Branding. Hell Yeah, India has now a Rupee Symbol.

Juli 17th, 2010 • Underway
Tags: Branding, Cool, Funny, India, Rupee, World

My branding highlight of the day is this – India has now a rupee symbol. It was designed by his royal highness Mustachio I himself. But do check out the report about India’s new currency symbol by yourself.

Amsterdam. Triple X City Branding Deluxe.

Juni 21st, 2010 • 8 comments Allgemein, Brands, Underway, We like
Tags: Amsterdam, Branding, Brands, Cool, Underway, visual, World

My new hometown Amsterdam is a unique city in many different ways. Its liberal laws, its multicultural approach, its channels and of course its beauty stuns me and millions of tourists every other day. One thing I like in particular is the city’s strong sense for branding. Amsterdam does not only know about its brand values, it also stages its corporate design consistently wherever you go.

Amsterdam’s branding is based on the city’s coat of arms. It consists of a red shield and a black pale with three silver Saint Andrew’s Crosses, the Imperial Crown of Austria, two golden lions, and the motto of Amsterdam. And as usual, such complex Coats of arms do not come with a simple story. Of course, there are different theories, especially where the three crosses came from. Sure, Wikipedia knows more…

Some people say the three saltires represent the three dangers of ancient Amsterdam: fire, floods, and the Black Death. That theory however has no historical basis. The crosses probably have their origin in the shield of the noble family Persijn. The knight Jan Persijn was ‘lord’ of Amstelledamme (Amsterdam) from 1280 to 1282.^[1]In the escutcheons of Dordrecht and Delft, two other cities in Holland, the pale refers to water. In analogy with this, the black pale in the escutcheon of Amsterdam would refer to the river Amstel.

By the way, I learned one funny fact about Amsterdam’s Coat of Arms.

The city symbol for Amsterdam is “XXX”, although no one really knows why. During the 60’s and 70’s, pornography was only legally available in the Netherlands, and when people would receive packages of this nature, it would have the symbol of XXX on it to note where it came from. This is how “XXX” or “X-rated” became associated with erotica.

Back to the branding topic. I have never walked the streets of any city and witnessed such a high sense about branding. The coat of arms and especially the three X’s are everwhere. Check out just some of these examples of Amsterdam’s city corporate design.

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Absolut. 25 years in fantastic ads.

Dezember 7th, 2009 • 1 comment Ads, Brands, Classics
Tags: Absolut, Ads, Branding, Brands, Classics, Cool, Creativity, history, Lifestyle, Print, visual, We like, World

My friends at Creative Criminals have published this fantastic compilation quite a while ago. But it is still worth taking a look at: For over 25 years Absolut vodka has run a simply überinspiring advertising campaign. The well known bottle of Absolut is formed in the shape of a tradtional Swedish medicine flagon. It may be hard to use for bartenders but the shape was an inspiration for their print campaign which just does one thing: Position the product as hero.

Check out the ad compilation here.

Logos. The Battle for Blue.

November 16th, 2009 • 1 comment Brands
Tags: Branding, Brands, Logos, Strategy, visual, World

Even in the classic brand design business differentiation seems to be unwanted hard to achieve. Check out this great info visualization by Wired Magazine which I found on Phil’s Flickr account.