I could probably write a hundred different blog posts about the soft drink super-giant that is Coca Cola – the evolution and history of the brand is fascinating, as is the success of legendary campaigns such as “Diet Coke Break guy”, “Holidays are Coming” and the recent “Share a Coke” initiative, which saw the famous logo replaced by people’s names. Perhaps one day I will.

But the subject of today’s Coca-Cola-related post comes from the Middle East where, in the midst of the holy month of Ramadan, some people were enjoying their can of ice-cold Coke (during the hours of darkness, of course) without a logo on it all.

Recognise this face?

Blink and you might have missed it, but social media giant Facebook changed its logo recently and you probably didn’t even notice. There was no fanfare, no press release, no social media campaign. In fact, comparing the old and the new designs, you could be forgiven for wondering what’s changed!

Google’s image recognition software is an incredible feat of engineering. Based on the structure of a biological brain, the ‘artificial neural network’ (ANN) consists of 20–30 stacked layers of artificial ‘neurons’, each neuron talking to the next to decipher what it can ‘see’ in a given image.

Like a human brain, the ANN is ‘trained’ to recognise objects and elements of a picture, with the neurons constantly adjusting and learning until together, they are able to accurately recognise, say, a dog, a banana, a tree.

But the ANN is not yet perfect. In an effort to understand precisely what is happening at each layer of the network, programmers decided to try turning the network upside down: instead of the ANN simply recognizing elements of an image, would it be able to recreate the image?

The results were surprising – often beautiful, and sometimes pretty creepy!

You see, while our human brain can look at clouds in the sky and sometimes imagine that they look like a bird, or a heart, or a face, we know that clouds are clouds. But the ANN doesn’t know that, yet.

When presented with a picture of clouds and asked to recreate it, this happened:

On his Twitter profile, John Hicks describes himself as a “gentleman graphic designer, Whovian, cheese enthusiast and cyclist.” He’s also the new Lead Designer at browser and software company Opera, and the brains behind some of the best loved icons on the web.

London, England, turn of the 20^th Century. Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, a bookbinder, and engraver Emery Walker went into business together, establishing the Doves Press printing company.

Though I took some convincing, I’m a recent convert from PC to Apple Mac. The transition was surprisingly easy to make (switch out CTRL for CMD and you’ve basically got it), but I do confess I still use Microsoft for Mac software, including ­– but only when absolutely necessary – the love-it-or-hate-it program PowerPoint.

Those of you who have ever sat through any kind of formal presentation will be familiar with the term “death by PowerPoint” – the embarassing clipart, the slow agony as the presenter reads aloud bullet point after bullet point, the cringeworthiness of words unnecessarily whizzing and twirling across the screen.

Every single one of the most successful brands in the world has a memorable logo – think of big names like McDonalds, Burger King, Coca Cola, and Apple just for starters.

Your company’s logo is the face of your business, the visual “hook” that helps customers to recognise you, recall what you do, and separate you from your competitors.

The British media reported this week that the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) has seen a 40% drop in the number of new people coming forward to donate blood.

Blood donation in the UK is unpaid, so relies on volunteers who are willing to spare an hour of their time once every three months to give a pint of their finest red stuff. Donated blood is used to help accident victims, cancer patients, people with hereditary blood disorders such as sickle cell anemia, women having traumatic childbirths, and for crucial scientific research. In short, it saves lives, so a drop in donor numbers is very worrying as it could mean life or death for someone in need.

In a controversial decision by the General Court of the European Union, Microsoft has been blocked from filing a trademark application for its video chat software Skype.

Lexmark, with its familiar logo with red diamond, is a brand that has been synonymous with printers and printing ever since its divestiture from computing giant IBM in 1991.

While browsing the internet for inspiration about what to write about this week, I came across this brilliant art project by students of Shillington College.

Shillington is an international organisation providing design education courses. With campuses in New York, USA; London and Manchester in the UK, and Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, willing students can learn the basics of web or graphic design in a few months, and go on to advanced education or employment in the creative arts.

In an international challenge, Shillington students were assigned the task to recreate a book cover, but with one caveat – no computers allowed. The results are amazing!

I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting Montréal, home of LogoBee’s HQ, but a recent rebranding of the regional tourism board has made me want to visit!

Arguably, Tourisme Montréal’s previous logo –  ‘à la Montréal’ (see below) was a little dated and tired. When I first saw it, I was perplexed by the lipstick ‘kiss’ – it seemed rather feminine and thus confusing as to who the logo was meant to appeal to. I also thought the lipstick made the more difficult to read.

All that has changed with a fancy new restyle by agency LG2. The new Tourisme Montréal logo is bold, easy-to-read, gender neutral and very digital-friendly, as this video shows.

The cheeky little Android robot has been depicted in a wide variety of costumes and guises over the years, but recently got into trouble by appearing to take a pee on the Apple logo!

The naughty icon appeared embedded into the ‘map view’ of Google Maps, located at coordinates just south of the town of Rawalpindi in Pakistan.

The cheeky little Android robot has been depicted in a wide variety of costumes and guises over the years, but recently got into trouble by appearing to take a pee on the Apple logo!

The naughty icon appeared embedded into the ‘map view’ of Google Maps, located at coordinates just south of the town of Rawalpindi in Pakistan.

We didn’t even know we needed one, but the launch of the Apple Watch this week is sure to take the world by storm. Market experts are predicting that, like many of Apple’s other products, it’s the creative design types who will be at the front of line to purchase one of these wrist-based mini-computers.

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