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?

It’s no secret I’m a fan of Johnson Banks, so I won’t go on about their recent Science Museum identity apart from stating that obviously, I loved it. If you want to see more of it click here.

No, I’m writing this because I noticed something the other morning as I passed an advert in the tube station.

One of the things designers love to do is line things up. Whenever I get a new identity brief, I often size up the name of the company, looking for symmetries, interesting gaps between letters, double entendres etc etc. All very Smile in the Mind. Anyway, I digress. One thing I often do is work out it the letters will stack nicely, so I liked the fact that the new Science Museum logo does that.

4 letters, 6, or best of all, 9 letters are all a gift. Except that there are 13 letters in S C I E N C E M U S E U M, and my OCD gene means I know that’s a prime number, so it doesn’t work. And then I noticed, they’ve run the I and the E together on the first line. Clever buggers.

Normally that wouldn’t work at all, but it works so well I hadn’t even noticed it.

Ben Casey of The Chase came in to work yesterday, and instead of the usual career synopsis, which most visitors choose to relate, he chose to talk about something “more interesting”, just one project. This was to be his work for Preston North End football club, a project which he described as “the perfect self initiated project”, encompassing design, art and football.

And I have to admit, at that point I was worried, not being a fanatical football lover, and having attended the talk in order to see some great ideas-driven graphic design from a company who have featured in D&AD every year for 23 years, I wasn’t sure I was up for a lot of football anecdotes and personal indulgences.

But I was too hasty, because Ben went on to tell us how his childhood love of Preston North End football club led from him redesigning their logo and stationery…

…to actually designing their STADIUM with no prior architectural knowledge…

“…it was just working on a grid system, similar to type really…”

If you let a graphic designer loose on a football stadium, then this is what you’re going to get:

Amazing. Seats as pixels. I have to say, that football or no football, this was right up my street, and exactly the sort of thing I struggled to inspire various meeting rooms of people with for England United. It was that sort of moment when you see something you wish you’d thought of first, except it was worse, because I had thought of it, and had it discarded.

Here’s his logo for The Great Room, the stadium’s hospitality suite:

Another shot dead on target. And what about a gift bag for the ajoining National Football Museum?

Bang. A hat-trick. The crowd go wild.

The talk predictably went into extra time. Despite there being only one project to discuss, Ben’s love for it shone through and that sort of dedication to the fabric of a brief always results in special things.

Along with a lot of other right-thinking people, I was really sad to hear the BBC were planning to close down digital station 6music. Almost as importantly as the end of the Adam & Joe show, it will mean I won’t have a use for this sketch I did a while ago.

The 6 was always aching to be a pair of headphones, and most of the other stations have a small intervention to the number to indicate their content.

If you want to try and change the BBC’s mind, there’s a protest tomorrow in London, apparently if enough people turn up they will consider a reprieve.

And if that happens, I’m happy to develop the logo for the relaunch.

I enjoyed reading the Guardian article this week on the significance of the letter ‘O’ to designers, but having seen this in New York, it’s certainly a double edged sword…

…more from New York soon.

Tim from Hat-trick design sent me some images of their recent Giants of Rugby project, which he must have had some sort of sixth sense about, because it was right up my street. In fact, it’s very similar to something I’ve done for another sport-related project, but I’m not allowed to show you yet. I loved it when I saw it recently at their Typographic Circle talk, but couldn’t find much evidence of it online.

Anyway, as it’s Hat-trick, it’s pretty self explanatory. The giants of Rugby, made from little Rugby shirt icons, and printed at massive scale at Twickenham Stadium.

Which reminds me, their identity for the stadium itself was lovely too…

Apparently, Rugby is like footyball, but you’re allowed to pick the ball up and hit people.