Product placement has existed, at the very least, since Jules Verne published Around the World in Eighty Days in 1873 when trading companies would ask him to mention them in his novels. Since then it can be seen in nearly every movie, every television show, many popular songs, and even video games. Most people can recognize when they see or hear it in those contexts, but those aren't the only places product placement exists.
Before I jump into it, I feel I must preface with that it's clear to me why product placement in media is used. It's a kind of symbiotic relationship between the entertainment and advertising industries. Entertainment companies need money to produce their media, and advertisers need a way to to reach possible consumers that isn't talking their ears off through 30 second TV spots, infomercials, and print.
In order for companies to make money consumers need to know their products exist. In addition, consumers need to believe the product is worth their time and money. For that to happen advertising is a necessity. Consumers purchasing products and services, consuming, is what drives the world's economy. Part of that involves product placement. It is a necessity. I say these things because I need to make it as clear as possible that I am not anti-advertising. There's a lot of junk out there that no one needs, and no one should be fooled into thinking they do by advertising, but there are definitely products worth advertising and worth purchasing.
That said, there is a kind of product placement the majority of the public is not aware of that deserves some attention:
Ourselves.
When I'm sitting at a coffee shop with my MacBook Pro open, I'm advertising for Apple. The recognizable casing and the glowing Apple logo on the back of my screen make me real life, real time product placement. Not only am I the age group they love to target, but because I'm also the age group they use in their advertising I become an extension of their brand wherever I work with this laptop. This is advertising Apple doesn't have to pay for because it's a function that has been built into their product.
It extends well beyond electronics, and is particularly prevalent with clothing and vehicles. Is it really necessary for American Eagle, Gap, Nike, Underarmour, Abercrombie, Aeropostale, Tommy Hilfiger, etc, to display their logos anywhere but on the tag? Do cars need to have their manufacturer's logo on the grill and the model on the sides and rear? The answer to both those questions is no. They're located in those places so when people are wearing, driving, and using their products they are also advertising those same products.
I'm not saying we should start peeling the branding off our cars, picking off the prints on our shirts, or pulling off stitching. What I am saying is that in an age where so many people are complaining about being constantly bombarded by advertising we should be particularly aware of how we are advertising.
We are product placement.
You are product placement.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Crowdsourcing: What It Does to the Industry
Crowdsourcing is and has been a hot topic in the design industry over the last year or two, and while I've touched on it a little in "Creation of a Logo" and my comments on a couple blogs I feel it's worthy of its own post.
Wikipedia says crowdsourcing is "the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call." As I have no experience for how it affects other industries, the focus will be on design.
Why It's Bad For Companies:
Companies are turning to crowdsourcing for all kinds of design, not just logos. I've seen posts up for websites, letterhead, brochures, envelopes, posters, you name it and it's been crowdsourced. At first thought the idea of crowdsourcing seems like a great move for a company because there's this illusion that everyone who crowdsources gets an amazing result for cheap.
Not true, and here's why.
There are many phases in the design process that heavily depend on conversation with the client. In fact, nearly EVERY phase in the design process heavily depends on that conversation. The first stage is research, in which the designer looks into the company's background to get a feel for where their current designs are now and how they can evolve into something better. In addition, they talk with the client to get a feel for how the company runs. This step ensures the initial design directions "feel" like the company "feels." It makes sure the design directions already gel with the brand. Without this conversation (which crowdsourcing prevents), especially if the company doesn't have a website, the very first step in the design process is significantly gimped.
The next phase in the design process, which we call ideation, is where designers come up with a wide range of solutions (some of them ridiculous, others not), and then trim them down and present them to the client for input. These ideation solutions are the other part of the foundation of the design along with the initial research. This phase is completely removed by crowdsourcing because there's no way to present those ideas.
So if your end design is a building and a minimum of half the foundation is missing or weak, how great is the result going to be?
After research and ideation the designer comes up with rough sketches for the actual designs. Each of those sketches presents a different possible design direction based on the previous two steps, which ensures that at this point any of the possibilities will already work with the company's identity (though of course some will be better than others). This gives the company multiple avenues and another chance to give input to the designer before a final direction is chosen to pursue. Crowdsourcing removes this step as well.
Crowdsourcing skips those first three steps and goes straight to the fourth, which is typically reserved for revisions and polish to a direction that has already been seen and revised by the company multiple times. So now, instead of having one design that really matches with the company brand, they have anywhere from fifteen to a couple hundred designs that are essentially step two designs that have no basis on step one and the company is forced to choose from them (in order to protect designers, after a certain number of entries are made the company is under contractual obligation to pay for one).
Step five, final output, consists of the last small changes made to a design before it's complete. Because crowdsourcing does typically allow some conversation between designer and client step five is usually the same.
On top of all this, the majority of crowdsource using designers are students. I'm not saying students all do bad work, but I am saying most of the designs you see (and must choose from!) are not done by graphic design professionals. I cannot decide what that's worth to you.
So, as a company, which is better to end up with? A design that was created based on a brief and maybe a website, or a design that was created based on thorough research, conversation, constant input, multiple revisions, and has a refined output? Which do you think will say more about your company?
Why It's Bad For Designers:
This is a much simpler argument than why it's bad for companies, and it comes down to one main point. Designers need to be paid for the work they do.
When you crowdsource you are asking potentially hundreds of people to work for you for free in the hopes they'll get paid. Does that sound ethical? Every time you crowdsource multiple people aren't getting paid for the work they do for you. Would that happen in your offices?
Now to this a lot of companies say, "Well the designers are choosing to participate. They're choosing to take that risk." This is fair, but is extremely short sighted. Thousands, perhaps even millions of projects have already been done on crowdsourcing sites. How long before designers no longer have a choice if they want work? Crowdsourcing sites are growing every day.
In addition, even those designers who do win are typically significantly underpaid, but because most of them are students are completely unaware. If the norm for a logo award payment is $300 that seems like a lot to a student. The average fast logo design takes 22 hours of work, broken down that's about $14/hour. That doesn't seem terrible for a student until you remember it's an independent contract which means the student needs to pay social security tax, medicare tax, and self-employment tax out of those $14. Suddenly they're down to $8/hour even though at this point they already have the expertise to be earning more than that.
So now you've got three guaranteed outcomes from crowdsourcing:
1. A design that doesn't match your brand as well as if you'd gone with an agency or freelancer.
2. Designers who worked hard for you for absolutely nothing.
3. A designer who was probably underpaid.
Not worth it.
Wikipedia says crowdsourcing is "the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call." As I have no experience for how it affects other industries, the focus will be on design.
Why It's Bad For Companies:
Companies are turning to crowdsourcing for all kinds of design, not just logos. I've seen posts up for websites, letterhead, brochures, envelopes, posters, you name it and it's been crowdsourced. At first thought the idea of crowdsourcing seems like a great move for a company because there's this illusion that everyone who crowdsources gets an amazing result for cheap.
Not true, and here's why.
There are many phases in the design process that heavily depend on conversation with the client. In fact, nearly EVERY phase in the design process heavily depends on that conversation. The first stage is research, in which the designer looks into the company's background to get a feel for where their current designs are now and how they can evolve into something better. In addition, they talk with the client to get a feel for how the company runs. This step ensures the initial design directions "feel" like the company "feels." It makes sure the design directions already gel with the brand. Without this conversation (which crowdsourcing prevents), especially if the company doesn't have a website, the very first step in the design process is significantly gimped.
The next phase in the design process, which we call ideation, is where designers come up with a wide range of solutions (some of them ridiculous, others not), and then trim them down and present them to the client for input. These ideation solutions are the other part of the foundation of the design along with the initial research. This phase is completely removed by crowdsourcing because there's no way to present those ideas.
So if your end design is a building and a minimum of half the foundation is missing or weak, how great is the result going to be?
After research and ideation the designer comes up with rough sketches for the actual designs. Each of those sketches presents a different possible design direction based on the previous two steps, which ensures that at this point any of the possibilities will already work with the company's identity (though of course some will be better than others). This gives the company multiple avenues and another chance to give input to the designer before a final direction is chosen to pursue. Crowdsourcing removes this step as well.
Crowdsourcing skips those first three steps and goes straight to the fourth, which is typically reserved for revisions and polish to a direction that has already been seen and revised by the company multiple times. So now, instead of having one design that really matches with the company brand, they have anywhere from fifteen to a couple hundred designs that are essentially step two designs that have no basis on step one and the company is forced to choose from them (in order to protect designers, after a certain number of entries are made the company is under contractual obligation to pay for one).
Step five, final output, consists of the last small changes made to a design before it's complete. Because crowdsourcing does typically allow some conversation between designer and client step five is usually the same.
On top of all this, the majority of crowdsource using designers are students. I'm not saying students all do bad work, but I am saying most of the designs you see (and must choose from!) are not done by graphic design professionals. I cannot decide what that's worth to you.
So, as a company, which is better to end up with? A design that was created based on a brief and maybe a website, or a design that was created based on thorough research, conversation, constant input, multiple revisions, and has a refined output? Which do you think will say more about your company?
Why It's Bad For Designers:
This is a much simpler argument than why it's bad for companies, and it comes down to one main point. Designers need to be paid for the work they do.
When you crowdsource you are asking potentially hundreds of people to work for you for free in the hopes they'll get paid. Does that sound ethical? Every time you crowdsource multiple people aren't getting paid for the work they do for you. Would that happen in your offices?
Now to this a lot of companies say, "Well the designers are choosing to participate. They're choosing to take that risk." This is fair, but is extremely short sighted. Thousands, perhaps even millions of projects have already been done on crowdsourcing sites. How long before designers no longer have a choice if they want work? Crowdsourcing sites are growing every day.
In addition, even those designers who do win are typically significantly underpaid, but because most of them are students are completely unaware. If the norm for a logo award payment is $300 that seems like a lot to a student. The average fast logo design takes 22 hours of work, broken down that's about $14/hour. That doesn't seem terrible for a student until you remember it's an independent contract which means the student needs to pay social security tax, medicare tax, and self-employment tax out of those $14. Suddenly they're down to $8/hour even though at this point they already have the expertise to be earning more than that.
So now you've got three guaranteed outcomes from crowdsourcing:
1. A design that doesn't match your brand as well as if you'd gone with an agency or freelancer.
2. Designers who worked hard for you for absolutely nothing.
3. A designer who was probably underpaid.
Not worth it.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Creation of a Logo
The fiasco over at the Gap got me thinking about what should go into the creation of a good mark (logo). Now, there are many excellent ways to go about this and what I'm about to outline is by no means the only way, but the experience I have with mark creation has led me to the following methods.
Step One:
Know your company. Know its past, know its present, know its potential future. Know its employees, know its attitude, know the state of its current public relations. Know its motivations, know its products, know its customers. THAT is your brand. The logo comes after, and cannot be done correctly without that knowledge.
Step Two:
Find yourself a freelancer or design firm, either one is great, but avoid crowd sourcing at all costs. I feel like a lot of companies out there have had great experiences with crowd sourcing, but I am 95% positive they could have had better results working with a freelancer or firm. Why? With crowd sourcing, and this depends on the site, but most of the time your company will post a request along with details on what you think you might want your mark to look like. After that, you're flooded with results and give input on the ones you like until the deadline expires. Once that deadline expires, if there are enough entries you MUST choose one of the logos and pay for it whether you're 100% happy or not.
Sometimes this works out, sometimes it doesn't, but your result will never be as good as if you were working through the mark face to face with your designer. We're not just people specialized in using computer software, many of us have been trained to think in ways business people do not. We are constantly pulling in visual information and combining it all into a vast pool of knowledge for current trends, aesthetic combination, and experimentation. This allows us to make leaps towards ideas when having conversations with you that can't otherwise happen online. Face time with a designer also ensures they're getting in-depth research into your company asking what motivates you and your employees, why you believe in your product, how customers use your product, what the history behind your foundation is, etc. All these things combine to create a mark that really represents your company, and is near impossible to achieve in a crowd sourcing environment.
Did I mention crowd sourcing also means potentially hundreds of non-winning designers not getting paid for the work they put into your company? I digress.
Step Three:
Listen to your designer. Chances are if you picked them you looked through their portfolio and liked what you saw. If you're telling your designer you think Comic Sans would be a great choice to modify for your mark, or a gradient would really liven it up and (s)he says that's a bad idea, listen. They are the expert you hired to get the job done, and the expertise becomes null and void if you don't use their advice.
This is not to say you shouldn't make suggestions! On the contrary, it is the designer's job to listen to everything you have to say and make your suggestions a reality in a way that is pleasing to the eye. Understand that NO DESIGNER wants to create a mark that looks like a pile of elephant turd, because each project they have has the potential to be their next great portfolio piece, which gets them more work. That makes them just as invested in the job as you are.
Step Four:
Ask for iterations. Make sure your designer is giving you multiple options for your mark. There is never one single almighty solution for any design problem, and every designer will solve it differently. A competent designer should be able to come up with multiple directions for you based on your needs and their research. More iterations means you'll be closer to a mark that best represents your company, rarely is the best sketch the first one.
Step Five:
Make sure you remain in regular contact with your designer. If they're not contacting you each time they finish a step in the design process (and they should) make sure you talk to them. Also make sure you are quick to respond to any correspondence they may have with you, whether an email, phone call, or a physically mailed proof. If a project doesn't have regular contact from the client it becomes easier for the designer to put it on the back-burner and do work for the clients who are responsive.
Step Six:
Test it. Once you have a mark you think is going in the right direction ask for opinions. Make sure the public can read and understand it by posting it on forums and asking people who have no idea who you are or what you do.
Closing Remarks:
And that's about it. After those steps your designer will take the tested version (if it was successful), clean it up, and give it to you in a bunch of different useful formats. Make sure you love it and you're not settling, no matter how long and arduous the process may seem at times. It's not worth your money if you'll need to change it soon. Some general design pointers for you in no particular order of importance:
- Avoid gradients. Not only do they look cheap, they are difficult to achieve with exact reproduction in prints.
- Alter your typeface (font) if one is used. Ask your designer to do a little something special with it so it's not the default.
- Keep it simple. A mark needs to be instantly recognizable.
- Avoid fads. Believe it or not, they exist in design too. You don't want to end up with a mark that needs to be changed 3 years from now. The goal should be timelessness.
- Keep it small, keep it compact. If for some reason it needs to show your entire business name that's twenty characters long, try and come up with a second design that compacts it (remember, Target's full name is Target Corporation which you NEVER see in its entirety).
- Never say "I want it to look like 'company X's logo." First, you could be treading on copyright infringement. Second, you want to be original.
Step One:
Know your company. Know its past, know its present, know its potential future. Know its employees, know its attitude, know the state of its current public relations. Know its motivations, know its products, know its customers. THAT is your brand. The logo comes after, and cannot be done correctly without that knowledge.
Step Two:
Find yourself a freelancer or design firm, either one is great, but avoid crowd sourcing at all costs. I feel like a lot of companies out there have had great experiences with crowd sourcing, but I am 95% positive they could have had better results working with a freelancer or firm. Why? With crowd sourcing, and this depends on the site, but most of the time your company will post a request along with details on what you think you might want your mark to look like. After that, you're flooded with results and give input on the ones you like until the deadline expires. Once that deadline expires, if there are enough entries you MUST choose one of the logos and pay for it whether you're 100% happy or not.
Sometimes this works out, sometimes it doesn't, but your result will never be as good as if you were working through the mark face to face with your designer. We're not just people specialized in using computer software, many of us have been trained to think in ways business people do not. We are constantly pulling in visual information and combining it all into a vast pool of knowledge for current trends, aesthetic combination, and experimentation. This allows us to make leaps towards ideas when having conversations with you that can't otherwise happen online. Face time with a designer also ensures they're getting in-depth research into your company asking what motivates you and your employees, why you believe in your product, how customers use your product, what the history behind your foundation is, etc. All these things combine to create a mark that really represents your company, and is near impossible to achieve in a crowd sourcing environment.
Did I mention crowd sourcing also means potentially hundreds of non-winning designers not getting paid for the work they put into your company? I digress.
Step Three:
Listen to your designer. Chances are if you picked them you looked through their portfolio and liked what you saw. If you're telling your designer you think Comic Sans would be a great choice to modify for your mark, or a gradient would really liven it up and (s)he says that's a bad idea, listen. They are the expert you hired to get the job done, and the expertise becomes null and void if you don't use their advice.
This is not to say you shouldn't make suggestions! On the contrary, it is the designer's job to listen to everything you have to say and make your suggestions a reality in a way that is pleasing to the eye. Understand that NO DESIGNER wants to create a mark that looks like a pile of elephant turd, because each project they have has the potential to be their next great portfolio piece, which gets them more work. That makes them just as invested in the job as you are.
Step Four:
Ask for iterations. Make sure your designer is giving you multiple options for your mark. There is never one single almighty solution for any design problem, and every designer will solve it differently. A competent designer should be able to come up with multiple directions for you based on your needs and their research. More iterations means you'll be closer to a mark that best represents your company, rarely is the best sketch the first one.
Step Five:
Make sure you remain in regular contact with your designer. If they're not contacting you each time they finish a step in the design process (and they should) make sure you talk to them. Also make sure you are quick to respond to any correspondence they may have with you, whether an email, phone call, or a physically mailed proof. If a project doesn't have regular contact from the client it becomes easier for the designer to put it on the back-burner and do work for the clients who are responsive.
Step Six:
Test it. Once you have a mark you think is going in the right direction ask for opinions. Make sure the public can read and understand it by posting it on forums and asking people who have no idea who you are or what you do.
Closing Remarks:
And that's about it. After those steps your designer will take the tested version (if it was successful), clean it up, and give it to you in a bunch of different useful formats. Make sure you love it and you're not settling, no matter how long and arduous the process may seem at times. It's not worth your money if you'll need to change it soon. Some general design pointers for you in no particular order of importance:
- Avoid gradients. Not only do they look cheap, they are difficult to achieve with exact reproduction in prints.
- Alter your typeface (font) if one is used. Ask your designer to do a little something special with it so it's not the default.
- Keep it simple. A mark needs to be instantly recognizable.
- Avoid fads. Believe it or not, they exist in design too. You don't want to end up with a mark that needs to be changed 3 years from now. The goal should be timelessness.
- Keep it small, keep it compact. If for some reason it needs to show your entire business name that's twenty characters long, try and come up with a second design that compacts it (remember, Target's full name is Target Corporation which you NEVER see in its entirety).
- Never say "I want it to look like 'company X's logo." First, you could be treading on copyright infringement. Second, you want to be original.
Monday, October 11, 2010
The Gap
As many of you are aware, The GAP has decided they need to refresh their brand. One of the most common changes you can make when doing a brand refresh is to change your logo. The thing is, this takes a lot more time, effort, public testing, and care than I think a lot of people realize. It is clear The Gap didn't do as much as they should have.
Here's the side-by-side. A beautiful, old, established mark on the left and a shiny, new, terrible mark on the right. I feel like a lot of people have been bashing this change without using anything but insults, I'm going to do more analysis on it than that, but first we need to talk about why this happened.
There are many major names, not just clothing, that have been going through an identity crisis over the past couple years with a need to re-invent themselves (Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Walmart, and MySpace to name a few). Even our own 3D Conferencing LLC changed to 3D Virtual Events with two logo changes, though we're quite settled now. This is creating an environment where those in charge start to panic as all their competition begins to change, and they feel the need to change as well if they're going to keep up.
The evolution of business is a good thing. It's what fuels innovation in new business strategies, products, and of course, branding. The problem is I feel like a lot of people are looking to a logo to do the heavy lifting, and it's just not going to get the job done by itself. Business doesn't just magically appear because you change a logo. A company doesn't magically make drastic changes to the way they operate because they change a logo. Those are what are really required to "re-invent" a brand. It needs to be an internal change first, only then can a logo be created that reflects on what the new company is.
On to The Gap's new logo. I've been watching over the past week as the story unfolds, trying to give them a chance to explain why they made the design decisions they made. This is the best answer I've read so far from their corporate offices, and it's not a very good one:
Her answer is because the design is more contemporary and current. I feel it's a safe assumption to say Gap thinks it's contemporary because it uses Helvetica. Now, I'm a Helvetica lover, and I love using it. Helvetica Neue in particular and all its wonderful weights make me very happy. It's clean, polished, neutral, and very well established. That said, at this point I don't think we can call anything contemporary anymore just because it uses Helvetica. Helvetica was designed in 1957, over half a century ago. It is very modern. It is NOT contemporary, and it is certainly NOT current.
The second part of the statement is what really gets me though. "It honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward." I could not disagree more. I think it takes The Gap's heritage, acknowledges it, then drags it screaming through the dirt. First of all, it's a painful miniature nod way off in the right hand side behind the "p". It really looks more like an afterthought than something that was carefully considered and designed, and doesn't appear to be actually integrated into the design at all. Second, and this is the worst part for me, I guarantee you the conversation with the designer went something like this:
Designer: "Here's the next iteration of your mark. We've added a solid blue square to it as a slight nod to the old logo.
Gap: "It needs something more. I don't feel like we've pushed this as far as we can. How about a gradient?"
And that's all the thought that went into it. I just don't see how adding a gradient acknowledges "the blue box while still taking it forward." A gradient is "taking it forward"? I think "gradient" and the first thing that comes to mind is discovering it in Adobe Illustrator CS2 in my high school design course and thinking how cool it was. A plain, standard gradient is a gimmick used when people don't think enough has been done with the design, and it's a bad gimmick at that.
Fortunately, The Gap has taken all the harsh criticism to heart. Unfortunately, they're turning to crowd sourcing to fix it. I'm sure they'll get a great result from it, it's just a shame they have to turn to a method that will waste the time (and therefore money) of hundreds of designers whose work doesn't get picked. They should have gotten better effort from whoever they went to for the design in the first place.
This designer/brand director thought their logo was great to begin with.
UPDATE
The Gap has decided to simply revert to their old logo and forgo crowd sourcing. Great to see them listening to not only their customers, but graphic designers as well.
Here's the side-by-side. A beautiful, old, established mark on the left and a shiny, new, terrible mark on the right. I feel like a lot of people have been bashing this change without using anything but insults, I'm going to do more analysis on it than that, but first we need to talk about why this happened.
There are many major names, not just clothing, that have been going through an identity crisis over the past couple years with a need to re-invent themselves (Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Walmart, and MySpace to name a few). Even our own 3D Conferencing LLC changed to 3D Virtual Events with two logo changes, though we're quite settled now. This is creating an environment where those in charge start to panic as all their competition begins to change, and they feel the need to change as well if they're going to keep up.
The evolution of business is a good thing. It's what fuels innovation in new business strategies, products, and of course, branding. The problem is I feel like a lot of people are looking to a logo to do the heavy lifting, and it's just not going to get the job done by itself. Business doesn't just magically appear because you change a logo. A company doesn't magically make drastic changes to the way they operate because they change a logo. Those are what are really required to "re-invent" a brand. It needs to be an internal change first, only then can a logo be created that reflects on what the new company is.
On to The Gap's new logo. I've been watching over the past week as the story unfolds, trying to give them a chance to explain why they made the design decisions they made. This is the best answer I've read so far from their corporate offices, and it's not a very good one:
I've been president at Gap brand for the past three years, and I've been living and breathing the changes we've been making on our journey to make Gap more relevant to our customers...We chose this design as it's more contemporary and current. It honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward.
~ Marka Hansen, President, Gap North America
Her answer is because the design is more contemporary and current. I feel it's a safe assumption to say Gap thinks it's contemporary because it uses Helvetica. Now, I'm a Helvetica lover, and I love using it. Helvetica Neue in particular and all its wonderful weights make me very happy. It's clean, polished, neutral, and very well established. That said, at this point I don't think we can call anything contemporary anymore just because it uses Helvetica. Helvetica was designed in 1957, over half a century ago. It is very modern. It is NOT contemporary, and it is certainly NOT current.
The second part of the statement is what really gets me though. "It honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward." I could not disagree more. I think it takes The Gap's heritage, acknowledges it, then drags it screaming through the dirt. First of all, it's a painful miniature nod way off in the right hand side behind the "p". It really looks more like an afterthought than something that was carefully considered and designed, and doesn't appear to be actually integrated into the design at all. Second, and this is the worst part for me, I guarantee you the conversation with the designer went something like this:
Designer: "Here's the next iteration of your mark. We've added a solid blue square to it as a slight nod to the old logo.
Gap: "It needs something more. I don't feel like we've pushed this as far as we can. How about a gradient?"
And that's all the thought that went into it. I just don't see how adding a gradient acknowledges "the blue box while still taking it forward." A gradient is "taking it forward"? I think "gradient" and the first thing that comes to mind is discovering it in Adobe Illustrator CS2 in my high school design course and thinking how cool it was. A plain, standard gradient is a gimmick used when people don't think enough has been done with the design, and it's a bad gimmick at that.
Fortunately, The Gap has taken all the harsh criticism to heart. Unfortunately, they're turning to crowd sourcing to fix it. I'm sure they'll get a great result from it, it's just a shame they have to turn to a method that will waste the time (and therefore money) of hundreds of designers whose work doesn't get picked. They should have gotten better effort from whoever they went to for the design in the first place.
This designer/brand director thought their logo was great to begin with.
UPDATE
The Gap has decided to simply revert to their old logo and forgo crowd sourcing. Great to see them listening to not only their customers, but graphic designers as well.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
An Introduction to Brand: Part Two
In Part One we covered the need for total business transparency in order to create a brand customers could trust. In Part Two we'll cover how to create the rest of the brand personality.
As stated in Part One, the goal of the brand is now to create, essentially, a person (not a company) that people interact with.
The first part of this is nothing new. You decide the overall attitude your company has when putting out advertisements, when creating your slogan, and when you answer your phone calls. In this step you're taking care of how you interact with customers on a more general, sweeping scale. You're taking care of the messages most people receive when dealing with your company when one-on-one interaction isn't happening.
The second part is more personal, and deals with situations where a customer normally doesn't feel like they're interacting with a human being. It deals with those moments where they feel like they're getting an automated, bland, "corporate" response. The solution is to avoid those responses. It's a lot of work, but in every situation where a customer contacts you, personalize it. And when I say personalize I don't mean swap out a name and put a jpg of your signature on it. I mean write the response from scratch every time. The fact is people are constantly getting very personal reactions from many people around them online. That makes it all the more jarring when they get a response that is clearly automated. Because of all the companies that are using automated responses, it's as refreshing as when you call a tech support line and get a person who knows what they're talking about instead of a machine that asks you to press numbers to solve a problem. It will make the customer's experience with you significantly more memorable.
The third part focuses on the attitude all those personal interactions take on. While you want them to be personal, they also need to be consistent. It's similar to when you're emailing or speaking with a friend. When giving them any kind of information there's a certain expectation for how they're going to respond and anything else catches you off guard. You want the responses to have a consistent tone to them. This links back to the first part of this article, because it's assumed that all the large scale messages customers receive have a specific attitude and tone too. If your brand image is casual, make all your personal interactions casual. If it's strict and business professional, avoid contractions and colloquialisms. If your advertisements use humor, let that shine through in your interactions as well.
The fourth and most important part of the new brand is community interaction, especially if you're a startup. I'm not just talking about using social media either, I'm talking about having meetings with professionals from your industry just to talk about how things are going for one another. I'm talking about making contacts, making friends, and overall letting people (not just prospective customers!) know you exist. Some of the biggest brands out there do well not necessarily because they're the best, highest quality product but because everyone knows who they are. Again, it's important to keep that same cultivated brand image in mind when you're interacting with the community because you become a physical representation of all things your brand is supposed to be.
The bottom line of this brand evolution is that you're creating a consistent entity your customers see and deal with 100% of the time they're interacting with your company. On top of creating that image, the best thing to do is make sure people see it. The time has long passed, let's change the branding landscape.
As stated in Part One, the goal of the brand is now to create, essentially, a person (not a company) that people interact with.
The first part of this is nothing new. You decide the overall attitude your company has when putting out advertisements, when creating your slogan, and when you answer your phone calls. In this step you're taking care of how you interact with customers on a more general, sweeping scale. You're taking care of the messages most people receive when dealing with your company when one-on-one interaction isn't happening.
The second part is more personal, and deals with situations where a customer normally doesn't feel like they're interacting with a human being. It deals with those moments where they feel like they're getting an automated, bland, "corporate" response. The solution is to avoid those responses. It's a lot of work, but in every situation where a customer contacts you, personalize it. And when I say personalize I don't mean swap out a name and put a jpg of your signature on it. I mean write the response from scratch every time. The fact is people are constantly getting very personal reactions from many people around them online. That makes it all the more jarring when they get a response that is clearly automated. Because of all the companies that are using automated responses, it's as refreshing as when you call a tech support line and get a person who knows what they're talking about instead of a machine that asks you to press numbers to solve a problem. It will make the customer's experience with you significantly more memorable.
The third part focuses on the attitude all those personal interactions take on. While you want them to be personal, they also need to be consistent. It's similar to when you're emailing or speaking with a friend. When giving them any kind of information there's a certain expectation for how they're going to respond and anything else catches you off guard. You want the responses to have a consistent tone to them. This links back to the first part of this article, because it's assumed that all the large scale messages customers receive have a specific attitude and tone too. If your brand image is casual, make all your personal interactions casual. If it's strict and business professional, avoid contractions and colloquialisms. If your advertisements use humor, let that shine through in your interactions as well.
The fourth and most important part of the new brand is community interaction, especially if you're a startup. I'm not just talking about using social media either, I'm talking about having meetings with professionals from your industry just to talk about how things are going for one another. I'm talking about making contacts, making friends, and overall letting people (not just prospective customers!) know you exist. Some of the biggest brands out there do well not necessarily because they're the best, highest quality product but because everyone knows who they are. Again, it's important to keep that same cultivated brand image in mind when you're interacting with the community because you become a physical representation of all things your brand is supposed to be.
The bottom line of this brand evolution is that you're creating a consistent entity your customers see and deal with 100% of the time they're interacting with your company. On top of creating that image, the best thing to do is make sure people see it. The time has long passed, let's change the branding landscape.
Friday, October 1, 2010
An Introduction to Brand: Part One
Today, brand is no longer about a logo and print collateral. Brand is a feeling a client gets when they interact with you. Brand is the personality of the company as an entity in itself, independent from its employees.
If your company were a person, a living, breathing being, what would it be? A woman, a man, asexual? Active and happy, relaxed and calm, intense and professional? The goal of the brand is not to create a company people like, not really. The goal is to create a person people like clothed in your company’s aesthetic.
Over the past decade a growing trend has moved companies towards attempting a "grassroots" attitude. The purpose of this attitude is to reconnect with prospective customers and make them feel like the company is one of them with the customers' best interests in mind.
The biggest problem with this is that most of the time it's a lie. Those companies are corporations who care more about their bottom line than anything else, and their new-found roots are simply another method to garner business. People are becoming wise to this tactic, and not only was it immoral in the first place but those companies are going to be in trouble when customers realize they've been lied to.
Now, this is not to say that having the bottom line as priority one is not a good thing. It's a business model that works for some companies, I'm not here to judge that. The problem is trying to sound like a company you're not. People are going to find out, with how much information is available about your company online this is inevitable.
The grassroots attempt is one of the many, many attempts companies have used since the creation of radio and television to make customers like them more. "Product X is fun for the whole family!" "Product Y is better than all its competitors!" "Product Z will make all your friends envious!" etc. The list is a long one, and they're fine as long as they're true.
The time has long passed for total transparency. With over 1/6 of the planet using some form of social media, there's no point in being anything but transparent. Honesty isn't just the best policy, it's the only policy. If your company slips up once with the wrong customer and whatever you've done contradicts your entire brand's philosophy, suddenly you're in the middle of a PR disaster when the twitter #fail hash is paired with your company name hundreds of times and everyone's Facebook has a link share to a news story.
The vast majority of people like honesty. If they feel like they can trust you as a company, they'll be more prone to trust your products. If your product has a defect, fess up to it as soon as its discovered and vow to make it right instead of trying to keep it quiet. If there's a bad customer experience, apologize for it. If you're a small company, don't act like a big one or vice-versa (someones going to find out either way). As long as you're honest most people will continue to trust your company even when you do screw up because most people understand that no one is immune to mistakes.
The easiest way to gain trust aside from making quality products and being transparent about your business is to create a business personality customers like. We'll go over that in part two.
If your company were a person, a living, breathing being, what would it be? A woman, a man, asexual? Active and happy, relaxed and calm, intense and professional? The goal of the brand is not to create a company people like, not really. The goal is to create a person people like clothed in your company’s aesthetic.
Over the past decade a growing trend has moved companies towards attempting a "grassroots" attitude. The purpose of this attitude is to reconnect with prospective customers and make them feel like the company is one of them with the customers' best interests in mind.
The biggest problem with this is that most of the time it's a lie. Those companies are corporations who care more about their bottom line than anything else, and their new-found roots are simply another method to garner business. People are becoming wise to this tactic, and not only was it immoral in the first place but those companies are going to be in trouble when customers realize they've been lied to.
Now, this is not to say that having the bottom line as priority one is not a good thing. It's a business model that works for some companies, I'm not here to judge that. The problem is trying to sound like a company you're not. People are going to find out, with how much information is available about your company online this is inevitable.
The grassroots attempt is one of the many, many attempts companies have used since the creation of radio and television to make customers like them more. "Product X is fun for the whole family!" "Product Y is better than all its competitors!" "Product Z will make all your friends envious!" etc. The list is a long one, and they're fine as long as they're true.
The time has long passed for total transparency. With over 1/6 of the planet using some form of social media, there's no point in being anything but transparent. Honesty isn't just the best policy, it's the only policy. If your company slips up once with the wrong customer and whatever you've done contradicts your entire brand's philosophy, suddenly you're in the middle of a PR disaster when the twitter #fail hash is paired with your company name hundreds of times and everyone's Facebook has a link share to a news story.
The vast majority of people like honesty. If they feel like they can trust you as a company, they'll be more prone to trust your products. If your product has a defect, fess up to it as soon as its discovered and vow to make it right instead of trying to keep it quiet. If there's a bad customer experience, apologize for it. If you're a small company, don't act like a big one or vice-versa (someones going to find out either way). As long as you're honest most people will continue to trust your company even when you do screw up because most people understand that no one is immune to mistakes.
The easiest way to gain trust aside from making quality products and being transparent about your business is to create a business personality customers like. We'll go over that in part two.
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