Behind TheStreet.com’s new logo

John Pavlus writes on the Fast Company design blog about financial news site TheStreet.com‘s redesigned logo.

Pavlus writes, “When you want a new logo that’s going to be an indisputable slam-dunk — as opposed to… well, you know — you go to Pentagram. Specifically, Pentagram partner and graphic-design titan Paula Scher. In a world where it’s de rigueur to sneer at solid branding design, Scher’s designs are the next best thing to bulletproof. So it’s only logical that the online financial journalism veterans at TheStreet approached Scher to help them update their long-stagnant logo.

“Scher’s new brand identity drops the no-longer-necessary ‘.com’ (this is 2011 — who isn’t a dot-com?) and the clichéd, Wall Street Journal-wannabe serif typeface. In their place: a muscular, no-nonsense font (a hand-drawn modification of Akzidenz Grotesk, if you’re wondering) with a triple-dash graphic mark, inspired by (what did you expect?) street markings, that boils the brand down to its Platonic essence.

“‘I just looked at a real street: those three dotted lines are the fast lane,’ Scher tells Co.Design. ‘It’s a perfect analogy to who they are.'”

Read more here.