DC Comics has grown up. Now just one of the three publishing legs that make up the foundation of DC Entertainment, the comic-book publisher unleashed a new logo and brand identity this week, according to Fast Company.
The logo will start appearing on DC books in March as well as on its other publishing entities:Vertigo and Mad Magazine. The company also is involved with a slew of entertainment ventures, covering movies, TV shows, video games, DVDs, and merchandising.
“It wasn’t as obvious to the rest of the world as it was to the comic fans that Batman is from DC Comics or Sandman is a Vertigo character,” says John Rood, DC Entertainment’s executive vice president of sales, marketing, and business development, to Fast Company. “Now that our audience has exploded beyond just a readership, we needed a way of making a more consistent connection between our properties and their parent brands.”
For a company that has many characters with secret identities (Batman, Superman, the Green Lantern), the logo design is meant to impart that sense of something hidden and mysterious that is revealing itself.
“In addition to flexibility, the new logo communicates this idea of dual identity," said Amit Desai, senior vice president of franchise management, to Fast Company. “There’s more than meets the eye. You have to take a closer look to understand the richness of our characters and stories.”
In this mobile era, the new logo works well digitally, as well. “The “DC” logo reads as a ‘D’ shaped page that pulls back to reveal a ‘C’ that could either be an obvious letter or infused with elements of a property or character,” Fast Company notes. “Digital devices (computers, tablets, smartphones, touch-screen displays, gaming consoles) will enable users to peel back the ‘D’ to expose a character, image, or story.”
Meanwhile, while DC is celebrating a rival comics company is doing anything but. The two co-CEOs of the Archie comics empire are embroiled in a serious legal battle, according to the New York Daily News.
Jonathan Goldwater, the grandson of one of the Archie founders, is suing to get Nancy Silberkleit out of the business, the paper reports.
“Unless Silberkleit is removed as a director and an officer, the Company — an iconic American company — is in serious danger of failing and being liquidated,” Goldwater claims, the Daily Newsnotes. One of Goldwater’s many complaints about his business partner is how she handled negotiations for an Archie Broadway show.
“Granting final editorial approval over a Broadway play to an independent producer gives that producer the ability to alter, and severely impact, the identity of characters which have been developed by the Company over 70 years!” Goldwater said.
If that were a DC Comics executive, expect a "Ka-pow!" to accompany that remark.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment