City Council members are looking at four possible logos to project an image for the old tank town of Tracy. No water tower appeared in any of the designs but there were plenty of triangles. The slogan, “Think Inside the Triangle,” is featured in all four possibilities. The triangle refers to the Interstate freeway triangle that surrounds Tracy with Interstate 580 along the foothills west and south of town, Interstate 205 around the north edge, and Interstate 5 to the east.

The 1960s first saw the freeway triangle developed by the Tracy Chamber of Commerce for new entry signs on both ends of 11^th Street. The triangle as shaped by the freeways was used on the sign with the words, “Grow with Us.” While serving as chamber president, John Miller put the triangle and slogan together. He worked with graphic elements and put a lot of energy into getting the welcoming signs designed, constructed and erected.

In the 1950s, Tracy’s slogan was “Where Agriculture and Industry Meet.” This was a product of a contest sponsored by the chamber to create a slogan and the local paper even carried it in its flag at the top of the front page. Members of the City Council are now comparing the typefaces for the slogan used in the four contenders.

Silk Pearce, the design and branding consultancy, just completed a total brand overhaul for Birkett Long, one of the largest and most popular full service law firms in Essex. The law firm is a regular winner of industry awards for its commitment to clients. It is bringing a fresh new look to all of its communications to better reflect its approach in advising national and international businesses as well as individual clients.

The first wave of work includes new stationery, signage, advertising, a re-designed client newsletter, branded giveaways, and an updated website. Silk Pearce has created a fresh, more appealing and integrated visual style for all of Birkett Long’s external communications. They now have a contemporary look that will boost their reputation as a major practice, competing, in many respects, with London firms.

Birkett Long’s new logo features a pallet of vibrant corporate colors and a visual design that has been specifically chose to tie together the company’s track record and heritage with its progressive approach. The firm’s former dark green logo in a chiseled typeface has been replaced with a distinctive symbol in the shape of the letter B with the words Birkett Long printed vertically alongside. The B is in a modern, block-like typeface but is overprinted with a scrolled letter L that divides the symbol into six sections. The core logo never changes but has been created in a flexible format so that it can be re-arranged for a wide range of promotional materials.

Screen USA announced the promotion of Bill Brunone to Vice President of Targeted Inkjet Systems, a newly created position within the company. Brunone will develop and implement a sales strategy for specific inkjet product lines across all Screen USA’s sales regions.

Brunone will perform a significant role by aligning and driving a corporate inkjet sales strategy, starting with the roll-fed TruePress Jet520 color inkjet press and Screen’s new TruePress Jet 650UV, an ultraviolet-cured inkjet flatbed press designed for the printing of industrial parts. He draws on a vast experience in the graphic arts industry and competitive knowledge of front end systems and digital printing technologies in wide-format, transactional, one-to-one marketing and short-run devices.

Before joining Screen in 2006, Brunone worked at Imaje Ink Jet Printing Corp. as Vice President of Systems and Applications where he managed sales, service and application engineering of the company’s high-speed addressing printers. Prior to that, he spent six years at Xerox Corp., holding several management positions, including National Account Business Manager and Global Account Manager. Early on in his career, Brunone created strategic plans and led product development for startups of new business entities in the industrial printing field.

Canterbury Press recently laid off 42 employees and has become the latest victim in the continuing trend of consolidation and closures in the printing industry. The company was expected to close its doors for the good after a skeleton crew finished wrapping things up.

This closure is part of a continuing trend in the industry as printing companies have been closing up or merging with other printers at a rate of approximately 10% each year. In 1995, there were 62,000 printers in the United States and now there are about 38,000. Industry experts expect the number to continue declining until leveling out around 35,000. The print shops left standing will likely be larger organizations and not small, mom and pop operations.

In October 2006, Canterbury Press installed a new eight-color press which went online in January 2007. The new press boosted their capacity and led to a prediction of double-digit sales growth. The new press had the capacity to print four colors simultaneously on two sides at a speed of 12,000 to 15,000 sheets per hour. However, the continued development of the Internet and growing competition from overseas printers resulted in fewer printing jobs to go around.

Monotype Imaging Inc. is a leading global provider of text imaging solutions and has recently expanded its Monotype(R), Linotype(R), and ITC(R) typeface collections with more than 100 designs.

New to the Monotype Library is the Slate Condensed family by Rod MacDonald, which is elegant yet functional. The fonts add six space-saving designs to the original Slate family. Another new addition is the Givens Antiqua family drawn by George Ryan and named in honor of the company’s first president and chief executive officer and current chairman of the board. The Givens Antiqua design employs a generous x-height and open proportions to promote readability.

New to the Linotype Library is the Eurostile Next family designed by Akira Kobayashi, type director at Linotype. This font is an enhanced and expanded version of the widely used Eurostile typeface family. Also new is Calligrapher Gaynor Goffe which brings the Hamada typeface, a script design that captures the feeling of ink on paper. New to the ITC Library is ITC Mattia, a design from Giuseppe Errico and is a distinctive handwriting font with scrawled letterforms.