BevBlog

Apparently, the gravitational pull of the sun, the Mona Lisa, the exponential growth of the universe, Earth’s magnetic field and Pepsi’s new logos all have something in common – at least if you believe the design agency that created it.

The Arnell Group’s design has been lampooned as resembling a fat man with a T-shirt riding up his belly, and a “plumber’s crack” as well, but a 27 page .pdf of the agency’s logic recently surfaced through social media site reddit and raised even stranger comparisons.

The document, dated Aug. 4, 2008, takes a historical look at the Pepsi logo and art in general. Art history seems like a stretch in the context of a corporate logo, but we’re with Arnell this far. The group follows up with an interesting examination of the Pepsi logo and the golden ratio. Still with them.

Then, BAM! The Pepsi logo has a magnetic field. Complete with a cross section of the earth showing its various layers, Arnell sets up a direct comparison between magnetic dynamics on the Earth and “smile” variations on the new Pepsi logo. No joke.

Then it gets involved in bendy logic even more: the report suggests that a proper Pepsi display should alter a shopper’s path like the sun’s gravitational field bends light. Let’s leave at the soda jerk the fact that shoppers move at a rate just a wee bit slower than light, (some 670 million miles per hour vs. the shopper’s typical 1 mile per hour pace) and focus on the fact that they’ve created a parallel by which – if you complete the logic – shoppers that get too close to the Pepsi display will be burned to atoms.

The crazy continues with a comparison between an exponentially expanding universe, and a cluster of differently-smiled Pepsi logos in an atom diagram-like arrangement.

And don’t even ask us what this is.

Maybe Arnell should have kept this under wraps. At this point, saying the logo was meant to invoke a jolly fat man may be a more palatable explanation than… than… whatever this is.

Companies connected to the beverage industry have been accused of bringing all kinds of ills on the U.S. populace – diabetes, heart attacks, New Coke – but flavor company Frutarom has now been accused of the dastardly deed of bringing sweetness to the Big Apple.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that Frutarom’s North Bergen, N.J.-based plant has been processing a particular kind of seed that emits a maple syrup-like aroma, and that scent has periodically drifted across the Hudson River to Manhattan.

Certainly, the industry could do worse to the world. And at least it’s better than the usual scent that comes from New Jersey. Then again, anything is better than the reek of medical waste and spray-on tan.