Open-source branding

Architecture for Humanity, the world's first and biggest humanitarian design organization, is making news for its development of an open-source architecture network, a way for architects to share, develop and license plans that can be used and modified anywhere in the world.

Maybe it's fitting, then, that the development of their new logo has an open-source feel. AfH asked designers around the world to submit logos. After publishing criteria for the logo, AfH asked interested designers to submit logos to a Flickr site, and more than 800 people did. Visitors to the site could vote on their favorites using the comments field (and it seems jurors also made selections), and now the original pool of entries is down to 12. By the end of January, they'll select the finalist and start using the new brand. While it's not quite open-source, it is brilliant: a cash-strapped NGO gets a slew of logo designs to choose from (for free), they generate publicity and plenty of goodwill, and underscore their brand identity as an open, collaborative, and community-focused organization.

[Cross-posted at Off-Center.]

Thomas Broome's Textual Interiors

Thomas Broome's wonderful pen-and-ink drawings of interiors made from text have formal appeal for me--fine lines, faint edges when you squint, and a doodle-like accessibility that reminds me of drawings in high school notebooks--but conceptually I like it too, especially his Ikea edition (bottom). When products with Swedish names become ubiquitous around the world--Flarke!--his rendering almost serves as a critique, but not quite.

What I'd like to see: a room created purely from brand names, countries of origin, or working conditions (UNIONMADEUNIONMADE chairs and CHILDLABORCHILDLABOR shoes).

[via]

Air Hijab.

Bahrain sprinter Raqaya al Ghasara won a gold medal at the 15th Asian Games on Monday. Aside from her 23.19-second 200-meter sprint, what's noteworthy about her performance was the full headscarf, or hajib, she wore. "Wearing traditional Muslim dress has encouraged me," she says. "It's not an obstacle - quite the opposite." Note, too, the Nike Swooshes adorning her full-body suit and hijab, suggesting that Muslim athletes are the latest to appear within the branding giant's aiming sight.

Next up: branded burqas?

(Thanks, Stephan.)

Rethinking the brand: Hank Willis Thomas

Hank Willis Thomas addresses commodification in his art--specifically, a link between the commodification of African men in the slave trade and the use of black bodies to hawk goods from credit cards to Nikes today. His work deals explicitly with branding, from the product logos plastered on athletes and rap stars to the markings that identified slaves.

But there also seems to be another take on "consumerism"--how capitalism eats up and spits out African Americans, and many of the rest of us as well. His appropriation of the Absolut Vodka ad, in which a slave ship floorplan forms the iconic bottle outline, suggests that our appetites have a price. Similarly, his piece Priceless #1 could be seen as a quick riff on a popular ad--and exploitative of the pictured family--until you hear the backstory.

Thomas says:

I think that the irony of the ideal of the black male body is interesting…it is fetishized and adored in advertising but in reality black men are in many ways the most feared and hated bodies of the 21st Century. The majority of this work comes out of the experience of losing my cousin Songha Thomas Willis – he was killed because he was with someone who was wearing a gold chain. It is this idea – that someone could be killed over a tiny commodity. In NYC in the 1980s, people were killed over sneakers and backpacks. Songha was someone who survived DC when it was the murder capital of the country and then came home to Philly and was killed over a commodity. I want to question what makes these commodities so precious that they are worth defining and more importantly taking another person’s life?

Update: See Thomas' work here. Tyler Green offers his thoughts on Priceless #1 here.