Logo design and brand standards are still developed like the digital revolution never happened, or worse, it just picks the advantages of the digital process and forgets about the pitfalls. The logo templates from a micro stock agency presented in this article look nice but are bad logos. So what should a designer care about in logo design and brand standards for the digital age?

1 – Digital first or digital last?

Digital first is the new hype and describes starting the design process with the digital consumption as a starting point. This is a fair point, but analyze your clients customers to be sure what medium the branding will be consumed most and what reproduction techniques will be required. Logos still need to be printed, screened, molded etc. Logo design is not just online or offline, so improve your skills if you lack certain aspects.

2 – The square and the skyscraper

It is very common these days that the logo is “boxed” in a square (Twitter avatar) or a skyscraper (Facebook Profile). Test your logo for this cases. Do you need a lot of white space to make your design shine? Does it stand out from the surrounding design elements? It may be required that you make special versions of the logo for these cases.

3 – The missing Micro-Sizes

In the past the designer defined a minimum size for the logo. He knew that his design will not perform under a certain size (pixel or mm) and forbid therefore the use. Today a designer has to provide a Micro-Size of the logo – It’s the Favicon used on the website, the Facebook Bookmark etc. It’s a legit use case and it’s part of the logo design, so provide a 16×16 Pixel version to your client.

4 – Wrong collaterals

The typical collaterals designed for a client who wanted a simple identity have been a letterhead, business card and an envelope or an full page ad. Today consider delivering a Twitter background, a Facebook profile image, email footer and a standard banner ad.

5 – Falling for the hype

Logo and brand design should never follow the hype. While designers tend to be always on the edge and try something new, they also like to follow trends. If you look at the most known and recognized brands you will see that the logo changes little over time and often you cannot tell when it was designed. A certain timelessness is required. Expect a logo to stay a least 10-15 years the same – longer than any given design trend.

I discovered that many small firms are discovering branding as the new formula to success. The understand that having a nice logo and a coherent branding helps them to build a trustful relation to their clients. To make it short – a small firm can look professional and bigger with a good branding. But too much branding can hurt. Why?

We seen this online all the time. Small 1-man firms build have a great website and you think you are communicating/buying/… with a corporation – not a small business.

The big mistake many small firms make with branding is, that they think that the more branding they do, the better it is. It mostly happens when they expand into a new business area. Sometimes the name of the firm does not reflect the new area and they expand into a new brand as well.

This is not a good idea, as you weaken your established brand. It is already an effort for small sized (and even medium sized) businesses to maintain “one” brand. In the screenshot above you can see an example of heavy overbranding. It is a small advertising agency with online and offline departments. As you can see each “department” has received it’s own brand (even with brand in its name – how ironic). This does not only look bad, but it’s not in their best interest. Who are they? Are they one or are they many – and if I call them how do they respond?

Especially if you are a service oriented firm this overbranding does not make sense. Even if you think that your brand name is tied to a business area you are better off investing in your established brand or do you think that Apple should have changed their name when they entered the music selling business?

Swarovski is a well known brand for jewellery around the world. The great marketing idea of applying techniques used for diamonds to glass made the company big and rich. These “techniques” are not only technical but also marketing skills. They sell you low cost glass at a high value by giving it the touch of exclusivity. They sell not only jewellery but also figurines and much much more – from beautiful to awful everything is covered.

Now I for myself don’t care much about the Swarovski hype – I don’t like much of the design and the associated prices – but I respect the marketing effort and how well they constructed their brand over the last 50 years. About 15 years ago they opened their “Kristallwelten” (crystal worlds). A sort of museum with works by famous artists inspired by the crystals. Andrè Heller was the curator of this magical place and everyone was delighted.

I will list now in a few words why this “Kristallwelten” is dismantling the brand of Swarovski:

• It’s expensive – you pay 9.5 Euros (about 13.4 US$ at the time of writing) for getting in. There are 15 tiny rooms with “inspired art”, that’s close to a dollar/room. If a ordinary museum would charge at this prices… and not to forget – this is a marketing stunt, so free entry should be the minimum
• If you are not interested in the “art” you cannot enter the shop directly – you have to pay to get into the shop basically. Ok, you get 2 Euro off you purchase with the ticket.
• The so called art is a hoax – maybe 2 or 3 pieces of this exposition is worth the name of art. I studied art and I can tell the difference. They have a separate room for the “gallery” as they call it – the room with real masterpieces from the Swarovski art collection – see the difference in the naming
• You don’t get any information about the production process or about Swarovski – there is only one room about the jewels itself and this is a little bit frustrating as you go there to learn about Swarovski
• It’s old – 15 years and nearly no addition. You can tell the date of the art pieces and the updated rooms are just fitted with larger screens.
• The shop has not all products on stock. The shop is big and they have nearly all products on display, but not all sizes. The factory is 50 meters away, we are at the heart of the Swarovski production site and they are not able to stock the rings on display in all sizes (and they just do S, M, L and XL – not like the jewellery ring sizes which are 22)

  On the good side I have to admit, that the “crystallized” section, where you can buy single items to combine by yourself are quite neat.

• The prices in the shop are the same all over the world. So if you travel to the Kristallwelten in Austria and you think that the shop nearby the factory is cheaper your wrong. No outlet – no factory sale.

So what is the conclusion – I stumbled out of the Kristallwelten and felt like I’ve been betrayed. The website is actually beautifuler and the respect for the firm was gone. No content for real money and no “magic” and all. Common’ Swarovski – we know it’s a marketing stunt, but don’t take us for fools. Get rid of the entrance fee (or do a full rebate on a purchase) and spice it up with more about the firm.

I found in a strategy presentation of a client a few nice inputs. Most of the time we stand in our own way because we don’t think like winner. There is a lot of literature about having success and so forth, but you can boil it down to this: Reframe

And here some examples:

Foto by marthax

In the last lessons I talked about the mindset of an art director. It’s different from a graphic designer in many aspects. It is often difficult to explain what is different, so I will try to make an example – a situation that every graphic designer who is working not just for himself has faced. The “too small font issue“.

The font is not small, is elegant

Picture this; you have to do a brochure or an image folder. You have a nice brief and the text is ok. Everything is set, you start doing the layout. You choose the colors, the font, and the images to use a make a nice modern layout. The client has no clear Corporate Design (and if, who cares anyway, this is about image and not rules). The layout reflects the latest trend in modern graphic design, but you adjusted it a little to the audience of your client – you used the minimal style instead of the grunge

Now you present the work to your client and guess what – he rejects it. At first you will ask what he didn’t like and he will give you some really bizarre answers. If you have a client that is used to handle graphic designers he will immediately state that the font is too small. You might say: “No, its 8pt, that’s pretty large. I have absolutely no problem reading it. And by the way, it’s not small, it’s elegant.” In the end you will have to increase the size of the texts. You don’t want to lose the client, but you are also fed up, so you do as little as you can to change the layout.

Causing problems

The biggest problem of such a situation is, that you didn’t discuss about content but problems. You did not discuss with you client about the great graphical idea you had. You caused your client a problem, because he could probably not read the text. Or if he could, maybe his clients are mid-agers around 50 – and they for sure have a problem with a font in 8pt. You are now in the eyes of the client a problem maker and not a problem solution and this is not good for further business.

Avoiding problems

An art director knows ahead what problems could arise and what could distract the client from thinking of him as a great problem solver and communicator. He knows that a bad presentation is killing the idea and not readable text is a red flag for executives and even worse for the consumer. No white text on light gray background, no all caps text … you know all the cool stuff. But in the end you have to think about delivering the message. It’s your job to not make it boring, but it’s not your job to make it an effort to get the message. A design can be elegant even with big letters; you just have to design it right. And think always, styling trends are like fashion – they change every couple of years. If you look back on some layouts you made in the past you will think about the colors or the pictures, but I’m sure you will not notice how big a font was.