Branding triumphs or blunders can get the creative industries talking on a routine basis, but rarely do these cases cross over into society and culture – or at least not before the branding is visible on products and signage in the real world. But late in the year, we were reminded just how visceral the public response can be when it goes wrong.

But let’s start with where things went right. A steady stream of new identities came from stateside arts and cultural institutions, including the Guggenheim, New Museum, and Brooklyn Museum. Generally these all involved the well-trodden ground of balancing past and future, consistency and flexibility, but there was still space to surprise and delight, particularly Studio Blackburn’s identity for the Olympic Museum, which took the IOC’s extensive branding and transformed it into something of its own.

We also saw an embrace of expressive letterforms, particularly for smaller independent brands. Designers turned to unexpected places for inspiration, whether flaky food, brutalist architecture, or bacteria. Meanwhile larger brands tried to keep blandification at bay in their own way, and cursive type has emerged as a popular way of going about this, particularly where it doubles down on a brand’s heritage. Kleenex unveiled an extensive identity update that held onto its looping wordmark while Kellogg’s extended its founder’s handwritten signature into an entire typeface. Elsewhere, hosiery brand L’eggs revived and reworked Herb Lubalin’s curvaceous original wordmark.