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Pepsi: Breathtaking Design Strategy (2008) [pdf]
- jaidhyani 4y agoThe song inspired by this document: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAG7pye0V1g&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAG7pye0V1g&t=1s
- niscocity35 4y ago
- zebracanevra 4y agoSee also https://youtu.be/fu3ETgAvQrw https://youtu.be/fu3ETgAvQrw which I believe is the official video to go with the song
- JohnJamesRambo 4y agoI see bullshit jobs existed in 2008 also. "a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case."
- niscocity35 4y agoThis is the most elaborate form of BS i have seen to date. My only take away from this post is that I like the 1962 skeuomorphic Pepsi logo with the bottlecap.
- silisili 4y agoAgreed. Really dig the 1929 and 1962 logos. It seems to just keep going downhill from there.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoIt kind of makes me sad thinking about all the time and talent and money that went into this with the main purpose of getting people to buy and drink more (unhealthy) colored, carbonated, sugar water.
- civilized 4y agoBreathtaking because of the breathing issues caused by obesity-induced apnea?
- bigdict 4y agoIt kills you, literally takes the breath away.
- mushufasa 4y agoWell, that's what happens when you make what people want... I guess.
- toast0 4y agoWell, people didn't go for the uncolored version, even with the movie tie-in. So unhealthy colored it is. ;p
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y agoI actually like Crystal Pepsi when it came out and was sad when it was no longer available.
- jihadjihad 4y agoAlways a classic, and it never fails to make me laugh when I scroll through the smiley face section. Impossible to unsee: https://www.cannotunsee.net/post/730928004/pepsi/amp https://www.cannotunsee.net/post/730928004/pepsi/amp
- drivers99 4y agoI was also thinking of the same thing, which goes to show how great a work of culture jamming[1] it is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_jamming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_jamming “Tactics include editing company logos to critique the respective companies, products or concepts they represent[...]”
- guerrilla 4y agoAdBusters is great for this[1] 1. https://www.adbusters.org/ https://www.adbusters.org/
- bitwize 4y agoKind of reminds me of Strong Sad.
- hoistbypetard 4y agoYes. https://www.utne.com/arts/new-pepsi-logo-is-a-joke/ https://www.utne.com/arts/new-pepsi-logo-is-a-joke/
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
- jbmny 4y agoAnybody else see a resemblance to the awful Microsoft Teams emojis?
- mushufasa 4y agodespite how silly this may seem to many in the HN audience, I will contend that: if you were running a multi-billion dollar sugar water company whose main moat is the brand, and spent hundreds of millions on ads each year as one of the key line items in the budget, you too would want this level of sophistication and thought put into a brand refresh. Probably even more. And you can imagine that this document was debated for weeks or months by the highest level executives as well as whole departments of marketers. They probably had multiple documents like this from multiple agencies. With that level of internal debate, all the granular side-by-side process diagrams are a necessary part of the UX here, to guide along the audience that only sees the pdf and can't talk to the agency designers.
- spoonjim 4y agoIt’s not the level of effort that’s weird, it’s the terrible output despite the level of effort.
- civilized 4y agoAnd the unsettling question: is this terrible output actually good? Do I just not have what it takes to recognize great sugar water salesmanship?
- twobitshifter 4y agoMy question is, bullshit aside, can we measure how effective this new logo was for Pepsi? Did it have any effect at all?
- awad 4y agoThe stock has been on a tear since then, so there's that. Hard to say what all the inputs were, but it didn't hurt, at least, observationally.
- bigDinosaur 4y agoYou could say that about anything that looks silly. At some point you gotta actually just say outright and unequivocally that something is silly. If this logo redesign wasn't absurd, nothing is.
- kumarvvr 4y agoWhat a load of crap. Is this what design boutiques do day in day out? Can anyone tell me if there is even an iota of meaning in the design process?
- randombits0 4y agoIt’s a somewhat clever shell script, I believe.
- deebosong 4y agoI've worked in small and big design shops. When done right, the process should make sense to a layperson, like you're respecting their intelligence. This Pepsi rebrand farce feels more like The Emperor's New Clothes. My guess, and someone with more knowledge can absolutely correct me, is that whatever agency bid for the job, they knew they were basically milking Pepsi for every penny they could, and it was pure greed. And in order to justify the utterly exorbitant estimate, they pulled so much bullshit out of their asses hoping to completely overwhelm the clients and utterly baffle and confuse them and make them feel too stupid to even ask about anything. Basically, design process should make sense and be understandable to the average empathetic, intelligent business owners.
- JohnBooty 4y agoWhen done right, the process should make sense to a layperson Yes, absolutely. A company I worked for paid big money for a design firm to do a brand makeover. The head of the design firm cautioned our CEO: "If we do this right, the result will not be mindblowing to you. In fact, your reaction might be 'duh - that's really obvious.' Because you already know who you are." (paraphrased) I really liked that sentiment. I thought that company did a great job, both on the brand identity itself and on the communication.
- Brendinooo 4y agoHaving done some identity work, some stuff is done on purpose and some stuff is justified post-hoc to make the pitch better. “It looks nice” doesn’t play all that well, and doesn’t give you much protection from a decision maker who (incorrectly) says “I think my idea looks nicer”. This is not representative of all design experiences though, I’m sure.
- wlesieutre 4y agoThe "Creation of Identity: Gravitational Pull" page is always good for a laugh Typical Light Path > Typical Shopping Aisle Light Path with Gravitational Pull > Gravitational Pull of Pepsi Relativity of Space and Time > Pepsi Proposition / Pepsi Aisle
- ydnaclementine 4y agoWatching mad men for the first time right now, and I feel it. Pepsi universe is going to be the name of my next vaporwave album
- w-ll 4y agoSaint Pepsi fan?
- wisemang 4y agoA follow-up to the Negativland classic Dispepsi [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispepsi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispepsi
- Fargoan 4y agoWoah. This is exactly the type of sampling I've been looking for. This is amazing. Thank you.
- philshem 4y agoThis scene lives rent-free in my brain (Kodak pitch, no spoilers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus
- stall84 4y agoPeople get paid a LOT of money to produce a document like what you (might have) had the great joy-in-humor to just read.
- JakeWesorick 4y agoThis is the most galaxy brain thing I have ever read.
- askvictor 4y agoFormer Pepsi CEO Thomas Rattigan ran Commodore Computer for a bit; former Pepsi President John Sculley ran Apple Computer. So there's a certain link to computing, for some unknown reason
- totetsu 4y agopepsi. I thought at the time that this 'leaked document' was a brilliant piece of gorilla marketing. It was making an internet meme before they were ubiquitous, and we're still sharing it and laughing about it today. pepsi. contributing to brand omni presence pepsi.
- totetsu 4y agoI wonder how much Richard Stallman gets paid to carry a bottle of diet coke everywhere he goes..
- notsapiensatall 4y agoA subversive element is called a guerilla. It's a loan word from Spanish meaning "little war".
- alberth 4y agoWhat came first: logo or journey? I wonder what was created first - the agency creating the new logo (and then backing into the justification for it), or did the justification for it actually come first & that lead the agency down the path to how the logo was ultimately created.
- emehex 4y agoSeems all very post-hoc
- edriscoll 4y agoprolly paid millions of dollars for this and there's a typo on pg.18 smh
- willmadden 4y agoThat's a lot of work to get people to drink carbonated sugar water.
- vlark 4y agoWow. They sure do a lot of work trying to justify a shitty logo. And it worked. Let that be a lesson for us all.
- dqpb 4y agoThis reminds me of the pseudo science of new age “sacred geometry”
- ianseyer 4y agoA funny parody song of this presentation by the legendary Neil Cicierega (potter puppet pals, ultimate battle of ultimate destiny, brodyquest, mouth sounds, etc…) https://youtu.be/fu3ETgAvQrw https://youtu.be/fu3ETgAvQrw
- agloeregrets 4y agoI was shocked to see this down so low. Absolute bop that perfectly outlines this nutcase thinking.
- engineer_22 4y agoIt's like Pepsi had a psychotic break. Don't worry, friend, it happens sometimes.
- Animats 4y agoBranding hardly matters any more. If I order Diet Pepsi from Safeway, sometimes they substitute Diet Coke. Which is fine with me.
- ianseyer 4y agoWorth mentioning that this is the same design company that blew $35MM on a terrible redesign of Tropicana Orange Juice, which they reverted back within a couple days (but kept the mock orange cap) https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2015/05/what-to-learn-from-tropicanas-packaging-redesign-failure/ https://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2015/05/what-to-learn-fro...
- bitexploder 4y agoI see high level design docs like this on occasion. I decided I am not qualified to comment, but my opinion is very polar. Either it is all a very expensive pile of poop or brilliance and design beyond my understanding. When looked upon at a distance I cannot discern which opinion is correct.
- duskwuff 4y agoIt's the first one. The vast majority of this strategy document is ridiculous drivel, written to sound profound but conveying no meaning. One early tipoff is the nonsensical timeline on page 6 -- it's basically just rattling off random bits of art history with no relation to the brand or the proposed strategy.
- autoexec 4y agoI'm guessing the guy who made this spent years working for an art degree, getting shackled with decades of debt in the process, only to find that it's nearly impossible to get work as an artist doing anything meaningful so he had to get a shitty 9-5 at a marketing firm and while his dreams of being a true artist have been crushed years ago he just wanted to do something with even just a little of what he learned while studying what he loved.
- barbecue_sauce 4y agoI would say it looks more like it was produced by someone who studied architecture/design, and had fun exploring the aesthetics of Pepsi as a brand.
- joshu 4y ago"graphic design is my passion"
- shoo 4y agoPepsiCo Inc (PEP, Nasdaq) isn't merely a beverage company - as explained in this strategy document - it is a space company. The Pepsi Universe, with respect to its 8 light year characteristic length, reflects the scale of the total addressable market (TAM) that PepsiCo can expand into. Noted short-seller and equity valuation skeptic Jim Chanos once described the TAM of space companies as infinite, because space itself is infinite. This pessimistic take anchors our low-end fair value estimate of PEP to $infinity / share. Since PEP currently trades at around $170 / share, we believe there is considerable upside to the long term buy and hold investor.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- swyx 4y agoi'd like to have whatever the author of this document is having
- askafriend 4y agoLooks like you'll be having a Pepsi.
- Anaminus 4y agoI've been calling it Pepsi Logo Kool-Aid.
- IncRnd 4y agoQuite possibly that is coke.
- aaronbrethorst 4y agoThey're required to call it "nose candy" when they work on the PepsiCo account. /s
- iancmceachern 4y agoThis is good stuff, you can't make it up. It looks like lots was going on at the Arnell group at this time. In this article it even quotes Arnell as saying this work for Pepsi in OP as "Bullshit" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-the-firing-of-weird-design-guru-peter-arnell-was-a-long-time-coming/#app https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-the-firing-of-weird-design-... You can't make this stuff up
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
- polio 4y agoSomebody had a lot of fun making this.
- kache_ 4y agolooks like a whole lot of bullshit
- lai-yin 4y agoDon Draper would have vanished for a year-long bender if he read this
- walrus01 4y agoNew band name: Pepsi gravitational field
- bumper_crop 4y agoWhen this came out, someone in my dorm made a mock of it on our whiteboard. With a few extra lines, it looks like a fat guy bending over. People always look for a human shape in what they see.
- lofatdairy 4y agoI don't think the title prepared me for this. I saw the first page and thought "oh, that's a terrible graphic, why are you moving away from the future". the mona lisa and taijitsu symbol seemed a bit over blown but still sorta grounded. I literally burst out laughing when I saw the contour lines and energy fields. Definitely was not prepared for "Pepsi Universe", either. I assume that by that point in the presentation the energy in the board room must be fever pitch for no one to point out how stupid that looks. Edit: Upon further reading about the guy who's behind this, Peter Arnell, it turns out he's possibly the harvey weinstein of the marketing business[^1]. It's a huge shame that neither this pseudointellectual bullshit, nor his string of workplace abuses, ruined his career. A consolation is that in 2011 his company got bought out and he got sacked. [^1]: The Newsweek article is a good read here: https://www.newsweek.com/crazy-genius-brand-guru-peter-arnell-76137 https://www.newsweek.com/crazy-genius-brand-guru-peter-arnel.... There's also a Gawker piece that gives a pretty clear idea of how big of a piece of shit this guy is if you can stand the fact that it's Gawker: https://www.gawker.com/244608/new-yorks-worst-bosses-peter-arnell https://www.gawker.com/244608/new-yorks-worst-bosses-peter-a...
- iancmceachern 4y agoAnd he called this work for Pepsi "BS" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-the-firing-of-weird-design-guru-peter-arnell-was-a-long-time-coming/#app https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-the-firing-of-weird-design-...
- Gordonjcp 4y ago> In pre-publicity for Shift, Arnell reveals that his habit of eating up to 50 oranges a day has left his hands bright orange in color. Bullshit. You'd be in a permanent sugar rush until your pancreas went on fire.
- oboes 4y agoI don't know about Arnell's case, but it's actually possible to turn orange by eating orange things. Although I think it's more common with carrots and young children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotenosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotenosis
- danielvaughn 4y agoI've never seen this before and I feel like I need to know the story. Is this satire or is it real? And if it's real, was it leaked or something? No way Pepsi would willingly share this with the public lol.
- riffraff 4y agoAFAIU this is real, but I contend that it's neither satire or real: it is in fact a marketing operation, and a very successful one. When this was "leaked" it was discussed for weeks, and you can see it is still discussed more than ten years after the fact. It's probably been more effective than most of the ad campaigns I can remember.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- grayrest 4y agoI've been laughing about this for years. I showed it to my graphic designer in 2014. She was delighted and did a small t-shirt run so I have the face on page 23 center row far right printed on a shirt.
- jat850 4y agoI would have been deeply disappointed if that wasn't the face you picked for the shirt. It's a complete capture of the entirety of the document.
- zaps 4y agoSo you want to go to graphic design school
- stazz1 4y agoit is a work of art
- stazz1 4y agoreally this is a thorough study in upper-management-ese
- yarg 4y agoThis reminded me of a presentation of progress meeting that I once attended. I left wondering if I was the only one that noticed they'd said and shown nothing at all.
- llip 4y agoIt’s pronounced “Bepsi” on the rez.
- c7DJTLrn 4y agoObviously there's a lot of nonsense here but the logo is a good one. In a way it's even better than Coca Cola's. I can recognise the logo of both brands instantaneously but Pepsi's is simpler and has no lettering. It's also aesthetically pleasing.
- jimbosis 4y agoThe current Pepsi logo has always reminded me of the SeaMonkey logo: https://www.seamonkey-project.org/ https://www.seamonkey-project.org/
- zhte415 4y agoWhen a marketing company does it for a soft drinks company does it, it gets ridiculed. When an engineer does it for the design of rollercoasters or boats, it gets praised. https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/2ndyearidlab/author/hohsuan/page/2/ https://blogs.lt.vt.edu/2ndyearidlab/author/hohsuan/page/2/ I see little difference of concepts used for the 'fair curve' and those of designing a bottle.
- Yahivin 4y ago> The Pepsi Ratio is aesthetic geometry.
- Fargoan 4y agoI'm not even joking, was this created by someone with schizophrenia or maybe during a manic episode? It reminds me of the connections my ex would make while she was manic. And those absurd connections made their way into her art.
- nicosaul 4y agoMost expensive circle ever
- jbullock35 4y agoI am surprised at how most of the comments here are -- I am guessing -- deeply misunderstanding the document. The document is almost unbelievably over-the-top. I think that it must be an intentional parody of marketing-speak. If you think that it's not, can you offer any evidence in support of your view?
- devindotcom 4y agoIt's 100% real and 100% serious. That's why it is so well known in the design world. I wonder if your comment exemplifies some corollary to Poe's Law - that someone mistaking real for parody or vice versa will confidently assert their view as obviously correct and challenge others (even if they constitute a seemingly informed majority) to justify their own.
- jbullock35 4y agoPerhaps my comment does exemplify Poe's Law. But I can't see that it's more likely to exemplify Poe's Law than your own comment. You've offered as much evidence for your interpretation as I have for mine: none.
- newobj 4y agoMy god it's full of carbs
- theptip 4y ago> BREATHTAKING is a strategy based on the evolution of 5000+ years of shared ideas in design philosophy creating an authentic Constitution of Design. This chart documents the origin and evolution of intellectual property. Also known as “the circle”. Credit where credit is due, it takes confidence to make this kind of pitch with a straight face.
- foobarbecue 4y agoOk I'm getting tired of seeing this on HN now
- henning 4y agoIt looks like the Time Cube guy got a job in advertising.
- endgame 4y ago"The Pepsi ratio is aesthetic geometry" could indeed be lifted from the writings of Earth's Wisest Human.
- kens 4y agoThe diagram of the Pepsi bottles (p7) reminds me of the classic computer art from 1968: "Running Cola is Africa", which interpolated between a runner, a cola bottle, and Africa. It was implemented in FORTRAN running on an IBM 7090 mainframe, and printed on a plotter. Maybe a bit tangential, but I've always thought it was an interesting piece of art. Kind of trivial now, but innovative 55 years ago for its use of interpolation to warp images. https://zkm.de/en/artwork/running-cola-is-africa https://zkm.de/en/artwork/running-cola-is-africa
- ncmncm 4y agoPepsi, Tropicana and the like, and their parent companies, are a direct cause of the Metabolic Syndrome epidemic in (particularly) the US, other former UK colonies, and UK, causing many times the preventable deaths from COVID, year in and year out. The "cause of death" noted for these cases never mentions metabolic syndrome (variously, fatty liver disease, cirrhosis, processed-food disease), but rather secondary illnesses it drives, most notably high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and circulatory illness. Most of these are products of high uric acid level, itself a byproduct of fructose processing in the liver. Fructose is processed only in the liver, like other toxins, and most similarly to alcohol. The standard to diagnose high uric acid has risen sharply in recent decades as levels themselves have risen with sugar intake, so people with a deadly uric acid level do not learn of the core problem. They instead are told of the high blood pressure and diabetes, and get medication for that, masking it but not its harms. We should not be allowing sale of these products; or at least, labels should warn of their fructose content. We could start seeing "contains no fructose!" on packaging, instead of "non-fat". (Because fat, even saturated fat, it now turns out, is harmless.) (Fructose in normal food, particularly fruit, comes with enough fiber to divert most of the fructose to your gut bacteria. Juice and soda strip away this protection.)
- rootsudo 4y agoThis is interesting, would you say the same for other cola and juice manufacturers? E.g. Coca Cola, Snapple, Bolthouse, etc?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ncmncm 4y agoYes, all.
- adrian_b 4y agoDuring many years, I have been very fat and all attempts of losing weight have failed. Eventually, I made great changes to what I was eating and I began to weigh everything that I ate, to ensure that I eat no more than planned, and in somewhat less than a year I have lost one third of my previous weight, reaching a normal value. Previously, I have not been drinking much Pepsi Cola or Coca Cola, but I have been drinking a lot of various fruit juices, all of which contain excessive amounts of sugar. By far the most effective change in my eating habits, leading to weight loss and better health, has been to stop drinking any other kind of beverage except water and herbal teas without sugar.
- stinger 4y agothey came up with the design first and then the justification :P
- stinger 4y ago
- rodarmor 4y agoThis is the canonical video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmVMh-nT200 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmVMh-nT200
- dusted 4y agoThe graphics and correlations look impressive and somewhat convincing.. I'll expose my ignorance here though and say that to this unenlightened, it looks like conjured up bullshit ..
- dillondoyle 4y agoBreathtakingly classic every time one reads it "Emotive forces shape the gestalt of the brand identity." story of my life.
- dirtyid 4y agoI couldn't decide if this was guerilla marketing at the time and TBH still can't. Has there been other synapse breaking redesign campaigns since?
- Linda703 4y ago[dead]
- nprateem 4y agoThe thing I never understood was why Pepsi got into running that airline out of Korea
- Reason077 4y agoThing is, the current (2009) Pepsi logo just isn’t very good. To me, it looks like the fat belly you’re going to end up with if you drink too much Pepsi.
- verytrivial 4y agoClearly, the war on drugs has been a failure.
- Dave3of5 4y agoI mean Pepsi sells sugary, carbonated drinks. Never thought they put this much thought into the brand. I thought it was just was looked cool.
- suction 4y agoI can't help but feel amused and a bit annoyed when designers pretend their work is like a science. Yes color theory and light refraction are science-y topics, but let's face after all if the people who pay you say they want it in red and bolder fonts, you do it.
- nomilk 4y agoSurprising just how much the logo uses the Golden Ratio in the placement of the geometries [page 19], and generation of the circle sizes [page 20]. Thought experiment: can a logo that heavily uses the Golden Ratio actually look bad? It could be the ultimate 'design for dummies' hack.
- s1k3s 4y agoThis looks very similar to the deliverables I get from my UX designers. And then I get a $400 bill with “Research on choosing the fonts”, the fonts being Roboto.
- wodenokoto 4y agoWhile we all love to hate on the design document, I actually think the final logo is really good.
- pelario 4y agoBased on a sibling comment[1], it seems that this document is authentic. I had seen it before (maybe here in HN), but I was convinced that it was a prank. Can anyone confirm the authenticity of this ? 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32064781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32064781
- whywhywhywhy 4y agoIt's as funny today as when I first saw it.
- foxbee 4y agoFor me, 1971 Pepsi Geometries: Perimeter Oscillations was peak Pepsi brand.
- rhabarba 4y agoI much prefer the earlier logos with more text and less emojis.
- iammjm 4y agoPage 6/27: ah yes, the progress is truly inevitable - 3000 years of human ingenuity, starting off with numeric harmony through Euclidian Geometry, the golden proportion, the vitruvian man, Möbius and le Corbusier, all just a mere foreplay for the Big Thing to come around: behold, the tricolor perfecta of black sugared water in a can. what a time to be alive!
- peanut_worm 4y agoWhen they started to talk about the gravitational pull of pepsi I knew they couldn’t be serious
- dima123 4y agoMy favorite Pepsi ad of all time: https://youtu.be/qTaOLr9TTkM https://youtu.be/qTaOLr9TTkM
- Semaphore1 4y agoENERGETIC > CAFFEINE FREE PEPSI C'mon man!
- sakarisson 4y agoThey should re-release this PDF as a series of NFTs
- krm01 4y agoHaving been involved in product design at startups & (very) large companies, I can unfortunately say this is what happens at most of the big Co's. Which is why we try to avoid working with large companies and rather partner up with Startups instead. Story time... This one time, I was reviewing a design with a client. We were going through this new page design in Figma. In the Zoom meeting, there were people from Marketing (SEO, Social, etc.), Legal, Product managers, developers, and a bunch more of which I don't even know why they joined the meeting. What happens during those types of meetings is that someone, usually the person highest in rank, puts the following words on the table: "so what do you guys think, thoughts?". That's where things start to get messy... In a large corp, when the boss puts that question on the table, people start to feel itchy. They want to say something clever and impress the rest of the team. Automatically their starting point is: this design isn't good and needs my clever input, so I can impress the boss and put my stamp on the project. The design that was basically approved by the same stakeholders over email, suddenly was getting 'feedback' from left and right. 'Make the font bigger' 'Make the font smaller' 'I don't like the shadows here' 'I really like how Competitor X, does it, can we do something exactly like that'. I tried pushing back, but it was too late. I was getting swamped in seemingly clever input from people that were just trying to impress the next person. We went back and designed 2 pages, one we thought was right, and the other one based on all the feedback that people were sharing. Their CEO went with option 1 luckily, but it wasted a ton of time for no good reason. Just looking at the PDF, I can imagine the conversations that lead to that 'design strategy'. Large design agencies know how to play this game, don't really care about great design and usually employ great story tellers to sell the idea to clients for big bucks.
- quesera 4y agoI've been in these meetings too, and they're exhausting. At this very moment, I'm trying hard not to be a part of this meeting, even though I have strong opinions that I don't think will be represented by the current lot of attendees. That said, there's often a component of competitive commentary, but also consider Parkinson's Law of Triviality, a/k/a Bikeshedding: https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/bikeshedding https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/bikeshedding
- sakarisson 4y agoThis reminds me a lot of Time Cube https://timecube.2enp.com/ https://timecube.2enp.com/
- bilater 4y agoWhat the hell is this lol
- chris_wot 4y agoI’d seriously reconsider using Arnell after seeing this.
- nbzso 4y agoA long time ago, I ran a creative agency. One day, I realized how my and my colleagues' talents were being used to sell utter bullshit. Closed the business and switched to web-design. In early 2005, I convinced a big local banking tech company to focus on UX and UCD. Started a UX design business. In late 2015, overwhelmed by the infinite need for Dark Patterns by my clients, I killed "the business" again and switched purely to UI and frontend development. So I guess this is the "progress" we can offer to humanity, pretty pictures and shapes with psychological tricks for corporate speculation and self-validation.
- barbecue_sauce 4y agoThere's very little in this specific document that has anything to do with manipulation besides maybe the manipulation of marketing executives.
- nbzso 4y agoYep, in my view this document falls into category of "Corporate Self-validation".
- Brajeshwar 4y agoAh! We used to refer to this as "Pepsi's $1M Logo Redesign."
- kizer 4y agoI was reading and laughing, wondering if HN was taking this seriously. It’s a decent logo IMO (though I think it’s unpopular) but obviously the paper is filled to the brim with complete bullshit, LOL. The Pepsi galaxy at the end is what really got me. Just use common sense and first principles and you can make a logo. Make sure it doesn’t look like a you-know-what and you’re golden.
- muaytimbo 4y agoI left PepsiCo in 2020, they are still eating shit like this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jacknews 4y agoMaybe this proposal is a bit excessive, but Pepsi is a billion++ company, based alsmost entirely on it's brand. They can afford, and expect some reasoning behind their logo design. Symbolism is all around, in logos, advertising, architecture, etc. Personally I see too many modern designs, even art, merely being 'visually appealing' or 'fashionable', without any reasoning, coherence, references, or anything behind them.