LOGO DESIGN BLOG   LOGO DESIGN REVIEW

Malaysia’s Ministry of Tourism recently announced a final logo for their annual Visit Malaysia 2007 campaign. To debut the new mark, the Ministry has teamed up with Malaysia Airlines, who have put the new logo on a new Boeing 747-400 aircraft, to promote the campaign, according to an article on Bernama.com.

Eventually 86 of Malaysia Airlines’ planes will bear the logo, exposing countless millions of travelers around the world to the logo. More than 20 million tourists already visit Malaysia each year.

The logo is a nicer iteration of the previous concept below. It’s also full of symbolism (see article here). The fact is most people will never even remotely consider what the five red dots symbolize or what the green flower petal means. But the logo does do a good job of portraying a casual, tropical feeling, and the message is clear: visit Malaysia in 2007. For those who do want the entire list of intended symbols in the logo, here it is.

Another tourism logo that comes to mind is the truly brilliant Bahamas tourism logo, which looks tropical and includes abstract shapes reminiscent of the actual geographic layout of the islands.

Chatrooms have been seething with negative feedback after a new logo design proposal for the Buffalo Sabres (NHL) was leaked to the public. Outraged fans have been signing a petition to redesign the logo on FixTheLogo.com, which has now collected more than 10,000 signatures. The petition in part states:

“[The logo] is a poorly conceived atrocity that does not reflect the history, tradition, or class of the Buffalo Sabres team or its fans. The logo resembles neither a buffalo nor a sabre. It has been compared to numerous unflattering things, from a hairpiece to a slug. This logo is an embarrassment to the Buffalo Sabres as well as the fans that support them.”

The new design, seen above, would be the third logo the Sabres will have had since the team was organized in 1971. The original logo included both a sabre and a buffalo:

In 1997, the logo was redesigned to include a menacing illustration of a buffalo head, but variations of the logo include a sabre as well.

You can see the entire lineup of the team’s past and current logos at an interesting website called SportsLogos.Net. (You can spend a lot of time on this site.) Some fans who are upset about the new design are also saying the design wasn’t accidentally leaked to the public, but that it was purposefully released to gauge public reaction.

What do you think of the new design? Is it an improvement?

Perhaps following the lead of Visa, who updated their image six months ago, Mastercard has unveiled a new logo design to go with their new name: Mastercard Worldwide. The new logo is full of gradients, which may make some designers cringe and make photocopying and embroidering the logo difficult. But the new design didn’t abandon the old, familiar overlapping red and orange circles.

Mastercard describes the new design thusly, according to an article in The Register.:

“The three circles of the new corporate logo build on the familiar interlocking red and yellow circles of the MasterCard consumer brand, and reflect the company’s unique, three-tiered business model as a franchisor, processor and advisor.”

Who knows how many consumers will contemplate what Mastercard Worldwide’s new logo means. And those that do just might ask: Why is the middle circle off center?