A Tale of Two Logos and a Need For a Name

Oh boy, the process and product that created the new VH1 and MoMA identities stretch the continuum of re-branding strategies to the point of of snapping it like a hardened piece of silly putty. The new logos have politicized me almost to the point of Bush (VH1) and Clark (MoMA). With the new VH1 logo, I’ve already begun experimenting with a little kick flip switch that will block out the bottom right hand corner of my television set whenever the dial ends up on VH1 which is rare except for the occasional back to the 70’s nostalgia. Meanwhile the Carterized treatment of the new MoMA logo, an attempt to breath more analog life into a digitally stale identity, has all the intellectual subtlety and sacred super nuisance that makes you fall in love hard. While one logo screams look at me. I’m so damn sexy! I’m Christina Aguilara all tied up in type and sporting a trucker hat with a backward irreverent “1” on it. The other says. . . well nothing at all really. The goal of the new MoMA design is to go completely unnoticed, to slowly seep deep into your veins without ever feeling the prick of the needle. The MoMA redesign is like that special record that takes you 10 listens before you realize what a monument of music you’ve been listening to.

In other branding news, there was a fine op-ed piece by Daniel Kantor in last Sunday’s Star Tribune called, We’ve got rail – but how shall we refer to it?. In a nutshell, the article laments the fact that the Twin Cities, unlike D.C., San Francisco and Portland who all have simple names that encompass the entire project of light rail (‘e.g’ METRO, BART, and MAX), is thinking too small and geographically specific in naming the light rail the “Hiawatha Line”. It’s fun to say I’ll take ‘MAX’ and not fun to say I’ll take the Hiawatha Line. Compounding the problem, Kantor points out in his article, The Hiawatha Line, as a name, would be very hard for non-native english speakers to pronounce, whereas something more monosyllabic and simpler might be a better suited to the region and its community. I think that MnDot (Minnesota Department of Transportation) should make a place on their website for citizens to suggest names for the Twin Cities light rail. I vote they call it the HAT (Hiawatha Area Transit).