In 1984, sports photographer Jacobus Rentmeester took a series of photographs for a pre-Olympics feature published in LIFE Magazine. The series depicted the iconic basketball player Michael Jordan as he approached the net for a slam dunk.

The brand name Bic is almost synonymous with its most famous invention: the humble ballpoint pen. Everyone has at least one Bic, everyone uses Bics, and while there are several variations on a theme, the standard Bic ballpoint is pretty much universal.

So if there’s a universal pen, is there is a universal handwriting? That’s a question Bic is trying to answer with its innovative ‘Bic Universal’ project.

Parental advisory stickers were first introduced in the mid-1980s, after a group of parent campaigners in the US formed the Parents Music Resource Center. The group was outraged by, among others, a Prince song whose lyrics referenced masturbation.

Though not quite successful in getting their shortlist of songs banned completely, the group did pressure the US entertainment industry to release “clean” versions of songs with adult content, and to place a parental advisory notice on the front of music packaging. The current black and white incarnation of the logo remains unchanged since its launch in 1993.

Last week it was announced that DC Comics, the publisher behind the Batman comics, had filed a lawsuit against Spanish soccer club Valencia to stop them using a new logo design.

Though the bat symbol has been a part of the soccer team’s branding since its inception, the design was recently revamped and a new application for copyright was made. This roused tempers at DC Comics, which countered the claim saying the logo was too similar to the Batman brand.

Helsinki, one of the new UNESCO Cities of Design. Image by Harri Timonen, via Flickr (CC-BY 2.0)

Santa Fe (Mexico), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Kobe and Nagoya (Japan), Montréal (Canada), Seoul (Korea), Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing (China), Berlin (Germany), Saint-Etienne (France) and Graz (Austria). What do these cities all have in common?

They are the only 12 countries in the world – until now – to have been awarded the coveted ‘UNESCO City of Design’ status.

People with dylexia find reading more difficult than most – but not any more, thanks to a new font developed by a Dutch graphic designer.

Himself dyslexic, Christian Boer designed the ‘Dyslexie’ font back in 2008 as part of his final thesis project at the Utrecht Academy of Art. Since then, scientists have subjected the font to rigorous testing, and found that 84% of dyslexics studied could read the font faster than other standard typefaces.

Visually, Dyslexie has been called “the chubby-ankled cousin of Comic Sans”, which doesn’t sound too appealing from a design point of view! But with 77% of test subjects making fewer mistakes when reading the new font aloud, my guess is that this font will soon catch on, particularly in educational contexts.

The font ‘works’ by making individual letters subtley more different from each other than usual. Dyslexics often subconsciously switch or flip letters with similar shapes around – letters such as ‘p’ and ‘d’ or ‘v’ and ‘w’, for example. Dyslexie gives each character a ‘lower centre of gravity’ so that they are less likely to be confused.

You can find out more about how the font works by watching this short YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLtYFcHx7ec.

You can also download the font for free from Christian’s website at: http://www.dyslexiefont.com/en/dyslexia-font/.

About the Author:

Although her primary niche is in scientific writing and editing, freelance writer Lisa Martin is also a creative type with an eye for design. She regularly works alongside graphic designers and as such has a keen interest in the development of logos and branding.

British parents are leading a campaign to rid our bookshelves of children’s fiction specifically targeted either to boys or to girls.

You’d expect a large consumer brand at the top of its game to have a huge branding and advertising budget. But back in 1981 – the heyday of the Sony Walkman – global electronics firm Sony decided to hand over a planned logo redesign to its customers.

But it turned out that crowdsourcing a logo was a really bad idea.

Inspired by the success of the recent rebranding of Taco Bell, now it’s Pizza Hut’s turn to get a new look.

Though the essence of the brand – the sloping, brush-stroked script and red ‘hut’ roof – will not change, the new logo is flatter, more one-dimensional and features a simpler colour palette. The new background to the red and white logo is inspired by a swirl of tomato sauce on a pizza base.

Anglo-Irish pop sensations One Direction are never far from the media spotlight, but this week one member of the five-piece band was involved in a heated debate with a journalist – over a logo.

Louis Tomlinson, 22, heart-throb for millions of young teenage fans all over the world, was recently papped wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the original 1977 Apple logo, featuring its then trademark rainbow-coloured stripes.

The dust has barely settled on the Brazilian soccer pitches that hosted the World Cup competition this summer, but Russia has just launched the logo design for the next tournament in 2018.

In the recent years, the amount of crowdsourcing companies that provide logo design services for a fraction of the price has skyrocketed, and more and more people are getting hooked on this sort of services. But is that really something to be happy about? After all, the saying goes that if something is too good to be true, it probably is. Crowdsourcing logo design is no exception – the tempting premise diverts a buyer’s attention away from several crucial flaws.

In the late 90s and early 00s, Nokia was the ‘must-have’ mobile phone brand – who didn’t have a Nokia 3310? But, failing to keep pace with the rapidly evolving smartphone market, the cellphone arm of the Finnish comms company suffered and was sold to US tech giant Microsoft in 2014.

Though the Nokia logo has so far co-existed alongside Microsoft Mobile, the end is now nigh for Nokia-branded phones. Its flagship smartphone – originally branded as the Nokia Lumia Windows Smartphone, is now dropping the untrendy Nokia tag altogether.

Here’s the new Lumia branding: very definitely a Microsoft phone now, featuring the signature Microsoft flag. Interestingly, the brand name Lumia has also disappeared from the phone!

The brains behind an innovative new idea fusing typography with geography and computer science are seeking financial backing via crowdfunding platform Kickstarter.

German computer programmer Benedikt Groß and American geography student Joey Lee have teamed up to create the world’s first font from real Google Earth satellite images.

Advertising in the world of sport is big business. Not only are there advertisements on and around the pitch or court, but almost every single athlete or sports personality also wears at least one sponsored brand on their clothing.

In British football (soccer), every team has a big corporate sponsor, ranging from telecommunications companies to financial institutions to airlines to high street brands. In short, almost any company that has enough cash to pay for the publicity can bid to feature on the front of a team’s kit.