Awesome Pictures Thread

[Nightblade]

What was he doing ?  Just randomly nicking stuff off strangers ?

Good for her.

The better question is: Who the hell steals a phone and then starts texting his friend 3 feet from the victim?

[Segoris]

People who get caught, beat up, and laughed at.

[Hawkbit]

What was he doing ?  Just randomly nicking stuff off strangers ?

Good for her.

The better question is: Who the hell steals a phone and then starts texting his friend 3 feet from the victim?

That was my question, and I'm left wondering if it was a staged event.  The spin kick looks legit, though.

[Ingmar]

It was staged.

[pxib]

[Paelos]

The 94 Coke can and 91 Pepsi can still stand up as my favorites. 1995 is my favorite 7-UP. I don't drink Crush but that 72 can is slick looking. The 85 Dr. Pepper Can is the one I'll always think of as Dr. Pepper living in Texas.

[Ironwood]

It's sad how far back my memory of those goes.

[Samwise]

The logos from the late 80s (when I started seeing soda cans in my classmates' lunches instead of juice boxes) have always been the ones I think of as the "real" logos, but I never really considered until now how incredibly subjective that is.

[Paelos]

I really hate the current Pepsi logo.

[Merusk]

It's sad how far back my memory of those goes.

I was worried how far mine went, which is late 70's. Thanks for the cheer-up.

I feel the same way, Sam.  I have a box of crap my mom gave me from her house, those 90's Pepsi cans are in there. I'd forgotten I'd done can collecting in H.S.  

The thing that stands out is that the first Dr. Pepper can is labeled "King Size" when you can barely find anything that small in stores today.  

I also don't recall the cans angling in at the top as early as they did.  Maybe it was just my local bottler but I don't think I saw it widespread until 1994, when the first can to do it was 1980 7*Up.

I really hate the current Pepsi logo.

Agreed

[Khaldun]

The 1948 Pepsi is kind of awesome. Looks like shaving cream.

[Ingmar]

It's funny how super modern the new designs always seemed at the time, and now everything looks like the 1970s Aperture Science logo.

[schild]

Coca-Cola (and in my opinion, Toyota) are two of the best logos ever created. They are the S-Tier of logos.

Below that I'd put FedEx (what a masterpiece of design) and 3M.

Campbell's doesn't even get a nod because fuck Warhol.

[Hawkbit]

FedEx is definitely first-class, harhar.  I liked Audi's logo, though it is fairly pedestrian.  More of a personal aesthetics.

[Merusk]

3M? Really? So what's there that I'm missing.  I can agree on the rest.

This little game always is fun, if only to realize how good a logo is or isn't and if the iconography is strong enough to make you remember the brand.

http://www.sporcle.com/games/g/corplogos

[Paelos]

I also really like like the Texaco logo.

[calapine]

Of the cans I like the 50ies and 60ies logos most. They are distinctive and stand out. The newer ones seem cluttered.

Edit: Re cars, the BMW logo is great.

[apocrypha]

Odd, I was born in 1969, yet it's the 1971/2 logos for Coke, Pepsi and 7Up that most closely match the image I have in my head for those brands.

I think the Nike logo is very good - instantly recognisable at any size and completely colour-independant.

[ezrast]

The 1997-era logo looks right to me in every case except Coca-Cola. Why would you put a picture of a bottle on a can? To remind people they're drinking from an inferior container? That's just wacky.

You know what's terrible? The current Wal-Mart logo. It's supposed to evoke a flower or sunburst or something I guess but it just looks like an asterisk or cartoon vanishing effect to me. It reminds me of Doonesbury's G. W. Bush.

[K9]

I think the Nike logo is about as perfect as a logo gets in many ways: instantly familiar, simple and elegant without being aggressively minimal, and suggestive of the brand's core notions (speed, athleticism, etc).

Here's an interesting article on how much various brands cost. Note that some of the prices represent more than just a logo, BP did not just pay $211M for a logo, it was a complete re-brand.

[Merusk]

The 1997-era logo looks right to me in every case except Coca-Cola. Why would you put a picture of a bottle on a can? To remind people they're drinking from an inferior container? That's just wacky.

Coke had something about celebrating the bottle in the late 90's IIRC.  Research says that 1994 (the first year the bottle was featured on the can) is the year the 20oz plastic bottle with the trademark contour was introduced.  That explains 1994, so it was probably kept on for the next decade as a reference to the design of the prior can until there was little reason to keep it on because the prior design focused on something as silly as the cap.

[Nevermore]

I prefer a simple and clean but distinctive look to the cans, so with that in mind

Coke: 1971
Pepsi: 1978
7 Up: 1980
Crush: 1981
Dr. Pepper: is vile so it doesn't matter

Wasn't that 7 Up can from 1994 because there was some kind of 7 Up video game that year?

[schild]

3M? Really? So what's there that I'm missing.  I can agree on the rest.

It's timelessly perfect. Much like the Coca-Cola logo (which simply says Coca-Cola in the most perfect possible way), the 3M logo will look good no matter what the design landscape looks like in 50 years, 100 years, or 200 years. Toyota's logo phases in and out of being good looking, but 3M represents their industrialized nature (and persona) in the most perfect way.

[schild]

Re 7-Up:

In the mid-late 80s, companies were obsessed with mascots. I don't know the actual reason, other than in the 80s companies were obsessed with being considered COOL. /shrug Cool spot was made in the 80s. The game DID in fact come out in 93/94 and the can did tie into it. Little Caesars started giving out puppets (I still have it, it's rad) of their little Caesar as well. Dominos had introduced Noid in the mid-80s. In 1990, however, Capcom released Yo! Noid! which was super great. Of all the mascot games, man, that one stood above the rest. But Capcom's arcade team was the tits, so I guess it's not entirely shocking.

In this block of years (let's just call it 1985-1995), McDonald's had their mascots be "in" in a big way. They had a huge run on their toys during that period. Especially the little toys that transformed from Burgers and shit into sweet robots. Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles were fucking HUGE during this period.

Maybe it was just a shift of advertising to the children of baby boomer moms. I'm sure economists have a more complex theory, but I think it's as straight forward as - a whole lot of fucking kids had purchasing power because their moms spoiled the ever-loving shit out of them.

Edit: For people under 18, this period was just an orgy of comic books, cartoons, toys, and video games. Hell, Nintendo had its entire rise to power in that block of years. It was ubiquitous enough that until the xbox came out, moms everywhere called every console "the nintendo." I don't know why a shift to calling every console the xbox happened, but I guess Microsoft did a lot of TV advertising. Meh, I'm going off point. Basically, kids had a LOT of say in the consumerism of their parents, so being "cool" to kids was a big fucking deal.

[K9]

I think a lot of the mascots were killed off by laws prohibiting direct marketing to minors? Maybe not directly, but there was a big shift in the early 00s as I recall to curb this sort of activity.

[Lantyssa]

Dr. Pepper: is vile so it doesn't matter

You wound me, madam.

[Nevermore]

You're a computer nerd, you should be drinking Mountain Dew anyway! 

[Paelos]

Dr. Pepper: is vile so it doesn't matter

You wound me, madam.

Don't worry, she's wrong.

[Kageru]

Brands like those are a good way of identifying some terrible multi-national and seeing if you can find a more local alternative.

[Tannhauser]

So did they just ignore New Coke on that poster? 

Oh and Dr. Pepper '85 forever bitches!

[Selby]

Oh and Dr. Pepper '85 forever bitches!

Yup!  And Diet Dr. Pepper cans from that era were BLUE.  Although the '68 design of Dr. Pepper is near and dear to my heart as well.

[RhyssaFireheart]

So did they just ignore New Coke on that poster? 

Oh and Dr. Pepper '85 forever bitches!

Oh and Dr. Pepper '85 forever bitches!

Yup!  And Diet Dr. Pepper cans from that era were BLUE.  Although the '68 design of Dr. Pepper is near and dear to my heart as well.

Obviously not real Dr Pepper fans, as evidenced by the fact that you both keep putting a period after Dr, when there plainly isn't one in the name.   

Dr Pepper is ambrosia of the gods though, yes it is. 

[Paelos]

Love me some Pepper.

[Stormwaltz]

Obviously not real Dr Pepper fans, as evidenced by the fact that you both keep putting a period after Dr, when there plainly isn't one in the name.   

I think she means it, guys. She's got the Cool Spot cussing us out.

[pxib]

The main thing I was amazed by was how early the designs stabilized. The fonts, for example, simply do not change.

Meanwhile: