"What's the beef?"

From brand.com to con.brand? (via @Identity_Forum)

Should brand owners invest in ownership of their own “.brand” domain, or is this just one last ICANN effort to monetize a no-longer-so-important monopoly? 

Three years ago, rumour first began circulating about the possibility of private ownership of top level URLs (Uniform Resource Locators). On June 20 2011, ICANN, the governing body for online domain names, formally approved a decision to allow organisations to register their own names at the top level of the Internet naming hierarchy — appropriately referred to as Top Level Domains, or TLDs for short.

Continue reading my entry on the Identity Forum

Rasmussen College’s Graphic Design Blog: “The Best of the Best”

Last night, Identityworks’ Tony Spaeth forwarded an email to the Identity Forum contributors (myself included) that he had received from Rasmussen College in Minnesota:

Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2011
To: forum@identityworks.com
Subject: You’re Featured on the Rasmussen College Blog

Hi there, Tony and team:

I just wanted to notify you that your awesome graphic design blog was featured in a recent article published by Rasmussen College.

The article is found here: Graphic Design Blogs: The Best of the Best.

The article was written by one of our School of Technology and Design faculty.

Congrats, and feel free to promote the article through your social networks and blog.

Well, of course, it is always nice to receive recognition, but even better to hear that our modus operandi of promoting ‘identity’ as a business tool through education channels is continuing to gain momentum.

Here is the College Blog’s accompanying introduction:

Sometimes the simplest projects are the most difficult ones. Identity design may seem simple to non-designers, but anyone within this field knows that the arduous task of capturing a brand’s entire essence within one small icon is no easy feat. This forum provides articles and thought-provoking arguments from the best in the field of logo design. Learn from the trials and tribulations of the masters.

DD

We’re pleased to welcome Pentagram’s Paula Scher to the Identity Forum

To most within the global design community, Paula Scher needs little by way of introduction. But here is an excerpt taken from her bio on the Forum:

“For over three decades Paula Scher has been at the forefront of graphic design. Iconic, smart and unabashedly populist, her images have entered into the American vernacular.

Scher has been a principal in the New York office of the distinguished international design consultancy Pentagram since 1991. She began her career as an art director in the 1970’s and early 80’s, when her eclectic approach to typography became highly influential. In the mid-1990s her landmark identity for The Public Theater fused high and low into a wholly new symbology for cultural institutions, and her recent architectural collaborations have re-imagined the urban landscape as a dynamic environment of dimensional graphic design.

Her graphic identities for Citibank and Tiffany & Co. have become case studies for the contemporary regeneration of classic American brands.  Scher has developed identity and branding systems, promotional materials, environmental graphics, packaging and publication designs for a broad range of clients that includes, among others, Bloomberg, Coca-Cola, Bausch and Lomb, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, the New York Philharmonic, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the New 42nd Street, the New York Botanical Garden, the Robin Hood Foundation and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. In 1996 Scher’s widely imitated identity for the Public Theater won the coveted Beacon Award for integrated corporate design strategy. She serves on the board of The Public Theater, and is a frequent design contributor to The New York Times, GQ and other publications. In 2006 she was named to the Design Commission of the City of New York…”

Paula marks her joining the Forum with an excellent posting entitled:

What they don’t teach you about identity design in design schools…

As always, comments welcome.