We love the blog Crit because it's like getting the course work for the design degree this writer passed up to instead write seventeen page essays about the significance of pagan vs.Christian burial rituals in Beowulf (please drop a line if you'd like to read this -- it's still saved somewhere on some computer somewhere and it'd be nice to one day get something out of it). Case in point of Crit's terrificness is this essay, "The Apple Core vs. Linear Logic" by guest editor Maggie Macnab. In it, she talks about Apple's logo, of course, and brings in Paul Rand's brilliant IBM logo as an introduction about the power and meaning of branding. It's a great read. Here's a bit:

In our information-laden world, it is absolutely crucial that a designer employ critical thinking through understanding intuitive connection when making use of visual imagery. Access informs response: What we intuit lays the groundwork of our actions. If you don't make the connection, that relationship is lost. Conscious study of the symbolics of number, shape, and myth tells our minds what our intuition already knows. It completes the synaptic cycle by producing work that is at once effective, aesthetic and ethical. It is effective because an intuitive match leads to greater understanding through initial recognition of a larger concept and is the shortest route between two points; aesthetic because appropriateness leads to elegance; and ethical because when unnecessary or inappropriate content is eliminated, the truth is revealed and something in the larger scope is to be learned.