make a mark...

I am fascinated with marks! My favorite classes in design school were typography and brand & identity. My favorite story of how a mark came to be is the story behind citi's logo. It happened while at lunch...2 designers (can I say design gods) Paula Scher & Kit Hinrichs of Pentagram were meeting with the marketing head of Citibank for a lunch meeting. Citibank was in the process of merging with another company whose logo was a red umbrella. In a matter of moments, Paula drew on her napkin a concept that would be picked up and carried throughout all of citi's packaging, environmental design, marketing, etc. After the meeting, Kit nudged her and said something like..."5 min! How are we going justify billing them a bizillion dollars for 5 minutes of development?" Her response was something like, "I've been in this business for 20 years, went through years of grueling design school...that's how we'll justify it." I love it! Pictured below is the logo. Notice how the "implied" umbrella connects and dots both of the i's. Paula is a genius!

While Citi's logo is a strong & crisp...maybe the best word to describe it is clean, Endymion Ensemble's logo represents a direction of branding that I'm excited about. It has a bite. It has a rawness, texture and almost hand crafted quality. I love that design seems to be going in this direction...back to craft. I'd love to take some of the logo's I've created and rub them up with sand paper or photocopy them a bunch of times to give them a grain and texture...something that a computer or desktop publisher can not do nor envision.