Dumbing down design

For the last three months, I’ve been working with a client that produces investment software, helping them brand the product and design the website and manuals. This last week, they met with potential investors who felt that blue and grey were too colorful and mingh offend somebody, they also decided that the name of the product, which associated an emotional idea rather than a reinteration of what the product does, was unacceptable, and that the name had to have ‘invest’ within it.

Meeting with my client, he asked me how I felt about it from my standpoint, and I told him that I thought it made their product thoroughly forgettable. He was in agreement with me and we likened the name change to calling a company like ‘Starbucks’, ‘CoffeeCorp’ instead and painting their shops with flat grey paint, a black and white logo of a coffee cup and using a laminate flooring and formica tables… just so that any color or style wouldn’t exclude or offend anyone. I was gratified that the individual that I work most directly with in the client’s organization was in agreement with me, but in the end, he doesn’t have the power to change the decision.

I’m curious if this is a common issue that designers face, and how they deal with it. I certainly don’t want to offend or lose a client (particularly as they are my studio’s client and not mine directly), but I don’t want to lie to them and tell them I think it’s a good decision to ‘dumb-down’ their brand in some hope that it’ll appeal to everyone. My take is, that while it may not ‘offend’ anyone, as they say, it will never stand out to be appreciated either.

• Jonathan Hull
• 7 responses
•  Branding, Business, Graphic design

Pantone Colors? How much do you really know about it?

So how much do we all really understand Pantone colors? For instance at my work the corporate Pantone is a green number 377. I generally use 377 C, since a lot of what we do ends up on coated papers, though sometimes not. In the cases that I use a nice, uncoated paper, generally Cougar 100lb cover and 10 lb text, I use 377 U.

C = coated, and is always the best for coated papers? Right?
U = uncoated, and is always the best for uncoated papers? Right?

Well what about CV, CVC or other off shoots? When are they appropriate? How do you handle the print colors for your brands?

Discuss.

• Vuel Egham
• 7 responses
•  Animation, Branding, General, Graphic design, Production

Ski Utah unveils logo

As part of their pre-state-of-the-season address, Nathan Rafferty of Ski Utah unveiled a new logo and website. Reporting another record ski season for 2006-2007, he the follows with details of how it will likely be “among the top three all-time highs&heillip; and could possibly be a record.”

Regarding the logo, he continues:

We were looking for something fresh. We just felt we turned the corner with the 4 million record, and we decided to try for a new logo. We wanted something clean, cool and simple. The old logo simply didn’t portray the message we wanted. … It was a particularly tough job because we wanted a mountain in the logo. One of the designers rode TRAX into work one day and counted 37 different logos, all with mountains.”

Does anyone know who did the rebrand?

• wade
• 13 responses
•  Branding, Graphic design

The Culting of Brands

I am currently in the middle of an excellent book: The Culting of Brands by Douglas Atkin. I wanted to wait until I was finished to comment on the book, but after I encountered the following quote, I had to stop and share:

Most brand doctrines generate as much excitement as wilted cabbage. They are often forged by a corporation’s senior officers during expensive offsite retreats. This “brain trust” spends days trying to differentiate their brand by devising their missions, visions, and values. For virtually every example I’ve seen, the outcome of these retreats has been exactly the same: what was intended to be a bang ended up as a whimper. In the attempted to please everyone and offend no one most of the ideas were compromised, their destiny to be relegated to dusty laminated sheets on cubicle walls and the odd coffee mug in the company kitchen.

The reality of this really made me stop. How often does this happen? How often do great ideas get diluted to a whimper because of corporate policy and think?

• wade
• 6 responses
•  Branding