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Employees of Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) can now check their
e-mail, find contacts, and print pay stubs at the click of a button
thanks to the redesign of YESCO-Net, the company’s internal Web site. We
wanted to create a look that resembled the corporate website, but served
a more functional purpose for all employees. This is just the latest of
many projects, including a kit cover for the Outdoor Division and
Electronics product sheets, that have undergone radical redesign to help
create a unified look across all YESCO branded materials.
Randall Smith is teaching the Junior class in Graphic Design at the
University of Utah this semester. In consultation with tenured faculty,
Randall developed a comprehensive course based around corporate design
problem solving in an integrated series of related projects. The
assignments are based on typical real-world problems encountered at
modern8.
New artists open at the modern8
Gallery. on September 21: the mixed media collages of Anthony Siciliano and the
typographic-pictographic digital prints of Mark Biddle. / August was vacation month at
modern8 with Russ in London, Bryan at Flaming Gorge, Randall and Tara both in upstate
New York and Maralee still off somewhere. / Until the TRAX construction project is
completed, we suggest parking on 600 West, the nearest cross street, or alternately,
in the newly constructed parking lot behind our office, also accessed from 600 West.
With a phone call to us, you can even come in the back door as well. /
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There’s probably no line more common—or more disliked by designers and
art directors, than “Make the logo bigger.” It usually comes after the
client has seen the first mock-up, while there’s still a chance to edit
things.
Designers think that whatever attracts the viewer is most important and
that almost any size logo will work if you first have their attention.
The client tends to think that there’s little point in marketing or
advertising anything if the viewer doesn’t know who it’s for.
Paula Scher, a highly respected partner at Pentagram, and designer of
the Citibank logo, titled her monograph Make It Bigger. On the first
page of the book, she describes the first ad she designed at her first
job. She submitted the ad for approval and was told to make the headline
and the product name bigger. On the second submission she was told to
make them bigger still. On the third submission the headline and product
name were huge. The ad was returned with a memo to also make the logo
bigger. The fourth submission came back with the notation that there was
not sufficient room for the body copy describing the product.
The instinctive urge of the client to make things bigger is based on
common sense. Bigger brings more attention and presumably more
commercial success. Designers are concerned with the hierarchy of all
the elements involved and yet designers are notorious for liking small
type.
The difference between these apparent opposing directions is indicative
of larger issues. Where do intuitive, aesthetic and design
considerations intersect with pragmatic, strategic and business issues?
What’s more important—look and feel, or an unseen strategy? Are
design-driven companies like Apple Computer and Target successful
because of their emphasis on aesthetics? Are Dell and Wal-Mart
strategically driven?
Let’s face it. Design is the means to an end, and that end, like it or
not, is commercial in nature. Design can make a Web site, a brochure or
an ad more memorable and therefore more effective in influencing its
audience. But ultimate success combines artistic and strategic elements
in a symbiotic relationship.
Marketing and advertising cannot be reduced to a logical, rational
discipline that can be defined, measured and predicted like rats in a
science lab. The fact, figures and projections of research, when done
right, can play a vital role in marketing, but you can’t stand on that
alone. As Jon Steel, brand strategist at Goodby Silverstein & Partners
said, “In the scientific method, there is no place for art, inspiration,
instinct, intuition, magic or luck, because they cannot be measured,
predicted or easily repeated.”
If your marketing or advertising isn’t memorable, or doesn’t touch your
emotions, it’s probably the fault of execution, not strategy.
Execution—the design, the writing—is the hardest part of the branding
mix to control.
Art is where the true magic lies, but art alone is not enough. When
combined with strategic and business considerations to achieve a shared
goal, creativity has the best chance for success, no matter what the
size of the logo.
When Guru Labs first approached us last year we thought they were some
kind of technology testing facility, which was part of the problem. Guru
Labs is actually the premier educational provider of
distribution-independent Linux instruction—teaching the open source
operating system to students and corporations from coast to coast. Guru
wanted roll out a comprehensive partner program to spread their unique
educational systems and courseware to a wider audience.
We were first engaged to help them strategically, with the 5d Perception
Branding Process. We added the word “training” to the company name and
developed a brand promise and tagline that positioned the company
squarely in Linux education. We then implemented the strategy, creating
a broad spectrum of marketing materials. Without losing the equity in
the existing logo, we redesigned the company identity, adding brighter
colors, introducing a wave element and humanizing the corporation with
Guru like photos.
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