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As someone who frequents the hardware store, walking through the aisles of tools and gadgets making imaginary wish lists, Stanley has become a part of my DIY vocabulary. Established in 1857, Stanley has withstood the test of time by evolving with the industry, continuing to produce quality products. Recently, the brand merged with Black & Decker, creating Stanley Black & Decker. This has carried them in to a new realm, from Healthcare and Security products to Engineered Fastening and Oil Pipeline Services. As any S&P 500 company would do in this situation, they decided to update their branding.

Partnering with Lippincott, a global brand strategy and design firm, Stanley worked extensively with all touch points of the brand to preserve its essence. Keeping the signature black and yellow color palette, Lippincott freed the Stanley logotype from the black badge-shaped enclosure, instantly modernizing the logo. Changing the typeface from stout and bold to slightly taller and less heavy was another choice that seemed to update the look. The “N” is cut diagonally, leaving a right triangle pointing upwards. At first look, I think of a square tool, communicating a theme of precision.

In their press release, Stanley describes the arrow as representing “action”, which seems to have been chosen directly from a generic word library for logo meanings. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and stick with the square tool idea. Besides the “N,” there is the incredibly strange “S” at the front of Stanley. The awkwardly angled end, or terminal, of the “S” runs directly in to a perfectly square bar on the “T.” This detracts from the intention of the precise arrow. It may be nit-picky, but in contrast to the previous “S,” which curved around to end parallel to the baseline, the new “S” seems like a mistake. I don’t love it, but all in all, I can live with wonky “S” and appreciate the reminder to measure twice, and cut once.

Next, Stanley has revamped all of their packaging to include the new look. The products have a strong look with the clean, new logotype applied. However, the actual packaging uses the logo so large that it starts to seem more like a generic “house” brand of a chain store. In my opinion, using the logotype smaller, left-aligned on the packaging could give it a more premium feel. Large and centered seems cheaper than the Stanley name deserves. It may take until the final product reaches the shelves to get a good impression of the new packaging, but for now, I will have to hope that the design gets a few updates.

Overall, I applaud Stanley Black & Decker for updating the logo, going for a slightly modernized approach but still keeping things simple. The black and yellow color scheme has become well recognized and will continue to do so. “I believe that this new logo has the strength and power to carry us for decades to come”, said Scott Bannell, Vice President of Corporate Brand Management. This may be correct, especially with Stanley’s history of consistency. The new logotype will look fantastic embossed directly on to metal or printed on Stanley’s tools, as well as on the vast array of products the newly formed corporation will deliver. Until then, I can live with the “S” and generic packaging, and appreciate the presence of fresh design in the hardware store.

By: Neil Ryan, Art Director

Get ready for a new feel when you touch your iDevice. Well, not a literal sensory feel, but a visual feel. You’ll still be touching a high-quality glass screen, but what’s underneath is getting a makeover. I’m talking about the iOS 7 icons, Apple’s new iDevice operating system. No more ultra glossy icons to tap; at least after you install the update. Apple is rolling out its new iOS 7 look in the fall of 2013, and this will the first major update since 2007.

While first getting some criticism for not releasing a new iPhone at the WWDC (Apple Worldwide Developers’ Conference) in June, they did unveil a completely new iOS 7 operating system. Why the update? Apple says, “…Our purpose was to create an experience that was simpler, more useful, and more enjoyable — while building on the things people love about iOS. Ultimately, redesigning the way it works led us to redesign the way it looks.”

So what’s the difference? What’s new? The most noticeable change is the gloss-less look (applause sign please). Icons for apps no longer have an overly cheesy, “trying to make 2-D look 3-D” kind of dimensionality. They are now donned with ultra bright colors and subtle gradients. The rounded corners are now more round, and each icon uses a slightly lighter weight typeface (Helvetica of course).

Do people like it? After all, the masses will be using it. Despite the heckling coming from the haters, most users polled prefer the new iOS 7 icon design to iOS 6. According to Polar, a mobile polling tool built by Input Factory to gauge user opinions, users prefer the new look and feel two to one, with over 46,000 people answering. However, the complaining has not ceased. Some are calling the complete design ‘hideously ugly,’ but I don’t agree.

In my opinion, the design has been long overdue. I enjoy the brighter colors and flatter look of the icons. It exudes sophistication while also feeling like a consumer device. It’s apparent that more focus is devoted to typography and simplicity, making for a clearer user experience. Are there things I would change? Yes, but they are small: make the corners more square and maybe reduce the saturation of the eye-popping colors.

In order to justify the cost of a high-end device that makes calls and does a thousand other tasks, the user experience needs to look sexy and expensive–and that goes further than the encasement. Many users are so used to the previous look that I think for some, the disdain is a knee-jerk reaction. Will the redesign mean a few less sales of iPhones? Perhaps. But I think the redesign will eventually be embraced. After all, Apple is trying to give users something they don’t realize they want, which is not an easy thing to do.

Sometimes it is necessary to do a little “spring cleaning” and de-clutter, even when you don’t think you do. That’s what Apple has done with iOS 7. In their own words, Apple says they made the new look and feel to “work and look beautifully.” I agree.

By: Justin Leatherman, Art Director

Navigating the waters of brand perception can be tricky, but if done right, customers will remain fiercely loyal to your company’s product or service offerings. This is accomplished by providing positive experiences for your customers. If, however, brands provide inadequate, inauthentic, and unsympathetic customer service, those companies’ perceptions will sink and customers will flee in droves.

One company that is in very real danger of scuttling their brand is Adobe, an iconic brand that provides software for the creation and editing of content. The vast majority of creative professionals use Adobe’s Creative Suite of products (which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, and many more content-creation and sharing products).

Adobe has been a leader within the creative software space for over a decade, and customers loved their products. It also enjoyed a solid brand perception; that is, until May of this year, when Adobe drastically changed its business model by abandoning traditional software pricing models and moving instead to a subscription based one. Now, customers who rely on the software will find themselves paying more—much more—to keep their software up-to-date.

For the past ten years, Adobe’s Creative Suite has offered bundled software packages to users for a one-time fee per license, with upgrades priced at a percentage of the full version cost. Each version’s features could be counted on to serve customers’ needs for at least 2–3 years, meaning that it was possible to leap-frog at least one full version of the software before upgrading. With the subscription-based pricing of Creative Cloud (what Adobe is now calling their Creative Suite of products), users will have to pay from $50–$70 per month (that’s $840.00 per year) PER computer. What’s worse, if users stop paying for their subscriptions, they will lose the ability to view, edit, print or export their work. In essence, Adobe is holding users hostage to their products so they will continue to pay for a subscription— indefinitely.

Adobe’s drastic pricing shift has caused users of their products to question the value of the brand: not only does it appears that the company is trying to increase “shareholder value” at the expense of its customers, they are sending a message of arrogance and mistrust (part of the reason why Adobe wants to verify subscriptions monthly is to decrease or eliminate software piracy) to their customers.

In turn, creative professionals and users (this one included) are lashing out at the company. In a survey of over 1,600 users conducted by CNET and Jefferies, 76% of respondents using the latest “boxed version” of Creative Suite (6.0) indicated that they would “never” move to the subscription-based Creative Cloud. Users of earlier versions said they were strongly disinclined to move to the subscription model as well. The lesson Adobe should learn from these types of surveys is that customer loyalty must be earned; it cannot be forced upon users. In doing so, the company has irreparably damaged its brand perception.

Ironically, Adobe is facing a similar fate to its old archrival in desktop publishing software that it vanquished in the early 2000s: Quark. Quark Xpress had been the industry standard software for years, but when Apple updated its operating system and the company refused to immediately recode its software to work with the new system, users jumped ship and adopted Adobe InDesign instead; it was this foothold in creative professionals’ toolkits that allowed Adobe to saturate the market and become the leading brand.

What will end up happening, in this author’s opinion, is that Adobe’s customers will seek cheaper alternatives…there are a plethora of other software choices out there for users to buy, and for a one-time fee. Though other products may not be as comprehensive as Creative Suite—yet—within a couple of years these alternatives may finally drown Adobe’s brand.

By: Ryan Hembree, Principal | Brand and Creative Strategy

America’s third most popular social network, Pinterest, updated their website this month with a goal of bettering users’ experience and interaction. The new design improvements include a simpler and cleaner layout and an array of new discovery features that make pinning your favorite things quicker and easier than ever before.

For those of you still exploring social media and what it means for your brand, Pinterest is an online pinboard, or social bookmarking website that allows users to create, share, and save interests, hobbies and/or events to topic-based collection boards. When a user shares an image or video on Pinterest, they are “pinning” content. Each pin is represented as an image and can be linked back to its original source. Pins can be organized by theme, and on different boards. Users who want to save what others have “pinned” will “repin” that content to save it to their own collection boards. Users also have the option to “follow” other users who share similar tastes and interests.

Three years after its launch in 2010, Pinterest embarked on a redesign to make the site easier to navigate, without drastically changing its look. After a three-month test period with select members, Pinterest analyzed feedback and began implementing the new site redesign to the rest of its 48-million+ users. As an avid Pinterest user, I was excited try out the new look and features.

With the redesign, Pinterest is even more user friendly. Navigating around the site is easier and more fluid for users, with pinners and boards featured more prominently than before. The pins are larger, and higher-quality images and feature-related pins make it easier to discover similar things. Suggested search terms, and the ability to view recent searches have been added, as well as a drop down to show popular topics. Pinterest notifies users when they are posting duplicate content, helping to eliminate clutter on their boards. My favorite new feature is that all content shows up on the same page, so you never have to leave it to view content; now I never lose my place while browsing.

Pinterest has also made it easier for users to interact with each other and discover material from like-minded individuals. It is now possible to send pins to friends, and even include a personal message. Pinterest users can now find friends from Twitter and Facebook that are also on Pinterest.
After testing the site, I’ve been very pleased with Pinterest’s updated look and new features. I appreciate that the company is interested in bettering users’ experiences, and takes the time to listen and evaluate their opinions. The new design is very helpful in managing and sharing my continually expanding boards. Pinterest is one of the top places for inspiration on the web and with the redesign it’s an even more beautiful visual experience.

By: Ashley Faubel, Designer

In March, The New York Times announced that it had been working on a complete redesign of the NYTimes.com. Since this is the newspaper’s first attempt at redesigning their online presence since 2006, the big focus is on creating a user experience that works well across all platforms and correctly displays in different media.

The new NYTimes.com article experience (top) versus the old (bottom).

The first prototype released focuses on the article experience: featuring minimal content on the sidebars and a three-column layout, the full article is now the centerpiece of a clean page. A header image is accompanied by the article title and byline, similar to the way articles are presented in print.

Mobile applications have changed the way users interact with content and their behavior towards scrolling as changed. These modified behaviors have made the jump to the desktop, and we now see websites using scrolling as part of the user experience. The NYTimes.com articles are no longer divided between multiple pages so as to prevent the user from having to scroll through long bodies of text, as used to be the norm.

The new NYTimes.com uses scrolling to show full articles but also to disperse the sidebar content throughout the page so it no longer takes attention away from the main article. As you scroll you also notice the main header change.  The first iteration appears when the article loads and it encompasses the way the user can interact with the whole site from within that particular article.  The related content disappears as you scroll below the fold and only the main buttons stay, which I think helps keep focus on the content and minimize distractions. The main navigation is at the top left, under what The Verge calls “the now-familiar three-line ‘hamburger’ icon” we see across mobile apps.

Personally, I love the focus that has been given to the content, with the article header across the width of the window and the body copy centered below. The secondary content shines because of the white space that surrounds it as you scroll down the window. Because every element of the sidebar has its own little area; as people interact with the site, sidebar items will become less obtrusive until you need them and know exactly where to find them.

Overall, the prototype released is leaps and bounds better than the current NYTimes.com, and a fine step in the right direction. Back in 2006, it was hard to envision the web would look like this. The conceptual decisions to clean up the interface and use a mobile-first user experience foundation are a reflection of the era we are living in. And the New York Times is finally jumping both feet in.

By: Emilio Servigon, Web Designer

The Tea in your cup might not be changing, but the letter T on your cup will be. Tazo Tea has quietly introduced a new look to their packaging and overall branding.

At first sip, the brands look quite different. It seems that the main objective was to polish up the look making it more presentable with a cleaner typeface, brighter colors, and an overall more modern feel. The teabag shape wasn’t reinvented and the name hasn’t changed—Tazo has just turned over a new leaf.

Although the visuals are different, there are a few things that remain constant. The logo itself carries a strikethrough in the letter Z, consistent with the previous logo. This alone gives it a “I am the same, but I’ve graduated” look. Daniele Monti, Creative Director at Starbucks Global Creative, said one of the goals was to “…bring the brand into the 21st century, and not to lose its soul.”

One way this was achieved was with the clever lines of text on the packaging. The old packaging had a mystic feel with the text. It reads, “Tazo happens when one combines amazingly flavorful teas with a fertile imagination and some other good things from nature.” In contrast, the new brand uses humor and wit to describe the tea flavors. “New white tea buds in the splendor of youth swing from the branch of an apricot tree, giggling delicately in the sweet-fruited air. Tahitian vanilla dances and twirls in creamy intoxication.” These new quips help describe the explosion of ingredients blended, which is what Tazo is known for.

The old logo and branding has been largely unchanged since Starbucks purchased the brand in 1999. I’ll be honest, the old look didn’t really bother me. It was strikingly odd, but seemed to fit the world of tea. It was dark, gothic, and felt like it belonged at a Cirque du Soleil performance. It’s exactly what I pictured when I thought of a typical tea drinker–intriguing and mysterious.

In my opinion, a typical tea drinker has an arrogance about their decision to drink tea over coffee. It seems like they think they are making a much more healthy choice and they should be joined by the nearest intellectual to speak of intellectual things (which usually means they say normal things and stare off into space while saying them slowly). So, tailoring a look all on its own for this niche market seemed to work, propelling the Tazo tea drinker to think they were unique and different.

Overall the new brand seems to fit better under the Starbucks umbrella. It now has a consistent feeling to the parent Starbucks brand–corporate, clean and clever. Was it the right direction? I’m not convinced. It does look good–really good. But the overhaul has taken away most of the original, unique tea feeling. Maybe it’s like watching your children grow up: you wish you could still have the younger version, while at the same time enjoying how their personality and quirks turn them into the grown-ups they are destined to become. I guess it’s time to watch the Tazo brand grow up and let go of the past. There’s always the memories right?

By: Justin Leatherman, Art Director