Identity, Shmidentity

Remember dial-up internet? When you actually had to sit down and actively attempt to (yes, attempt, as in, you might NOT) connect to the internet...
Now, it's ubiquitous. Just sit down, click, and you're good to go.

Remember when it took 15 minutes to download a song? Programs like Napster and Kazaa were indispensable...
Now, it takes 15 minutes to download an album (and that's with an on-campus connection, if you upgrade your bandwidth, it can get pretty intense.) And nobody even knows what Kazaa is.

And while old AOL can still get you to Wikipedia, everybody wants something better! Now that I have cable internet, there is no 'getting' to Wikipedia, it's just always open on my computer.

If my computer is on, the internet is on.
If my browser is open, Wikipedia is open.
You shouldn't have to log-on.

What does any of this babble have to do with Corporate Identity?

Well, I really want to say "Remember when companies just had little logos to signify themselves?" And then have us all scoff and laugh at it like a 56k modem connection. And I think we're pretty close to being there.

I don't want to have to see a logo! I just want to see and then be able to KNOW that something (poster, product, stationery, any collateral, any THING) is from a certain entity. I think it is the acid-test for identity work.

I think this is what that chart Marty had in class the other day was all about. Where it steps up from identity into systems and communities. The Brooklyn Museum system was pretty exemplary of this. The Sak's 5th Ave post was pretty much in the neighborhood as well, not so much revolving around a definitive mark, as a particular aesthetic.

Or think of Apple. You don't even have to see "iWhatever", or any product. If it's on TV, you see the black screen with the white text, then just EXPECT to see the white apple pop up next. I suspect the music is a large part of their system as well, as in the iPhone commercials, but that can be part of an identity as well, and though we're the VISUAL communicators, if we find ourselves in the role of Creative Director, I think there is a chance of having a say in the aural portion of something.

I feel like Urban Outfitters has also achieved this sort of position. They barely even have a logo...they have this weird web of cross-media experience that IS Urban Outfitters. While it isn't necessarily my FAVORITE experience, it really works. Actually, maybe this is just me, but sometimes I see kids dressed up in their full hipster regalia, and to me they just become a walking, talking billboard for UO because they look like they stepped DIRECTLY out of the jaded, post-teen angst, half-ironic-half-not pages of an UO catalog. I can use 'urban outfitters' as an adjective.

Anyways, this post is getting kinda long. The point is, I don't want an identity, everybody has one of those. John Doe has an identity.
But Johnny Depp...he has a persona. That's got significance. that's so much more desirable!

I know it's just a semantics issue, and that a corporate identity that is DEVELOPED enough can attain that complexity, but the phrase 'corporate identity' makes me sad haha.

Okay I am done rambling.