Kodak waves a magic wand

The future is becoming the present. Technology will soon enable you to walk into a Kodak Express outlet with a faded old photo of granny, fiddle about with the Image Magic system and alter it as much as you like. No sending it off to be enlarged. No need to provide a negative. And you can do it all by yourself.

Landor Associates was asked to create a visual device to bring fame and fortune to the system, a hidden gem which is already nestling in some Kodak concessions around the world – without the new logo as yet.

The resulting graphics aim to work across all cultures. Potential customers will be attracted by the fact that they themselves can ‘make the magic,’ according to Richard Ford, executive creative director for Landor in Europe.

The design team explored various routes for the identity, ranging from the transformation of light and images through lenses, prisms and mirrors, to the power of imagination.

Landor moved away from expected themes such as optical transformation, preferring to focus on the imagination of the customer.

The symbol also incorporates a halo to ‘reinforce the idea of space and light, and to introduce a shape which will be further developed in 3D presentations of Image Magic equipment in the retail environment,’ Ford says.

Hide Matsunaga, the project’s design manager, expects the identity to raise Image Magic’s profile and ‘make it well known’. He adds enthusiastically that ‘everybody’s going to want to do this when they hear about it’.