Musings on identity design
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A few articles on identity design recently caught to my attention. I have some thoughts, what about you?
1 ::
The headline of the article which prompted this blog post “Playing the Logo Game” made my heart sink. While this particular piece is part of an ongoing series on small businesses and startups, is taking the crowdsourcing approach to problem solving is the most appropriate route?
Using the word “game” if off putting from the start. One would think that hiring a designer to develop and represent your ideas would bear more weight than a game and be taken a bit more seriously. The other crucial point – that the cost of an identity gets weighed against the cost of an oven. One must be practical, but how odd is this!
2 ::
“…I actually don’t think that brand new logos are worth that much or mean that much in and of themselves. So why not have a class of third graders compete to design your logo?”
I pulled this quote from Pentagram’s Michael Beirut interview out of context. The full interview from Facing Sideways can be found here, which of course completes the ideas Mr Beirut put forth. While this quote is part of a larger interview, I wonder how many times it has been excerpted and presented as absolute fact. The payoff is there, but only if the user is willing to look beyond the bite.
I’m questioning: In an age where information gets disseminated in multiple ways, and that particular sound bite can easily be found on a Google search, how do we accurately present ideas and debates in our profession?
3 ::
Another Pentagram partner, Paula Scher, writes a wonderfully blunt commentary on identity design. Her focus: what they don’t teach about identity design in design school. I found 1/this true and 2/refreshing, because if a logo and identity were only about formal elements, then yes, a design student could do a better job.
Unfortunately as Ms Scher points out, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Read on.
