Last week, the 2012 London Olympics committee introduced 12 posters that celebrate the Olympics and Paralympics. All were created by British artists.

The posters measure 60cm x 80cm (about 23.5 in x 31.5 in) and are printed on 200gsm FSC paper. You can buy them for 7 pounds ($11.20) each.

The University of San Francisco unveiled a new logo and tagline last week:

According to the press release, three changes are most noteworthy:

1. The school's name is now spelled out "to limit confusion with other universities and bring attention to the university's intimate interconnection with this stunningly beautiful, world-class city".

99designs describes itself as a "marketplace for crowdsourced graphic design" and says its customers are "seeking quality, affordable design services." The premise is that a company describes what it's looking for, selects values to communicate (playful or serious, for example), and challenges site members to submit designs that meet the criteria. The company can reject all submissions and set how much it will pay if it does choose a design.

Back in the late 1990s, Rafael and José Guilisasti began to convert a winery that produced wine in the conventional way into a winery that was completely organic and biodynamic. Today, Emiliana Vinewayds even has a mobile chicken coop that helps fertilize its fields.

Last December, the Big Ten Conference (a collection of athletic teams at eleven—yes, eleven—American academic institutions) unveiled a new logo:

Yesterday, the Big Ten Network followed suit and rebranded itself:

Milliken & Company started small, making woolen fabrics in Portland, Maine, under the name Deering Milliken. In the 146 years since then, the company has grown and changed significantly. According to Wikipedia, Milliken now produces automotive fabrics, interior furnishings, apparel fabrics, industrial products, and specialty chemicals.

So I can see why the company thought its logo, which reminds me of the "pure wool" mark, needed to change, too.

The packaging design agency jkr calls its work a "refresh" of the House of Swan cigarette filters and papers. The packaging used to look like this:

Post-redesign, it looks like this:

Supermodel/television personality Tyra Banks recently launched typeF, a beauty and fashion website. This is the typeF logo:

What do you think? Does the logo deserve an A, or will you give it a failing grade?

According to the Landor website, the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese team approached branding giant Landor in summer 2009 "with a challenge: to refresh and contemporize its look, help differentiate itself better from competitors, and visually streamline its portfolio of over 50 Macaroni & Cheese products.

How do you show off a great photo? Easy. Clear everything else off the page. John McWade from Before & After magazine shows you how in this video:

To remain financially viable, many magazines are planning on supplementing -- or already have supplemented -- print editions with digital editions and websites. Magazine brands are also extending into live events and books. Recognizing this, the Magazine Publishers of America recently changed its name to MPA - The Association of Magazine Media. The accompanying new logo was designed by Pentagram's Paula Scher:

The Deutsch Design Works agency redesigned all of the Hansen's soda cans. Here's one before and after:

Base, a multinational design firm, recently redesigned the logo for NASA as a creative exercise, not something NASA commissioned. To see several NASA logo variations and explorations, read the Base blog post "A Proposal To Go Where No NASA Logo Has Gone Before."

Here are six versions of AOL's new logo:

They're not six drafts of the logo -- they're all final versions, all different.

An AOL press release described the new logo as "uniquely dynamic" and a "simple, confident logotype, revealed by ever-changing images. It’s one consistent logo with countless ways to reveal."

Wow.

Online travel search engine Kayak.com redesigned its logo a few months ago.

The original mark:

The new logo:

Do you think the new logo is an improvement on the old one?

The video below shows explorations of the new mark: