With all this 90+ degree weather we’ve been hav­ing, I’m dream­ing (more than usual) of island get­aways and sit­ting on the edge of the surf cool­ing off with a frosty bev­er­age in hand. Luckily, I’m slip­ping away for a long week­end to Puerto Rico in a few weeks. In doing a lit­tle research, I noticed that the Puerto Rico logo was rel­a­tively sim­ple com­pared to oth­ers I remem­bered. Since tourism is such an impor­tant indus­try for so many islands, I was curi­ous to see how other islands brand themselves.

Please note, I’m focus­ing on the con­cepts as a whole ver­sus the exe­cu­tion itself, and these are just my ini­tial reac­tions to each. I linked to all the web­sites too, to see how the brands sync up on the dig­i­tal side.

As you can see, the logo that I found on the Visit Puerto Rico site is rel­a­tively sim­ple. I was unable to find it in too many other places (hence the poor image qual­ity), but they use a cus­tom type­face through­out the rest of the brand.

The Hawaii logo is tex­tured, trop­i­cal and col­or­ful, which is a good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Hawaiian islands them­selves. However, I’m not sure I like the style that much; it feels a lit­tle early 90s to me.

The Bermuda shorts seem like a pretty obvi­ous choice for the mark on this logo, but it has an upscale but breezy feel, which is about right.

St. John is one of my absolute favorite places in the entire world. I’m not so sure about the mul­ti­col­ored man on stilts jug­gling stars (see web­site for ani­ma­tion), but the USVI logo cer­tainly has an island flair to it.

One part of me is totally charmed by the obvi­ously fun-loving Cayman Islands pirate tur­tle with a peg leg and sword. The other part of me des­per­ately wants some­one to redo this logo and bust “Sir Turtle” out of the 80s. (That’s his offi­cial name accord­ing to Kim, a long­time Cayman resident.)

I think the Bahamas logo and iden­tity sys­tem by Duffy Partners is prob­a­bly the most suc­cess­ful island iden­tity out there. Everywhere you go in the Bahamas, you see this logo rep­re­sented – brand loy­alty is def­i­nitely not an issue for them. The con­cept is really strong – it mim­ics the actual islands them­selves but isn’t so lit­eral that it just feels like a draw­ing of islands. The pat­terns and col­ors are used effec­tively through­out dif­fer­ent ele­ments such as the web­site, brochures and even in ani­ma­tion. Brand New fea­tured this iden­tity as “One of the Most Relevant Identities of the Decade” and I agree whole­heart­edly. Be sure to check out the TV com­mer­cial here.