Brand New is a Speak Up spin-off displaying opinions, and focusing solely, on corporate and brand identity work. It is a division of UnderConsideration. The blog compares older brand identities and their recently updated versions. The deconstructions of the logos is sharp, educated and catty. Kind of like a carload of really smart designers, home for the holidays, driving around their hometown riffing on all the strip mall signage.

Posted on Jan.20.2007:

I have never eaten at Hardee's or Carl's Jr, mostly because I rarely eat at fast food burger places but partly because if you asked me to name five Quick Service Restaurants (QSR for short) focusing on burgers I would have a hard time getting past McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's. In fact, it wasn't until today, while googling around, that I finally made the connection that the faux hot commercial with Paris Hilton soaping up a Bentley was for Carl's Jr. And for Hardee's. Apparently my brand neurons never made a full synapse between these two places and Paris. Or that Hardee's was the crazies that were pushing the 1420-calorie burger earlier this century. Perhaps the reason is that I'm not their target audience: Young, hungry guys. I guess I am the three things: Relatively young, sometimes hungry and genderly a guy. But when put together, I prefer to disassociate from my brethren. And, hopefully, this too explains why I can't bear the sight of these new logos and much less comprehend how "research showed that the new logos were seen as classier, more unique, more appealing and more attractive overall."

Stretching back in time before the era of the printing press or the pyramids, there has been a war raging within the human race--a war between accountants and designers.

From the FastCompany blog:

No Accounting for Design

Is market share a meaningful measure of design's financial performance? You'd think so, judging by the number of design consultancies that use increases in sales and market share to trumpet the "success" of their redesigns. The Industrial Designers Society of America even uses market share and sales as two important metrics for its prestigious Design & Business Catalyst award, which recognizes "market and financial performance" so as to demonstrate to executives "the value of design."

But while market share might be meaningful to designers, it has far less resonance with CFOs, the ultimate arbiters of design investments. Julie Hertenstein and Marjorie Platt, two Northeastern University accounting professors who've attempted to quantify the contribution that design makes to the bottom line, argue that market share, by itself, doesn't really mean much. "Market share is just that, a share˜it's measured as a percentage," says Hertenstein. "If you can't measure it in dollars, it doesn't show up on the accounting statement." read full post>>