Legendre+Rutter » international

“Same-ness” just isn’t the same

Legendre Rutter — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:10:00 +0000

An old adage in business and marketing describes how someone in the sea shell business can succeed: put the sea shell store right on the beach… and right next to another store just like it. The rationale of this strategy—that the best way to sell something is to do it where everyone is already shopping for what you have to offer—is sound. And while it may certainly still be true in some commodity product businesses today, the nature of intellectual property, broad product and service offerings, internet trading, and global competition makes the adage much less true now than even 20 years ago. Today, companies must compete with great design… in their offerings, strategies, and communication.

This is not to say that a graphic designer’s primary objective is to help clients look and sound different. As Malcolm Grear, Professor Emeritus of Graphic Design at RISD, used to say: “The goal of design is not to be different, only good. Then it is different.” A case in point is the French epidemiology company, EpiConcept, whose visual identity and positioning is so unlike that of any of their competitors, they have carved a solid niche in this specialty medical services industry.

The core driver of EpiConcept’s visual identity and communication is a belief in the inseparable relationship between man and nature. The logotype, an iconic, geometric representation of humankind, has become the foundation of all EpiConcept’s marketing materials. The figure is always shown either residing within the natural world, or making sentient connections with nature. Expressing this balance is crucial for a company who works to protect mankind from epidemic diseases, while respecting the higher goal of protecting the delicate balance of nature.

The logotype for EpiConcept, along with the identity developed as an international symbol for communicating information related to flu viruses.

New Year poster entitled “One for All and All for One.”

A special set of pictographs designed for EpiConcept software products

When hospitals across France were all using different forms for recording mammogram data, this form was designed for EpiConcept and is now used as the standard.

Two-sided poster: “Tomorrow is less to be discovered... than to be invented”

EpiConcept website

100 Posters in 24 Cities

Legendre Rutter — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:27:59 +0000

On December 10, 2009, the 61st anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an exhibition of 100 posters opened in 24 cities around the world. The organizer of this network of exhibitions is a group called “Poster 4 Tomorrow,” who can boast partnerships with Reporters Sans Frontiers, Amnesty International Italy, UNESCO, Council of Europe, and others. The juried competition to create the 100-poster collection drew 1,834 entries from dozens of countries. All 100 posters are available for high res download and free distribution at the poster4tomorrow website.

Selected images from December 10 openings in (from top to bottom): Milan, Paris, Seville, Chonan, La Paz, Derry, Los Angeles, and Montreal

Where Have All the (U.S.) Posters Gone?

Legendre Rutter — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:58:25 +0000

We can argue all day and night about why the printed poster is disappearing from the visual landscape, but the truth is that posters are still being produced all over the world. Designers everywhere are creating posters that are well-conceived and beautifully crafted, but there is evidence that the poster is simply not taken as seriously in the U.S. as it is in almost every other part of the industrialized world. As evidence, look at the major International Council of Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA) endorsed poster competitions around the world over the past year. Very few US designers enter these competitions and, for the most part, even fewer win anything.

Two such competitions stand out: the prestigious Toyama International Poster Triennial in Japan and the China International Poster Biennial. At Toyama, of the 4,516 posters submitted for judging from 49 countries, only 52 were from the USA. And of those, only 7 were selected for exhibition at the Toyama Museum of Modern Art (out of 409 exhibited). In China, the numbers were even more stark: of the 178 posters selected from all entries, 106 came from Asia, 66 from Europe, and only 5 came from all of North and South America.

What can we say? We’re trying to do our part to keep the American poster alive on the international design scene. Legendre+Rutter had three finalists chosen for exhibition in Toyama and four of the five US posters selected in China.

Finalists in the Toyama International Poster Triennial: “Cet Obscur Objet du Désir” by Legendre+Rutter and "Imagination" by Yann Legendre

"Les Liaisons Dangereuses" by Lance Rutter, Toyama Poster Triennial

Finalists in the China International Poster Biennial: "Niki de Sant Phalle" and "Fantasmagoria Fukuda" by Yann Legendre

Finalists in the China International Poster Biennial: "Music Awards Dinner" and "Homage to Mucha" by Lance Rutter