Art inside the city branding. Artistic containerlogos for dynamic city brands

Abstract

In recent decades, city brands have chosen updated graphic image strategies to function in accordance with contemporary communication trends, adapted to new technologies. Several city logos have been redesigned to reflect artistic values and communicate a variety of content. To this end, many identities have been conceived by structuring the visual brand as a container of iconic elements capable of communicating those values in a flexible, dynamic and generative way. The purpose of this research is the qualitative study of the tools used to build these brands, with the intention of proposing a specific taxonomy of container-logos, a graphic trend that is booming in corporate visual identities for city brands. Based on the observation of the growing phenomenon of implementation of flexible visual identities in cultural spheres, it has been possible to collect extensive and detailed iconographic information related to the specific use of the logotype tool hybridized with artistic content. Flexible instruments capable of supporting intuition in research have been used. In an interpretive manner and with a specific content analysis, it has been possible to filter a sample of several brands founded on container logo design to outline a defined typology that would lead us to a taxonomy that was decisive. As a final result, we offer the study of 8 city brands selected within said sample, thus proposing a significant example of the variants in the formation of this typology of logos and their generativity when forming visual identity systems capable of resolving the graphic communication of urban centers.