In celebration of Santa Fe’s 400th anniversary, this logo design featuring the Sun symbol with adobe buildings under has earned the most number of votes and declared the official symbol of city’s three-year commemoration.

However, the Santa Fe 400th Anniversary Committee still needs the consent of indigenous tribe of New Mexico, the Zia Indians, to use their stylized Sun symbol. For many years, this sun symbol has been used without any permission from Zia. The committee promised to change its logo if they tribe do not approve it.

This Sun symbol, a red circle with rays pointing at four directions, is regarded by Zia Indians as sacred. It represents the important fours in their lives – 4 seasons of the year, 4 major directions in the compass, 4 seasons of life, 4 periods of each day, and 4 sacred obligations (have a strong body, clear body, pure spirit, and affection for others).

You can see this on the flag of New Mexico. Next year, the same design will be used on the New Mexico coin in the U.S. Mint’s 50 State Quarters series.

During the entire commemoration, education will be the focus next year. In 2009, local events will take the lead while the committee will concentrate on national and international events in the third year.

Via Sante Fe New Mexican

After 85 long years of improving American lives, the monthly general interest family magazine Reader’s Digest will finally say goodbye to its long-time logo starting January 2008. A more hip and tech savvy design will replace the timeless logo. Logo Design pointed out some of the noticeable changes:

1. Sans serif vs. serif
2. Emphasis on Digest vs. Reader’s
3. Red stylized apostrophe vs. black apostrophe
4. Speech bubble in “D” vs. no speech bubble
5. URL vs. no URL

More than that logo, subscribers will see an entirely new Reader’s Digest starting with the December issue. Included in this re-branding campaign are:

New tag line: Life Well Shared.

Target young readers. The magazine’s average reader is 52 years old. One of its strategy to target the younger audience is to shift from direct mailing to online advertising. That’s why URL RD.com is an important part of the new logo. Also, the magazine has partnered with hip brands like Verizon, Samsung, and South Beach as advertisers.

Ads on the back cover. Before you can only see homespun illustrations but now it will display full-page ads there. Dove is the first lucky brand to get that much coveted ad space.

Via Mediaweek

As a way to update the brand image and exude new aura to Walt Disney’s movie-studio theme park, it will be renamed from “Disney-MGM Studios” to “Disney’s Hollywood Studios”. Moreover, a new logo design was unveiled last October to symbolize this major change.

The cluttered logo combining the MGM insignia and Mickey Mouse with a clapboard will finally say goodbye after hanging at the gate of the theme park for 18 long years.

It will be replaced with a simple yet very refreshing design effective January 7, 2008. Since Mickey Mouse is a very important figure for the company, he is still featured holding a clapboard inside the letter “O” of the word “Studios”.

A major difference is the use of fonts. The old logo used three dominating colors which are blue, white, and yellow. On the other hand, the new logo of Disney’s Hollywood Studios uses only the black as its dominating color with a simple gold lining.

You might notice both designs use 3 major fonts to represent Disney, MGM or Hollywood, and Studios.

More importantly, this is not just a simple makeover to create a buzz. Disney will add a new ride called Toy Story Mania!, a new outdoor show called “Block Party Bash”, a new High School Musical street show. All these additions are meant to augment this major re-branding effort.

Via LogoBlog

Inspired by the popularity of famous streets like Broadway in New York and armed with the ambition of revitalizing its downtown area, development officials in Clearwater City, Florida has decided to promote a particular street as the ideal destination instead of the whole downtown.

A new Cleveland Street logo featuring colored dots and modern flower design on a black background is launched to kickoff this branding campaign. It will be used in all marketing materials and for recruiting new retailers.

However, one council member did not find this new logo very fitting for Clearwater. He specifically contested the use of black background because it counters the image of Sunny Florida. On the contrary, the majority believed the color black added a touch of elegance to the design.

While some branding experts find it unfair to promote a portion of downtown area, their consultant recommended this approach after thoroughly evaluating the potential of this street and the entire downtown area.

Cleveland Street is currently considered as dead end because storefronts are bare and the beach traffic is already gone. This will dramatically change in the near future as the city invested heavily in a new streetscape to make it very appealing to pedestrians.

The recruitment strategy aims to bring new coffee shops, restaurants, shops, and other retail stores in the street to make it more alive, attractive, and profitable.

Via St. Petersburg Times

Can’t think of creative and effective ad or slogan to go with your impressive logo design? Burnout happens even to very creative individuals. Also, not all entrepreneurs have the much needed creativity or enough resources to commission a branding agency.

In case you badly needed an ad or a memorable slogan, you can visit The Ad Generator by Alexis Lloyd. It is a free mashup tool which manipulates languages and images to create fake advertisements every 15 to 30 seconds. Here are some of their samples.

Here’s the explanation of his process:

Words and semantic structures from real corporate slogans are remixed and randomized to generate invented slogans. These slogans are then paired with related images from Flickr, thereby generating fake advertisements on the fly. By remixing corporate slogans, I intend to show how the language of advertising is both deeply meaningful, in that it represents real cultural values and desires, and yet utterly meaningless in that these ideas have no relationship to the products being sold.

While some of the generated ads are really meaningless, visiting this site can guide you to the right direction or help spark the creativity within you. If you’re lucky, you might find the ideal slogan or ads for your small business here.