圖標雖然小,現代企業沒它不大貨車行車紀錄器安裝

在智能手機時代,企業標志經歷瞭一場巨變。它不再僅僅是一個視覺符號,還是一個被手機用戶每天觸摸幾十次的圖標。對於那些因重新設計考慮不周的標志而導致客戶不滿的公司來說,這不啻為一場災難。


假設Uber(我隨意挑選瞭一個極具數字時代風格的公司作為例證)創建於1909年。顯然,它會有一個不同的商業模式,當然不涉及一款智能手機應用,但它涉及將人們有效地從一個地方轉移到另一個地方。在那個時代,什麼有可能成為這傢公司的視覺識別(即它的標志)呢?

或許僅僅是公司的名稱。這個很可能更加不討人喜歡的名稱——Uber個人運送公司——以可口可樂的腳本呈現出某種洛可可風格。或許是對其總部進行的一種類似石版畫的詳盡描述,以表明其工業實力。

在現實中,Uber成立於2009年。到那時,關於標志和品牌視覺識別的其他元素的意義和目的的思考,已經獲得長足進展。更為顯著的是,自2009年(即iPhone開啟智能手機時代的兩年之後)以來,這種思考已經發生巨變。

首先需要指出的是,標志不僅僅是公司信頭,廣告牌或其他促銷場所上的名稱、圖標,或者其他視覺簽名。從你的口袋或包裡取出那個設備,滑動屏幕——正如你每天或許都會做許多次的那樣。無論你去哪裡,你現在每天都隨身攜帶數十種品牌圖標。著名設計公司Pentagram合夥人邁克爾·比魯特表示,“人們正在以一種他們此前從未做過的方式,與這些標志進行切切實實地互動。”特別是對於Facebook、Airbnb、Snapchat和Uber等公司來說,這意味著“他們的客戶不僅僅與這些品牌,而且與代表這些品牌的標志有一種真正密切的關系。”

現如今,這個現實超越瞭以數字為中心的公司:無論其產品或服務多麼類似,幾乎任何一傢以消費者為導向的公司,都必須應對一個在某種程度上由APP按鈕和Twitter頭像定義的溝通環境。這就是品牌標識變得無所不在,深深嵌入我們生活的原因所在。(設計師和客戶所說的品牌標識,是指一整套視覺和文字符號,包括標志在內。)


Suppose Uber —to pick a random example of a distinctly digital-era company—had been founded in 1909. Obviously it would have had a different business model (not involving a smartphone app), but let’s say it involved efficiently moving people from place to place. What, in those days, might have been this firm’s visual identity—its logo?

Perhaps just the company name, which would likely have been fussier: the Uber Personal Conveyance Concern, rendered in some rococo style along the lines of Coca-Cola’s script. Or maybe a densely detailed lithograph-style depiction of its headquarters, suggesting industrial might.

In reality Uber was founded in 2009, and by then the thinking about the meaning and purpose of a logo and other elements of a brand’s visual identity had evolved quite a bit. More remarkably, that thinking has changed dramatically since 2009, which was two years after the debut of the iPhone ushered in the age of the smartphone.

For starters, a logo isn’t just a name or an icon or other visual signature on company letterhead or a billboard or other promotional venue anymore. Take that device out of your pocket or bag and swipe through the screens, as you probably do many times a day anyway. You now carry dozens of brand icons wherever you go. “People are literally, physically interacting with those symbols in a way that they never did,” says Michael Bierut, partner in the prominent design firm Pentagram. For the Facebooks and Airbnbs and Snapchats and Ubers of the world in particular, he continues, that means “their customers are having a really, really intimate sort of relationship not just with those brands, but with the symbols that represent the brands.”

And by now, this reality transcends digital-centric companies: Almost any consumer-facing business, however analog its products or services, must reckon with a communication environment partly defined by app buttons and Twitter avatars. This is one reason that brand identities—as designers and their clients refer to the larger set of visual and verbal signifiers that include a logo—have become ubiquitous and embedded in our lives.

Twitter


與此同時,數字時代讓標識系統變得更加動蕩。頻繁的風格更新,或徹底的品牌改造經常招致不同層級的公眾反響——在前幾代設計師看來,這些都是不可思議的。導致這一刻的變化最初是逐漸發生,然後似乎突然出現。其結果是,現代企業標識從來沒有像現在這樣,擁有如此大的利害關系。

視覺傳播與拉斯高的洞穴一樣古老,符號設計的歷史可追溯到代表貴族傢庭的飾章,或者代表十字軍的十字軍徽。在早期的商業環境中,一個獨特的標志有助於客戶在日益非個人化和廣佈的市場上區別不同制造商的商品。在工業時代,拜平版印刷術和彩色印刷等新技術所賜,這個基本概念驟然加速。貝斯公司註冊於19世紀70年代的紅色三角形標記經常被視為第一個商業標志。


At the same time, the digital era has helped make the identity systems more volatile, with frequent stylistic updates or outright branding do-overs, often drawing levels of public response that earlier generations of designers would have found unfathomable. The changes that led to this moment happened gradually, and then seemingly all at once. As a result, the stakes for the modern corporate logo have never been higher.

Visual communication is as old as the caves of Lascaux, and you can trace the design of symbols to represent groups to aristocratic family crests or the red cross of a Crusader. In early commercial contexts, a unique mark helped customers distinguish one maker’s wares from another in increasingly impersonal and far-flung marketplaces. That basic notion accelerated through the industrial age, influenced by new technologies from lithography to color printing. Bass Ale’s red-triangle mark is often credited as the first commercial logo, trademarked in the 1870s (and famously visible in édouard Manet’s 1882 painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère).


20世紀中期,商標這一相當務實的想法演變為一個更加抽象的“企業標識”概念——將標志和企業視覺傳播的其他方面定位為一種既能捕捉品牌的本質,也能為它增添價值的東西。在某種程度上,這是一個更加專業化的設計社區的職能:設計師們用準工業化的嚴謹態度,執行他們信奉的現代主義美學。那個時代湧現瞭一大批如今被奉為偶像的標志,其中有許多出自少數幾傢公司和設計師之手。

雷蒙德·洛威以突破性的工業設計而聞名於世,其客戶包括斯塔德貝克公司、希爾斯羅巴克公司、Coldspot冰箱和灰狗公共汽車等。他有一句膾炙人口,旨在說服客戶的名言:“好的外觀是一件可銷售的商品。”這種堅信設計和風格將提升營收的理念,轉化為好彩香煙盒、空軍一號機身上的圖形作品,以及殼牌、埃克森美孚和美國郵政局的徽標。索爾·巴斯為貝爾電話、女童軍、美能達和聯合航空等機構和組織創造瞭歷久彌新的標志。(值得一提的是,巴斯還是設計電影海報和片頭部分的大師。)切爾馬耶夫 蓋斯馬設計公司為美孚石油、美國全國廣播公司、美國公共廣播公司和大通銀行設計瞭一批持久性的品牌標識。在這個企業設計的黃金時代,最有名的人物或許是保羅·蘭德。他為IBM、聯合包裹公司、西屋電氣和耶魯大學等機構設計瞭數十個經典標志。


Around the mid-20th century, the rather practical notion of a trademark morphed into a more abstract idea of “corporate identity”—positioning the logo and other aspects of a company’s visual communication as both capturing the essence of a brand and adding value to it. This was partly a function of a more professionalized design community that embraced modernist aesthetics executed with quasi-industrial rigor. And that era produced a startling number of now-iconic logos, many created by a handful of firms and individuals.

Raymond Loewy is best known for breakthrough industrial design (Studebakers, the Sears Roebuck and Co. Coldspot refrigerator, the Greyhound bus, and many more)—and for convincing his clients that, as he once put it, “good appearance was a salable commodity.” This belief in the bottom-line payoff of design and style carried over into graphic work from the Lucky Strike box to the livery of Air Force One, as well as logos for Shell, Exxon, and the U.S. Post Office. Saul Bass (also famous for movie-poster and title-sequence work) created lasting logos for Bell Telephone, the Girl Scouts, Minolta, and United Airlines, among others. Chermayeff Geismar designed durable identities for Mobil, NBC, PBS, Chase, and others. And perhaps the most celebrated figure of this corporate-design golden age, Paul Rand, created scores of logos for the likes of IBM, UPS, Westinghouse, and Yale.

美國全國廣播公司


即使在今天,設計師傑瑞·凱珀表示,有許多上述標志仍然“幾乎是不可破壞的。”在20世紀80年代早期,凱珀攜手巴斯,為AT T設計瞭一款旨在取代貝爾電話標志的全球標識。自那以後,他相繼為思科公司和信諾集團等企業設計瞭一些著名標識。那個時代基本上規范瞭標志設計的思維:獨特、難忘、靈活,以及簡單。沒有層次,沒有細線,他們看起來真的像是用白板筆創造的——許多的確是。至少初步的草圖是這樣。“他笑著說。避免使用一種依賴大量色彩、多色漸變或復雜細節的標志,是有一些實際原因的:它需要顯示在一些低質量印刷品上,比如電話薄,報刊分類廣告或傳真。


Even today, many of these logos seem “pretty much indestructible,” says Jerry Kuyper, a designer who worked with Bass on the AT T globe icon that replaced the Bell logo in the early 1980s and has since designed identities for Cisco, Cigna, and others. That era essentially codified logo--thinking: distinct, memorable, flexible, simple. “There were no gradations, no fine lines; they really looked like they’d been created with a Magic Marker—and many of them were,” he says, laughing. “At least the initial sketches.” There were practical reasons for avoiding a mark that depended on lots of colors, gradients, or intricate detail: It would need to work in low-quality black-and-white printing such as the phone book, classified ads in newspapers, or a fax.


當然,這種背景現在幾乎變得無關緊要。加德納設計公司總裁比爾·加德納指出,在數字環境中,創建或復制多色漸變或復雜效果是沒有任何問題的。(15年來,他經營的網站Logolounge.com一直癡迷於追蹤大大小小的企業標識變化和趨勢。)正因如此,Instagram當前圖標的彩色字段才會出現在你的手機上。

這僅僅是不斷變革的技術對標識設計影響的最新例證而已。幾十年前,當電腦允許設計師輕松地為標志添加陰影、亮點和維度時,他們確實這樣做瞭。比如,設計師利用3D效果重新修改瞭蘭德設計的扁平化聯合包裹標志。從面向印刷品的塗色過程(旨在響應外部的光線)轉向面向屏幕的塗色過程(從後面點亮,因此更加強烈),讓透明度和色彩漸變這類技巧成為可能。本世紀初期,MSN.com的標志(一隻色彩斑斕的蝴蝶)讓許多設計師皺起瞭眉頭。他們指出,這個標識實在難以印刷。“但微軟聲稱,‘我們不會印刷它。MSN生活在一個完全數字化的世界中。’”加德納說。

塞吉·哈維夫是現在被稱為切爾馬耶夫 蓋斯馬 哈維夫設計公司的合夥人之一。他說,設計師們仍然用鋼筆或鉛筆在紙上勾勒黑白色的初步草圖。哈維夫聲稱,自從他的合夥人創建這傢公司以來,設計世界已經發生瞭翻天覆地的變化,但某些基本原則,特別是簡單性原則,並沒有變化。他們設計的許多標識,盡管在一定程度上受制於20世紀中期的制作條件,但仍然“在數字媒體時代茁壯成長,其應用范圍完全超出瞭他們的預期。”哈維夫說。

盡管如此,他承認,自標識設計的第一個全盛時期(涉及藝術和企業風格精確度的特定融合)以來,這一領域已經發生巨變。彼時,無論某個標志是簡單的“文字標志”(像蘭德用線條勾勒的IBM標志),還是涉及一個符號(像切爾馬耶夫 蓋斯馬設計公司為大通銀行設計的抽象八角形),設計師都會制作一本厚實的“標準手冊”,不遺餘力地描述這個商標的使用細節。比如,一本IBM標志使用手冊具體到打印的字行長度,詳細描述瞭該標志在內部郵件信封上的具體位置。卡內基梅隆大學設計學院教授丹·博亞斯基表示,“這是那個時代的顯著特征之一。通過標準手冊,你可以瞭解到使用這個標志和這套標識系統能做什麼,不能做什麼。”


Of course such大車專用行車紀錄器安裝 contexts hardly matter now. Creating or reproducing multicolor gradations or complex effects is no problem in the digital environment, observes Bill Gardner, the president of Gardner Design in Wichita. (For 15 years he has operated the popular site Logolounge.com, obsessively tracking business identity changes and trends, large and small.) Thus, for example, the chromatic color field that makes Instagram’s current icon pop on your phone.

That’s just the latest manifestation of how changing technology has influenced identity design. A couple of decades ago, when computers allowed designers to easily add shadows and highlights and dimensionality to logos, they did—revising, for instance, Rand’s flat UPS logo with 3D sparkle. A shift from print-oriented color processes (responding to external light) to screen--oriented color (lit from behind, and thus more intense) enabled tricks like transparency and gradients. MSN.com’s early 2000s logo, a butterfly with complicated color overlaps, raised eyebrows among designers at the time, who pointed out how hard it would be to print. “But Microsoft was saying, ‘We’re not going to print it. MSN lives in an entirely digital world,’?” Gardner says.

Sagi Haviv, a partner in the firm now known as Chermayeff Geismar Haviv, says designers there still make initial sketches in black and white, with pen or pencil on paper. For all that’s changed since the days when his partners founded the business, he argues, certain fundamentals—simplicity in particular—have not. Many of their logos, shaped partly by the constraints of mid-20th-century production, “thrive in digital media, in applications that they could have never predicted,” Haviv says.

Still, he concedes that much has changed since that first heyday of identity design, which involved a particular mix of artistry and corporate-style exactitude. Back then, whether a logo was simply a “wordmark” (like Rand’s IBM, distinctly constructed of stripes) or involved a symbol (like Chermayeff Geismar’s abstract octagon for Chase), the designer would also produce a thick “standards manual,” painstakingly delineating the precise details of how the mark could be used. For instance, one IBM manual specified, down to the pica, the proper placement of the mark on an internal mail envelope. “That was so part of that era,” says Dan Boyarski, a professor in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University. “You went to the standards manual to learn the dos and don’ts with this logo and with this identity system.”


在那個時代,推出一個新標志主要與大規模的後勤工作聯系在一起,比如重新塗繪數以千計的卡車或飛機,或者替代橫貫東西海岸的加油站上的標志。在這種時代背景下,標準手冊或許特別重要。標準當然還在延續,但現在,這些系統通常更加靈活,以適應不斷變化的媒體景觀。(這些手冊已經演變為難得一見的奇珍異寶。事實上,有人最近在眾籌網站Kickstarter籌集資金,試圖重印切爾馬耶夫 蓋斯馬設計公司在1977年為美國環境保護署制作的長達244頁的視覺標準指南。)


These manuals may have been particularly important in an era when rolling out a new logo was largely associated with massive logistical feats such as repainting thousands of trucks or airplanes, or replacing signage on gas stations from coast to coast. Standards of course persist, but these systems are generally more flexible today to deal with a constantly changing media landscape. (The manuals have become a curiosity. In fact, a recent Kickstarter campaign raised money to reprint the 244-page Chermayeff Geismar 1977 visual standards guide for the Environmental Protection Agency.)

美國環境保護署


但這些手冊或許也是那個時代難以量化的一項特征的副產品:作為一個準薩滿教式的問題解決者,設計公司在這樣一個客戶們剛剛開始理解的新生領域提供專業知識。(IBM總裁小托馬斯·J·沃森在1973年發表演講時聲稱,‘好的設計是一門好生意’。時至今日,設計師們仍然喜歡引用這句話。)就像醫生開具一種診斷結果和治療方式那樣,一些設計師以提供單一解決方案而臭名昭著,尤其是蘭德。一位20世紀80年代的客戶後來回憶說,“我問他是否會提供幾個選項,他說,‘不,我會為你解決你的問題,你付錢給我。如果你想要更多的選項,去找別人談吧。’”蘭德獲得瞭這份工作,以10萬美元的酬勞為一傢名為Next的個人電腦初創公司設計瞭一個標志。對此,這位名叫史蒂夫·喬佈斯的客戶欣然接受。


But perhaps the manuals were also a side effect of a harder-to-quantify characteristic of that era: the design agency as quasi-shamanistic problem solver, offering expertise in a nascent field its clients were just beginning to grasp. (“Good design is good business,” IBM president Thomas J. Watson Jr. declared in a 1973 speech that designers still love to reference.) Rand in particular was notorious for presenting a single solution, the way a doctor presents a diagnosis and treatment. “I asked him if he would come up with a few options,” one 1980s client later recalled. “And he said, ‘No, I will solve your problem for you, and you will pay me?…?If you want options, go talk to other people.’?” Rand got the job and was paid $100,000 to design a logo for personal-computer startup Next, which that client, Steve Jobs, accepted.


即使在那時,也沒有幾位設計師能夠做到這一點,但可以肯定的是,現在沒有人能做到。作為一個對比,不妨看看如今最熱門的科技公司Snapchat的標志。創始人自己繪制瞭一個幽靈符號,據說他僅僅瀏覽瞭一下應用商店,並註意到沒有多少公司使用黃色,就這樣選定瞭其背景顏色。

一些著名品牌打破瞭這種嚴格層級,並為自身標志在數字時代建立瞭一個不同的未來,耐克就是其中之一。但視覺藝術學院品牌碩士課程負責人,播客Design Matters主持人黛比·米爾曼認為,這真的跟著名的“嗖嗖飛鉤”符號沒有多大關系。眾所周知,第一次看到“嗖嗖飛鉤”時,耐克創始人菲爾·奈特的反應相當冷淡。


Few designers could get away with that even then, but it’s a fair bet that none could today. As a point of contrast, consider the logo of one of the most talked-about tech companies right now: Snapchat. The founder drew the ghost symbol himself, and reportedly chose its background color by simply scrolling through the app store and noticing there weren’t many companies using yellow.

One of the brands credited with breaking down those strict prescriptive hierarchies and setting up a different sort of future for the logo in the digital age is Nike. But this wasn’t really about its famous Swoosh symbol, which Nike founder Phil Knight famously had a lukewarm reaction to the first time he saw it, argues Debbie Millman, chair of the School of Visual Arts’ Masters in Branding program and host of the podcast Design Matters.


“重要的不是這個標記,而是營銷。”倘若耐克在過去數十年沒有投入數百萬美元進行頗具創意的廣告宣傳活動,“嗖嗖飛鉤”恐怕不會獲得如此高的認可度。米爾曼繼續說道,正是這些營銷努力,讓“嗖嗖飛鉤”獲得瞭商業標志的聖杯:除瞭通常與公司名稱協同產生的“標志鎖定”效應之外,它還能夠傲然自立,並且仍然是可識別的,仍然有意義。

日益復雜的品牌的強勢崛起,大大增強並重塑瞭現代主義者的一個信念,即一個標志,無論是采用圖標還是其他什麼形式,隻有從它的聯系中才能小貨車行車記錄器安裝獲得意義。切爾馬耶夫 蓋斯馬 哈維夫設計公司的合夥人哈維夫透露稱,大通銀行董事長“非常討厭”該公司在上世紀50年代中期設計的藍色八角形標志。“他說,‘搞什麼鬼?這到底是什麼意思?”但六個月後,這位董事長穿上瞭一件袖口印有大通八角形標志的西裝。

“它已經成為這傢銀行的代表,他感受到瞭一種擁有感。”哈維夫說。這個符號沒有任何意義——直至這種聯系最終確立。讓人們列舉一個他們最喜歡的標志,他們總會回答自己惠顧過或者非常尊敬的公司名稱,比如耐克、蘋果、聯邦快遞或亞馬遜。“他們絕對不會提到安然,即使安然擁有一個由最著名的設計師(其實正是無處不在的保羅·蘭德)操刀設計的偉大標志。”哈維夫總結道。

從互聯網時代早期開始,數字文化就增強瞭創造一個獨特企業標識——甚至是(或者說,特別是)一個涉及純抽象符號的企業標識——的挑戰和機會。一方面,培訓消費者識別一個包含公司名稱的文字商標相對更容易;另一方面,當它被壓縮到一款應用或社交媒體頭像上,一個長度僅為八分之三英寸的位置上時,一個較長的名稱或復雜的標志可能難以識別。一些人通過使用一個字標的某個組成部分來解決這道難題——Facebook那個映襯在著名藍色背景上的小寫字母“f”,就是一個耳熟能詳的成功案例。但仔細看看你的手機,你可能會註意到很多符號,其中有很多都是很抽象的。“在某種程度上,每一個符號都是旨在為字母表創造一個新字母的嘗試。” Pentagram設計公司合夥人比魯特這樣說道。


“It’s not the mark,” she says. “It’s the marketing.” The Swoosh would not be so recognizable without millions of dollars of creative firepower poured into advertising and promotion over the decades. That, Millman continues, is what allowed it to attain the holy grail for a commercial symbol: an ability to stand on its own outside the usual “logo lockup” pairing with a company name, yet remain recognizable and meaningful.

The rise of increasingly sophisticated branding turbocharged and reinvented something the modernists had believed—a logo, in icon form or otherwise, acquired meaning only from its associations. Haviv, of Chermayeff Geismar Haviv, says the chairman of Chase “hated” the blue octagon abstraction the firm designed in the mid-1950s: “He said, ‘Well, what the hell does it mean?’?” But six months later the chairman was wearing Chase octagon cuff links.

“It had become the representation of the bank,” Haviv says, “and he felt a sense of ownership.” The symbol doesn’t mean anything until that association forms. Ask people to name a favorite logo, and they’ll answer with the names of companies they patronize or respect, such as Nike, Apple, FedEx, or Amazon. “They’ll never say Enron,” Haviv concludes, “even though Enron had a great logo, designed by one of the most famous designers.” (The ubiquitous Paul Rand, in fact.)

Digital culture, from the early web days on, has heightened both the challenges and opportunities of crafting a distinct corporate identity, even (or perhaps especially) one that involved a purely abstract symbol. On the one hand, it’s easier to train a consumer to recognize a wordmark that includes a company name; on the other, a longer name or complex logo may be hard to recognize or even discern when it’s crunched all the way down to a three-eighths-inch square on an app or a social media avatar. Some can resolve this by using an element of a wordmark—Facebook’s lowercase “f,” on its famous blue background, is familiar enough to pull this off. But if you look at your phone, you’ll probably notice quite a few symbols, many of them pretty abstract. “Every one of those things is an attempt to invent a new letter of the alphabet, in a way,” says Pentagram’s Bierut.

Facebook


這是一個通常需要花費好幾年,甚至幾十年的項目,但對於一傢龐大或全球性公司來說,它的確能帶來可觀的回報。2011年,重新設計的星巴克標志取消瞭所有單詞,轉而選擇其長期使用的美人魚形象的一個風格化版本;在理論上,這個標志由此得以解放,更容易被世界各地的人們所接受(客戶不需要具備閱讀西方字母的能力),其聯系也不再限於咖啡。Pentagram最近幫助萬事達更新標志,將公司名稱移至著名的互鎖圈之下,為在“標志鎖定”之外使用這個符號開啟瞭新的可能性。


This is a project that normally takes years, if not decades, but it also has distinct payoffs for expansive or global businesses. Starbucks’ most recent redesign, in 2011, dropped all words from its logo in favor of a more stylized version of its long-standing mermaid figure; in theory, that frees the mark up to work more easily anywhere in the world—customers don’t need to be able to read Western letters—with associations no longer limited to coffee. Pentagram’s recent update of Mastercard moved the company name off and below its familiar interlocking circles, opening up possibilities for using that symbol outside the lockup.


鑒於現在隻有如此多的抽象形狀和顏色供設計師使用,正如比魯特所說,有種感覺似乎是,“你可以隨意提供這些東西。”他提到Airbnb在2015年重新設計的標志,許多人在社交媒體上嘲諷它像女性生殖器。“我不記得他們曾經說過它應該像什麼。我想他們是說,‘這是我們所代表的價值觀,從現在開始,這就是陪伴我們持續前行,不斷促進這些價值觀的旗幟。’在這面旗幟上,它幾乎可以是任何東西。”


Given the reality that there are only so many abstract shapes and colors to work with, it can feel almost as if “you could hand out these things at random,” as Bierut puts it. He mentions Airbnb’s redesign in 2015, which many people mocked on social media for resembling genitalia. “I don’t remember them ever saying that was supposed to look like something,” he says. “I think they said, ‘Here are the values we stand for, and from now on this is the flag under which we will march on our way to promote those values.’ It could almost be anything on the flag.”

Airbnb


數字技術已經為企業標識的演變過程帶來瞭新的參與者:人群。那些現代主義設計巨匠從來沒有必要應對互聯網點燃的強烈反應,這種抵制有可能將一款重新設計的標志令人好奇地轉變為一場類似流行文化事件的運動。比如,沒有哪個品牌希望經歷果汁品牌Tropicana在2009年遭遇的無妄之災。正如該公司的設計師當時所言,為瞭將這個果汁品牌“演變到一個更加現代化的狀態,”Tropicana放棄瞭長期使用的標志——“一個插有吸管的橙汁”,轉而使用一個盛放在玻璃杯中,並使用無襯線字體,有點抽象的果汁圖像。投訴電郵不斷湧入,銷售額下降瞭20%,那個不夠現代的標志被迅速恢復。一年後,Gap收回瞭一個幾天前剛剛宣佈,就立刻在Facebook和Twitter上招致漫天嘲諷的新標志。

現在,任何一傢有意推出新標志的公司都知道,新設計將被廣泛審查,尤其是像Uber這類生存在數字世界的公司。Uber設計、產品和品牌總監沙林·阿明表示,“人們與他們的手機之間存在一種私人關系。“在傢中的主屏幕或第二塊屏幕上放置東西,幾乎就像在他們傢擺放傢具一樣。有人突然闖入傢中,要改變沙發的位置。”

成立近8年以來,Uber已經使用瞭好幾個標志,主要是對字母“U”采用不同的處理方式。但該公司在2016年推出的標識計劃,旨在設計“一種更適合未來10年、15年的標志。”阿明說。它基本上是一個圓圈內的小矩形,兩個幾何元素通過一條細線連接在一起。該公司希望,這個純粹而簡單的符號將在U字形沒有引起共鳴的全球市場上獲得奇效。

不同於上世紀中葉,由一個外部機構提供決定性解決方案的設計界場景,Uber采用瞭矽谷科技公司尤為青睞的一種處理方式:一個漫長的迭代過程,其中穿插深入的用戶研究,並從內部發起。“我們實踐和呼吸這個品牌。”阿明如是說道。他解釋說,Uber的標志是連接比特和原子這一內部概念的延伸:矩形是比特,圓圈是物理世界。

有沒有用戶理解其深意呢?這可能是一個錯誤的問題。阿明欣然認同的一個觀點是,新標志的命運將取決於隨著時間的推移,它將被賦予何種意義。就目前而言,Uber代表的意義(富有遠見的便利,抑或漫不經心的殘酷)或許值得商榷,但這傢企業的未來並不取決於它的標志。正如1959年或1909年的情形一樣,事實恰恰相反。


Digital technology has brought something else to the corporate-identity process: the crowd. Those modernist design giants never had to contend with the kind of Internet-fueled backlash that can turn a redesign into something curiously close to a pop culture event. No brand, for instance, wants to endure the Tropicana debacle of 2009. In an attempt to “evolve” the juice brand “into a more current or modern state,” as the company’s designer put it at the time, a redesign dropped Tropicana’s longtime orange-with-a-straw-in-it logo in favor of a somewhat abstract image of juice in a glass and a sans serif font. Complaint emails poured in, sales plunged 20%, and the un-modern logo was promptly restored. A year later, Gap withdrew a planned redesign just days after announcing it, when it was roasted on Facebook and Twitter. (As Vanity Fair put it at the time, “The logo passed after a brief and ignominious battle with stage IV banality.”)

By now any company pushing a new logo knows that the design will be widely scrutinized. And that may be acutely true for a digital-dependent company like Uber. “There’s a personal relationship that people have with their phones,” says Shalin Amin, Uber’s director of design, product, and brand. “What they put on their home screen vs. the second screen—it’s almost like somebody’s house, where you place your furniture. And all of a sudden somebody comes in to change your couch.”

In its eight or so years of existence, Uber has cycled through a couple of logos, essentially varying treatments of the letter “U.” But the identity scheme it unveiled in 2016 is meant to be “something that better suited us for the next 10, 15 years,” Amin says. Basically it’s a small rectangle within a circle, the two geometric elements connected by a thin line, a pure and simple symbol the company hopes will work in global markets where the U letterform has no resonance.

In contrast to the mid-century scenario in which an outside agency presents a solution with a decisive “ta-da,” Uber followed what has become a more typical approach for Silicon Valley tech-centric firms in particular: a long, iterative process, spiked with extensive user research, and led from within. “We live and breathe the brand,” Amin says. The Uber glyph, he explains, is an extension of the internal concept of linking bits and atoms: The rectangle is a bit; the circle is the physical world. 大型車行車紀錄器安裝

Does any user get that? That’s probably the wrong question. Amin readily agrees that the new mark’s fate will depend on how it’s filled with meaning over time. What Uber stands for (visionary convenience or blithe ruthlessness) may be up for debate at the moment, but the business’s future does not depend on the logo. As in 1959, or 1909, it’s the other way around.


重新設計更多地由公司內部驅動這一轉變,反映瞭矽谷的一大趨勢。舊金山特納·達克沃斯設計公司創始人大衛·特納表示,“就這些企業的實際運作方式而言,設計具有至關重要的意義。”這傢設計公司創造瞭現已延續20年的亞馬遜標志,並且幫助更新瞭諸如可口可樂和李維斯這類偶像級品牌的標志。“他們建立瞭非常強大的內部設計團隊,並且有能力為這些設計師支付高額薪水。我知道這一點,因為他們總是企圖挖我的人!”

特納指出,更加純粹的數字公司實際上可以比以往任何時候都更容易修改其標志。如果你真的依賴一款特定的APP,哪怕其視覺呈現方式發生根本性變化(比如Instagram),你也會迅速適應。這可能反映瞭一種更為重大的轉變:許多科技公司不僅僅是以設計為中心,而是以互動-設計為中心。他們高度專註於塑造我們與計算機、互聯網和移動應用互動方式的圖形用戶界面。

在這樣一個信息-設計環境中,清晰度是最重要的訴求。例如,幾年前,蘋果公司徹底修改瞭其移動操作系統中的圖標,以消除模仿類比世界的“擬物化”符號——比如指代“報亭”的木架,或指代“筆記”的黃色便箋簿——轉而使用更加平坦、更加簡單的圖像。你可以看到這種轉變對Instagram標志的影響:其標志不再是對一部快速照相機的詳盡描述,而是一個使用至今的抽象版本。

特納表示,將互動-設計思維應用到標識設計,會產生一批可能“高度合乎邏輯,非常精簡的”標志。“但我認為,正在開始發生的,是你逐漸失去個性。你正在失去這個品牌的內涵,而這種內涵與人類的情感是相通的。”然而,你可以看到為什麼互動-設計趨勢會影響現在的標志:我們與它們互動。對於一傢以數字為中心的公司來說,一個簡單、清晰易記的符號不僅僅是一個有價值的品牌元素。它其實是帶有功能性的。

在21世紀,數字環境並不是唯一一個被標志滲透的地方。我們現在期望咖啡店、獨立樂隊、微型啤酒廠、食品卡車或一傢由兩人組成的科技創業公司都擁有一個很酷的視覺識別。不僅僅是在美國。哈維夫表示,在他的合夥人參與領導的標志革命爆發整整60年之後,現在很難構想一個真正原創的標志。每當他的設計團隊將一個新創意提交給法律部,以供後者在全球范圍內搜索類似商標時,他們總是被提醒這一點,因為律師們總能發現一些可能存在的先例。“對於任何設計師來說,這都是一個令人謙卑的時刻。”他說。

幾年前,Logolounge.com創始人加德納表示,設計師在厚厚的印刷年度綜合報告中研究彼此的作品。今天,通過設計網站或社交媒體,一位大牌設計師可以看到地球另一端某位設計新秀最新發佈的標識創新,反之亦然。僅Logolounge一傢網站的虛擬圖書館現在就能提供超過26.5萬個標志。加德納指出,“現在很難說‘這種設計方式是一個趨勢,’因為它會迅速地成為老古董。”正如視覺藝術學院的米爾曼所言,由於標識“傾向於更快地佈滿塵埃,”企業面臨更大的誘惑去更快地改變和更新品牌標識。這相悖於一項有助於我們觀察任何特定設計是否真正具有偶像地位的元素:時間的流逝。

但並不僅僅是設計師及其客戶看到比以往任何時候都更多的標志和品牌設計,然後與之互動。我們這些圈外人也是如此。米爾曼指出,作為現代標識設計或許最令人驚奇的進展之一,越來越多的普通人開始學習自己設計標志——“使用專業設計人士確立的品牌設計信條,為運動創造符號。”她列舉的例子包括“黑人的命也是命”,以及在巴黎遭受恐怖襲擊之後迅速流行的“為和平祈禱”符號,甚至還包括粉紅色的貓咪帽——在唐納德·特朗普就職後全美各地爆發的婦女遊行活動中,這種旨在抨擊當選總統侮辱女性言論的帽子賺足瞭眼球。

米爾曼表示,“這些都是標志,它們是傳播運動的有力符號,它們將擁有共同價值觀、願景和使命的人們聚集在一起。所有這些都是品牌宣傳。”也許這就像非常頻繁地聽另一種語言之後,你也開始使用它。“無論這是好事還是壞事,它隻是我們這個時代的一個後果。”事實上,她認為貓咪帽是過去一年最有力的“品牌”象征。“這是一種新形狀,新形式,它正在利用一種顏色,沒有使用任何語言。”米爾曼這樣說道。“這是一個堪稱完美的標志。”(財富中文網)

原文刊載於2017年6月15日出刊的《財富》遊覽車行車紀錄器安裝雜志。

譯者:Kevin


The shift to more internally driven redesigns is a reflection of a broader trend in Silicon Valley. “Design is so fundamental to the way these businesses actually operate,” says David Turner, cofounder of San Francisco design agency Turner Duckworth, which created Amazon’s now 20-year-old logo, and has updated the identities of brands as venerable as Coca-Cola and Levi’s. “They build really robust internal design teams. And they can pay them a lot of money. I know, because they’re always trying to poach my people!”

Turner points out that more purely digital companies can actually revise their logo schemes much more easily than ever. If you really rely on a particular app, and its visual presentation changes radically (as, say, Instagram’s did), you’ll soon adjust. And this may reflect a more significant shift: Many tech companies aren’t just design-centric, they’re interaction-design-centric. They focus heavily on the graphical user interfaces that shape the way we interact with computers, the Internet, mobile apps.

In an information-design environment, clarity rules. A few years ago, for instance, Apple thoroughly revised the icons in its mobile operating system to do away with “skeuomorphs”—symbols that mimicked analog-world contexts, such a wood-shelf “newsstand” or a yellow pad for “notes”—in favor of flatter and simpler images. You can see the influence of this shift in Instagram’s logo, which switched from a fairly detailed depiction of an instant camera to the more abstract version it uses today.

Applying interaction-design thinking to identity design results in logos that can be “highly logical, very stripped down,” Turner says. “But I think what’s starting to happen is you’re starting to lose personality. You’re losing what brands are all about, which is connecting to human emotion.” And yet, you can see why interaction-design trends would influence logos now: We interact with them. For a digital-centric company, a simple, clear, easy-to-memorize symbol isn’t just a potentially valuable branding element. It’s actually functional.

The digital environment is not the only place soaked in logos in the 21st century. We now expect every coffee shop, indie band, microbrewery, food truck, or two-person tech startup to have a cool visual identity. And that’s not just in the U.S. Sixty years after the logo revolution his partners helped lead, Haviv says, it’s harder to come up with something truly original. His firm is reminded of this every time it turns a new creation over to the legal department to search for similar marks around the globe, and the lawyers find a slew of possible precedents. “It’s a humbling moment, for any designer,” he says.

Years ago, says Logolounge founder Gardner, designers studied one another’s work in thick printed annual roundups. Today, through design sites or social media, a big-shot designer can see the latest identity innovation from an up-and-comer on the other side of the planet, and vice versa. Logolounge alone now offers a virtual library of more than 265,000 logos. “It’s hard to even say ‘This is a trend,’?” Gardner continues, “because things become old hat so quickly.” And because identities “tend to look dusty faster,” as SVA’s Millman puts it, there’s even more temptation to change, update, or revise them more quickly. This cuts against one of the elements that helps us see any particular design as truly iconic: the passage of time.

But it’s not just designers and their clients who see and interact with more logos and brand design than ever. It’s the rest of us too. And in what may be the most surprising development in modern identity design, Millman suggests we’re increasingly learning how to do it ourselves— “using the tenets of branding that have been established in professional circles, to create symbols for movements.” She points to examples like Black Lives Matter, the Peace for Paris symbol that went viral after terrorist attacks in that city, and even the pink pussy hat, which got a lot of attention for its prominence in the women’s marches that occurred after Donald Trump’s inauguration.

“Those are all logos,” she argues. “They’re symbols that telegraph a movement, that bring people together who share values and a vision and a mission. And that’s all branding.” Perhaps this is like hearing another language so frequently you start to pick it up by osmosis. “Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing,” Millman says, “it’s just a consequence of our times.” In fact, she names the pussy hat as the most potent “brand” symbol of the past year. “It was a new shape. It was a new form. It was utilizing a color. It didn’t have any language,” she says. “It’s sort of a perfect mark.”

A version of this article appears in the June 15, 2017 issue of Fortune with the headline "The Most Important Quarter-Inch in Business."

台灣電動床工廠 電動床
台灣電動床工廠 電動床
AUGI SPORTS|重機車靴|重機車靴推薦|重機專用車靴|重機防摔鞋|重機防摔鞋推薦|重機防摔鞋
AUGI SPORTS|augisports|racing boots|urban boots|motorcycle boots
一川抽水肥清理行|台中抽水肥|台中市抽水肥|台中抽水肥推薦|台中抽水肥價格|台中水肥清運
X戰警多鏡頭行車記錄器專業網|多鏡頭行車記錄器|多鏡頭行車紀錄器比較|多鏡頭行車紀錄器推薦|多鏡頭行車紀錄器影片
台中抽水肥專業網|台中抽水肥|台中市抽水肥|台中抽水肥推薦|台中抽水肥價格|台中水肥清運
台灣靜電機批發工廠|靜電機|靜電機推薦|靜電油煙處理機|靜電油煙處理機推薦
優美環保科技工程-靜電機,靜電機推薦,靜電機保養,靜電機清洗,靜電油煙處理機


arrow
arrow

    t7pafc64j2 發表在 痞客邦 留言(0) 人氣()