Pepsi and its branding is one of the most recognised brands in the world, and when a change is done, people debate about it for years. Like anything popular, people will jump to its defence or slam it for change. Personally, I thought the new Pepsi was a brave attempt at modernising the brand, but ultimately failed in its delivery, with a poor icon revamp and ill-advised typography.
It seems like others thought so, especially the Design Boutique team where they did their own version. In their own words:
Recently when Pepsi updated their logo, as designers, we did not feel that it was much different than the previous one . Pepsi, throughout the years, have always did very small, and careful changes in their logo. We think it’s time for Pepsi to be brave and make a bolder redesign of their logo. This is our suggestion: We took the logo to a new level, taking it from 2D to 3D, just by playing with the shapes and the shadows (a very hot trend in design now).
Microsoft recently revealed a new logo and identity across all their mediums, along with rebranding Windows, Office and Visual Studio. Met with pretty much positive reception, the new logo and branding was a good step forward for MS following their recent Metro branding also being well-received.
But before that, an Art Center College of Design attendee called Andrew Kim laid out his vision for Microsoft’s branding. And boy, is it good.
Deciding that Microsoft’s new logo should be representing the future and more akin to science fiction, as well as taking a more aggressive approach than Apple and Google, Andrew laid out his plans for the branding to be based around the ‘slate’ – a singular shape more common with metropolis-type windows and a shape that all MS products can be based around. Publishing his rebrand, along with clear and concise reasoning behind the thought process and delivery of the branding and some stunning imagery, Andrew clearly struck a chord with many designers and tech blogs, having had the post picked up by Mashable, TechCrunch and SlashGear and receiving critical acclaim all round.
