There’s a document circulating around the internet at the moment which is supposedly the design brief behind the new Pepsi logo. It uses all kinds of complex “science” and esoteric theory to justify the logo’s redesign including: the golden mean, the “gravitational pull” of Pepsi, perimeter oscillations and more. Pepsi’s energy fields are also explained, and somehow the relativity of space and time are involved as well.
The document’s veracity is in question because, well – it all sounds so crazy. But a Pepsi promotional video from last year uses some of the same images from the document (see below), so it’s possible this thing is real. The brief is worth a read for the comedy value alone, or if it is real, to peer into a complex design process.
Fast Company explains more:
You’ve probably seen the logo everywhere — tops of taxis, subway stops, billboards — and wondered if it was inspired by the Obama “O.” Would that it were so benign.
The design brief (right-click to save) currently making the rounds of the Web, suggests that, if done right, the new Pepsi logo will likely lead to The Rapture that Evangelicals promise is coming. It also illustrates the extreme disconnect between the marketing world and the real world.
The presentation, by the Arnell Group (also responsible for the botched design of the Tropicana orange juice carton) contains visual representations of and comparisons with the following: the golden ratio, the Mona Lisa, the Parthenon, the Gutenberg Bible, the earth and its magnetic fields, and the solar system/universe. None of these things have anything to do with soda.
In a modest moment, the authors titled the presentation/pitch “BREATHTAKING”.
Every page of this document is more ridiculous than the last ending with a pseudo-scientific explanation of how Pepsi’s new branding identity will manifest it’s own gravitational pull. But the craziest thing is that this pitch worked! Pepsi bought it — reportedly for several hundred million dollars — and now we have “the emoticon of a new generation.”
Fast Company: ” Pepsi Logo Design Brief: Branding Lunacy to the Max”
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That’s one of the weirdest stories I’ve read in a while (and I’m a dan of the daily mail).
I suppose things do get weirder as we head towards the Rapture/Omega Point/2012/End of the Age of Mirrors etc…
Mind you, I did get some inspiration from it, “Every page of this document is more ridiculous than the last ” is my new pitch mantra.
February 11th, 2009 at 7:04 am
It’s obviously a joke, right? Isn’t that fairly clear when you read it? Very funny though…
February 11th, 2009 at 8:29 am
The NEWEST Pretrib Calendar !
Hal (serial polygamist) Lindsey and other pretrib-rapture-trafficking and Mayan-Calendar-hugging hucksters deserve the following message: “2012 may be YOUR latest date. It isn’t MAYAN!” Actually, if it weren’t for the 179-year-old, fringe-British-invented, American-merchandised pretribulation rapture bunco scheme, Hal would still be piloting a tugboat on the Mississippi. roly-poly Thomas Ice (Tim LaHaye’s No. 1 strong-arm enforcer) would still be in his tiny folding-chair church which shares its firewall with a Texas saloon, Jack Van Impe would still be a jazz band musician, Tim LaHaye would still be titillating California matrons with his “Christian” sex manual, Grant Jeffrey would still be taking care of figures up in Canada, Chuck Missler would still be in mysterious hush-hush stuff that rocket scientists don’t dare talk about, and John Hagee might be making – and eating – world-record pizzas! To read more details about the eschatological British import that leading British scholarship never adopted – the import that’s created some American multi-millionaires – Google “Pretrib Rapture Diehards” (note LaHaye’s hypocrisy under “1992″), “Hal Lindsey’s Many Divorces,” “Thomas Ice (Bloopers)” and “Thomas Ice (Hired Gun),” “LaHaye’s Temperament,” “Wily Jeffrey,” “Chuck Missler – Copyist,” “Open Letter to Todd Strandberg” and “The Rapture Index (Mad Theology),” “X-Raying Margaret,” “Humbug Huebner,” “Thieves’ Marketing,” “Appendix F: Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “The Unoriginal John Darby,” “Pretrib Hypocrisy,” “The Real Manuel Lacunza,” “Roots of (Warlike) Christian Zionism,” “America’s Pretrib Rapture Traffickers,” “Pretrib Rapture – Hidden Facts,” “Dolcino? Duh!” and “Scholars Weigh My Research.” Most of the above is written by journalist/historian Dave MacPherson who has focused on long-hidden pretrib rapture history for 35+ years. No one else has focused on it for 35 months or even 35 weeks. MacPherson has been a frequent radio talk show guest and he states that all of his royalties have always gone to a nonprofit group and not to any individual. His No. 1 book on all this is “The Rapture Plot” (see Armageddon Books online, etc.). The amazing thing is how long it has taken the mainstream media to finally notice and expose this unbelievably groundless yet extremely lucrative theological hoax!
February 20th, 2009 at 2:30 am
A .doc of staggering ridiculousness. I love it! Design as science. Pepsi alongside Michaelangelo and process over talent.
March 12th, 2009 at 7:27 am