Creative Bloq

Our latest opinion piece comes from Scott Lambert of Design Bridge and Partners 🧡 It's about why you need to adopt a 'fix and flex' approach to branding. "Solely focusing on brand compliance and consistency tethers a brand to a world of creative complacency. A mooring to the boring, as it were. It typically starts so well. With the brand idea acting as a North Star, a refreshed visual identity ensures it looks dapper while standing out from the crowd. Everyone’s on board, enthused. Colours follow orders, fonts awash with obedience, logo is in shipshape fashion, photography in focus. Yes, consistency provides reassuring stability – at first. But the real test of even the best rebrands begins when the tightly-wound anchor rope starts creaking under the waves of innovation, tripping up the onboarding teams and tying campaigns up in knots. Suddenly that anchor is feeling a little too heavy, and more like a set of constraints and restraints..." Read more: https://lnkd.in/edjqP-id

Our Tech Reviews Editor Erlingur Einarsson spoke to PhotoShelter CEO Andrew Fingerman about how the company has built its digital asset management platform for creatives, marketers and brands and made sure it keeps up in a tech world that keeps getting more complex and demanding. Thanks so much, Andrew, for sharing your insight with us and making DAM concepts so easy to grasp!

Kleenex is such a strong brand that in some parts of the world, the word 'Kleenex' is used interchangeably with 'tissue'. It also has a powerful legacy, and is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. To mark the milestone, it has partnered with Turner Duckworth to reinvent its brand, futureproofing it for years to come while bringing cohesion to what had become quite a disparate brand – with different variations across markets. The new look centres around a crown, which houses the word 'Kleenex' and positions Kleenex as a leader in this space. Its soft curves also hint at Kleenex's use. The wordmark itself has taken various forms since 1924 – Saul Bass' 1961 iteration is perhaps the most famous – but prior to Turner Duckworth's work there were several versions in rotation that were housed within a variety of shapes. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eycmRKJE

It's about time herpes got a rebrand. What do you think of this campaign?

One project that caught our eye this week is the design for The China Now Musical Festival, an annual series of events produced by the Bard College US-China Institute in partnership with the Central Conservatory of Music in Bejing. Bard College is a very classy bohemian arts-based college in New York, and its festival now has a classy design to match, courtesy of London agency Saboteur (who just won three Brand Impact Awards). The goal of the project was to bring Chinese music to life for new audiences and the visual identity, which is called Musical Characters of China, uses calligraphy to showcase the expressive nature of Chinese music. "Words like 乐 ("music"), 连 (“link”), 聚 (“together”), and 动 (“movement”) emerge from the performers, making each word an integral part of the performance," reads Saboteur's project page. "Calligraphy was the natural choice. Calligraphy is all about movement – the sweep of the brush is captured in the line. Calligraphy is a frozen moment," says Paul Cardwell, co-founder of Saboteur.

"Cosmetics brand Maybelline New York has unveiled a powerful new campaign to mark today's World Mental Health Day. Empowering young people to take back control of their mental health, the striking film is a poignant reflection of social media's positive and negative effects on Gen Z, spotlighting a safe space to switch off from the online world." Developed by Nice and Serious in collaboration with Spindle, 'Reconnect With You’ is an honest and unpretentious demystification of mental health matters. Read more at Creative Bloq 🧡 https://lnkd.in/efpRc7Wu

Hey designers! We're looking for new creatives to feature in our best design portfolio examples. If you'd like to be featured get in touch with natalie.fear@futurenet.com 🧡 https://lnkd.in/eryD5SU

At the end of 2022, the year that generative AI ominously forced itself onto the art scene, photographer and artists’ rights activist Jingna Zhang was feeling frustrated. Like so many, she had been hoping that ArtStation would finally see the light and support the art community by banning the waves of AI-generated images that were flooding the site. Instead it doubled down and issued a statement saying it didn’t want to stifle AI research. Stunned by this betrayal, Jingna, who is also part of two class-action lawsuits suing AI companies for theft of artists’ work, hatched a plan to build a new platform where artists’ interests come first, making it different to other social media platforms for creatives. Working with a small team of volunteers and self-funding the project, she laid the foundations for Cara, an art portfolio and social app that doesn’t host AI art, and automatically adds NoAI tags to let AI companies know that the owner doesn’t consent to their work being scraped. It’s also integrated with Glaze, a tool for cloaking images so they can’t be used to train AI models. The result is a space where people can find human artists easily, and artists can come together to support each other as they navigate the changes that AI is bringing to their passions and their livelihoods. You can read more about Cara below 👇 Have you joined yet?

If you missed it, check out our recent interview with Ruca's Nolan Cabeje as part of our Day in the Life series. "I may be biased, but at Ruca, we’ve embraced this inclusivity wholeheartedly. Our model is built on trust and collaboration. If you’re recommended and trusted by someone in our cooperative, and if you have the skills, you’re welcome to join us. We value talent and teamwork over titles and egos" Read the full interview here 👉 https://lnkd.in/gSysmTCU

Sometimes going big is better, but what governs the decision to supersize? And how do you make that happen effectively from a design, technical, and marketing point of view? Large-scale branding can make an impact when you want to break into new markets, launch a new product, or convey important information, but what do you need to think about before you order that billboard? Location and demographics are important, and timing can have a big role to play. Seasonal trends, big movie releases, or local events are common marketing tie-ins. Among the challenges associated with supersizing is set-up and maintenance of the branding materials. Upkeep is as much a part of the process as the design and creative side. Supersized branding can be an expensive exercise, so we spoke to the pros for tips to help you decide on whether to supersize your branding, and ensure the results have impact. https://lnkd.in/dVNeuSeN