Did you hear that Gap has redesigned its logo? Probably not, as it's been pretty quiet about it. In fact, the only recent news out of Gap of late has been its donate-your-old-jeans drive and its annual kids' casting call.

But go to its homepage and there it is — or more accurately, isn't, as its classic blue-boxed logo is missing, replaced with a Helvetica Gap with a box perched behind the 'p' like a window.

Yes, after dominating the late 1990s and early 2000s, Gap has dropped its iconic logo in favor of something that looks like it cost $17 from an old Microsoft Word clipart gallery.Continue reading...

By its own definition, the "Unlogo" project is "a web service that eliminates logos and other corporate signage from videos. On a practical level, it takes back your personal media from the corporations and advertisers. On a technical level, it is a really cool combination of some brand new OpenCV and FFMPEG functionality. On a poetic level, it is a tool for focusing on what is important in the record of your life rather than the ubiquitous messages that advertisers want you to focus on."

It was all started by a guy (Jeff Crouse) who was being paid, no doubt handsomely, to train a computer to recognize brands and logos. Now he's decided to turn that technology around, and to search and destroy logos.Continue reading...

The mascots for the 2012 Olympic Games in London have been unveiled and... oh me, oh my. The response to Wenlock and Mandeville, the mascots, has been unforgiving. The New York Times, being generous, called them "science-fiction versions of Gumby." London's less charitable Telegraph called them "patronising rubbish."

The reasoning behind their weirdness certainly has something to do with the 18 months it took to create them and 40 (40!) focus groups that influenced their design. Each amorphous "Gumby" boasts a light atop its head representing (in case you were wondering) London's taxi cabs, a single eye (representing, um, the London Eye?) and bracelets representing the five Olympic rings - not day-glo rave bracelets. Hang on: seems the single eye is meant to evoke a video camera. Hmm. Makes perfect sense for a nation deep in debate about becoming a surveillance state.

An informal survey at the Brandchannel watercooler gave the concept the following scores (on a scale of 1-10):

WTF Factor: 9
Spirit of the Games Factor: 3
Overall Score: 2

Wenlock and Mandeville prompted us to go back and look at some Olympic mascots of the past. Scorecards ready?Continue reading...

World Cup Blog, which itself has been threatened by FIFA over unauthorized use of the term "World Cup," reports that the global soccer tourney's governing body is cracking down on unlicensed usage of World Cup-related words and logo.

FIFA's not kidding around, having recently won a legal injunction against a pub near a World Cup venue in Pretoria, South Africa, for alluding to the World Cup (a FIFA no-no) in its marketing around the upcoming event. The message is clear: unless you've got an official licensing deal such as Nike or Adidas, watch out!

Hasn’t the Professional Golf Association had enough media controversy lately? Apparently not, as the PGA recently tried to bar British golf pro Lee Westwood from the St. Jude Classic in Memphis, TN.

The reason? No tales of Tiger Woods-style tomcatting, but a small logo on the shoulder of Westwood's golf shirt depicting his sponsor UPS, which wouldn't be a problem if Memphis didn't happen to be home to FedEx corporate HQ.

FedEx's motto these days is “we live to deliver.” And deliver they did, in the form of a ‘do not participate’ edict to Westwood, the #4 player on the PGA Tour. Did we mention that Fed Ex is a major PGA tour sponsor?Continue reading...

"Canadian wine country" may sound absurd to those not in the know but the land of the maple leaf also boasts a robust fermented grape industry in Ontario. One challenge for local vintners though is that many Canadians might not know this.

Even worse, many Canadians who do know this are having trouble figuring out just which wines are home-stomped and which are imports. Consumers looking to buy local can identify 100-percent Ontario-made wines by noting the VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance of Ontario) symbol. The problem? Grape Growers chairman Bill George Jr. explains, "Several studies have shown a lot of customers don't know what VQA means." However, the alliance has a solution. Too bad it is more of the same. Continue reading...

Pages, remember those? Paper sheets affixed one after the other, covered with various information organized in even more various ways. Those days are over.

Clearly, the modern age of the iPad and Kindle is not one of pages. So Yellow Pages, the well-known telephone and address directory, is changing its logo to reflect substantial changes within its brand.Continue reading...

The University of Southern California is accustomed to winning on the playing field. In fact, one could argue that part of the school's brand is winning. Now, the university's brand is a winner, quite literally.

Far from the sunny shores of California, the University of South Carolina, on the east coast, attempted to register its interlocking "SC" logo -- which is has used to represent its baseball team for years. However, the University of Southern California filed a law suite claiming the University of South Carolina's logo was confusingly similar to its own "SC" logo.

In true college rivalry fashion, the University of South Carolina countered with a claim that Southern California's logo misleadingly suggested affiliation with South Carolina. The Federal Circuit Court, however, sided with Southern California. It dismissed South Carolina's claim, upholding the 2009 US Patent and Trademark review board ruling that rights to the "SC" belong to the University of Southern California alone. Continue reading...