I think you'll love this -- Pepsi design strategy

[brkl]

http://www.scribd.com/doc/12112331/Pepsi-Breathtaking-Design-Strategy

BREATHTAKING

[Salka]

One logo - multiple emotions... all those emotes display the same emotion don't they?

Is this real or a joke?

[Freezerr]

That was amazing.

[Nappi]

That magnetic field and gravitational pull bullshit was pretty awesome.

[SignorSuperdouche]

Hasn't all that golden ratio stuff been shown to be nonsense about a million times?

[Nappi]

That's what illuminati wants you to believe.

[syntheticgerbil]

Hasn't all that golden ratio stuff been shown to be nonsense about a million times?

I've never really heard a great sustained argument with references, facts and examples against it, but I'd love to get more information on this.

Also, this document is what happen when people pay big money for basic designs.

I think their new billboards I've seen around town are stupid, but then again, there's not really any billboards I enjoy, so everything is equally offensive or unnecessary to me.

[SignorSuperdouche]

It's not so much that there's an argument against it, it's more that the argument for it doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. Proponents of the idea that the golden ratio is something that humans find aesthetically pleasing never explain why it should be so, they just point to a bunch of examples in paintings, architecture or nature and say "Look, it's there. Therefore it is aesthetically pleasing.". If you look at this evidence, excluding the renaissance artists who specifically put the ratio into their works, all of the examples given are either comparing arbitrary lengths for no reason and/or ignoring all of the examples of similar things which aren't in that ratio.

A whole bunch of bad, cherry picked evidence does not aggregate into one good piece of evidence. It's all just one big feedback loop of confirmation bias.

I found a brief analysis here. I'll include the last two paragraphs, they essentially say what I am trying to but much better than I ever could.

I will certainly not attempt to make the ultimate sense of sex appeal in an article on the Golden Ratio. I would like to point out, however, that the human face provides us with hundreds of lengths to choose from. If you have the patience to juggle and manipulate the numbers in various ways, you are bound to come up with some ratios that are equal to the Golden Ratio.

Furthermore, I should note that the literature is bursting with false claims and misconceptions about the appearance of the Golden Ratio in the arts (e.g. in the works of Giotto, Seurat, Mondrian). The history of art has nevertheless shown that artists who have produced works of truly lasting value are precisely those who have departed from any formal canon for aesthetics. In spite of the Golden Ratio's truly amazing mathematical properties, and its propensity to pop up where least expected in natural phenomena, I believe that we should abandon its application as some sort of universal standard for "beauty," either in the human face or in the arts.

[gdf]

This is fucking incredible. It basically highlights everything that is wrong with new-age marketing and capitalism. I'm blown away.

[Nachimir]

Oh god, don't get me started on aesthetics, especially not when I'm this tired.

http://blowatlife.blogspot.com/2009/02/pepsi-logo-response.html

[miffy495]

Oh my god that is my favorite thing in quite some time. The Pepsi energy field was the best part. And when they traced aesthetics from 3000 BC up to "Pepsi 2009: ?" Amazing find, sir.

[Historical_Society]

It's not so much that there's an argument against it, it's more that the argument for it doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. Proponents of the idea that the golden ratio is something that humans find aesthetically pleasing never explain why it should be so, they just point to a bunch of examples in paintings, architecture or nature and say "Look, it's there. Therefore it is aesthetically pleasing.". If you look at this evidence, excluding the renaissance artists who specifically put the ratio into their works, all of the examples given are either comparing arbitrary lengths for no reason and/or ignoring all of the examples of similar things which aren't in that ratio.

A whole bunch of bad, cherry picked evidence does not aggregate into one good piece of evidence. It's all just one big feedback loop of confirmation bias.

I found a brief analysis here. I'll include the last two paragraphs, they essentially say what I am trying to but much better than I ever could.

I would like to place a big disclaimer and say I'm not an artist and have rather crappy artistic skills.

But moving on, I feel the argument displayed is probably coming at it from an angle that I guess that was never explained. When they've showed architectures that were built where the golden ratio is visibile, what I personally found aesthetically pleasing is more of it's organized structural appearance. I'm very fascinated by numbers, symmetry, and art that devolves from it. So at least from my perspective, I wouldn't say that golden ratio automatically turns me on, I would say it's more likely to be visual appealing than a disproportioned anamoly.

Which is kinda where I took issue with the article cause it seemed to be rather just taking that as what everyone is saying. (Or at least thats how I subjectively viewed the article) I would draw the similarities to the golden ratios more to the comparison of pi. Pi isn't the definite equation but it does the job well. The golden ration isn't the perfect ratio to beauty, but it does the job well. I can understand the absurdities of saying, ear lob width divided by eyeball lashes is a definite proof of the golden ratio. But essentially, leg:torso length and arm:forearm, if either of those were disproportioned it wouldn't necessarily disgust you, but the lack of "aesthetical symmetry" would throw you off a bit to notice.

It's a valid argument, but I personally feel it's overgeneralization. But I digress.

[DanJW]

Golden ratio is not some kind of Theory of Everything, but it is a useful tool for artists to know. Like HistSoc says, knowing the ratio can make checking your proportions much easier. Also, I've always been taught that the "rule of thirds" is a good way to anticipate how the human eye flickers around a scene, and it seems to work. I don't have any replacement tools if you take that one away, other than trial and error.

Also there is definitely something in the Fibonacci spiral appearing in nature, which is closely related. It's not mysterious, just a fact: circles, spirals and cones are strong supportive shapes. How do you build one as you grow? Fibonacci sequence.

[Jake]

The ad agency responsible for the Pepsi rebrand (Arnell) also did the simultaneous re-brand of a few other Pepsi products including Mountain Dew and Tropicana orange juice, which rolled out at the same time as the ridiculous Pepsi logo which started this thread.

For Tropicana they didn't do golden ratio nonsense or whatever else. They just took the logo the brand has had for ages -- a straw sticking out of an orange -- and replaced it with... nothing.

Not saying I was particularly fond of the old Tropicana packaging, but people definitely had an affinity for the straw in the orange which they'd been seeing for decades, and they were not pleased.

Amazingly, people were so annoyed that Pepsi went and reverted to the old Tropicana packaging.

The best part though: Here's a video of Peter Arnell explaining the mountains of amazing crap behind their surely multi-million dollar redesign which resulted in taking an A-brand well recognized fruit juice and re-wrapping it in what looks like packaging the grocery store chains might use to package their generic brand. (Or, what they would use to package liquid laundry detergent.)

It might not quite defeat the agency's insane Pepsi document, but it is definitely cut from the same, amazingly horrible cloth. Watch as any hopes you had that there was maybe some irony in that Pepsi branding document get blown off the map 80 times:

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Edited March 21, 2009 by Jake

[Nappi]

Oh wow.. It all makes sense now. It's a mom and kids squeeze thing.

Also, this doesn't take Coriolis effect into account and needs to be updated.

[Thrik]

Heh, I didn't even realise Pepsi had redesigned their logo — understandable seeing as it's apparently US-only right now.

What a complete waste of time and money. The new bottles look bland and rubbish.

[DanJW]

What a complete waste of time and money. The new bottles look bland and rubbish.

Yeah, like the new Tropicana cartons, those pepsi bottles scream "cheap own-brand knock-off" to me.

I've always preferred Coke anyway.

[brkl]

Heh, I didn't even realise Pepsi had redesigned their logo — understandable seeing as it's apparently US-only right now.

What a complete waste of time and money. The new bottles look bland and rubbish.

That's nightmarishly bland :/

[Salka]

Yeah I'm not a designer or artist but it looks shit. That's amazingly bad. It really makes me think - I could probably get through my entire life and be quite successful if only I could master the art of bullshitting effectively.

[Nachimir]

Thanks brkl, just got around to this.

Convention --------------------------> Innovation

Fucking hilarious This could have been devised by Duncan.

[syntheticgerbil]

I can see the golden ratio as a both sides of the coin sort of thing, so I don't care to argue either way, I guess I wasn't enlightened of anything I didn't already know one way or another, sometimes using golden ratio rules in my artwork and sometimes not. It's more of an instinct or feeling basis when drawing, but I'm just a simpleton and not DaVinci with my leaque of 13 year old boy sex slaves.

The ad agency responsible for the Pepsi rebrand (Arnell) also did the simultaneous re-brand of a few other Pepsi products including Mountain Dew and Tropicana orange juice, which rolled out at the same time as the ridiculous Pepsi logo which started this thread.

For Tropicana they didn't do golden ratio nonsense or whatever else. They just took the logo the brand has had for ages -- a straw sticking out of an orange -- and replaced it with... nothing.

Not saying I was particularly fond of the old Tropicana packaging, but people definitely had an affinity for the straw in the orange which they'd been seeing for decades, and they were not pleased.

Amazingly, people were so annoyed that Pepsi went and reverted to the old Tropicana packaging.

The best part though: Here's a video of Peter Arnell explaining the mountains of amazing crap behind their surely multi-million dollar redesign which resulted in taking an A-brand well recognized fruit juice and re-wrapping it in what looks like packaging the grocery store chains might use to package their generic brand. (Or, what they would use to package liquid laundry detergent.)

Hahah that's funny you brought that up. I kept saying it looks like it should hold some sort of feminine product now, but laundry detergent is much more polite and acceptable.

[Roderick]

Ahahaha I hadn't even seen the big orange nipple on top of the thing! Now that's just ridiculous.

[Erkki]

I reject your matriarchal interpretation. It's clearly a penis full of urine.

[gdf]

"We wanted to explore where nobody has gone before, inside the orange"

Breaking fucking boundaries there, people.

[ThunderPeel2001]

You're kidding... The one on the right is the "new" design?

I looked at it and I immediately thought it was a cheap bootleg or Tropicana in some third world country. That is astoundingly awful looking. Did the CEO's daughter do it for a school project...?? Jesus!