My first passion: Social Media
My second passion: Branding
I love everything about the concept of branding in the marketplace. I am completely obsessed with how a brand grows over time and gains new followers/evangelists.
I have been disappointed with the lack of brand identity in the Web 2.0 community.
You can argue that the technical advantages of a social media platform has more to do with the brand than design and I would agree with you. That does not negate the fact that good design is a MUST in the creation of a brand identity.
There is a huge difference between the brand identity of a product or service and the brand. Social Media has done a great job in the overall brand development of certain services because of one thing: the community. In the Web 2.0 world a brand is built on the customer evangelists surrounding the community.
The Web 2.0 world has become a mundane assortment of bright colored, reflective, and odd word images sporting as successful brand identities.
What do you think? Is the Web 2.0 world ignoring good design? Am I beating around the bush? Is it even important?
Kyle-
Interesting post. I guess I would define what you are debating more as a “logo” or “mark” than a “brand identity”. That’s at least what I’m gathering from what you’re asking. If this is the question then I would say I agree with you that Web 2.0 is ignoring good design, but for good reason. The one thing these companies/brands need you to remember is their URL, nothing more. In my opinion it is too risky for these brands to try and get fancy with their logos potentially having the URLs get lost in them. While a URL is secondary with most brands, with Web 2.0 it’s front and center most important. They need to keep it simple.
As a self proclaimed packaging whore, I believe it has gone too far.
When your logo has nothing to do with what you do? It gets questionable for me.
The latest example is Plurk. A pig in the logo, and the world Plurk. *sigh*
Twitter is maybe the only one that makes an iota of sense to me.
While the logos and branding may be “cute,” when everyone is doing the same kind of “cute” originality is lost, and cute is pointless. As are the babytalk brand names.