As opposed to “women’s restroom”?

When you think about it, “female toilet” doesn’t make much sense at all, does it?

Another Earth = another minimalist logo

I love the simplicity of this movie’s wordmark. Just one little trick with the O, and the name and the mark work together to convey a single meaning. Nothing too fancy and not overly clever—not trying too hard.

You’ve probably received those email forwards about “awesome minimalist logo designs” [1, 2, 3], but often they feel to me as if they’ve been backed into, little more than rebus puzzles with a “TM” added to imply that someone’s using them as logos. They’re like solutions waiting for a problem—like someone came up with an ad and then waited for a client to sell it to (yes, I am still beating that dead horse). And maybe part of the reason I find it hard to believe that those are “real” logos is that most brand managers and business owners aren’t interested in logos that are riddles. And they’re right not to be.

So it’s refreshing to see something like this elegantly executed and easy to interpret. Is there a second, deeper meaning to the logo? Maybe (I haven’t seen the movie or read much about). There’s an air of mystery in the ads and the name. The logo, despite its simplicity (or because of it?), makes it all even more intriguing. Like good brand design should, it makes me curious to learn more—not just smile and say “oh, I get it!”

Semantic Argument now featured on Alltop!

Very excited that Semantic Argument has been selected as a featured blog on Alltop’s top branding news site. Alltop is a content aggregator site, an “online magazine rack” that collects “the headlines of the latest stories from the best sites and blogs that cover a topic” and groups them into individual web pages. The site was cofounded by Guy Kawasaki, ex-Apple guy and author of popular books Enchantment and The Macintosh Way. Come to think of it, I know way too much about this guy.

I’ve been recommending Alltop for awhile now as a good place to scan articles and blog posts on branding, so it’s an honor to be included on the page. I’ve added a widget to the lower-right-hand side of this blog, in case you’re interested to see some of the latest headlines from the branding page.

What LinkedIn has that Twitter and Facebook don’t

[This post was originally published on FutureBrand's FBlog.]

Recent IPOs from LinkedIn, Groupon and Pandora have all eyes on the “social media” industry. While that label may be useful in contrasting from more traditional brick-and-mortar businesses or the dotcom darlings of the early 2000s, it does the companies it refers to a disservice by failing to recognize diversity within the group. Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, LinkedIn—while they all allow us to connect with each other online, they are otherwise quite different businesses. (In fact, doesn’t it feel a little funny to refer to Twitter as a “business” at all?)

The success of LinkedIn is based on a simple tenet of brand strategy, and something that Facebook, Twitter and even Google mostly lack. Namely, LinkedIn has a niche.

continue reading…

Great name: Belly Flops

As if it wasn’t brilliant enough to package and sell assembly-line mishaps, the American jelly bean makers Jelly Belly have gone the extra step of coming up with a great name for the product. “Belly Flops” is at once descriptive, funny, evocative of the brand’s personality (fun and silly), and a bit daring (because a belly flop is a painful thing). And if Belly Flops really are Jelly Belly’s mistakes, it’s a win-win for company and consumer—incremental revenues for them, and for us, a fun, novel (presumably discounted) way to enjoy a favorite candy.

Can you think of any other companies that have managed to package and sell their mistakes?

[Thanks to Lauren for reminding me about this great name, and for the pic!]

Comedy Central’s brand strategy is no joke

[This post was originally published on FutureBrand's FBlog.]

Once upon a time, before the likes of Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry roamed (infested?) our airwaves, a startup television channel named MTV used to play music videos. And not just from 3 AM to 8 AM, as seems to be the case today. A look at MTV’s current programming schedule shows just how much has changed since “Video Killed the Radio Star.” While the focus on teenage viewers is abundantly clear—with shows like “When I was 17,” “16 and Pregnant,” and “That 70s Show”—there are few clues for unfamiliar viewers as to exactly what that big “M” stands for. In fact, MTV officially dropped the line “Music Television” from their logo last year.

I offer this MTV parable only as counter-example to

continue reading…