Every so often here at 3dB Creative, we get the opportunity to develop a brand's identity from the ground up. It's an exercise we love to do, especially when we get to the logo. And while a logo doesn't comprise the entirety of a brand, it's a central element and therefore merits a lion's share of our attention.
Like most creatives, we're highly opinionated when it comes to methodology, and over the years we've created an unofficial (and not entirely thorough) set of guiding principles for logo design. In the spirit of openness, here are a select few of those principles...
1. Your business is complex. Your logo shouldn't be.
Logos are like a brand's ambassador, often making the first impression on a customer. As such, it should communicate the brand in a concise manner, distilling the brand's values and activities down to a simple visual statement that makes a quick and memorable impact.
On a practical level, this means that the logo has to look great in black and white. In fact, we don't even get into color considerations until the client has already approved a black-and-white version. It should also look great at any scale. Our litmus test is that the logo should come through on the most primitive of fax machines (yes, people still use those) while still looking fantastic in all its full-color, seven-foot glory on the sign outside the building.
That said, we have at times created a "family" of logos for a brand. This can help maintain the integrity of the brand when the logo is used in an unorthodox footprint. We would rather take the extra step to a create a low-fi alternate for a highly-detailed logo, or a square iteration of a very horizontal logo, than to leave impromptu logo surgery in unskilled hands.
2. Explanations are pointless.
If you've designed a logo that needs to be explained using relativity, magnetic dynamics, or Euclidean geometry, you haven't designed an effective logo. The whole point of creating a logo is to effectively communicate core brand values in one concise graphic. If it requires an accompanying 27-page manifesto, it's time to get back to the drawing board.
In that vein, and this should probably go without saying, the visuals in the logo should speak in a logical manner to the nature of the company being represented. What if Apple had decided to use a different fruit for their logo?
3. Redesigns are sometimes unavoidable, but they shouldn't be part of the plan.
In other words, make it timeless. Effective branding relies on consistency, repetition, and persistence. As such, your logo should be an icon that weathers fads and trends, communicating your brand's attributes regardless of what filters Adobe included in this year's Creative Suite.
When designing a logo, we aim for durability. The last thing we want is to create a logo that is insufficient to the task, and needs to be redesigned two years later -- thereby erasing any strides that have been made in the intervening time in terms of brand recognition. Of course, no logo will last forever, but it's worth noting that the best, most iconic logos only need a refresh, not a redesign.
Speaking of durability, you can't beat these for sheer perseverance:
Designers and their fonts are like coaches and their players. There's always a set of bread-and-butter fonts that get the job done, with minimal tweaking. These fonts are the "clutch players" that may not necessarily win the game, but at least they won't lose it.
And then there are those specialized players you save for just the right occasion. These are the really nice fonts that usually only appear in your A-Grade work. A big headline here, a small tagline there; sometimes you're so inspired that you design everything else around the font.
But every once in a while you find a font that fits both these categories. An impossibly perfect blend of work-horse and show-horse that can adapt to the most mundane of copy blocks, yet carries the style and panache to support the loftiest of headlines.
Enter the winner of the first annual 3dB Creative Font of the Year: Din.
Need an attention-grabbing headline? Pick Din. A large block of body copy? Give Din a try. How about a modern font for logo making? Yep, you guessed it, Din. With its five standard weights and alternate glyph choices, Din's uses are almost infinite. It's a strong typeface that is clean and modern, and has the right amount of personality to stand out in a crowd of sans-serifs. It plays nice with countless other font styles, creating endless combinations of balanced type treatments. And it can play first chair or second fiddle in your designs, while still maintaining its identity — further proof of its versatility.
Ahh, Din. We saw glimpses of your greatness when we first drafted you to do the heavy lifting in the Stanton For Life Magalog. When you effortlessly filled the body copy of that 40-page document, we gave you an automatic audition for the BOSS ME-20 Campaign. Again, your quiet, assertive elegance made that piece soar with flying, albeit muted, colors.
This of course led to your inevitable casting in the legendary dual performance of Logo Typesetting and Lead Headline Font for iPerform3D.com. Needless to say, you never failed to impress, and we salute you for your resourcefulness.
Congratulations, Din. Thanks for your excellent work in 2008 and please, don't let this go to your head(line)!
We don't normally bow down for other creatives (at least in public), but in the case of advertising veteran and uber-copywriter Bob Devol (who we recently met on Facebook), we extend the ultimate Plus/Minus prop: a word-for-word repost of his recent blog entry.
Word, Bob. Word.
Pardon me, your marketing statement is showing.
January 26, 2009
Have you heard the radio spots for Ovaltine? Hopefully you missed them or, more likely, you heard and ignored them. These spots are classics of a commercial genre called, “Idiot and Know-It-All.”
In these awful spots the unusually jocular “”know-it-all” spews a litany of product selling points directed at helping his or her companion, the rapt “idiot.” They usually have the same ending: the eternally grateful “idiot” thanks the “know it all” for the tip followed by a weak joke and mutual forced laughter.
This drivel is often the result of a misguided marketing manager who thinks advertising is about spewing selling points.
And it’s not confined to broadcast. Cutting and pasting a marketing statement is common across all media – print ads, brochures, online, it’s everywhere.
Here’s a tip. Don’t do this. Ever. And if you are, stop it. Now.
Effective advertising begins and ends by recasting your marketing statement into a compelling story narrative with emotional, impactful visual and verbal hooks to draw your prospects in, hold their interest, and act on what you’ve presented.
Dramatize your selling points with flair and style and you’ll cut through the advertising clutter like a chain saw through tofu.
Want examples? Just open any advertising awards show book or check out Communication Arts magazine. Remember that this goes for all media, including online, offline, any line. Also all segments: B-to-B, B-to-C, or any other “C.”
It's a Google World. We just search in it. And in this world, Seattle-based SEOmoz
is one of the best resources for search engine optimization -- giving
everyday joes the tools to boost your site(s) "organic" (non-paid)
search rankings. Of course, SEOmoz sells a service -- namely,
subscriptions to a suite of internet-based tools which allow you to
constantly analyze and improve your site's search rankings. But what's
most cool about SEOmoz is the regular video lessons they freely provide
visitors on all aspects of SEO. Check out the typically helpful video
below, "The Microsite Mistake." Clearly, Rand and his team at SEOmoz
are passionate advocates of what they do. Better still, they're
Seattleites -- so they get some 3dB hometown love too.
If you liked / loved / obsessed on Buena Vista Social Club's original studio album a decade ago, then you should just stop reading this right now and go buy the "Live at Carnegie Hall" dual-CD set, released in October. (Sorry, we're a few months behind on this recommendation. We got the CD set as a Christmas present.)
This release is every bit as necessary as the first record. In the words of All Music Guide, "It's not only a historical document; it is a living, breathing piece of work that guarantees the transference of emotion from tape to listener, and cements the Buena Vista Social Club's place not only in the Latin music pantheon, but in the larger context of popular music history." Um, exactly.
OK, so we know that the business and political worlds depend on surveys and polls. We suppose they're just a necessary evil. But without knowing how the survey was conducted -- or who was surveyed, etc. -- we're always cautious about treating them as gospel truth. Today, Dilbert makes the point quite nicely.
I was shopping for a small flat screen TV last weekend at the local big box Buy-o-Rama, and noticed that practically every feature bullet on the product information cards was overly done. Trademarked. Acronymed. Confusing.
Don't get us wrong, it's good to "make hay" of your product's noteworthy features -- especially in a crowded consumer category -- but marketers really need to know when to say when. Here are some glaring examples we found online.
SONY
Witness the "Sony 52" BRAVIA® W-Series LCD Flat Panel HDTV, featuring MotionFlow™ 120Hz, BRAVIA Engine 2™, Advanced Contrast Enhancer circuit (ACE), and an enhanced XMB™ user interface."
(Ummm, does anyone know what all this means besides Sony?)
HOOVER
Here we have the, "Hoover Turbo-Powered SteamVac Dual V TurboPower Carpet Cleaner, with Patented SpinScrub Brushes and Dual V-Nozzle Technology."
(Perhaps our next Commander in Chief can use this to suck Bin Laden out of his cave.)
COLGATE
Ready to clean up? Why not try "Colgate® Total® Advanced Whitening Toothpaste with Dual-Silica Technology."
(Lord knows our old single-silica paste wasn't getting it done.)
OAKLEY
Once your smile is looking good, why not slip into a pair of Oakley Airbrake™ sandals, which feature...
Water-friendly synthetic leather plus water repelling microfiber for aquatic adaptability and fast drying
Comfort of RED CODE™ technology that conforms to natural contours beneath the foot
Odor control of Microban® antimicrobial treatment
Slip resistant UNOBTAINIUM® tread for exceptional traction on wet and dry surfaces
(Um, do we really have to make up periodic table elements to sell a sandal? My chemistry teacher's head just exploded.)
File this one under Annoying Signs of Our (post modern) Times. So we all know that CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are necessary to stop spammers, protect e-commerce sites, preserve the integrity of blogs and forums, and a billion other things online.
CAPTCHAs usually take the form of a string of letters that we humans can easily decode and re-enter, confirming our innate human-ness. But what happens when we humans can't actually read the letters, and therefore can't solve the CAPTCHAs? (See below.)
It's kinda like Blade Runner in reverse, where the replicants are asking us questions, and we're like.... wait a second, this sucks. Clearly this is the first step in Project Human Phase-Out, currently slated for 2060.
Earlier this week Iran conducted war games in which they test-fired long-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Israel. The day after the test, Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, released an image of four missiles firing simultaneously. The image was picked up by leading news outlets worldwide.
I don't know about you, but to me four missiles are way scarier than three missiles. Sepah seems to agree, because upon close inspection it's pretty obvious that the missile second from the right is cloned. That's right, the Iranian government uses Photoshop — and apparently not very well.
Called out on the world stage for their slipshod use of the Clone Stamp tool, Sepah quietly released the original, three-missile version of the image later in the day. Clearly, if the Ayatollah had just hired 3dB Creative in the first place (we offer outstanding propaganda services) none of this would have happened.
The Internet is rife with snooty designers calling out fonts they disike. Here at 3dB, we have our own snooty list of bad fonts, which we submit to you as our "Four Deadly Fonts." These shall henceforth be avoided at all costs.
Yes, this one is obvious. But Comic Sans is so insidious that it merits inclusion on any list like this. Besides, when a font inspires entire sites devoted to bringing about its downfall -- even John Stossel is talking trash -- you know it has struck a cultural nerve.
A very good typeface gone bad. Overused into oblivion, Rosewood can be seen on 50% of all graphic design created since 2004, from the World Series of Poker to the menu at that barbecue joint down the street.
Times is the default font when you open a new document in Microsoft Word. 'Nuff said.
Not quite a font, more of a technique. Nothing says "screw legibility" quite like setting a Blackletter typeface in all caps. Just last week I nearly caused a 12-car pileup trying to read "In Loving Memory" on the rear window of a tricked-out '92 Honda Civic.
