Logos: Logo, identity, brand, culture

Many books on Corporate Identity seem to concentrate either on the design elements, with lots of well-lit photographs of expensive letterhead, or on the dry marketing case for design with little discussion of what the logo looked like. This is a refreshing change in that it combines both elements, through the use of up-to-date case studies of companies such as Philips, Bird's Eye and Direct Line. The author describes the key concepts that people often regard as synonymous - logo, corporate identity and brand - and shows how the differences between them are key to an understanding of this process. The over-arching point that Morgan makes is that a new corporate identity is only the icing on the cake of a whole host of organisational change and will only succeed if everyone within the company is prepared to buy into the process of change. The whole corporate identity process is illustrated by the case history of Orange - surely the best new corporate identity for a long time and one which completely changed the perception of mobile phones in the UK.


This will be a useful handbook for anyone who is about to embark on the process of a new identity and it will be particularly useful for helping to convince stakeholders of the value of good design. It doesn't really tell us how to do it in the arts - perhaps that's a book that somebody should write soon!