New logo: Refinery29

Refinery29 is a website dedicated to fashion and beauty. Launched in New York in 2005, it has expanded over time to cover other cities and the rest of the world, to the point that it can warrant commissioning a new visual identity from Wolff Olins. That's what they did, and the identity was launched over the weekend.

New logo: DNN

DotNetNuke, a company that operates a web content management system of the same name, announced earlier this month its intention to rebrand as DNN. The old name was derived from the fact that the platform is based on the .NET framework, and the company wanted to move away from the technical association the previous name brought with it.

With the namechange comes an overhaul of the brand architecture with new names for all products. The open source platform is called DNN while the commercial applications carry the new "Evoq" brand. This evocative should communicate that its CMS help companies build websites that "evoke the personality, value proposition and uniqueness of that business".

New logo: Big 12 Conference

The Big 12 Conference is a conference within American college athletics. Despite the name, it is made up of ten universities (as opposed to the Big 10 Conference, which has twelve schools). Last week it introduced a new logo, created by GSD&M, an ad agency in Austin, Texas.

New logo: Finnish Police

The Finnish Police is about to get a refreshed look at the beginning of next year. A new logo was revealed earlier this month and will be introduced in January 1 as part of a structural reorganisation.

The logo features the Finnish police force symbol – a lion's head on a sword – and a wordmark. Up until now, these elements have been used separately, and the biggest change is that they can now be joined together in a lock-up. Other than that, the changes a barely noticeable, save for a few legibility updates to the wordmark.

New logo: The Contemporary Austin

Back in 2011, two contemporary arts institutions in Austin, Texas - the Austin Museum of Art and Arthouse - merged to create a single contemporary art museum. After being called AMOA-Downtown for a few years, last week (July 18) it changed its name to The Contemporary Austin. The new identity was developed by Pentagram partner DJ Stout in Austin.

The team sought to come up with a unique name that expresses the focus of the institution, avoiding acronyms and the word "museum". The visual identity is built around a straight-forward wordmark set in a recently released typeface called Boxed, with a small cap A in the word "contemporary", which stands for both Austin and art.

New logo: Indygen

Indygen is new mobile telecommunications brand in Romania, launched earlier this month, that targets young consumers. The brand identity was developed by Brandient in Bucharest.

The name is an abbreviation of "Independent Young Generation", but can also be interpreted as the word indigenous. It is positioned as a movement that helps the young people achieve their personal goals. The visual expression communicates change and spontaneity, in the form of a custom brush stroke typeface and symbol representing change of direction. The symbol also alludes to ribbons that connect people to larger movements, causes.

SIM cards for Indygen don't come in flat envelopes, they are packaged with a set of collectable toys shaped like urban warriors.

New logo: Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus

The Gustave Roussy Institute is a cancer research institute in the suburbs of Paris. In June, it changed its name to the Gustave Roussy Cancer Campus Grand Paris and adopted a new identity, created by Minale Brand Strategy.

Neuropathologist Gustave Roussy was the founder of the institute and his name will now be clearly communicated as the primary name for the institute, with all the good energy that comes with associating yourself with a visionary founder. It will hopefully also root out a bunch of alternative names that have been floating around.

The coloured elements around the letter Y symbolise meetings and sharing of the institute's values. The logo has five colours, each representing its major units. The agency also came up with a mascot named Gustave who will be used at public events.

New logo: Wrocław Airport

The Wrocław-Copernicus Airport is the fifth largest airport in Poland, serving the city of Wrocław in south-western Poland. This week, on July 17, it unveiled a new logo. It was selected trough a contest which was one by a man named Krzysztof Pilch, a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts In Łódź.

New logo: Candyland

Some sweet fun today in the form of Candyland, a new umbrella brand for candy from British confectionery maker Tangerine. This completely new brand was developed by BrandOpus based on a theme of "embracing nonsense". Candyland will unite a diverse portfolio of classic brands like Wham Bars, Dip Dab and Refreshers, some of which are currently sold under the Barratt brand.

The packaging portrays Candyland as a whimsical place divided into different territories. The stylistically consistent packaging is further unified by the logo, a quirky airship.

New logo: Corbion

Corbion is the new name for a Dutch company that produces biobased products for ingredients and packaging, formerly known as CSM. It recently divested its bakery products division, which kept the CSM name.

The new name was unveiled on June 18, and the visual identity was developed by VBAT.

New logo: Anders Petter

Anders Petter is a Swedish brand for pots, pans, cutlery and other kitchen-ware. This spring, the brand got a new look, created by Silver in Stockholm. The design drew some inspiration from old cook books.

New logo: Unimev

Unimev is the new name for the French meeting industry council, an organisation for those that organise trade fairs and exhibitions. Previously known as FSCEF, the new name was launched on June 28. The identity was developed with French agency 4uatre.

New logo: Sport1

Sport 1 is a German free-to-air television channel dedicated to sports programming. Launched in 1993, it was known as DSF until 2010. Its owners, Constantin Medien, are about to extend the brand to a sports radio station called Sport.FM, due to launch on July 19. As a result of this, Sport1 will get a new logo to be used across all platforms. It was reportedly developed by Brandsome, which also owned by Constantin Medien.

Logo round-up: June 2013

Here's the logo round-up for June 2013, a month filled with various interesting new logos from around the world.

New logo: Glasgow Airport

When you want to use typical iconography to represent Scotland, you have two options. The saltire from the Scottish flag or the thistle, Scotland's floral emblem. When a new logo was created for Glasgow Airport, they went with the former.

Glasgow Airport is the second busiest airport in Scotland and launched a new logo this week, on July 10. This is part of major rebranding of the country's largest airport corporation which has meant that all airports have been given independent brand identities. The logo, featuring a nice geometric thistle-G, was created by Designline in Paisley.

New logo: Hightail

YouSendIt, the web service we all use to send large files, announced this week, July 10, that it was changing its name to Hightail. No design credit given, but a video that accompanied the launch suggests it was at least partly done in-house.

The company says it wants to be about more than file sharing. The existing highly functional name, just like competing cloud storage services (Dropbox, Skydrive and several combinations of cloud, drop, send and file). It was also seen as limiting, while the new more aspirational name is broader.

Walter Landor 100

Today is the 100th birthday of Walter Landor, founder of Landor Associates, one of the world's leading branding firms. He was born as Walter Landauer in Munich, Germany, on July 9, 1913. The son of a prominent architect he was strongly influenced by the modernist movement and realized that ha wanted to design for a living. After studies and practice in London, he eventually came to the United States where settled down in San Francisco and founded Walter Landor & Associates in 1941 with his wife Josephine.

For its first twenty years in existence, Walter Landor did a lot of work in packaging. Much of his success was built on designing beer labels. It wasn't until the 1960s that he would fully venture into the nascent corporate identity field. Since then, Landor Associates has produced thousands of brand marks for prominent clients around the world.

A full biography can be found Landor's website. This post will celebrate Walter Landor's legacy by featuring some of his firm's earlier brand marks from the 50s up until 1974, when Walter Landor retired from day-to-day operations.

Landor was known for pioneering some research-based methods for brand strategy, but that didn't stop his firm from also producing beautiful design. Some are classic design cases, others all but forgotten.

New logos: K2 and Frisbee

K2 and Frisbee are two Italian kids channel broadcast for free to most of the country. Their parent company was bought by Discovery Communications earlier this year, and on June 30 they both got new on-air looks-

K2 is heavy on action and adventure cartoons for boys, while Frisbee caters more to girls. Those targets are clearly more apparent with the new logos.

Alta Vista brand history

Yahoo announced a couple of weeks ago that AltaVista would close down today. A good excuse to go through AltaVista's history in logo form.

For those of you who don't remember it, AltaVista was an early search engine, one of the first to use crawlers and indexing to give you results on whatever topic you wanted. It was developed in 1995 by Digital Equipment Corporation, partly to showcase its processors, and would soon become the leading search engine as the Internet was welcomed into people's homes.

New logo: Norwegian Environment Agency

The Norwegian Environment Agency (Miljødirektoratet in Norwegian) is a new government agency formed on July 1 from the merger of the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management and the Norwegian Climate and Pollution Agency. The visual identity for this "super agency" was developed by BrandLab Oslo.

They wanted to position the agency as the agenda setter in Norwegian environmental politics. This was done through an elegantly tight expression with a stylised M in a mix of blue and green. BrandLab also developed imagery guidelines, website design, icons and typography.

New logo: Wallonia

The government agencies in Wallonia, the southern French-speaking half of Belgium, unveiled a new logo on June 27. This new logo is part of a marketing effort to promote Wallonia abroad and will be launched in full before the end of the year. It was developed by communications agency VO-Event in Brussels.

The logo consists of five dots and can come with four different "auras", coloured pattern representing qualities such as accessibility and technical know-how.

New logo: Follett

Follett Corporation is a major American provider of educational materials, operating hundreds of bookstores and other services. Back in May, it introduced a new corporate identity, created by Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv.

Although most of Folkett's divisions and products are named after the company, they all use completely different logos. The new mark is intended to represent the entire company, replacing all the old logos and creating a unified brand architecture.

The symbol show two elements coming together, while also being a stylized flame, a symbol of knowledge.

New logo: Telecom Egypt

Telecom Egypt is the incumbent telecommunications company in Egypt, established in its current form in 1998. Apparently unaware of the impending coup-d'etat, it introduced a new logo this week.

The new logo is said to reflect a "dynamic and fast-paced environment". It introduces a symbol built on the initials T and E and some sort of forward-looking symbol.

New logo: Tigerair

Tiger Airways is a Singepore-based budget airline with flights to destinations in Asia and Australia. This week, on July 2, it shortened its name to Tigerair to reflect changes within the company. It was created by a Singaporean agency called The Little Secret Agency.

The leaping tiger from the old logo has been replaced by a friendly wordmark with rounded letterforms and a subtle orange smile.

New logo: İstikbal

İstikbal means "future" in Turkish. It is also the name of a Turkish furniture company, founded in 1957. At the end of June, it introduced a new logo, reportedly created by Chermayeff & Geismar in New York.

New logo: RadioShack

RadioShack is an iconic American brand for a chain of electronics stores. Over the weekend it opened a new store in Manhattan that it hopes will help it survive in an increasingly competitive environment. With the new store came a logo for the entire chain, formally announced on Monday.

The old logo was created by Landor Associates and unveiled in August 1995. Replacing a funky '70s logo, it introduced the R-in-a-circle mark. The new version keeps the circle mark, but replaces the R with a heavy sans serif. No design credit or explanation has been given.

New logo: Mahou San Miguel

Mahou San Miguel is a major Spanish brewery group. This week the company introduced a new corporate identity as it hopes to continue its international expansion. It was created by Interbrand.

The old logo was a combination of the labels for the two beer brands that make up the company name. Its replacement features a clean red M and simple typography.

New logo: EY

Ernst & Young is one of the four world's major accounting firms, formed in 1989 through a merger of firms dating back to the 19th century. Yesterday, July 1, it shortened its name to EY.

The need to shorten the name to just two letters can be debated. Ernst & Young isn't as unwieldy as PricewaterhouseCoopers, which shortened its name to PwC a few years ago. The stated reason for the change is consistency. Up until now, the full name was often shortened to E&Y and EY. The company also has a new tagline, "Building a better working world", which replaces "Quality in everything we do".

The logo itself is quite straightforward. It includes the two letters and a yellow beam that the company has used as a decorative element for a few years.