Branding: Talking Books
Posted: April 29, 2011 Filed under: Logos & Branding, Publishing | Tags: audio, books, brand book, branding, design, guidelines, identity, logo 7 Comments »
Talking books is an Canadian audio-book retailer established in 1996 that sells on-line, in stores, and through electronic kiosks. They have recently undergone a review of their identity managed by US based designer and illustrator Adrian Walsh who developed their new identity and brand guidelines.
“This identity had to attract a wide variety of audiences. I had to create a mark that could appeal to a business man, while not alienating a stay-at-home mom and vice versa. To do this, the mark is very clean, simple and professional looking, while still having a sense of lightness through color and wit. The logo suggests both books on a shelf and the equalizer bars of a stereo simultaneously. This theme of the logo is further used throughout the brand in applications ranging from the interface of the kiosks, to a set of gift cards.”
The original logo was very dated and fussy, focusing on a broad global expression and forfeiting the very human individual nature of story telling. It appeared heavy in places and suffered from excessive wording and an unnecessary use of initials. This is a really clean re-brand that has a strong identifiable presence and neat twist that blends the physical nature of stacking books and the on-line world of digital audio content. The simple typographical choice of NewsGoth clearly reflects the theme in both its tall letter forms and editorial characteristics. The logo-mark is effectively utilised as a visual device in a number of ways to communicate information on printed collaterals and as the basis of an on-screen interface.
Design: Adrian Walsh
Was really good seeing not just the logo design, but the creative process, then seeing the brand carried through the guidelines, infographics, gift cards etc. Nice work!
Glad you enjoyed the article.
Great one.
I really like this. Keep up the great posts.
Thanks Tony
Initially I was much more impressed with the sketchbooks than the final realisation. For me the new logo, while vastly superior to the original, was still too corporate and lacking in personality.
I imagine that having a book read to me is quite an ‘interpersonal’ experience, after all I’m hearing someone else’s voice, not the voice that I hear in my head when I read to myself – and I don’t get any of that from the new logo. It might be appropriate for a company called ‘Audiobooks’ but less so for ‘Talking Books’.
Also, making a visual metaphor with an analogue technology seems strangely anachronistic. I bet Talking Books sell books as downloads. Personally, my iPod inhabits a different world to my hi-fi or the over the top graphic representations of sound that you might find in a pimped car with an anti-social ICE installation.
However, as the blog progressed, I was impressed by the uses to which the logo have been put when in application on various touchpoints. I was expecting a rubber-stamp solution, but the designer has brought wit, colour and life to the brand.
The kiosk navigation is an elegant animation of the core logo and the gift card execution is a charming riff on the corporate mark. That said, the bookends navigation would be enjoyable whatever the logo looked like and the gift cards could have played with the ‘volume’ of the spoken word by using larger and smaller speech bubbles or quotation marks to indicate the different values.
I’m left a little undecided. I think this idea is saved by it’s application. On its own, it falls a little short of the mark.
Thanks for a great blog though. Eloquent write-ups, decent imagery and some interesting comment. Importantly you carry subject matter that I haven’t seen a million times before. I’m adding BP&O to my bookmarks and I’ll mail the link to the team in my studio.
Cheers
Shaughn
Thanks for writing such an interesting comment, some very good points that I missed and really add to the article. I always hoped the site would include opinions beyond my own.
And thank you for your kind words, I do my best to look for projects to post beyond the usual high profile ones. I really appreciate your support!