It's been plastered on t-shirts (3 for $10, last we checked), bumper stickers, salt and pepper shakers, even a particularly garish Gucci handbag, but for Milton Glaser the sheer endurance of the I ♥ New York logo he developed, gratis, in the late 1970s, is still difficult to fathom. "It is one of those peculiarities of your own life where you don't know the consequences of your own actions," Glaser told The New York Times recently. "Who in the world would have thought that this silly bit of ephemera would become one of the most pervasive images of the 20th century?" Earlier this week, the paper of record focused on efforts to "reclaim the symbol itself, which...has become devalued...through overuse." Initiatives include a difficult-to-reproduce hologram that will mark the logo's licensed use while sellers of unauthorized I ♥ New York goods (no doubt created at home, with help of Courier and Wingdings) will receive a cease-and-desist letter from an Albany law firm.

According to Thomas Ranese, chief marketing officer at Empire State Development:

"We have been reviewing anything found by our licensing agent," said Ranese. Undesirable products include ashtrays ($6.99) and cigarette lighters ($3.99) because the state wants to discourage smoking.

Marshall Blonsky, 70, who teaches semiotics at Parsons the New School for Design, expressed skepticism at the state's new efforts. "Oh, boy! That's very odd!" he exclaimed. "They're trying to re-proprietize this thing." The brand is battered, Mr. Blonsky said. "What was absolutely original and therefore thrilling in 1977," he said, "is now an empty signifier, nothing in it, no communication, zed, zero. It moved from poetry to banality, from red to pink, like a coin that has been rubbed smooth from so much usage."

Tell that to Gucci, whose limited edition NY ♥'ing handbag sold out in a flash earlier this year and is now fetching sums on eBay that are far from zero. We here they're particularly coveted in Japan.

No designer or design-friendly person enjoys seeing a logo go away. Such is the case that came with the news that Warner Brothers is folding their Warner Independent Pictures side arm. This, of course, means that the logo will sink along with the ship. Although it isn't the world's finest piece of branding ever, we always thought it was clever and interesting to look at. Michael Walker, who was a bit harder hit than we were, apparently, was kind enough to send us over his lamenting over its loss and why he enjoyed it so much. Here's a bit:

It's an outstanding example of how to tap the equity of a parent brand (the "W" from the "WB") while creating a fresh identity with the simplest of strokes: notch the middle fork of the "W" to create the "i" in Independent then reinforce the connection with a splash of scarlet. Too bad it was for naught.

Presumably, the logo will live on in DVD packaging and in the title cards of Warner Independent films already released, which include George Clooney's Academy Award-nomination magnet Good Night and Good Luck and the documentary March of the Penguins.

By way of Design Info, we found this little bit of funny: Flogos. We looked it up and saw that it'd been making the rounds a bit on blogs overseas, in foreign languages, so if you haven't heard of it over here in the US, then we feel we've done our part in spreading the word of absurdity. There's really nothing more to Flogos than this: balloon logos. They're custom-made, supposedly-environmentally safe balloons, built to resemble silhouettes of your logo, that are launched into the air and spread brand awareness to a wide variety of birds, high-rise apartment dwellers, and fish, when the land in the sea. Their site is a fun to maneuver around and we look forward to the day when this sort of advertising is gigantic and we're assaulted by Flogo's sky branding by day and Spacevertising's asteroid advertising by night.

The May issue of Boston features a cautionary tale for would-be designers of university logos. In the wake of Boston University's logo update and Northeastern's imminent rebranding, the magazine asked six Boston design firms to try their hands at new logos for a few other institutions: Harvard, MIT, and Boston College. The results? [shakes head, crinkled eyes cast downward] Well, let's look at a couple of examples:

From Monderer Design comes the above crack at updating the Harvard logo, which was criticized for its ornate, difficult-to-reproduce crest. The new logo (at top right) may streamline the laurel leaves into jaunty sprouts but then shirks the symmetry for a shield that we initially hoped was a clever allusion to Harvard-affiliated MacLean Hospital, a pioneer in schizophrenia research. In fact, firm principal Stewart Monderer's says that "the sans serif 'H' visually balances the three books....signif[ying] a more modern, more connected school, while retaining its historical elements." More connected, you say?

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Interesting follow-up from the second place winner of the readers' choice in the Logo Design Love Awards. Jacob Cass, proprietor of Just Creative Design, has put up a post explaining, in great detail, how he came to his current identity. From start to finish, he shows his original self-branding work "JackCass Productions" and then, as he moved beyond being fifteen years old, into something more refined. It's a fun bit of reading and looking over a virtual shoulder. And who isn't a sucker for behind-the-scenes, process stuff like this? Here's a bit about an early logo idea that featured a generic little swirl:

I received feedback from peers and from forums and many people told me that there was so many logos that incorporated the Fibonnaci Squirl. After a little research I found this was true and this meant that my logo would not be unique. So I went with the led pencil idea that I thought was working quite well so I continued with that. It was here that I tried to get the best size for the pencil to show off the JCD initials as well as making sure it looked like a pencil.

Join us in a toast, won't you? Today we raise our cardboard cups of [insert your favorite piping hot beverage here] to contrarians such as Starbucks, who this month bucked the trend of going green--just as it reaches its Earth Day fever pitch--in favor of good ol' nostalgia. And in this case, "nostalgia" comes in a muddy brown hue. The Seattle-based company is keeping its Design Studio HQ busy with a two-month-long switchup of its iconic green logo with the original 1971 version, which features a more maritimey, twin-tailed mermaid inspired by a Norse woodcut in the center of the company medallion. The old school logo, which made a brief reappearance for the company's 35th anniversary in 2006, can now be found on on all 'bucks cups. It will remain the logo of Starbucks' new Pike Place Roast blend after the company rouses from its nostalgia this summer.

In BusinessWeek, Rob Giampietro of New York design firm Giampietro + Smith compared the move with those of baseball teams that don "throwback uniforms," while writer David Kiley asked:

Is there a danger that, by rolling out the old logo once again, Starbucks might overplay the authenticity card? "There is never a danger in reminding your employees or your customers of your authenticity as long as you also keep moving forward in new, surprising ways that are relevant to people," says Brian Collins, principal of the New York-based strategic branding firm Collins:. "When it's done right--and consistently--it can be the smartest way to market an established brand."

It's unlikely that Starbucks would ever consider going brown for good...."As a color it's so much less distinguished than the green, and the green conveys both a friendlier and more upscale image," says Giampietro. "And it's so Italian!" he adds, referring to Starbucks' inspiration for the color, the Italian flag.

And fear not, even with the brown-logoed cups, those green straws aren't going anywhere. Play ball!

As the many e-mails now flooding our inbox attest, yes, NBC's blocky 1975 'N' logo (which proved a legal disaster as well as an aesthetic one) was indeed designed by New York firm Lippincott & Margulies (now just plain Lippincott). "That 'N' is such a great story," says Dan Cooper, who in the course of defending the honor of the letter 'Z,' pointed to it as a single letter logo gone wrong. "And after it sucked as an 'N,' they went completely nuts and stuck the 'N' over the peacock!" What's the only thing that could make NBC's sordid branding history more intriguing? Disco music! Posted below for your viewing pleasure is Renan J. Sanson's video montage of vintage NBC logos from the 1970s and 1980s, backed by an infectious disco beat. Must-see TV, indeed.

Earlier this week, we chatted a bit about single-letter logos ("Give Me an 'A'! That's It, Just an 'A'!"), pointing to Garech Stone's piece in the new issue of Eye that notes how certain letters (e.g., A, M, and T) are more popular than others and lend themselves better to modification, while "'J' and 'Z' seem difficult to resolve." Art director, Fox News Channel co-creator, and all-around media guru Dan Cooper, however, is sticking up for the 26th letter, often typecast as the sleepiest. Case in point: the "Z" (at right and below) that Cooper created for writer Steve Zousmer, a former head writer of Good Morning America and the first senior producer of Nightline who now focuses on speechwriting.

The goal was to capture Zousmer, who Cooper calls "a brilliant iconoclast, a sardonic wit, and the most uncorporate of great corporate speech writers," in a memorable mark. "In the back of my mind, of course, was the legendary 'Zorro' as portrayed by Walt Disney with the sword-slashed Z mark," Cooper tell us. "I wanted something bold and rough-hewn. Something absolutely not Paul Rand. Something that caught the eye and made Steve memorable, to reinforce his reputation, so an executive might say...if lost for his name, 'Let's have that Z guy do it! He'll come up with something unique but on-message.'" And so the bold Z that whispers of a woodblock print was born.

So what are some of Cooper's other favorite single-letter logos? "I can't think of any. People are so wedded to icons now and names as positioning/differentiation concepts that it's hard to find an artist who can achieve the simplification to satisfy the requirements," says Cooper. "Of course Hewlett Packard's 'hp' is a nice piece of work, but very not great, NBC's disastrous N (was that Lippincot & Margulies?) was horrible -- but using a single letter hand painted, as was my Z, is very powerful-- if it's really well done."

And speaking of Eye magazine, the new owners have just published the spring 2008 issue (#67), and it's a type special. Among the standout pieces is Garech Stone's treatise on single-letter logos (O, how timely). Born of the monogram and powered by the instantly recognizable letters that are their starting points, these chameleonlike logos transform "the obvious...with the spark of imagination and wit."

Such renowned figures as Paul Rand, Saul Bass, and Lance Wyman realized this. Many of their logo designs embrace the inherent communicative power, symbolic potential and raw immediacy of the alphabet. Bass, for instance, adapted a 'C' for Celanese, a 'U' for United Airlines, a 'W' for Warner and several 'A's (Alcoa, Avery). Rand claimed a 'C', an 'E,' and a 'W' for Cummins, Enron, and Westinghouse respectively. Wyman modified an 'M' for Minnesota Zoo, another for the Mexico City Metro, an 'S' for the Setauket Center, and a 'H' for Hoboken. The familiar transformed and made new.

But not all letters are created equal. Stone notes that M and T are popular, and everyone loves an A, while "'J' and 'Z' seem difficult to resolve." Although we know a certain masked master swordsman who would beg to differ.

In a strange bit of intellectual property talk, Adidas has fought (and won) to not let anyone get anywhere close to putting stripes on similar products to those the company manufactures. They just succeeded in getting a new ruling through the EU courts saying that no one else can use their three stripes design and should you dare to even think about putting two stripes, don't think they won't come take a look to make sure you're not getting too close to infringing their striped-ness. This victory gets them all the closer to locked up the whole of Europe from competitors looking to swipe some of their brand's image. Here's a bit:

Adidas welcomed the ECJ's interpretation. "It strengthens the protection of famous trademarks in Europe, and will benefit us in the protection of our famous three stripes trade mark," the company said in a press release.

"We do not seek to prevent the use of decoration, but the use of striped markings that confuse consumers, or cause them to make a link with our company and its famous trademark," it added.