M. Gladwell: Outliers and Chip & Dan Heath: Made-to-Stick

If Truman Capote was like a semantic Paganini, then Malcolm Gladwell is undoubtedly a Paganini of anecdotes. Much has been already written on Gladwell’s recent Outliers: The Story of Success. If a summary can be made before the book is actually written, then the best one was given by Richard St John in his 3-minute TED talk: “8 secrets of success”: [continue reading]

The science of Shopping by Paco Underhill

A store has 3 distinct aspects: design (the premises), merchandising (whatever you put in it) and operations (whatever employees do). They’re closely intertwined, interrelated and interdependent, so changing one of them will affect the other two as well. Their correlations are thoroughly covered in Paco Underhill’s analysis of an evolving shopping culture. It’s one of these books that in addition to substantial advice on customers’ tastes and habits is able to entertain us with witty anecdotes and gripping details.
The book has been incredibly well summarized by Malcolm Gladwell in his New Yorker article: The Science of Shopping, so instead of writing a mere ersatz of Gladwell’s review (which definitely is a must-read), I’ll focus on the book’s guidelines for designers. [continue reading]

A list of common but not that obvious mistakes in logo design

I’ve been recently commissioned to review a logo for a beauty product. The what do you think question. The logo itself was well crafted and will probably prove successful, but it got me thinking about general rules for logo design. The technical aspects are well covered (e.g. here or here), but there are a few guidelines that exceed the obvious “it has to be legible and memorable”. So, here’s my list of common, but not that obvious at first glance, mistakes in logo design:

1. Cliché logos
   Undoubtedly clichés communicate. Usually they provide straight-forward symbols easily understood by all. They facilitate the communication process and therefore are quite common. The problem is distinctiveness: there are around thousand of logos with a tree (highlighting heritage), leaves (nature) or a globe (we’re global). The design idea does not have to be unique in the history of graphic design (which is highly unlikely), but it has to be distinctive in a particular marketplace.
   Every industry has its fig leaf, concealing the designer’s lack of original idea, so make sure you find one before the designing work. And if you, unfortunately, happen to exploit a cliché, make sure it is executed with a superb design.
   [Sidenote: the same applies to so-called generic shapes: a star, a heart, a circle et cetera: no matter how much effort is put to make them look distinctive, there are millions of other versions of the same shape.]

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