Natural Selections

Over the summer of 2001, I began collecting plant and animal logotypes. The more I looked, the more I found… from mega-corporations like Royal Dutch Shell to perennial favorite Penguin Books to upstart new brands like Sirius Satellite Radio. As my collection grew, so did my desire to compile, organize and analyze the overarching patterns of biodiversity within the world’s graphic identities. I christened this project “Brand Menagerie”.

The initial goal of “Brand Menagerie” was to collect specimens, classify them and create a taxonomy of all the forms of life in the world of brand design. No mascots would be allowed (sorry Tony the Tiger), the logos could be extinct (historical), but must be be of a particular calibre or distinction to maintain the quality of the specimens and prevent the task from becoming unmanageable. With a complete enough taxonomy, opportunities, trends and predictions might be made about the tree of brand life I set out to create. For instance, one might find that lions are overused, while great swathes of the fungi kingdom have yet to be utilized.

Sadly, the project was never completed. Yet I have held onto the idea, and recently presented it to the design department at The New York Times as part of a lecture I delivered. I was thrilled that Nicholas Blechman of the Review of Books found the idea compelling enough to ask me to explore the biodiversity of the world of publishing imprints. Exploring this rich vein of plant and animal life led me to discover the publishing world’s affinity for marine birds and mammals (though curiously not fish)... and of course flowering seed plants.