Siegel calls on companies to use greater simplicity in their language. Visual language, including graphic design and branding, is as much a part of this language as verbal language. In fact, because images are experienced first they are arguably more important.

I’m currently working on a brochure that explains complex algorithms and formulas for a network-marketing compensation plan. We realized most people will not want to know all the nitty-gritty details, however a small minority will. By simplifying everything to visual metaphors and quick statements that are easy to understand, the result is a breathe of fresh air in a complex, over-hyped industry.

Our approach applied two lessons learned from the Internet.

1) A lot can be said in only 140 characters.
Messages about your company and its offerings must be made shorter and shorter or fewer and fewer people will listen.

2) Those who desire can simply click “learn more.”
Make the information accessible to those who really are interested but don’t lead with it. Ever. Make it available on your website somewhere but keep it indexible. No PDFs.

Steve Jobs once said, “It’s a very noisy world and we’re not going to get the chance for people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear about what we want them to know about us.”

Strong brands are easy to understand. Toms Shoes, Apple, Google, Nike are built around simple concepts; “One for One”, “Think Different”, “Don’t Be Evil”, “Just Do It”. Each stands out in their crowded industries. If you want people to pay attention to you, you need to be the breathe of fresh air in your industry.

Simplicity, though, is much easier said than done. Sometimes “simple”, when it has nothing of substance to say, is just boring and is easily dismissed. The trick is not to have simple ideas, rather complex ideas presented simply. Oliver Wendell Holmes is attributed to saying, “I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity; I would give my right arm for the simplicity on the far side of complexity”. All industries are complicated and if you can be the one you can present complex ideas at their most basic level, you can be powerful.

Branding was traditionally defined in two-dimensions, with logos, typography, symbols and advertising, but now it penetrates the way we perceive and design spaces. Although branded environments as a field of practice grew out of interior design in the 1990s, a strong case can be made that it began with the Walt Disney Company in the 1950s. When they opened Disneyland they created the prototype for a completely immersive experience in a constructed brand environment. Every ride, each store—everything supports the brand and brand stories associated with the company. The experience of the user is paramount in such an environment, rather than the style and aesthetics of the architecture. The objective is to use space as a physical embodiment of the brand, to create a “brand space”.

Wikipedia sums up the practice nicely: “The practice of designing branded environments is often a research effort led by an interior designer or an architect, and may include a multi-disciplinary team of strategic consultants, brand development experts, marketing and communication consultants, and graphic designers. Particularly effective for retail, museum and exhibit design, branded environments can support the success of many organizational types, from corporate to institutional and educational. The designed environment can reflect or express the attributes of a community or the competitive advantages of a company’s product or service.”

Some architectural firms promote branded environments as a distinct discipline and claim “increased productivity and a better understanding of firm mission, vision and values.” The application in corporate environments isn’t quite as obvious as it is to retail environments. And yet the new proposed campus for Apple, at one of the last public appearances of Steve Jobs, undeniably fits with the corporate culture and attributes of the design-centric company.

The suggestion I made to my client YESCO didn’t allege quite that much, but I remember shortly thereafter sitting at lunch inside a Jimmy John’s restaurant. I tweeted about it, saying, “Jimmy John’s is just a Subway with better branding.”  The fast food company does a good job of taking the brand experience beyond outdoor identification, and I mentioned that to my client. A freestanding Jimmy John’s location nearby has been painted entirely flat black. The design inside picks up on the slab-serif typography of their logo and projects a retro feel in the choice of materials and color. The black color is used inside on menu boards and branded packages. Vintage-looking metal signs project a little attitude with “Do’s and Don’t’s”. Sandblasted glass proclaims “Gourmet sandwiches since 1983” and neon signs promote “Free Smells.”

You can argue that phony-retro-looking signs or materials are not real and such is the case with any staged environment, whether by Disney or Jimmy, but the resulting emotion in the user is very real.

New cars offer surprisingly similar features and benefits. And further, we’ve come to expect near perfection in quality standards, no matter what we’re looking at. It’s like what Bernard Schmitt says in the book Experiential Marketing, “What they want are products, communications and marketing campaigns that dazzle their senses, touch their hearts and stimulate their minds.”

Being a designer, I obsess over details—cockpit controls, the musical interface, materials. The salesman looked at me a little weird when I told him I didn’t like the interior wood paneling, even it if was real. Design details like these, whether functional or not, are intended to provide a cue for an emotional response to the object.

Attention to detail is an integral part of up-market product design. But as Deyan Sudjic says in The Language of Things, “When cars perform equally well at either end of the price spectrum, the unintended consequence is that the key aspect in making the difference for a $40,000 car can be the $75 needed to make the driver’s iPod compatible with the car’s entertainment system. Amid all the work that has gone on in wind tunnels testing aerodynamic forms, on the fuel efficiency of the engine and on the lightening of the structure while retaining the car’s road-holding and crash-survival characteristics, the music system my seem little more that trivial. But it’s the details that create the sense of luxury.”

In the search to replace my 10 year-old car, I found myself engulfed in the customer experience, which of course was exactly what the marketers wanted to happen. I built customized cars online, I devoured the $6 brochures I had picked up from the dealer (without a test drive—at least at first), I reviewed the displays in the showroom, and I talked to others about their experiences.

It came down to two quite different car brands, but both owned by the same company: the Mini Cooper, and BMW. The Mini Cooper is a British icon of the ‘60s, with a form distinctive enough to successfully create a new category of object, which others eventually came to imitate. BMW bought the Mini Cooper brand and in 2001 and introduced a re-designed vehicle that has been marketed brilliantly, with unconventional, award-winning advertising and smart design.

The parent company, BMW, was one of the first carmakers to realize the importance of building a strong brand through different communication experiences. As Schmitt says, “They are not just selling a product—they are selling a whole complex of feelings and associations and experiences.” In 2001 and ’02 BMW introduced a series of short online films, produced by famous directors, which broke new ground in branded entertainment. This month the German automaker is pairing up with Paramount’s Tom Cruise movie Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol on TV, print, radio, Internet and dealership ads.

A friend of mine recently returned from Europe, and told me about his experience buying a new Beemer at BMW World. As explained by Alina Klingman in the book, Brandscapes, “BMW World was designed to be a holistic attraction where customers are immersed in an interactive brand experience and where they are encouraged to test-drive the latest models of BMW or pick up their newly purchased car. Effective both as a brand experience and as an icon, due to its unique architectural expression, BMW links its corporate identity to good design and high cultural values. BMW has had a long history of reflecting a certain vision and attitude through architecture and design.”

I told my modern8 associates that the BMW was the design history equivalent of the International or “Swiss Style” while the Mini, with its quirky looks and graphics was obviously Post-Modern. Although the Mini was undeniably fun to drive, in the end, I reverted to my International Style education and bought the BMW (one without wood paneling). Many would suggest that it is more appropriate for my age anyway, but I’d never let that stop me.