cmyk

Wolken communica, Bellevue Art Museum	Cato Purnell Partners, Infratil
Braue; Branding & Corporate Design, Druckhaus Wüst	Chase Design Group, First Light

For years, cyan, magenta, yellow and black have been designer-speak in developing identities for printing and color houses. So when did these primary colors of the print world enter the vocabulary of the real world? When digital printers became cheaper than the inks you load in them. CMYK soon became the building blocks of a visually literate society. These base colors, spurned as long-time restrictions by designers, suddenly became the novel darlings of consumers. To explain a concept, knock it down to its basic elements: Suddenly, CMYK is a fresh tool that a savvy public understands.

flames

Davidson Design, Target	Fernandez Design, Global Chaos
Luce Beaulieu, Le Poulet Grillé	Modern Dog Communications, Experience Music Project

Though tiresome to many, fire is one of the elements of nature, and flames aren't going away soon. Want to confirm this? Turn on your TV and count the number of custom biker/motor/auto/monster/pimp-my-ride-shows spread across networks as diverse as Discovery, MTV and ESPN. Customization has become an industry, and good pin-strippers sign autographs. These guys can tell us there are traditional flames, fast flames, California flames, tribal flames and more. We still associate flames with heat, speed and vanilla rebellion, and as long as there are fast bad-boy clients, designers will be painting their licks.

wicker balls

A & Company, Total	Carbone Smolan Agency, Assurant
Landor and Associates, Pepsico	Fernandez Design, MetaDot

Globes continue to be a popular solution to represent the international affairs of a corporation, though I typically wince at a globe solution when it's the only tale a company has to tell. These solutions, on the other hand, can take on a degree of elegance and often represent the strength and complexity of the organization bonded by the woven layers. The French A & Company, for example, was masterful at combining the flagship colors of Total, Fina and Elf to help represent the merger of these three European petroleum giants.