No guts, no glory
Guts aren’t exactly glamorous. And the connotations of the word ‘gut’ are multifarious: there’s the gory (‘blood and guts’); the Germanic ‘good’; the straightforwardly corporeal; or for those with an interest in newer psychological findings, it’s a wondrous ‘second brain’.
Ad agency folk, however, have long taken the word ‘guts’ far outside of the bodily. For many of them, ‘guts’ is an aspirational word: ‘gutsy’ work, ‘trusting their gut’, a staunchly ‘no guts no glory’ approach. Hence the name of ad agency GUT, which was founded in Buenos Aires and Miami in 2018 by Anselmo Ramos and Gaston Bigio, former execs at WPP’s DAVID.
GUT, which was named agency and independent network of the year at the 2023 Cannes awards, now has offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and The Netherlands; and has racked up a client list including Google, Headspace, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, and Lyft…
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Sandvik Group by Lynxeye, Sweden, 2023.
Sandvik provides manufacturing, mining and infrastructure industries with high tech engineering solutions. Its new logo, designed by Lynxeye, is said to represent progress and circularity, and further, visually summarise the commitment of Sandvik to advance the world through engineering. A simple use of heavy to fine lines, a diagonal upwards motion left to right and good balance of volume and void effectively conjure up precision, progress and heay engineering. Locked-up into a circle (a globe! circularity!) makes it easy to deploy cross platform.
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Design History: The story of PAOS' 1983 logo for Japanese toys and games company Bandai.
By the 1980s Bandai Co., Ltd–a Japanese multinational toy and games manufacturer and distributor founded in 1950–had grown to become an industry leader, operating eight groups covering a variety of different product categories. In 1982 these groups were merged into one.
The restructuring was instrumental in getting Bandai listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and expressed its readiness and ambition to move beyond an area of business that was described as a ‘cottage industry running on inspiration’.
Recognising that the entertainment industry would expand far beyond toys and games (Bandai would later be responsible for launching the electronic pet craze with Tamagotchi) Bandai sought out a new corporate identity. This would outwardly convey the restructuring and renewed ambition of the company and prepare it for further expansion whilst also maintaining the ‘vitality inherent to a medium-sized business. In charge of this would be PAOS, fresh off working on iconic Japanese brands such as ASICS and Kenwood…
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Now on Brand Archive:
F1 by Wieden + Kennedy, 2017
Brand Archive is a new research tool from the team behind BP&O. Discover a long history of corporate identity design, from the 1960s to present day. Using our custom built filter, discover individual assets from signage, to packaging to liveries, drawn from over 700 brands.
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