Great article on the shift towards emergence in branding.
It?s official. The age of the static brand is coming to an end. Organisations, companies, institutions, even charities are realizing that having identity schemes that ?flex? and adapt to circumstances are more appropriate in the multi-channel, multi-lingual world that brands now inhabit.
Over-controlled brands are starting to look stiff and old-fashioned, but not all clients (and certainly not all design companies) have yet woken up to this latest shift.
Published June 8th, 2007
in Emergence, Branding, Aesthetics and Ambiguity.
The London 2012 official logo was unveiled about a week ago and has caused quite the commotion. Most reactions have been negative, many verging on being violently so. Some are calling for its immediate withdrawal, while others are certifying it as a failure…5 years before it will be able to show any success.
I can see where the detractors are coming from - it is a major departure. However, I feel that there is a great deal of short-sightedness and reactionary thinking going on. Why am I sticking up for this design? Because of this one short paragraph in the brand mission statement that I think everyone dismissed as meaningless fluff:
“The new emblem is dynamic, modern and flexible. It will work with new technology and across traditional and new media networks.”
The Olympics already has a logo - the 5 rings - that is instantly recognizable and crosses all linguistic and cultural barriers. It is fixed, unmatched and untouchable. A steadfast rock. Conversely, the London 2012 logo looks like a frenetic Keith Haring figure (see the pink one on the right, below) - ambiguous, vague, and meant to change and adapt. It is pure attitude and personality.
I have the feeling that this “icon of the games” is just the tip of the iceberg, and that it’s real value will emerge through the branding system. Given the history and ethos at Wolf-Olins, it is a very real possibility that the logo will take on an entirely different purpose and not behave like a traditional logo at all. Instead I can see it being a highly adaptable, emergent vehicle for the spirit of the games.
My prediction is that this branding system will grow on people and continue to evolve as 2012 draws near.
Published April 17th, 2007
in Emergence and Aesthetics.
The Tax Map
Chaim Kirby visualizes the US tax code just in time for tax day.
Published April 4th, 2007
in Emergence, Branding and Aesthetics.
The latest and last book covers for the Harry Potter series were recently released:
US Cover:
UK Children’s Cover:
UK Adult Cover:
Why would a book series with so much notoriety need to differentiate its look & feel? Would adults really not buy the book if it didn’t look like every other adult fiction novel? I mean, if you switched out the name and title for that of a Stephen King novel no one would be the wiser.
Does a book like this even need a cover?
It strikes me as absurd that the final installment in such a noteworthy series would bend to the stylistic whims of the publishing industry, but nonetheless, it does show how static content can take on multiple aesthetic styles to communicate to particular audiences. While the adult cover is most noticeably different, the contrast between the two children’s covers is more subtle. The illustrative style, subject matter, and layout tell a lot about how the Harry Potter series is viewed in the public consciousness. In a way they form a mirror that reflects the attitudes and values of certain groups (in this case the children of the US & UK) through aesthetic choices.
So which one of these covers is the right one? Is there a definitive Harry Potter cover?
Published March 29th, 2007
in Emergence and Aesthetics.
Once again, Rafael Fajardo surpasses my ability to articulate:
“My friend and colleague Bill Depper has told me he continues to play soccer and hockey for the flow experience. He means it in two senses. Both in the sense of pursuing a state of optimal performance, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi proposes; and, in the sense of an organic and dynamically emergent gameplay experience shared among a group of players. One could argue, I realize as I write this, that both senses are manifestations of the same experience. I haven’t heard many talk about the former sense as a shared experience. Instead I’ve only heard it spoken of as a deeply subjective experience. Perhaps the shared manifestation can be described by the same sense of collective flow.
I posed to Bill - who also has coached for his children’s soccer teams - the question of how to teach the latter dynamic flow. Soccer has developed a set of vocabulary terms that are necessary, but that I find insufficient to the task of developing this collective sense of spatial and temporal awareness. ‘Move to the open space’, ‘follow your pass’, ’square pass’, ‘wall pass’, ‘through pass’, are all descriptors that - combined with appropriate actions - should help build this embodied knowledge. Children who play in the streets of latin america figure it out (perhaps I idealize here). The knowledge I seek here is an aesthetic one. The brazilians have called it ‘Joga bonito’, or beautiful play. How can I share with kids the idea of beautiful play.”
Having played hockey for most of my life (and soccer for a number of years), I can attest to this sense of aesthetic flow and emergence. As a goaltender it was my job to assess the other team in relation to the puck - to evaluate plays in real-time, determine the possible outcomes and decide which ones were most likely in order to quickly react when they happen.
Play seems to materialize out of nowhere, things come together and break apart. Passes, shots, dekes, saves and checks all have optimal states that are considered “beautiful.” There are beautiful goals and ugly goals. Every so often a play combines many beautiful elements to produce a moment of beauty that is greater than the sum of its parts - more than the beautiful save that lead to the beautiful pass that lead to the beautiful one-time shot and goal. This moment of strong emergence provokes the human spirit into wonder and amazement. It is the kind of harnessed serendipity that the game is set up to produce.
Perhaps all aesthetic systems share the concept of “joga bonito”?
Published May 29th, 2006
in Emergence and Aesthetics.
The concept of Emergent Aesthetics is now patent pending!
Huzzah!
Published November 15th, 2005
in Emergence, Branding and Aesthetics.
I kind of surprised myself a little…
I usually frequent Grant McCracken’s blog. “Why?” you ask. “Well, because it is awesome,” I reply. He is usually right on the money about culture and creativity, and I find myself often agreeing with him. The point is, in general, I am not great at conversation…I go into a cold sweat when the lady at Chipotle asks, “black or pinto?” However, today I read a post on the aforementioned blog and I actually was able to send off a response to it in under 10 minutes! And it’s mostly lucid and coherent to boot!
Continue reading ‘A Little Surprised’
Published October 30th, 2005
in Emergence, Communication and Aesthetics.
I’m finding more every day! This one rocks my socks…
“Agent-based conception of disaster events: modelling human actors as rule-driven, simultaneous interactions within networks, as both affecting environments and expressing rules differently as environments change.”
Emergence Notes (via Easily Distracted)
OK, so we can use emergence to emulate known, studied phenomenon like a tree or swarm behavior in bees. And we can also use the algorithms devised from these emulations to build unknown things, like the most effective NASA radio transmitter for a satellite based on a tree algorithm or a FedEx package managing system based on an ant algorithm. These things have been done, and they are unbelievably awesome.
But, what would happen if we were to use emergence to emulate and create known and unknown conceptual phenomenon - i.e. emotions, ideas, experiences, cultures, etc?
Would we develop algorithms for emotion - a rule-based articulation of love, hate, or indifference? Perhaps we could create new experiences that we could have never conceived, but are still able to understand because they evolved from other ideas and experiences. Emergent Aesthetics gives us this framework of creation and understanding. Imagine, a Turing machine for Brand Experience.
Published March 31st, 2005
in Emergence and Aesthetics.
Published March 30th, 2005
in Emergence and Aesthetics.
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