Modern Technology

Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, or CPIT for short is one of the many tertiary education providers in New Zealand. Late last year Strategy took over the CPIT contract and with it a completely new look for CPIT's advertising was made. Two main changes to the logo are changing from Garamond to a San serif typeface what looks like Akzidenz Grotesk bold and the movement and increase emphasis on the 'feathers'.

The change in Advertising is probably where the most significant change in branding can be seen, more text based advertisements using strong bright colours (as below) have been pasted up around the city. Gone are the old posters featuring an image with a half relevant pun on a white background, in comes saturated colour stick figures, pictograms and plenty of type.Colours in above image are similar to CPIT ads not exactly the same as through scanning, converting to web and changing from CMYK to RGB affects colours)

The logo itself is a step in the right direction although the typeface is a bit too bold but an update was needed. The same can be said for the advertising and other Ephemera. I am not sad to see the old ads disappear and I think the creators of them would be happy to forget them too.



Less Dick more X

I wasn't going to post this one and had it saved as a draft for a while because it has has already been covered on Brand New (but as a Australian brand and recently Westfield Riccarton opened a new Dick Smith upstairs which has the new logo) and it was also covered on Design Assembly.

The old New Zealand one differs from the old Australian one featured on Brand New (the Electronics is much more generously kerned and the head descends rather than Ascending on the Australian version. If you can't be bothered reading through all of Chris Thorpe's post then to summarise it was done by Hoyne Design.

and Statement from Dick Smith via Chris Thorpe guest blogging on Brand New:
The objective of the rebrand was to make the Dick Smith brand relevant in today’s market and support the business moving from electronics to technology. Research conducted over past 18 months confirmed the Dick Smith Brand was dated and considered old fashioned. The word electronics had us stuck in the 1970s. We’re in the technology and entertainment business and we realised we needed a contemporary brand to match that.

I liked the geeky illustrated face and it will be sad to see it disappear to be replaced with a more generic logo-type although the old one was dated it added to its charm and it felt right for the store. The name Techxperts is confusing and the staff at Dick Smith are often unhelpful and will avoid you.

Bringing the Mitre back

Ok this isn't a logo change or anything that is brand new. But for Mitre 10's 35 year anniversary in New Zealand they are using an old logo which incorporates the Mitre in Mitre 10. Also adding to the retro 70's kitsch feel they also have an illustration of a game show type host. I like the quirkyness of the campaign and have usually enjoyed the tv ads Mitre 10 has produced. I don't think too much can be said about the typography neither are that strong in that department. But the blue yellow and orange are a strong established brand in New Zealand and to people of my generation so seeing it in such a different way is a nice surprise.

Gothic Energy

A while ago Demon Energy was released and grabbed a niche market of the ever expanding energy drink market in New Zealand. Now many drinks have been released into a similar market that aims at the sub 30 male market. Offering more energy than your standard (more colourful) energy drinks, such as Red Bull, Lift plus and V, that makes you think of Youtube clip's like Powerthirst and College Humours' reply. Mother energy drink have recently been aggressively pushing their advertisement explaining the need for excessive amounts on energy.

Other products such as Relentless, Ink and even Illicit Cola share a similar branding strategy dark colours usually black and red, with Gothic black letter typography. Their advertising strategy seems similar to that of Beer advertising pushing an image rather than their product (homogenous product and point of difference being advertising image).

Coca-Cola have been putting in tens of million dollars behind Mother Energy it seems they may be here to stay, appealing to what I can sum up as this market. Here's to hoping it follow's in the path of Cherry Cola.