Icon and web designer Jon Hicks from Hicksdesign.
I will use his MailChimp logo to explain a crucial point in logo visual brand identity over the years that I’m often faced with my students and in work too.

As you can see in the MailChimp logo, the symbol part is very illustrative and you rarely see this treatment in an institutional logo. Why? Because it’s too complex to decline in all the possible, small, variations and that’s why the symbol turns to a “head only” chimpanzee version when it runs out of space. Should Hicks went for a more Swiss-graphic-orthodox version?
Here’s the point, MailChimp has to thank their successful brand identity primarly to the well executed particularized chimp. Plus as you can see on their website, if you need a more formal version of the logo, you can go with the logotype only version, if it’s capable enough to stand-alone.

This leads us to identify better our customers. A web focused company, app studio, etc., which display their logos on a specific hardware and software most of the time, take more advantage off well executed pictogram than a well declinable logo.

There is of course the classic illustrated version of an institutional logo, but I like how icon designers can push it to the main logo directly.

If you want find out more about Jon’s icon creations, here some info + dates and for a detailed reading you can buy The Icon Handbook and check other useful stuff.

By the way, Jon Hicks is a remarkable web designer too, his website was one of the first good responsive ones and he’s very precise in coding as well.

No, these photos are not processed with an Instagram filter and characters are not involved in a historical re-enactment.

Pictures were taken between 1909 and 1915 by the Russian photographer (and chemist) Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky to document the country’s lifestyle for educational purposes.

Prokudin-Gorsky used an experimental technique with color-sensitive glass plates, collecting over two thousand pictures that remained forgotten until 1948, when were purchased by the United Staes Library of Congress, which from year 2000 oversaw the digital restoration.

The events of these apocryphal sagas are rural migrations, airplane disasters, shipwrecks, from which all the pain was sucked away, leaving on the ground the museum of a rebuilt memory, that flits on the Sacred Island of the northern polar helmet, floating in the subtle planes of the fourth dimension.

The poems of the ancestors, that were the guiding stars of rough Scandinavian sons in search for light in ancient Iceland, are repeating transfigured in total stasis, such as creative primordial acts of souls who grow Chaos, producing Cosmos.

Photos by Kelly Dyson, mtrances, Heike Ollertz, Harpa Hrund, Jónína Guðrún Óskarsdóttir, Mark Finney, Aimed, Curtis Budden and others.

A short selection of recent gorgeous remixes:
I’m late on Parra for Cuva, just followed recently. He manage to have slight flavours of gospel in his tracks. Much appreciated this elegant Jonas Woehl interpretation.

Downtempo version by Clara Moto of a great Samaris ballad. Could listen in repeat for hours with this in background.

What a special mixture. Is it only me or should Jon Hopkins have a featuring on all of his tunes? Here some feat. with Purity Ring.

Sun Glitters is just pure summer, plus he makes me discover new artists with his remix choices.

UK photographer Rebecca Bathory and the love for abandoned buildings.

Unseen to ordinary people who pass their boarded windows and fenced walls, the no trespass signs refrain society from seeing the hidden world behind closed doors. These locations are imbued with a wealth of meaning and wonder and a history of their own. There is considerable aesthetic beauty in things decayed and the objects that remain, but will soon disappear forever.

Monument Valley is a puzzle game for iPhone, iPad and Android, an illusory adventure of impossible architecture and forgiveness by ustwo.

The scene is presented in isometric view and based on optical illusions and changes of perspective.
Visually, the color palette and the architecture of scenarios creates a peculiar aesthetic, which contribute to maintain a high level of ludic fruition.
Narration provides many references to sacred geometry and epic tones, having the rare merit to create poetic interludes between game actions.

Also enjoy the inspiring behind the scenes above.