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About six months ago, Adobe launched its CS3 line of design software, the first revisions of its products since the company acquired their primary competitor, Macromedia. Inevitably, new versions mean new branding. (I mean, how else is someone going to know it’s new, right?) So what did they do that is worth blogging about?

Imagine Adobe’s task for CS3. They already have dozens of products, all centered around design. They merge with the next biggest guy in the game, which adds even more products. Macromedia’s brands have strong identities and associations of their own, and, at the time of the merger, these are more unified than Adobe’s. How does Adobe successfully assimilate these new brands?

This raises a valid question, what were Adobe’s brands, up to this point? I bet you have a hard time remembering. I don’t think they did a good job of developing or managing them. It’s difficult to remember because it wasn’t clear what their brands were supposed to represent. Moreover, each product’s brand or logo was so different from one another. It was difficult to get a sense of what was “Adobe” about them.

When the switch to Creative Suite came, Adobe’s brands became somewhat more consistent, but it was still challenging to associate them with their products. Photoshop had an eye motif for a long time—then suddenly it became a feather or a quill or something. Illustrator’s branding was, what, Botticelli? And then for some reason, it became a flower. What do any of those symbols say about the product? Why do they keep changing so much? It appears Adobe did have a strategy, but I doubt people understood what they had in mind.

The first rule of branding is consistency; Adobe violated that rule. They showed a lack of consistency across their entire software line and within the individual brands themselves. Which brings me to the big reveal: Adobe’s new branding strategy.

As you can see, Adobe went from artistic renderings of nature to a reductionist wordmark; consistent from piece to piece. Their product line becomes a wheel—a color wheel. People are split across the noosphere on whether they like it, but I have to say that I approve.

It’s just so logical. It’s a Pantone chicklet and an abbreviation of the program name—about as minimal and informative as one can get in 16 x 16 pixels. To me, it says something about the utility of the programs for design. It says “paint” or perhaps “pixels”—elements of composition, but not compositions themselves. I get it now. Adobe literally means building blocks.

And it’s usable, too. Before, it was sometimes difficult for me to identify which Adobe program I was clicking in my taskbar, but these new icons aren’t confusing to me at all.

What they’ve done is created a system – an algorithm, one might say—for branding their products. It doesn’t get much more consistent than an algorithm. Yes, it’s not fancy or expressive, but it is understandable to people. Most of all, it is extensible. Apply it to anything and it becomes Adobe. That’s the genius.

And, folks, that is a brand.