(mouse over an image)

IDENTITY WORKS IN TWO LANGUAGES
Hong Kong China
To accommodate a growing class of domestic business travelers in China that demand style and affordability, the 280-room Hotel Jen has opened its doors in Hong Kong. Early in the process, the developers brought in San Francisco’s MetaDesign to develop a branding system that reflected the combination of simple, modernist architecture with the offer of traditional Asian hospitality. MetaDesign helped to conceive a name in Mandarin and English - “Jen” - understandable in both languages. (Jen is a representation of a Chinese character that signifies love and goodwill towards people. The naming process was said to have involved “an exhaustive review” of several hundred choices.) The next challenge was to create an identity that works with Roman Letterforms and simplified Chinese characters. The result, says MetaDesign Vice President and Creative Director Brett Wickens, is “a brand identity that evokes the heritage of Chinese writing, through written symbols, with a modern, sleek look.” It has been implemented across a series of applications such as signage, stationery, and in-room collateral. The design firm also served on the hotel’s advisory panel so as to have input on the interiors. Wickens concludes that the brand identity and interior design place “customer expectations at the center of a forward-thinking design philosophy to create a hotel product that is personal, distinctly Asian and affordable to all.” Contact: www.metadesign.com

SIPPING THE BUBBLY AT CANNES
Cannes France
Turner Duckworth has received the first ever Design Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions for its work on the Coke brand visual identity. The firm has been working over the past couple of years on packaging, retail graphics, fleet graphics and more in an effort to distill the brand to its essence and “make Coke happy, fresh and honest again.” The judges, which also gave the new aluminum bottle a Gold Lion, lauded the firm for its “iconization of heritage.” Moira Cullen, Coca-Cola North America’s Design Director, says that Turner Duckworth’s achievement has been to simplify the brand and “to really make what had become very complex, into something very clear, pure and emotionally resonant.” The firm has offices in San Francisco and London. Contact: www.turnerduckworth.com

WYOMING AND SUKLE DRAW THE LINE
Cheyenne WY/Denver CO
The Wyoming Department of Health is inviting its citizens to take a hard look at personal choices that effect the health of others. The message: think twice about behaviors associated with alcohol and tobacco that cross the line and create “secondhand harm” to others. Sukle Advertising + Design, an independent Denver-based agency, is communicating the message with a mix of traditional and guerilla marketing tactics - tv and radio spots, print advertising and posters, oversized painted wall installations on buildings, and a wry presence in liquor stores, gas stations, bars, convenience stores and schools. Also included: a 15-city tour featuring street teams collecting stories from citizens in return for t-shirts and wristbands. Creative Director Mike Sukle argues that “the line between good decisions and dumb decisions can be thin, veiled and deceitful. We’re just asking people to think first.” Adds Rodger McDaniel of the Wyoming Department of Health: “This campaign is about personal responsibility, and is not the state telling you what you should or shouldn’t do about tobacco and alcohol.” Art Directors on the campaign were Andy Dutlinger, KC Koch, Caryn Arredondo and Jeff Euteneuer, while the Copywriter was Jim Glynn. Contact: www.sukle.com or www.wedrawtheline.com

TALKING TYPE
Chicago IL
This year’s Jack Weiss Founder Award scholarships from the STA in Chicago have been announced. Awarded annually to Chicago-area students on the basis of their submissions to a poster competition, the winners are Yvette Shen and Onus Fatih Yazicigil (shown above), both of Purdue University. An honorable mention goes to Yeonjae Yuk, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The theme: “Typography as Meta Communication.” The judging committee included Cheri Gearhart, Jack Weiss, Joseph Essex, and Alma Hoffman. Contact: www.sta-chicago.org or www.chicagodesign archive.org

PENTAGRAM MAKES THE LOGO BIGGER
New York NY
The New York Times building facade is one of nine honor winners in this year’s Society for Environmental Graphic Design competition. Pentagram fulfilled the dream of clients everywhere to “make the logo bigger,” supersizing the iconic Times logo on the new Renzo Piano-designed headquarters tower. What may look like a simple sign - if a 110 foot long logo set as a 10,116-point version of the iconic Fraktur font can be called simple - is actually an intricate skin assembled from nearly a thousand separate custom-designed pieces, each a 3-inch painted, extruded aluminum sleeve. The team included Michael Bierut, Tracey Cameron, Michelle Leong and Tamara McKenna. Also shown here: A special jury award for the Billboard Earthbag Project, a vision for constructing emergency shelters following natural disasters that integrates hard-to-recycle billboard vinyl; and an honor award for the One Day Poem Pavilion, Jiyeon Song’s graduate thesis at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, a geodesic dome-shaped shelter with perforations that allow light in and project poetry onto the ground. Contact: www.segd.org/awards/2008.html

ANYTHING BUT STANDARD
New York NY
When hotelier André Balazs established The Standard hotel brand (with properties in Miami, Hollywood and Downtown LA), he wanted it to have a unique look, complete with an upside down logo, a riff of the nature of what it means to be “standard.” Balazs then turned to Helicopter to extend the brand to all visual communications from check in through check out, from print ads to event kits to seasonal products. Shown here: amenities packaging for guests incorporating the upside down logo that is described by Helicopter partners and founders Josh Liberson and Ethan Trask as “hip, impeccable and just a little cheeky.” The work was done in conjunction with Pandisco product design. Contact: www.hellochopper.com

URBAN TUMBLEWEEDS DEBUT IN DESERT
Black Rock City NV
Burning Man Art Festival in the Nevada desert is the home to many surprises, among them the first showing of “2663 Urban Tumbleweeds,” an eco-art installation by design firm MSLK. Seeking to raise community awareness of plastic bags as a common sign and symbol of waste and overconsumption, the Long Island City NY-based design firm came up with the idea of a graphic statement on a grand scale: an art installation of 2663 bags, which represents the number consumed in the U.S. each minute. At Burning Man, the bags were placed along the “Trash Fence” - a name participants use to refer to the boundary fence that keeps participants and trash inside the festival limits. Signage, made from recycled vinyl graphics, told the story of the environmental impact of the bags. The project, note principals Marc S. Levitt and Sheri L. Koetting, began with a visit to drop-off boxes at local stores to collect used bags. They plan to bring the installation to a New York City park, “where the bags can be artfully intervened within trees,” and are considering an invitation by a small Soho gallery to fill the space from floor to ceiling. Contact: www.mslk.com

ENVISIONING URBAN COLORADO
Denver CO
In a region of the country where living downtown by choice runs counter to the culture and the stereotype, Cultivator Advertising & Design tackles the issue for Riverfront Park, a development with nine different residential buildings bordering Denver’s Lower Downtown (LoDo). The agency created a richly-produced, die-cut casebound book, with magnetic overleaf closure and seven support material pockets. Through it, readers get a wide open and playful look at the energy that an urban neighborhood can generate. The distribution strategy: 900 books to current residents as a coffee table conversation starter, and 900 as a premium giveaway to prospective residents. Creative credits to Chris Beatty, Creative Director, Tom Abare, Creative Director and Copywriter, RIch Rodgers, Designer, Sarah Sibly Copywriter, and Jeff Gorman, Production Artist. Contact: www.cultivator.com