Mistaken Identity

Good design and successful corporate identity management come about through control. Design orders chaos.

Good design and corporate identity management are evident when the personality, or soul, of an organisation is clearly defined and articulated; when numerous messages both complex and simple are communicated well, time after time, to both the client, organisation, and the rest of the world.

Good design and corporate identity management come about through dialogue and negotiation, through knowledge shared between the designer and the client organisation. They rarely arise through accident and must be consciously and positively called into being.

Design is structured activity based on analytical methodologies and informed intuition. It is therefore important that you employ well-educated designers. All good design is underpinned by clearly defined process, clarity and attention to detail (God is, after all, in the details).

Design is a multidisciplinery problem solving process. The process of designing a brochure is essentially the same as designing a building although the technical aspects differ. In Britain the education system has a tendency to pigeonhole designers in departments dedicated to specific technical applications in the mistaken belief that this is what industry requires. A multidisciplinery practice can offer a more holistic evaluation of problems and posit more radical and effective solutions.

NOT departments dedicated to specialisms but individuals with complete design intelligence.

In my experience the creation and maintenance of corporate identity could immediately become more cost effective if designers were used properly and allowed to exercise their skills. Design, like most professional services, tends to be billed against time spent irrespective of whether the time is spent thinking or making or specifying. The best value time you can buy from a designer is thinking time. In order to get the best value out of this time its important to accurately articulate the problem—the first guideline to save time and money is to construct a brief.

Work with the designer to write the brief.

* ensure the designer understands the corporate culture and has accurate information.

* ensure the designer is aware of any potential problems and irrational likes and dislikes.

* ensure the designer has access to individuals within the organisation responsible for implementing the outcome of the brief or championing the corporate identity.

When you pay for designers to solve problems you should get the additional bonus of educational evangelism. Good clients tend to be made rather than acquired. Designers are used to explaining the why’s and wherefores—so use designers to champion causes on your behalf.

The second role of cost effective corporate identity management is to disallow preconceptions; design is an analytical activity not a deterministic one. It is similar to homeopathy, looking at root causes and their solution, not merely at symptoms. “So, you think you want a logo”—but there could easily be another more unique, appropriate and inexpensive solution. Designers are educated to absorb, analyse and articulate cultural change so use their skills for your benefit.

To simply produce a brief demanding pre-determined response, or produce a brief with insufficient information requesting a speculative response is not a serious way to obtain an accurate and cost effective solution. Initial speculation on the part of the client can lead to significant savings as the problem is accurately defined before any solutions arise.

The third guideline for cost effective corporate identity management is to avoid the mistaken belief that an expensive manual is any sort of end in itself.

The unit cost of many corporate identity manuals doesn’t correspond with their usefulness. All organisations undergo constant cultural change and an inflexible document quickly becomes obsolete.

The manual shouldn’t be worshipped or cast in stone—The Herald, The Broomielaw—both evolving projects.

Individuals within organisations must feel empathy with their corporate identity. Guidelines must be communicated in a simple non-didactic, non-legislative way. People must understand why colours etc. have been chosen. People dislike being ordered what to do, or patronised. People dislike systems which legislate against any creative imput and abhor systems which confuse, or are incomplete. Unnecessary bureaucracy leads to maintenance of the status quo.

However professional the generic printed binder may look, if often fails the produce to desired response. People have a healthy disregard for the printed word.

GIL gave The Herald a system with which to solve their problems —“Kit of parts”—“set of tools”. Tools are inert if not used—people have to use them. The manual in effect is “a request for action/involvement”.

The fourth guideline for cost effective corporate identity management is to make more use of sensorial vocabularies rather than visual ones.

Design isn’t only concerned with the visual but with all of the human senses and comunicates with a sensorial language utilising myths, rituals, symbols, values and beliefs in order to articulate culture.

The tangible aspects of design language include written and printed material, moving images, products and other artifacts, interiors and architecture—they are the expensive parts of design language.

The intangible aspects of the design vocabulary are less obvious but more potent: smell, taste, touch, sound, temperature and light. They produce a frequently subliminal response and when used intelligently often diffray the need for a more tangible and expensive solution.

Bread shop without smell; church without an echo, difference between and canteen and a restaurant.

Invest in clear thinking and attention to detail. The quality of the design process should replace the weight of specification. Good design is about control—sensorial control as well as financial control.