Re-abstracting the Landscape

Corporate identity of financial institutions is undergoing a flux, to put it mildly.  Corporate identity in days of old was guided by the advertising industry and the field of logo design.  The news now has the upper hand, and, the abstraction of corporate identity runs past those little logos.  A sour pill has sullied the icons of the day.

Citigroup lost (actually, sold) its red umbrella sometime in 2007 and adopted the red arc which now reads as a red (dangerous) small bridge.  AIG has no little corporate abstraction, it stands with its initials.  If pronounced as a word -- "aig" - well, it rhymes with gag and brings to mind a kind of choking yelling noise.  Bank of America has an American flag as landscape, farmer fields on a distinctive curve as it viewed from above, perhaps a corporate jet.  RBS has a geometric tesselation that would make a fine wallpaper - arrows pointing inward to a blank circle...the emptyness of the inside does not read well these days either.

Redesign ideas?  An abstract metamorphosis of these logos will no doubt be coming soon. Colourwise, Missmc recommends out with the red and in with the green.  What else?  American references need to be avoided for a while.  Fonts?  They must get serious.  Times-Roman or something nostalgic.  Perhaps most importantly, all these institutions need to be renamed before they are re-logo'd.  I can see you all smirking with venomous ideas.  Stop that!

The State of Zero

Missmarketcrash is still thinking about "Zero as a number does not make sense".  After Obama's inaugural speech yesterday, the whole world now knows the banks are at less than zero, and zero would be a rather welcome state to be in at the moment if one were a bank.  The stock markets took notice as well, and did a fantastic swan dive.  But, let's digress for a moment and ponder "Zero"...

In politics, the term "Year Zero" is a zinger.  If for any reason, after a significant event, a country would like to completely shed its past, its cultures and traditions, and, start afresh, well, it might change its calendar and start afresh with year 1, creating a new base in time.  The French revolution tried such a manuever, as did Cambodia.  So, conceptually, it has the capacity to contain more than a bit of an ominous element to it.  

So, onto plain old Zero.  "How can something be nothing" is what I think my son was getting to, centuries after the ancient Greeks pondered the same thing.  Of course, Ancient Greeks believed the world was orderly and intelligible, where as our current civilization is perceiving things within the age of chaos theory.  Quite appropriate at the moment.  Parmenides of Elea was a precurser to Hamlet with the question "Is it, or is it not?".  We've seen a surge of bankers and financiers on the "to be or not to be" topic decide not-to-be in recent months.

So, the idea of zero sometimes contains an innate element relating to "control" within it.  Zero divides us from the negative, standing as a gatekeeper to missing things.  Zero is a neutral territory, but not quite a null unknown, though it stands close to a philosophical world of indetermination.   Much like the neutral response of one of my more learned friends, it almost seems to say "I see..." in response to something.  If you've ever authored a DVD, you know zero is what one would assign as a "country" to let the DVD be enjoyed worldwide with no restrictions.

Much more could be written as there is a world of "Zero" in concept out there to ponder.  But, in regard to The-Banking-Thing, we finally have been told we are far far far less than zero.  I'm expecting my ex-beloved Bank of America stock to reach the state of zero in the next coming weeks.  Nationalization looms, and, that is basically a return to a state of Zero.  And that brings us neatly round back to the question as to whether Zero as a number makes sense.

"Whatever is Necessary"

Missmarketcrash was stuck in traffic after the school run as she had taken the car rather than the bicycle due to torrential downpours this morning in London.  The radio was on and she drifted whilst listening to a conversation about the aesthetics of the mind and the idea of someone having a visual representation of the landscape of their thoughts.  Hyper-connectivity of ideas, and, the forms they might give perception to as a kind of architecture, with shape, textures, colors...

Quite obvious to Missmc who often thinks in technicolor, but, an idea hardly given pause by humans after the age of five.  The first born of Missmc can wax eloquent about the shape, sound, and texture of a letter or word, as can son number two.  This extends to music, architecture and most other things in the world for us, and, can weave some heady pictures when interrelations begin.  Oh dear.

Back at home Missmarketcrash watched Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling give a live Q&A on the Banking Thing and the next steps that the British Government is undertaking.  Mr. Darling's eyebrows are quite an astonishing feature of his face, and, Missmc now forever will be wedding the phrase "Whatever is Necessary" with a vision of these fine caterpillars.  

So what does the current plan look like to Missmc?  Well, it is much like Val's dream in the previous post.  Mystery boxes that are wrapped up in various ways, unopened.  They are offerings, like gifts.  They will be exchanged in kind, box for box, with everyone looking inside. Or thrown into the volcano.   They seem to be noisy presents uttering discordant sounds.  They smell like church incense.  There is more - an enormous backdrop of towering teetering things and stumbling things.  A few smart looking assemblies as well.  All somewhat personified.  Will anyone want these gifts?  Will they please us? We'll have to open them and see.