Design Week interviewed COLLINS Senior Designer Indgila Samad Ali on the city’s new campaign logo.

“While she believes the goal behind the new initiative is well-intentioned, Samad Ali says that ‘absolutely anything meant to stand next to or reference the original Milton Glaser logo is going to pale in comparison’.

‘The original is much more than a brilliant piece of graphic art — it’s now a part of New York itself, if not its very heart. To have done this successfully would have required an impossible amount of good luck.’”

Full story here.

Wow.

We are beyond honored to be recognized by Ad Age as their first Business Transformation Agency of the Year.

Ad Age stated the recognition is intended for companies who, with their clients, are “rethinking product offerings…reconfiguring how clients reach customers…recasting a company’s brand mission, or in general finding new ways for clients to…create new connections to incite loyalty, or increase and build their customer base.”

In short, it is a recognition that values strong outcomes as much as strong output. We like that.

And it is directly in line with the belief COLLINS was founded upon fifteen years ago:

Design is not what we make.

Design is what we make possible.

And speaking of possibility, none of this happens without:

1. Each and every one of our remarkable clients. Thank you for your trust, partnership and industry leadership.

2. Our incredible people. We have an extraordinary team spread across our San Francisco, New York and London offices, as well as around the world–from Australia to London to Los Angeles.

Thank you, Ad Age, and thank you, Adrianne for your thoughtful story.

And bravo to all of the rest of the A-List honorees, here, especially our friends and clients at Mailchimp for their In-House Agency of the Year award.

Onward, all.

The people at Creative Review took the time to cover the new purpose and re-brand we recently launched with our friends and clients at Freeform.

COLLINS “was briefed to bring the platform to ‘a new generation of viewers’, by emphasising Freeform’s commitment to ‘young adult stories that buck tropes, flip scripts, and curb such conventions’.”

Not to get too geeky, but as part of the project, we worked closely with the leadership and creative team at Freeform and with the global typography company Monotype to create a new way to deliver a brand voice. We used the very first cut of Helvetica, Neue Haas Grotesk (designed in 1957-1961 by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffman at the Haas Type Foundry), and developed a system which allows letters to evolve, shift and warp to better express different ideas, themes and emotions.

As CR said “It makes for striking branding when used in static imagery, but really comes to life in motion – which feels fitting for Freeform’s new positioning…”

Read on here.

We could not have been more thrilled to work with the remarkable team at Freeform to re-engineer their purpose and brand. Now, Freeform is equipped to continue their mission—pushing new perspectives for the ever evolving young adults who make up their loyal audience.

Joe Ortiz, our partner and SVP, Marketing at Disney says it best:

“What we started thinking about is shape and looking at that curvature and the implied motion, and so everything feels like even when it’s static, it’s moving or it’s about to move. Always at its heart, there’s the ability to change and an openness to change.”

Full story here.

In the wake of Nokia’s recent rebrand, Print Magazine asked L.A. Corrall, COLLINS Vice President and Creative Director, his thoughts on how to best evaluate the work.

“Nokia clearly wanted to signal to the world that Nokia is changing— strategically and as a business— and they wanted to do it in a bold manner. They wanted a javelin thrown into the future. This logo is the sharp end.”

You can find the rest of the interview here.

We can continue to talk about Bolt’s new logo (which we like) from Koto.

Or, we can talk about the more interesting conversation it’s uncovered–

We can talk about originality.

Liz Stinson and the good team at Fast Company invited Brian Collins to do just that.

Full story here.

Steve Jobs had invited Brian Collins to his home for dinner. That night, he told Brian that Apple existed for just one reason:

“The world needs Apple. We need to make things that are insanely great.”

Over the last 12 years, however, groupthink in Silicon Valley and beyond has replaced big, outsized ambitions with three words:

Minimum Viable Product.

Not insanely great. Not even great. Just enough to make it through.

Now, we understand the need for fast prototyping and testing. Got that.

But how do we regain the energy embodied by “insanely great”?

How do we fuel that aim everyday?

At COLLINS, we work to make room for embracing the unexpected, mistakes and the absolutely unintentional.

And we never leave serendipity to chance.

See the full clip of Brian’s talk at D&AD in London here.

Join us as COLLINS Creative Director Joseph Han and Design Director Sanuk Kim speak at the Carnegie Mellon School of Design.

March 20, 2023.

More details here.

Our friends at Square Roots, the technology leader in indoor farming, just announced plans for a new facility in Kentucky. It marks a tripling of their growing capacity this year.

The new location features the latest in Square Roots’ growing platform, promising yield increases of 30% using a range of automation technologies from seeding to harvesting and sanitization.

It’s another encouraging milestone in their journey towards making locally grown, fresh produce available to everyone, all year round.

Read more here.

We have all spent time working as a part of a team. So we all have experience with projects grinding to a halt or workstreams hitting a wall.

It’s draining, frustrating and often confusing as to what, exactly, went wrong. We blame ourselves. And sometimes (if we haven’t had our coffee), we start pointing fingers.

But more often than not, the people are not the problem. The problem is how those people are working together.

That’s where Mural comes in. They know that good work only happens when you work well together. It’s why they designed a new platform and tools to make seamless, thoughtful collaboration easy for any team.

We’re grateful to have worked with the great people at Mural to craft a new strategy, tone of voice and design system. To support their transformation from a collaboration tool to a community primed to close the gap between ideas and impacts for teams everywhere.

Case study coming soon.