Twenty years on time for FedEx

Twenty years ago today, on June 23, 1994, the American express parcel service Federal Express unveiled its new shortened name and smart logo to much pomp and circumstance. Ahead of the unveiling, the new logo had been painted on an MD-11 jet and flown to the Memphis International Airport to be the centrepiece of the unveiling ceremony. This could be watched by thousands of its employees and spawned lots of news articles. One estimate said the event reached 88 million people.

Federal Express started operations in 1973 after a Yale student realised you could compete with the post office by transporting express packages on jetliners. It grew quickly and eventually "fed-exing" became synonymous with "sending packages fast", allowing Federal Express to join the short list of company names that had become verbs. But as competition grew it needed to differentiate itself to maintain its lead. The namechange was preceded by two years of extensive research both internally and with Landor Associates.

But the end result was remarkably simple. The name was shortened to the already established shorthand. The logo was a rendition of the name in simple letters with the now famous hidden arrow. For plane liveries they opted for white fuselages instead of the purple that had dominated up until then. Landor also came up with the tagline "The World On Time" which reinforced a worldwide reach and focus on punctuality.

Stockholm continues to capitalise on Scandinavia

For the last few years, Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, has boldly marketed itself as the "Capital of Scandinavia". This has probably been seen as unnecessarily arrogant and brash to those living in other Scandinavian capitals, like Copenhagen and Oslo. But Stockholm are sticking to it and last year they introduced a refreshed version of this branding, created by Essen International.

That agency was also involved in branding the city of Stockholm (Stockholms stad) last year. To clarify, the Stockholms stad project mostly concerned communication from the city of Stockholm to its inhabitants. The "Capital of Scandinavia" branding targets business and tourists from around the world and concerns all the 52 municipalities that make up Sweden's capital region.

Essen's branding unites the branding for the city and the region with a common visual expression with similar colours and typefaces. It is built around the already established crown symbol and designed to work in a digital environment.

Logo round-up: May 2014

Here's the logo round-up for May 2014. This month saw some major rebrands, such as Brazil's postal service, Portugal's largest cable company and many others from around the world.

New siren sings for the Museum of Warsaw

The Museum of Warsaw (Muzeum Warszawy) is an historical museum located in the old town center of Warsaw. Formerly known as Historical Museum of Warsaw, it recently unveiled a new visual identity, developed by Warsaw-based graphic designer Ania Światłowska.

The new symbol features a highly abstracted version of a syrenka, a mermaid holding a sword and a shield as found on Warsaw's coat of arms. It should symbolise how Warsaw's past meets its future and communicate openness and modernity. The typography uses Good, a typeface designed by another Varsovian, typographer Łukasz Dziedzic.

New broadband brand Relish launches

UK Broadband is a company that owns significant slices of radio spectrum suitable for 4G LTE use. Earlier this month, on June 2, the company launched a new mobile broadband service in London called Relish. The brand identity for this service, including name, positioning and design, was created by Turquoise.

The new service is focused on ease of use rather than speed. Turquoise developed an illustration style to portray the various uses people may have for mobile broadband.

Transaction company Ingenico freshens up

Ingenico is a French company with global reach that provides technology solutions for electronic transactions. Earlier this month, on June 4, the company launched a new visual identity and launched a new brand architecture which sees it being renamed Ingenico Group. Ingenico now describes itself as "the global leader in seamless payment", reflecting and evolution from being mostly about payment terminals.

The new brand identity was designed by Unlimi-ted. The new logo are quite straight-forward and a departure from the red script logo used up until now.

New symbol for Bulgaria's Max Telecom

Max Telecom is a Bulgarian telecommunications company that began operation in 2007 with the launch of a 4G network. Last month, on May 20, it introduced a new 4G LTE network and took the opportunity to also launch a new corporate identity.

The company will now be marketed simply as "Max". Most applications seem to use Museo as company typeface.