The design process, at its best, integrates the aspirations of art, science, and culture.” — Jeff Smith
corporate logo design
A company’s reputation is its livelihood.
Whether good or bad, intended or not, every company has one. (Or maybe doesn’t have one at all, if it fails to communicate itself).
Reputation, to a large degree, is the sum total of many factors: product quality and innovation, customer service, human resources, location, pricing, distribution, convenience, community involvement.
On a more human scale, it’s not unlike the reputation of an individual person. The net effect may be made up of trustworthiness, consistency, honouring commitments; perhaps even personality, cooperation and sense of humour.
These attributes take time to build up amongst peers, friends, neighbours and communities.
But there are ways to convey such personal reputation or attributes in abbreviated form. The person’s name, their face, their (rightly or wrongly) physical attractiveness, their handshake, eye contact, speaking voice, sociability, dress sense.
Corporate Logo design, and the many aspects of communication which pivot upon that, is also a way of abbreviating a company’s reputation and perception.
Few of a business’s potential customers, suppliers, employees or communities have time or inclination to study every mission statement, company vision, PR release, news report, product specification or prospectus to endeavour to learn the full picture. But brand creation and corporate logo design go a long way to providing a handy pocket reference.
To design such reputation tools is a specialist field. The challenge for the expert and experienced designer is to, as a starting point, immerse themselves fully in the workings of the company, its products and often, its future direction.
Part of the challenge of reaching the very essence of design is to pare back the layers and try to put aside the parts that don’t contribute to that end point — to not try to convey everything.
Then comes the synthesis: after the business is mentally unpacked, it needs to be put it back together in a simple set of focal points that can then fan out, in a controlled manner, to meet every touch-point in the company’s activities.
