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Thursday, May 07, 2009
P Is For Providence ... is for Paper Rad?

The below is the newly designed logo for Providence, Rhode Island, in an effort to rebrand themselves to the rest of America as the "Creative Capital":

And it took me literally four and half seconds to shout out, "Paper Rad!!" upon seeing this. Everything about this ID screams the veritable Providence/Baltimore/Pittsburgh design hive in love with Lisa Frank, Hypercolor and 80s cartoons... and yet, Paper Rad it is not. Instead, the creators of "P" are a corporate brand-design company based in Nashville called North Star Destination Strategies.

Weird? A little, especially because Paper Rad is at least indirectly associated with the Providence art/music scenes (Wizzards et al). And certainly their work is only plundermashups of recent trashpast, but still... I dunno here. Hopefully the explanation is because one of the Paper Rad dudes actually works for North Star, but I found nothing on the internet corroborating such a possiblity.

Still, nice to see a little outside-the-comfort zone work on the part of a major city.

UPDATE:

In looking again, I noticed that on the WSJ page below the photo it says "Ben Jones"... which is also the name of one of the three main Paper Rad dudes. So maybe he was involved in this project in some fashion? That would actually be kind of awesome. Or maybe i'm confused and the logo above isn't actually the Providence logo (which is actually described in the article as "A bright orange P"), but is instead someone else's interpretation of the new logo? Fuck if i know.

anyway...

Labels: paper rad, quickthoughts

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 5/07/2009 03:32:00 PM 0 comments

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