Processing the brand idea

It is understandable that even if they get this, most companies are not ready to go for it. The excitement and the anticipation for their own brand is just too overpowering. I often experience clients overwhelmed when they’re talking about their brand. They know what they want to do as a service and they have a pretty good idea of services or features they are going to involve with their offer. But if you ask them “what distinguishes your brand from others?”, you can hear the crickets chirping.

Hence the idea of a process: a workshop or just a good meeting, where we’re together processing the brand will result in finding out what this brand is really standing for. It’s the pathway to a good brand strategy.

Is there no shortcut?

This is the question I hear quite often, and again, I understand the motives for it. Yes, you can quicken it up, but you can not override the process. Even if you’re designing just the logo, you have to think about brand values, whether you want to or not.

If you try skipping this step, you are basically letting your gutt feeling decide what your brand is standing for. Which can be a good thing once you have processed the brand idea and you have a pretty good imagination of what it’s standing for. But if you haven’t done that, you are looking at pretty colors and fonts, nothing more.

The role of a logo

I believe the role of a logo is overrated. A logo has often symbolic meaning, more for the organization carrying it than for the people it is catering to. If you think about it, the functional role of a logo would be recognition. It should serve as a an emblem saying “this is from us”. Nothing more, but nothing less.

I often refer to brands like persons, because that’s how people are treating them. A logo is like a signature, it is not the signing person itself. A logo alone doesn’t represent the brand.

The effect of misunderstanding or simply overrating the role of a logo comes from our current state of design- and lifestyle culture. Logos are experienced to have a lot of power in a world of media omnipresence, but in reality, their true influence is just happening if they are standing for a really powerful brand. If Nike didn’t have its brand history, it would be a mundane logo.

I often experienced that in the process of creating their identity, as in becoming who they are and what they are standing for, companies and startups are struggling with their personality. They are immature and haven’t figured out yet who they really want to be. And you know what? That’s totally normal. If a brand is like a person, it needs to go through puberty, just like everybody else. But in this important process your brand is finding its identity. It will happen a lot that your identity is questioned, from the outside and from the inside out. A brand that went through a lot of trouble becomes a stronger brand. Look at Apple: It took a “Think different” campaign to strengthen the brand, to bring it back on track, the track that was its nature. What most people don’t see is how this campaign enforced the brand from the inside out.

Can’t we just do the logo?

Sure you can. You can do anything in design. The question is if you want to make a quick buck or if you want to create something you can put in your portfolio, and it doesn’t stand out for its glitter but for its stronger qualities.

An even better question is, do you want to do a service to the people using the brand’s products?

History proves, a logo doesn’t need great design to make a brand successful. If the service or product is great enough, it won’t matter what the logo looks like. Truth is, some things don’t need to be very well done to last for a while.

If you want a logo people remember, three qualities of a logo will always remain important:

1. It is recognizable
2. It is unique
3. Once you saw it you can draw it

I have to admit, the last one is a tough one these days. The logo explosion world-wide seems to be flattening any option to find a unique shape for your logo. None the less, the rules of good design won’t change. They’re founded on psychology and cognitive science.

Giving shape means excluding options

The process behind good branding excludes options before it results in finding the most valuable one. Good design leaves things out, as many as possible, before it adds something. A soap bubble in the air is round, because it’s the most efficient design for its formation.

It’s quite easy to explain “I chose blue, because it is a calm colour” for an example, or “I chose an asterisk, because it is used for annotations”.

It is by far harder to tell why you excluded an option than why you chose one.

The issue with quick-and-dirty design solutions is, the decisions have no source, so they are just explanations and make the branding process irrelevant: anything can be right, but nothing would be wrong.

Preferring quick and dirty

My friend’s client chose to go with a different consultancy. They came up with a logo, despite there was no branding process behind it, and at first glance it looked okay. It features a blue word in a washed out typeface, complimented with a red asterisk sign.

Why did they choose this font and not another one? Why is the asterisk red and typography in blue, why not the other way around? Why has asterisk a chewed look to it? The positioning at the end and not the beginning of the word, was there an idea behind that or not? The asterisk may work if you explain it, but what if you don’t?

In the description of what the logo should communicate, one line was standing out: “Typeface and colors communicate: fun, humor, leisure, accessible”.

I remembered that was what my friend’s client regarded as their brand values: “fun, humor, leisure, accessible”. What a unique set, don’t you think? Any typeface/color combination has the power to communicate this, if you just explain it. Lime green/rusty red, pink/egg yellow, orange/blue can all be fun colour combinations.

If you are explaining design choices, the question is not why you made a choice, the question is why you withdrew an option.

For every logo design one needs to answer questions, and it’s easier to do so before you start looking at fonts, colors and elements. Of course you can find your way gradually when it comes to drawing a logo or finding the right font. But at this point you should already know where you are heading. The worst you can do is start finding explanations when you are looking at a dozen of logos. You will end up comparing one logo with another, and your only measure for distinction will be “I like it” versus “I don’t like it”. That’s hardly a good process of logo selection.

Free of charge

My advice for all startups, ventures, companies and organizations looking for a logo is:

Forget the logo. Think about the brand first. It often doesn’t take more than a couple of hours and you don’t have to be afraid you won’t find anything. There’s always something that makes one brand unique. If your logo is more important to you than your product, something’s wrong with your brand. It may be you need more time for this than you thought, but that means you’re just not there yet. Don’t underestimate the power of experience. In the end, a shortcut now may cost you the momentum of a lasting impression for your brand audience.