Pepsi recently redesigned their logo as they have done many times in the past. I came across
the document outlining Pepsi's process and rational behind the redesign and was surprised by what I found.
First, Pepsi analyzed their past logos, deconstructing them into shapes and studying the reoccurring patterns. This part seemed pretty straightforward and made sense for deciding where to take the design next.
Next they overlapped the circle patterns to determine what a new logo should look like also taking into consideration the evolution of bottle shapes and how that affects design.
Section C is where thing started to really get interesting. Titled "Towards Innovation: Projecting Pepsi's Future, Applying Universal Laws to Establish a Blueprint for the Brand," this section dug into natural laws such as ratio, proportion, scale, and even gravitational pull of the earth to calculate factors that should be considered for the redesign.
Apparently by studying the Earth's "naturally occurring electric generator in fluid motion that sustains the Earth's magnetic field" the redesign team was able to determine the best way to align the new Pepsi logo curves of blue and red.
After looking through these diagrams, things really moved from scientific to ridiculous for me. Earth's magnetic fields and angles of the light from stars determining the logo for a sugar water beverage?
I believe the aim of this document was to get people talking and to cause people to write about the absurdity of it (looks like they succeeded in getting me to help them). I can't help but believe that at least a good chunk of this document was pure tongue-in-cheek and humor. I could be wrong. What do you think? Scientific or sham?
This week, we have seen a few big discussions on the validity of a product or message due to their apparently chaotic image being portrayed (Pepsi logo redesign, Jaoquin Phoenix on Letterman).
