For some reason, as soon as you describe something as a brand all this fake science marketing mysticism gets invoked and paralysing decisions get made.

"Commercial concerns are both implicit and invisible in the consumption of content."

Sifting through HRO's sorta-haughty satire is worth it for the occasion post like this, where whoever Carles is gets tired of mocking teenagers and writes something true and intriguing about the state of the music industry and popular music culture (at least for the indie set).

Good rundown of some great and not-so-great logo redesigns in 2008.

"the Department of Health is considering plans to force tobacco manufacturers to sell their cigarettes in plain unbranded packets." "They'd be taking one of the most carefully branded products in the world, and de-branding it. And since they've already banned tobacco advertising, cancer sticks don't really have much else left except their branding. They'd be stripping them back to just their name, taste and cost."

Entertaining ad campaign by Crispin Porter + Bogusky. I'm not going to start eating BK, but this is tasty.

Another take on the "NYC" portion of the recent and much-maligned NYC taxi redesign. It is praised. The logo on its own is quite interesting, and the possibilities shown with it as a "vessel" are cool.

A "table of brand element terms."