Old wine

As I write this post, a group of wine enthusiasts in Bordeaux are using Twitter to tell me what they’re up to as they investigate the latest vintage. They’ve just uploaded a picture of the new Cos d’Estournel chais on Twitpic. Apparently the ‘08 Cos is as impressive as the new building.

You might think these updates are coming from a new, savvy online wine site. The online edition of Decanter? Or the ever enthusiastic Wine Library TV, perhaps?

They are, in fact, being tweeted by BBRBoysInBDX, the buying team from Britain’s oldest wine merchant, Berry Brothers and Rudd. Berry’s has serious history. They’ve been operating out of the same shop in St James’, London since 1698 and have been supplying wine to the Royal Family since King George III was on the throne.

It’s not unfair to assume that any business with 311 years of history might be a little stuffy, especially one which is based in St James’ and deals with a luxury product (as Berry’s do; they’re more Château Lafite than Jacobs Creek). Look a little closer at Berry’s and you’ll be surprised.

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Flexible consistency, consistent flexibility

In late 2006 I went to see Alan Fletcher’s retrospective at the Design Museum in London.
It’s the only exhibition, before or since, where I’ve read every word on every caption for every piece of work. It was a masterclass in design. The piece of work that struck me most, more than the witty collage work or the posters written in Fletcher’s trademark handwriting, was a rub down sheet of Reuters logos. What I realised, whilst I was looking at that rub down sheet, are the massive technical restraints that limited identity design forty years ago. There was one logo and it only physically existed in a handful of sizes. The rules were kept simple. Apply the logo in the set position at the set size and don’t ask questions.

Image from Panjapop, Flickr.

Forty years later, identity is referred to as brand and we use media banks to download brandmarks instead of using sheets of rub down logos. It comes as no surprise that people have started to question the “Consistency, consistency, consistency” mantra. In the last couple of years, more and more high profile projects have rejected this mantra in favour of a flexible approach to identity. In a world where some brands are seen on screens more than in print, flexible identity is a logical development. It’s also a development which changes the identity design process. We need to start considering why an identity is flexible, how it can change and what this communicates.

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