Just for the sake of it

   
Coca-Cola advertisements from 1936 (left) and 2007 (right)

The strength of the Coca-Cola brand is its visibility in a competitive drinks market. The world-famous logo remains remarkably distinct and unchanged after 120 years, and for this reason it is easily recognised by generations of consumers. Its heritage inspires confidence and induces loyalty, playing on our conservative instinct to buy goods with which we are familiar and comfortable. However, branding alone is not responsible for the success (or potential failure) of a product such as Coca-Cola. Branding is a process by which objects are made to seem to be more than the sum of their parts; it transforms an ordinary product into a unique commodity. Above all, the integrity of the product must be preserved. It is the foundation on which emotional attachment to a brand it built. This means consistently delivering a product to a specification and a high level of quality, to build a brand’s credibility. If, as occurred in 1985, the Coca-Cola recipe was to change substantially then the correlation with the brand would weaken to an extent where sales would suffer.

All lowercase = fail. Also a missed opprtunity to reunite text and graphic

Altering the brand of a product, particularly the logo, is a greater temptation, and one which cola rival Pepsi seem unable to resist. In autumn 2008 Pepsi unveiled the biggest overhaul to their logo since the introduction of the blue and white globe. It subscribes to an annoying school of thought that says that in order to appear modern and trendy you should only use lower-case letters. On a word like ‘Pepsi’, which now begins with a descending ‘p’, this looks particularly stupid. I don’t believe there is the same of justification for this redesign as existed half a century ago when Pepsi needed to distance itself from its biggest rival.

Pepsi and Coca-Cola in 1940

Pepsi Cola is quite an old brand, albeit one that has had many face-lifts. The drink was first formulated in 1898, 12 years after Coca-Cola. It was given the name Pepsi-Cola in 1903 and shortened to Pepsi in 1962. Pepsi-Cola’s first logo was designed to mirror Coca-Cola with an elaborate red script; the intention was probably to share in Coca-Cola’s success by making the two products harder to differentiate. However, the problem with this strategy is that it risks presenting the product as an inferior copy unable to stand up on its own merits. The best decision that PepsiCo’s marketing department made was to drop the script in favour of clean sans-serif capitals. The addition of the Pepsi globe originated from a patriotic move made during the Second World War when red, white and blue waves were added to the bottle cap. It evolved and was integrated with the product name. At this point I believe that Pepsi found a logo that could be used to establish a brand identity clearly independent of Coca-Cola, and so it should have remained without need of the regular tinkering it has received in the years since.

Pepsi in the 1960s and 1970s

A logo should transcend changes in style that affect the design of labels, posters and advertisements, and be beacon of consistency when all else around is changing. That way Pepsi can still chase the next ‘Pepsi Generation’ without sacrificing brand recognition, because ultimately that’s how I feel about the new Pepsi logo: I don’t recognise it as symbol of a drink I grew up with, as with Coca-Cola's logo, but see it as a shallow attempt to position Pepsi as part of modern culture. Coca-Cola doesn't respond this way and as a result is a more consistent and confident brand. Pepsi should learn the lesson that logos should not be changed for the sake of change.

Swine Flu

When Parliament takes a much-needed break in the summer, the attention-grabbing headlines which so often rely on political developments tend to dry up. The final Question Time before September gave some clue as to the story that may carry newspapers through the silly season: swine flu. Question Time is an intriguing political program in which audience members award populist statements from the panel, and themselves, with regular rounds of applause. There was a lot of a sentiment surrounding the belief that the media were over-exaggerating the risk of swine flu. One man said that the mortality rate was no higher than for seasonal flu. It may be true that the people who are dying are people with underlying health problems, but the potent fact is that swine flu is spreading fast outside of the traditional flu season. Clive James was perhaps the most reassuring voice when he put our public health in a 50-year context, remarking that our ability to provide vaccines now is far removed from a time not so long ago when polio would visit every street, and whither the limb of a child. Our public health system has indeed come a long way since the founding of the NHS, which will be sorely tested if swine flu becomes a second Spanish influenza pandemic. Until a few years ago when I read about the life of Egon Schiele, who was a high-profile victim of Spanish flu, I wasn’t even aware of this aggressive disease that killed more people in two years than died in the entire First World War. The future of this current influenza is still highly uncertain, though history shows the potential dangers that may test our society.

Whether following an economic or in this instance a public health ‘crisis’ you can rest assured that the BBC will find an interesting way to map it.

This is a simple and efficient piece of design. With a scrollable timeline it makes clear the spread of swine flu from Mexico and the United States to Europe and Asia, and that the number of confirmed cases is mushrooming in Great Britain, unparalleled by other European countries. The important black nucleus of death, however, remains reassuringly small relative to the spread of infection. Whereas graphics such as these have been common to television news reports for years, their presence on the Internet has increased with the proliferation of plug ins (particularly Flash) that have become a standard for the vast majority of web users. The BBC also now embeds videos into the pages of BBC News, something that only became practical with the adoption of Flash, and the increase in bandwidth web users now enjoy. The archived pages of BBC News extending back to the late 1990s indicate stylistic and technological changes that have impacted on the overall design and format of the website, from a time when bits of data trickled to and from a dial-up modem and manifested themselves on a fat, low-resolution CRT monitor, to today, where you will have a better setup. Hopefully. The best reason being the ability to enjoy the BBC News website it all its glory.

To end on a note somewhere closer to swine flu, here's an interesting Flash game where you try to wipe out humanity with a pandemic of your creation: Pandemic II. It is not an attempt at scaremongering.

Graphic designer slash astronaut

Forty years ago the first human being set foot upon another celestial body. This is the cultural significance of Apollo 11’s mission that has endured the decades. It is its political significance that has since declined into irrelevance with the fall of the Soviet Union. We can easily forget that forty years ago the Americans were hoping to make a political statement in their drive to reach the moon first: the triumph of capitalism over socialism. This arena of the Cold War known as the Space Race at least avoided the bloodshed, the human sacrifice and controversy of the Vietnam War, despite the great financial expense involved. It was embraced by an American people who were inspired by President Kennedy’s promise to land a man on the moon before the end of 1969 and “do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”. However, the Apollo missions ended abruptly in 1972 after six successful moon landings when America’s scientific supremacy was proven and the political will to finance further manned space exploration dissipated. The Apollo missions were ahead of their time in that without the political rivalry that existed, the pace of technological development would have been more relaxed and fewer risks would have been taken in order to place a man on the moon. The British astronomer Patrick Moore – whose lunar maps were used by NASA to choose landing sites – had predicted many years ago that the first human landing on the moon would not occur until the 1980s, his only substantial error in a prophetic list of space firsts. This perhaps indicates the extent to which America’s manned space program was accelerated, and explains why after 40 years Apollo still remains the (isolated) pinnacle of achievement in this field.

Of the three-man Apollo 11 crew one never walked on the surface of the moon: Michael Collins. Yet his contribution to the mission goes beyond the role of astronaut. Collins was directly responsible for the design of the Apollo 11 mission insignia after Jim Lovell mentioned to him the idea of the American eagle. Collins traced a picture from National Geographic and depicted it swooping over the surface of the moon with a gibbous Earth in the background. In reality that eagle could not fly through a vacuum, if it didn’t explode due to the lack of pressure then its bloated carcass would be suffocating on the surface. As a symbol of patriotism and an American icon it is a superior choice to the American flag, which would have been overtly political. An olive branch was added to its talons to tone down the aggressive connotations of a bird of prey. Unlike later Apollo insignias, the names of the astronauts were not included so as to reflect the fact that many people had made important contributions to the mission overall.

Over the past week ITV news has had an extra 10 minute news feature presenting the Apollo 11 mission as if it were happening today. The use of modern CG graphics doesn’t seem out of place for such a historical event (though the slightly rehearsed feel does). NASA have also being streaming communication audio in real-time on their website. Tributes such as these are important. In their attention to detail they help to create a sense of the anticipation that built up over the week-long journey to the moon. They are more than the marking of an anniversary, but a greater attempt to communicate to people like me what it must have been like to be alive in 1969, to have been drip-fed information unfolding day by day, awaiting one of the most significant scientific and cultural events of the twentieth century.

The two Michael Jacksons

In the immediate aftermath of his death, the creation of the posthumous memory of Michael Jackson began in earnest. People gathered in cities across the world to pay tribute to a renowned entertainer, celebrating his music with impromptu street concerts and dancing. CD sales and digital downloads of his albums also skyrocketed, breaking and setting new records in the process. The television news channels lead the way with tributes from people in the music industry, who praised Michael Jackson for his talent and inspiration, and also the prejudicial barriers to black entertainers that he removed. For all his recent controversies there was a sense that people were taking control of a public image that for years had been tarnished, and restoring it to a position of honour. It is as though there had existed two Michael Jacksons in the popular consciousness. The first was a grown-up child star of the Jackson 5 who forged an immensely successful solo career with Thriller, Billie Jean and Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough. This was the Michael Jackson of the 1980s and the red leather jacket. The second was almost a figure of ridicule and tragedy, a man who by middle age exhibited a process of self-destruction and some bizarre eccentricities. Sometime this Michael eclipsed the latter. These weren’t, however, two different people, but the highs and lows of a person who lived under unique and exceptional circumstances. It is difficult to reconcile these characteristics within one person, so this separation in popular perception was aided by the fact that Michael Jackson’s appearance changed radically across the course of his life. As family, friends and fans continue to pay their last respects, the enduring face of Michael Jackson will be the young, fresh-faced entertainer in his prime, and the connotations of a man who dominated pop music culture of the 1980s and early 1990s.

Photograph by Herb Ritts, 1992