I’ve been thinking a lot about QR codes recently, and how ugly they look. So, here’s a project which caught my eye over at Collate this week, from those clever chaps at The Chase. They’ve used QR codes to print Christmas wrapping paper, where each code contains a gift idea too. Blimey.

The sheets look pretty nice as posters too, right up my street.

I’ve been pursuing a little pet project do do with the oft-maligned QR code for a little while now which I hope to be able to reveal in the new year, so watch this space for more QR goodies…

Last week I was invited along by Creative Review, to the Pentagram studio, for a talk by one of their partners, Angus Hyland, also the co-author of (relatively) new book Symbol.

Angus took us through ten corporate identity symbols of one kind or another, telling us a bit about their origin and meaning as well as why he liked them.

He started with the play symbol. Clever. And he went on to ask why that was such a recognised symbol for direction. In fact, perhaps arrows are one of the most fundamental symbols, and it must all come from arrowheads somewhere along the line, which we used to be pretty preoccupied by…

…In Angus’s words: “Things haven’t really changed that much.” Angus is a clear devotee of symbols, “SYMBOLS, not logotypes” and despairs of clear symbolic logos which have had the name of the company stamped across them. He quoted Eric Gill:

“Letters are not pictures, but signs for sounds”

We also learned that Bass was the first trademarked symbol in the UK, dating back to 1875, and that Carolyn Davidson designed the Nike swoosh symbol for $35. Blimey.

Angus told us that a symbol is like a bucket which doesn’t leak, it’s something which you can fill up, and over time it will hold much of the brand’s value. He told us that was why he would buy the Coca-cola logo over the secret recipe for the drink itself without hesitation: “That’s where the money is”

And so we went through the ten symbols, pausing every now and then for a quick quiz question, to which a correct (or hilariously incorrect) answer won a badge. Hyland was entertaining and witty, whilst remaining suitably shambolic with a playful glint in his eye which only comes from someone who knows their stuff inside out. He was toying with us. The thought occured to me that he’d make a good Doctor Who…

The first symbol was (of course) Apple. Angus wondered whether you’d covet a MacBook Pro if it had the ASUS logotype (not a symbol) on it, or indeed the original Apple logo: “I guess they figured that didn’t work terribly well.”

Modern branding is so damn clever and immersive, but if you get rid of the thing in the middle, you’re still at the heart of the experience… I’m not so sure…”

We learned that the bite out of the Apple was at Steve Jobs’s request, in order to give it scale – otherwise might it be mistaken for a tomato or a cherry?

He traced the evolution of the Shell symbol, reserving special comment for the”clever dick” who decided in 1955 that “it wasn’t enough to just show a shell” and admitting that as a child from Brighton, he had assumed the brand was all about the seaside.

He brought us to the WWF symbol, admitting a love for animal symbols, and saying gleefully “everyone likes their first teddy bear” and noting that although based on a drawing of a real Panda at London Zoo, it “represented a paradigm shift from illustration to symbol” in its execution.

And that brought him nicely to the Penguin symbol, where he revelled in the fact that it had nothing at all to do with the subject matter:

“Penguins don’t read books”

Angus told us how his more recent work on the Penguin symbol had involved slimming the bird down by 15%, primarily to make it easier to fit onto book spines, but also retaining it’s design quirks.

“Idiosyncrasies are what we associate that brand with.”

He spoke a few times about the tendency for companies to take the safe route when it came to their symbols, and described the woeful process whereby individuality is removed from a mark in the quest for boardroom acceptance:

“…and it enters the wind tunnel, the anodyne focus groups, where all the edges are blown off”

This struck a chord with me, I’ve often myself used a sculptural metaphor for this phenomenon, whereby the designer chips away at a piece of stone to create a beautiful sculpture, only to have a series of well-meaning but unimaginative people apply sandpaper to it, until there are no edges remaining on which anyone can snag their coat. You start out with a masterpiece and no matter what you do, you end up with a ball.

One final thought from Jan Tschicholdon on the inspiration behind the Penguin symbol? “My God, those birds stink!”

Next up was the CBS eye, where Hyland took us to the world of Mad Men corporate America.

Angus liked the “fundamental” aspect of this symbol, made from 4 circles building a pictogram of the human eye. Perhaps it was inspired by Magritte, who knows…

So from the eye to the mouth, and the Rolling Stones symbol, first used on their 1971 album Sticky Fingers.

Hyland told us the story of John Pasche who, while studying at the RCA was asked to design the symbol after Mick Jagger approached the college looking for a bargain basement symbol. The best thing about it? “It’s NOT The Beatles” but an “enduring pop-art symbol” which “encapsulates the time”.

And so that lead us to another zeitgeist-seizing symbol, that of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament…

…which we learned is actually not a trademarked symbol at all, and stems from the Aldermaston march of 1958. Perhaps an early use of a public domain socially powered identity? Why has it endured? In Hyland’s view, perhaps because it’s “so damn easy to make”, unlike other symbols for peace: “try drawing an accurate dove”.

As the symbol appeared almost virally on badges nationwide, it gained a “quasi-religious” status, but what inspired it? Opinion is divided on the matter, but Angus accepts the account which tells us it is made of of the semaphore letters N and D. Clever, huh?

The next symbol Angus talked about was the perpetual designers’ favourite, the Woolmark…

…with the most infamous aspect being who actually designed it? The symbol was the result of a competition in 1963, with the true designer to this day being somewhat unclear.

Hyland showed us how it was based on a Möbius strip, actually cutting one up in front of us, Blue Peter style.

Influenced by commercial op-art of the day, the Woolmark was agreed to be the direct ancestor of the ubiquitous recycle symbol.

Next, on to that monument of corporate identity, the Deutsche Bank logo.

I hadn’t realised that this was another symbol resulting from a competition, but crucially in this case, the entrants were shortlisted designers, judged by a panel of design experts, rather than the clients themselves. The result is an iconic symbol which would surely not have survived the “wind tunnel” if the client had intervened. Interesting stuff.

The symbol is a square you can’t penetrate “with profit inside” which is the sort of rooted abstraction many designers aspire to in mark-making. Finally, Angus reminded us that the symbol had been allowed to endure also, because it was at the heart of a well managed brand, the absence of which can be the slow death of an equally great symbol.

And so, to the final symbol Angus showed us, British Rail.

He told us this was the result of “proper design” by the Design Research Unit, the first generation of British multi-discipline design agencies, sitting around “stroking their chins”. And it’s certainly an enduring symbol, becoming the de facto icon for transport in the UK long after the demise of British Rail, as well as being emulated elsewhere in the world.

After this tenth symbol, Angus left us with an Alan Fletcher quote:

Commercial symbols are like people. Some are reasonably put together but lack personality, others are aggressive, or pompous, or merely unpleasant. Occasionally one encounters an interesting character. Whatever the case, to be effective, a trademark must meet a set of criteria: the utilitarian values of being relevant, appropriate and practical and the intangible qualities of being memorable and distinctive; and that something extra, the visual tweak which creates a unique personality.

Which seemed to sum it all up nicely.

And that was it. Ten symbols from the book, from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. The talk was entertaining and engaging, and Angus was fun to watch as well as learn from. He made a point of going into exhaustive detail about the origins of each symbol and went to great pains to credit the correct people (something which I wasn’t fast enough to write down all of for this post I’m afraid!) I didn’t win a badge, but I did pick up a copy of the book on the night which is full of this kind of detail, as well as the endless pages of pure symbols which designers crave.

There were some questions afterwards, mostly fixating on the origin of the CND symbol, with some frankly ludicrous rationalisations of its meaning. In the end Angus conceded that “you load your own reasons on to it” but I’m happy saying I’m pretty sure it isn’t anything to do with unborn children or the crucifixion of our lord Jesus Christ.

After that, Angus stepped back into his TARDIS and disappeared. The whole thing was brisk, making my note-writing somewhat chaotic, as it was obviously a cut-down version of the same talk he has given elsewhere. Like at the Design Museum for instance, where Amanda Jahn had the luxury of time to compile this impressively succinct summary of the talk. So if you haven’t managed to follow my rambling, you can simply glance at that to get the gist of it:

In fact I should probably just have shown that image at the start really.

Oh well, Symbol the book is available to buy now.

So it’s Wimbledon time again, and as regular readers of the blog will know, as I live just down the road from the epicentre of the madness, so each year I take an extra interest in the promotional activities being undertaken.

No fancy tennis typography at the tube station this year, just a very pedestrian FedEx branding and contrived sentence (‘Live to deliver’ – Really?) accompanies the traditional grass carpet on the platform, but I did come across this from one of my favourite design companies, hat-trick. They’ve only gone and redone the Wimbledon identity…

…what I wouldn’t have given for that job! And as usual they’ve done something lovely with it.

Also Sony have reshot their famous Bravia balls ad in SW19 with, yes, you’ve guessed it – tennis balls. Apparently it’s to do with it all being filmed this year in fancy 3D-o-vision. Anyway, it’s nice, and somewhat weird to see the balls cascading down the streets in my neighbourhood.

So if you follow me on Twitter, prepare for a fortnight of cranky tourist-frustration tweets, and if you’re travelling to the tournament on the tube in rush hour, expect to encounter my tennis elbow.

This week’s fix comes from Victor Hertz, who has created these honest logos, which balance just the perfect amount of cynicism and levity for a Friday…

…see more in his Flickr set. Found via theinspiration.

Nice idea. Working in branding, I’m constantly reading the mythical ‘brand essence’ of various large corporations, which is always a statement which we are constantly reminded is never to be actually broadcast outside the building. I wonder how this exercise might go if you rendered various brand essence statements in the company’s logotype? Would the two match up or contrast horribly?

Two lovely examples of adding motion to what would previously have been static symbols.

This is the Current logo (the new Current logo, not the previous Current logo if you see what I mean), which in its previous incarnation had been animated from a static mark by the addition of a (bit dodgy) wave effect. Wolff Ollins and friends took this one step further and reimagined it as a flag.

Found over at Brand New where you can read the full story. Lovely…

Also, here’s a nice bit of 8-bit esque animation applied to a road safety sign.

Working within 2kb of RAM, the barbarian group animated the signage on hardware not intended for animation, to send a stark message.

Found rather predictably via the Creative Review blog…

Just a few things I spotted this week…

A modular typeface system which overlays different weights to build different combinations. Via typetoken

Lego walls! Via ohdeedoh

Milton Glaser on the fear of failure. Via Creative Review, where there are more from similarly wise people.

And finally, delightfully crazy Doctor Who T-shirts. Via GeekAlerts

I’m going to try and do a post like this every Friday. Juicy JPGs and creative clips without the burden of my tiresome opinion…