A few weeks after Arkansas State University (ASU) retired its Indian logo and family mascot, it has unleashed its new mascot design featuring a fierce red wolf.

From Indians, ASU is now officially known as the “Red Wolves”. What is very evident in these new designs is the transformation of identity as aggressive and vicious. This athletics mascot design includes a mean-eyed red wolf baring its teeth and seems ready to fight anytime, anywhere.

Moreover, ASU’s athletic director believes it symbolizes team spirit since wolves always travel in packs. Hopefully, this will foster the bonding among students and staff to support its athletic endeavors. According to ASU Chancellor Robert Potts:

“I considered the fact that we wanted something unique. There are several schools that have a wolf or some variation of that, but none of them are the red wolves. The red wolf was indigenous to this area…they run in packs, they’re noble creatures, but they’re also vicious and aggressive, and that’s something I think we can embrace.”

ASU believes the transition from Indians to Red Wolves is a very lengthy process. Aside from making it available in different marketing materials and merchandise like t-shirts, caps and uniforms, ASU also needs at least 6 months for the makeover of its Indian Stadium and Indian basketball court.

Red wolves are considered endangered species since 1973 and once boomed in Arkansas and Missouri during the 60s.

Via The Herald

If you want to create compelling logo designs sometimes you have to think outside the box or break conventions. Now, a new study reveals a unique way to develop logos – use images that consumers can relate to even if it’s not related or have little to do with your products or services.

This is a major paradigm shift for conventional branding tells us to use symbols strongly relevant to our products or services. And this is very evident in different industries like the image of a car for automotive services, silhouette of a body for beauty, salon & spas, or the cross symbol for religious logo designs.

But what’s happening in the wine industry begs to change our perspective. It turned out that 1 in 5 table-wine brands launched in the last 3 years use animal images as part of its logo design. Central in this tactic is the so-called concept of “psychological priming”. Here’s a concrete example:

In one experiment, participants first had to do a word jumble, either searching for words related to dogs or words related to cats. They then participated in an ostensibly unrelated study and were asked to rate a series of products, including batteries and dog shampoo. Those who had done the word jumble relating to dogs rated the dog shampoo higher, on average, than those who had done the cat-related jumble.

However, this research is limited in scope so it may not be wise for startups to assume it will apply in our chosen category. Still, it is interesting to see more examples of this approach in action. Please let me know if you find one.

via huliq

Believe it or not, some cute mascots have more oozing appeal compared to popular actors. Well, at least in Japan. According to an interesting news article, there is a poll saying that a baseball mascot named Doala the Koala is the hottest male among the 20-something Japanese women.

Though this sounds really weird, it seems these women can’t resist the cuteness of this blue koala mascot. Doala is the official mascot of the Nagoya-based Chunichi Dragons Central League baseball. Designed just like most anime characters, Doala has thick eyebrows, childish smile, adorable eyes and wears Chunichi Dragons baseball uniform.

To make things really odd, why would a baseball team named Dragon use a koala bear as its official mascot? Well, it turned out there’s a deep relationship between Nagoya city and Australia way back in 1984 when the first batch of koalas arrived at Nagoya’s Higashiyama Zoo.

14 years after its creation, Doala is more popular than ever. His nationwide appeal to young Japanese women lead to the publication of “Doara no Himitsu” (Doala’s Secrets), a book about Doala’s opinion about love, society and money. Surprisingly, it has sold 120,000 copies in just 2 weeks! Now, that’s mascot power!

Here’s another compelling reason why logo design is important in building your brand identity. A new study suggests that exposure to famous logo designs can affect our creativity or thinking processes.

Published in the Journal of Consumer Research, the experiments of professors in Duke University and University of Waterloo (Canada) concluded that “even the briefest exposure to well-known brands can cause people to behave in ways that mirror those brands’ traits.”

Several experiments comparing competing well-known brands were conducted to validate this theory. The first one involved the famous Apple and IBM logos. After testing more than 300 students, each participant was asked to identify the possible uses of bricks aside from building a wall. It turned out those who are exposed to Apple logo have provided more unusual and creative answers compared to the IBM group. Since Apple is known for its innovation and creative flair, the group simply mirrored its traits.

Another test was conducted between Disney and E! Channel and the result was the same. Disney group shown a more ”family” behavior compared to the group exposed to the gossip-laden E! Channel.

This study underscores the importance of creating memorable logo designs and more importantly putting strong emphasis on building your brand traits. In terms of implementation, one of the professors recommends that famous brands should put more emphasis on brief brand exposure and less on print or TV ads.

When it comes to logo designs, the peace sign is one of the most widely recognized and even exploited graphics today. Even though it turns 50 this month it remains relevant and meaningful to many people.

But did you know this the original use of this logo design? According to a news article, Englishman Gerald Holtom created this logo design in March 1958 for the activist group known as Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War and later adopted as the official logo of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). (more…)