Contemporary Branding
Companies stating who they are by subtraction, where control of type and white space does the explaining that a slogan would otherwise have been asked to do.
Dictionary entry
- Corporate Modernism 1950s–1970s / Style
The golden age of corporate identity established by Rand, Chermayeff and their peers: geometric marks, gridded standards manuals and disciplined application speaking for corporations in modernism's abstract language.
- MUJI 1980– / Style
A way of letting the raw colour of a material stand as the finish of an industrial product. Unbleached paper, uncoloured plastic and unstained wood are the outside of the thing, and the product name moves off that surface onto a hang tag.
- Corporate Grunge late 1980s–mid-1990s / Style
A controlled transfer of distressed type, rupture, and layering from music publishing into corporate advertising and product catalogues. Illegibility is not the goal; traces of rebellion sit around otherwise ordered product information.
- Sportsbrut late 2010s– / Style
A sports-graphic style connecting brutalist grids, huge type, and exposed structure with competition, timing, bodies, and scores. Roughness communicates force and urgency rather than institutional refusal.
- Genericana mid-1980s–early 2010s / Style
A contemporary brand style that edits 1920s–50s American packaging, sign painting, and factory labels into regionally nonspecific authenticity. Wide space and premium materials turn an imagined old shop into a current upscale product.