We receive an e-mail about our business cards every day. Potential clients who want ‘the same card’, designers who want to re-create them for themselves, or publishers and collectors who want to publicize the card. What is new to our collection of admirers is a company that seems to have build a business around our card. Utilizing a near-replica of the card I designed 6 years ago, they proclaim it is ‘the hottest thing on the market’ that will enable you to ’set yourself apart from the competition’. Maybe it is finally time for ourselves to re-design our cards so we can set ourselves apart from followers. Ah, the beauty of the media. Thanks to my former student Strahan for the great detective work. Hey, were you trying to print your own GD-cards?? ; )  

…and it does not look like it will be any time soon. Not with such a sad smiley face.

…come in all shapes and forms. The turtle that comes to my mind is the one in a mark of a magical resort I tend to stay at a couple of times a year. Here is their very appropriate logo:

It was surprising to see the logo below in an article in the latest issue of Dynamic Graphics. The fat headline above reads ‘I DID IT MY WAY’. Ouch.

I assume and hope that the logo (which never was used by the designer’s client, luckily for more than one reason, as the article describes), nor its designer, have ever come in touch with El Capitan Canyon, so the likeliness of it being a straight copy, although very omminent on first sight, is quite unlikely.

Then again, you never know when it is plagiarism, and when it is not. To ask that question yourself, I found a blog post that went out for the hunt of these sad examples.

It might make you wonder, and it puts me into a constant fear of it ever happening at Geyrhalter Design.

‘Send It Certified’, a startup company, approached us around a month ago, and after a couple of meetings we were convinced that they have a great idea and the power and background to make it happen. In more of a partnership then vendor approach, Geyrhalter Design engaged in the first step, the Identity Design. Send It Certified’s current tag line is ‘Your Private E-Delivery Network’, and in short the company is a fast, secure and affordable alternative to the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of standard email (Did the e-mail end up in Spam? Has it ever been read? Will the Administrator read highly secure information?) and the expense and delays of overnight delivery services (Plus the fact that FedEx often just leaves a package in front of the actual delivery address, or with a neighbor). One of the most amazing features though is that ‘Send It Certified’ offers to send e-mails biometrically secure, so by finger print identifications. Quite an amazing offering, and also a lot to address in a simple mark.

Our solution, as seen above, conveys a lot of the points, in a very simplistic visual manner:

The white spaces to the left and right are a metaphor for two fingers, as in a sender and recipient (with the lines becoming the friction ridges), meeting to exchange the biometrically secure data, which is shown by the orange portion, which becomes evident by the further use of orange in the word ‘Certified’. The round shape of the mark represents the worldwide/global service area, while the circles enforce the notion of spreading a message. The larger blue areas in the logo mark stand as a metaphor for the ubiquious area of non-certified exchanges, as enforced by the blue type reading ‘Send It’.

As we are engaging in all other areas of creating Brand Atmospheres for SenditCertified, which we will share with you at a later point, or through our soon-to-be-relaunched web site, we feel well-weaponed with an Identity in tow that is as trustworthy and established as it feels significant and high-tech.

The California Community Foundation, one of California’s Largest and Most Active Philanthropic Organizations, reached out to us to play an integral role in a large rebranding effort that nicely becomes one of our prime examples of what we call ‘brand atmospheres’. We just finished the last touches on the new Identity and will, in the months to come, roll it out over the entire spectrum of the foundations’ visual communications. You will see the outcome on our site, but until then I want to present the new Identity to you and share a bit of light onto the concept behind the visual:

Incorporating the new tag line ‘Building the Future of Los Angeles’, the new Identity and corporate design system repositions the foundation as pioneering new solutions to social problems thus creating positive change in L.A.

The Identity design represents an upward-thrusting structure conveying both boldness and stature. The 5 light rays breaking out of the conventional structure are a metaphor for the foundation’s priority areas and the innovative ways in which the foundation addresses root causes of L.A.’s biggest challenges. With the use of green, the analogy of a wave, and a solely positive upwards movement, the mark makes an energetic symbol for positive action.

You can compare our new creative effort to the current, and soon to be old, logo on their site.

As an interesting side note I learned that the old logo has been created by the same designer(s) who designed the Tree People’s logo, and at around the same time, which seems peculiar to me. But then again maybe it’s just me who sees the similarities, and maybe the whole story is just a myth.