'A Concrete Identity' Article from Creative Review August 2013

Whilst reading Creative Review, I found an article called 'A Concrete Identity' about the Barbican in London and how its identity has changed and developed over the years through working with various artists.

I found this article particularly interesting as it explained why certain design decisions were made and it shows the progression from how it looked in 1982 up until now. For example, the current font used in the Barbican logo is Futura. The designers were looking at geometric fonts, especially ones with single-storey 'a's and chose Futura because of the circular letterforms which naturally fitted with the building's architecture and half-roundel logo. This article also explains problems which were encountered such as the designers being worried the new font would cause too many comparisons with a previous museum also using Futura. This interested me as it highlighted the factors the designers must consider when re-creating a logo. It isn't enough for the logo to just look appealing, it must also not be too similar to any others to ensure it's original and not confused with other companies. The final part of the article describes the latest change to Barbican's identity which was to remove the name from the carrier and place it vertically. This change was made to allow the name to be much larger on the poster/promotional material however the headline would still be read first. This specifically made me realise how much thought is put into the placing of all text and logos on different venue's identity - everything is put somewhere for a reason and the more thought which is put into it will usually create the more successful results.