The trend-a-day email newsletter DailyCandy has received even more buzz than usual lately, due to a recent Wall Street Journal report that it was up for sale-for more than $100 million. According to an article in next week’s New York magazine, DailyCandy’s purchase (by “a big-time buyer‚Äù) is pending.

But there are those who, having sampled a morsel or two of DailyCandy, say they just don’t get it-what’s the big deal? So how did DailyCandy amass over one million subscribers and leave all of the other “Hey, look, buy this/go here!‚Äù-style newsletters in the dust? One word: branding.

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While watching the commercials during the opening ceremonies of the Torino Olympics I had an entirely different experience than watching the Super Bowl commercials. Sure there were some repeats of the Super Bowl ads, but there was an element in the Olympic commercials that wasn’t as evident in the Super Bowl spots. Design. If the new Super Bowl ads were “punch line” oriented, I saw more evidence of design and more specifically “graphic” design during the Olympic breaks. It only makes sense. It is a different venue and an entirely different feel. Do the opening ceremonies lend themselves better to brand building than the “look at me” Super Bowl commercials? It would seem that the answer is yes. From the look of some of these commercials is seems that there is a resurgence of graphic elements in TV ads.

A few asides: Did Apple start the trend (of graphics centered spots)? Or was it Target? Microsoft seems to be trying to gain a little creative equity in some of their new commercials. I will believe that when I see it. One new commercial that I saw tonight that was very beautiful (looked like the Lemony Snicket’s film titles), but I don’t even remember the product. It was beautiful but had very little connection to the company. A missed opportunity.

What really caught my eye tonight was the new Coca-Cola Company commercial and accompanying logo and identity. Coca-Cola has become a true master of creating intoxicatingly beautiful commercials and products. How well does their new branding effort compare?

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One of the more entertaining discussions raised by my Lego camera was an argument on Digg. Apparently you are supposed to say “made out of Lego bricks” not “made out of Legos.” That sounds funny, but some people were genuinely upset about it, and a heated and hilarious argument of 40 comments ensued. So is this just Lego fan snobbery, or is this a legitimate offense? Does it hurt the Lego brand? What is Lego’s official stance on the matter, and what are they doing about it? You might be surprised by what I learned…

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Continuing the story Bennett touched on a few weeks back. Apple will be launching a slew of announcements, including their new Intel-based power macs, at the MacWorld Expo on January 10. Apparently, this seems like the perfect time for Intel to drop into a full-on logo redesign to take advantage of all the new publicity they’re going to get.

I’ve been looking online-and looking hard-because I just can’t believe this is a new logo (I confess that I don’t pay any attention to Intel). But everytime I go to Intel.com, they have their “sunken e” logo. The same one that they’ve always had. What we’re getting here is a solid basline for the text and an offical play off of their “Intel Inside” marker-swoosh, into a full-on mellenium-swoosh.

Don’t these people pay attention to anything? How long can company after company churn out the exact same logo? More so than any other millennium-swoosh logo, this one actually feels like it was designed 7 years ago. It wouldn’t be so bad, really, except that it is the perfect physical embodiment of every design clich√© from 1999. (no, 3D really hit big a year or two later)

This news is trickling out from an internet leak that focuses mainly on Intel’s new processor plan. Expect the official announcement in a week to 10 days.

Brand. Branding. Brand building. Brand refreshing. Brand positioning. Brand strategy. Rebranding.

UPS and AT&T (now at&t) have taught me one thing: Traditional logo design is dead. Identity design is being reborn as a new thing: Branding. It’s a piece of a larger whole, and it is no longer being driven by design.

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