Branding continues to evolve at a gallop, spurred this time by advancing technology and the rise of social media. "The internet has challenged the conventions of branding,” says Simon Browning, a brand specialist at Tokyo creative agency EAT. “We believe that smart companies will shift focus from logos and CI's to actively demonstrate what they are capable of and establish innovative policies that people can align with.” Today, logos aren’t just a symbol, static or dynamic, of the business, but a tool for, and the site of, the brand's community-building efforts.

Logos, to be sure, are inching towards interactivity and mutability: There's Bruce Mau’s frame logo for an art school, which is filled with student works like a gallery wall; the MIT Media Lab'smorphing logo; and Google’s web signage, which was recently made into a pluckable guitar. But two recent identities--for Istanbul’s newest cultural institution, SALT and the nascent, internationally mobile urban planning platform, the BMW Guggenheim lab--don't just change. The patrons of the brand change them.