Sabrina Dent: Freelance web designer, developer and internet marketer living in Cork, Ireland with one dog and a husband in no particular order.
Your Brand is Not a Sacred Cow
Here’s a really common scenario:
You get a new client and they have a great product but no brand. Let’s say they make, I dunno, cow print toys or clothing or something, so you futz around for a while and decide to call the company Cowlabunga. (Just roll with me here.) You get to work and develop strong visuals for print and web and awesome messaging for use everywhere. The client loves everything, and then – after having stared at this shit for 60 hours – they have a crisis of faith.
Normally, these crises are some combination of the following:
1. They get hung up on the pronunciation. Is it cow-la-bunga or cool-a-bunga? Will people get confused? Frankly, it doesn’t matter – you say potato, I say patatoe, but everybody is clear about what vegetable we’re discussing. Is Vimeo pronounced vi-may-oh or vi-me-oh? I have no idea and care even less; I can spell it, find it, and host my videos on it, so whatever – it works.
2. They get literal with the logo. People who are new at starting or leading companies are universally obsessed by their own logo. And the telecom guy always wants a phone, the real estate guy always wants a house and everyone in anything to do with discounts always wants to dick around with currency symbols.
Even in 1971, Nike’s designer knew you don’t do that. Your logo does not need to be literal to be clear. Nobody thinks McDonald’s sells arches, and nobody thinks Nike sells swooshes.
A logo need not – and often arguably should not – be representative of the specific product the company sells or the specific service it delivers. That is not the job of a logo. Thinking that the logo is what defines a brand or is even the most important part of the brand experience means that someone has no understanding of what branding is and probably should not be trusted to market a company.
3. They get hung up on the logo. Once the logo is agreed, clients tend to think it’s cast in stone. It shouldn’t be, because you absolutely can play with it. Google does. The BBC does. The New Museum of Contemporary Art does, too, rendering the words NEW and MUSEUM in a consistent type face and sticking whatever they want between them.
The static logo is dead, and thank God for that because if I have to fuck up one more website, flyer or poster because some sponsor’s logo MUST have a 30mm white surround, I’m going to start taking hostages. Your logo is a tool, not a monolith; it’s there to be used, not preserved as a sacred cow.
I would suggest, however, that you not call your company Cowlabunga. It sounds like a foot disease.
17 Jan 2010
| In: Crankypants + Marketing + Technology | Tags:brand identity, branding, logos
Darn had Cowlabunga all ready. Sounds like some bitter experience in the past few days.
Agree people are fascinated with the idea of a logo. Get customers first with your fab product then worry about the logo I say.
Are you sure Cowla… oj forget it..
18.01.2010, 4:15 pmThe static logo is dead, – that just plain ridiculous
“If I have to fuck up one more website, flyer or poster because some sponsor’s logo MUST have a 30mm white surround, I’m going to start taking hostages” – are you saying that you take issue with designing to the brief? All us designers have work to a brief right? Requirements are requirements right? If I am sponsoring an event –then the ‘event’ and all supporting collateral must treat my brand with the respect it deserves as laid out in the usage guidelines provided by the designers I commissioned to draft it
“Your logo is a tool, not a monolith; it’s there to be used, not preserved as a sacred cow” – No I disagree your logo is the sole identifier of your yet relatively unknown company as then backed up by the end-to-end quality of the products and/or services you provide. If you are a recognised established brand then you can afford to use your logo as a tool – your brand/logo is the sole differentiator between your coffee house and the coffee house down the street – I’m sure Google or Nike as a startup would be a little at odds with this – similarly the BBC or Channel 4 – or McDonalds
Any designer web, print or otherwise that doesn’t respect an organisations brand, or brand requirements shouldn’t really be working a job – You lead the Mortgage company client who wants a house through a process where the house is a starting point and then you push metaphor , type , composition – the Telecom client wants a phone because you they haven’t yet engaged in a process of developing their quite one-dimensional primitive ideas into something bigger bolder – - they are often incapable of visualising the possibilities yet – you are the creative, its YOUR job as a designer to ensure the phone and house and currency symbols are transformed to something deeper with meaning and substance…. and where the logo exists already literally deal with it – the best designers can work with any graphic and if its really that bad with millennium swooshes and the word 2000 in it then have the courage of your own convictions and recommend a rebranding exercise with tangible evidence to prove your argument…
By the way the Winged Goddess of Victory was called Nike and the ‘swoosh’ supposedly represents her wing – Carolyn Davidson (famous for little else) was trying to quite literally represent one of her wings – she knew fuck all about not needing to be literal – process = Nike – Winged Greek Goddess – Wing – Wing Shape – Swoosh – tada = wages. In Davidsons terms thankfully the company wasn’t called Phonecorp or Home Buyers
At least thank you today for inspiring me to start blogging – its wordpress.com right
10.02.2010, 2:19 pmIn three various companies I worked for, at various times we would undergo a massive re-branding process. We would bring in brand experts, designers and everyone said that the logo was sacrosanct and were really strict about us using it externally or internally without the guidelines. Not every logo starts off as a Nike or a McDonalds that comes with brand recognition and consistent brand imagery management. I remember our Italian team got creative with our logo and it was unrecognisable. They separate the words from their position and stuck the tagline in between the name of the company, they added Italian colours to it and nearly took it out to dinner and put a dress on it. Some people can get over creative that is why guidelines are good. When the logo eg BBC, Mc Donalds etc is at such an iconic stage – only then can you play around with it as then people know who you are and your logo means something. Just a small reflection from someone who saw how it worked from inside the company.
11.02.2010, 1:28 pm“Can we make the logo bigger? And put it in the middle of the page? Perhaps just have the logo, on it’s own, on a splash page with ‘click here to enter’ underneath?”
27.04.2010, 12:31 pm