Think (and design) London

After the London 2012 logo came out, I've been increasingly skeptical of any designs produced to advertise the city of London. Johnson Banks, a London firm specializing in strategic identity and branding, designed this tourism logo for Think London, London's "official foreign direct investment agency," "a non-for-profit private-public partnership" that helps connect businesses to the city. Johnson Banks explains their rationale for the design: "Think London’s job is to sell the city as a location to the world’s businesses. ‘Forget Paris, Berlin, Beijing, set up in London instead’ is their pitch. So how do you distill all that London has to offer into 1 symbol? Well, you don’t. You use 45. We twisted the famous skyline 180 degrees into a reflection and made a new skyline out of all the other factors that would help you choose the city." I like the concept behind the logo, but not so much the execution. The reflection shows the real skyline and the upper skyline has new symbols to represent the modern city, but the mark is incredibly busy, and definitely not reducible. It would just look like a blue blob. The video advertisement that accompanies the logo makes me like the logo a bit more, but that might just be because the logo already has so many elements that it's pretty easy to translate to another medium. Still, the video was way too long and visually complex-- too much messaging isn't the only thing that leaves the viewer overwhelmed with these designs.

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