In our ever-connected world of today, being a true original is increasingly challenging. Just look at these similar looking logos. One is from a American global retail giant, and the other from an Art Museum in Mexico City.
Walmart; and Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo (Museum of Contemporary Art) from the Jumex Foundation, the Mexican corporate giant built on Jumex juice brand.
The art of capturing an entire company’s ideas, ethos, knowledge and the future in one logo and corporate identity is an integral part of visual branding. Of course there’s much more to branding than meets the eye!
Most of today’s organizations are well-versed in this most fundamental of branding-building exercises. Some are still struggling to design an identity that best represents their values and positive traits, while others come up with eerily similar-looking designs, albeit representing vastly different organizations, across a multitude of industries and countries.
I consider myself as a visual creature, and the past few years i’ve been on a personal mission to identify suspiciously similar looking Logos and Corporate Identities. Allow me to add a footnote, however, as I’ve learned from past experience; the opinions on the similarities are subjective, representing my views. And my sole intention is simply to demonstrate that we are all inspired by the same things. Now more than ever, thanks to the internet.
To date I’ve come across myriad doppelgängers, look-alikes, wannabes, copies, or plain plagiarism. Sheer coincidence? Or copycats?
Realistically of course, I’m not discounting the simple fact that some may have been inspired by the same ideas. Nevertheless, it’s an ever changing, ever amassing encyclopedia of visual identity that’s just a click away. Here’s a look at some.
There’s an old French proverb: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” first coined by French columnist and novelist Alphonse Karr (1808-1890), which loosely translates to: “The more we change, the more we stay the same.”
Before the internet, we all operated in virtual seclusion and isolation, as individuals in our world. Collaboration only occurred in Multinational Corporations that operated across different countries and cultures. In the business world, ideas and innovation spread in limitation, only to organizations that had the resources and means to communicate
Fast forward to the Internet and Social Media era, connecting the human race like never before in history, like a labyrinth of busy bees.
Facebook, Twitter, Linked-IN, Groupon, Instagram, Pinterest, Path and Crowdsourcing are becoming a common part of our vocabulary and lifestyle… through which mediums we are connected through our work, and the objects that inspire us.
And for all the digital natives out there (yes, all you mortals conceived after 1980s when internet and email was part of daily vocabulary – in any lingo), I have no doubt that life without the internet is quity simply… NO LIFE AT ALL!
IDEAS INSPIRING INNOVATION 