Archive for January 4th, 2012:
The Eeriness of Time Warner’s Logo
Years after its release, the infamous Time Warner Logo is still making a buzz. Designers and writers on the Web never fail to mention the logo every time they want to talk about something that is dashingly eerie yet plausible and effective in terms of marketing and branding. For some expert designers, there is nothing special with the logo. It is just a mere copycat of a hieroglyphic character derived from an Egyptian deity. Yet for others, it has an innovative take representing something that is overused. In this case, many experts believe that pictographically combining ‘eye’ and ‘ear’ is no innovation, but deriving something from an infamously eerie figure to modify two barely original entities (eye and ear) is a brave step to uniqueness. Again, without a doubt, something new is always a good topic for weary writers and erudite designers. Establishing trademark For every merging companies like Time Incorporated and Warner communications, establishing a trademark is a primary concern. In their case, it is good that they retained their popular names. The need to reintroduce a new brand is never a problem; they were both independently popular and have already made a name for themselves even before the much-talked about merger. Trademark, the product of all branding strategies, is something every business and company aims for. In a merger, establishing a trademark is a different issue. Here, it should be the exact common denominator between the two companies’ identities, and it should relay a specific message, which tells their audience about the merge. Time was primarily concerned with journalism, Warner with entertainment According to their announcement, Time and Warner were just literally merging. They said that it was not a step to drop any of their existing priorities. Time Warner would continue both old companies’ endeavors. The newborn company would still focus on Warner’s commitment on delivering entertainment and Time’s dominance to journalism, but this time, (like any merging clichés) much better. Much better means much broader, so it was surprising and astonishing that their branding team focused only on two entities to brand themselves: looking and listening/ eye and ear. Early predictions showed that they would combine film reel with LSR cameras and quill; some imagined Typefaces “T” and “W” would be artistically deviated to form something that would convey “newspaper” and “movies”. Yet all of these predictions were mere failures. Their branding team surprised the world with a hieroglyphically inspired logo, a surprise that stirred logo-uproar all over the Web. Now, years after its release, Tom Geismar (the man behind Mobil, Xerox, and Viacaom) proved the public wrong. His hieroglyphic logo is extremely popular, not only because of the artistic controversies it brought to the design world but to the efficacy it gave Time Warner as well.
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