Remember the Old Spice commercial? If so, open your facebook page. Pick the third person of the same gender as yours on the newsfeed and open his feed in a separate tab. Look at his last 8 wall posts. Now, back at yours. Now, back at what his posts are about. Now, back at yours. Chances are they don’t differ much. Yet, you do. Sadly, it’s barely visible through your web presence.

Statistically speaking, depending on your age, gender and friend count likeness, you use similar structures, words and write about corresponding subjects at corresponding times. In case of my facebook friends, there’s at least one niche music video link, at least one ‘funny picture’, at least one thankful post and at least one slightly ironic rant on — in general terms — state of the culture. Which makes 50% of the rather small sample entirely predictable. The question that follows is: are we entering the age of mass unification that reshapes us into rather amorphic and impersonal shells or simply are we that similar?

There are a few things to consider:

1 The medium is the message

Trivial as it has become, McLuhan’s notion of the medium affecting the content is still valid. If you ever had doubts on the extent of its relevance, consider the impact of a slight redesign of FB’s status update box on the use of pronouns:

‘Until March of 2009, the status update box appeared next to the person’s name. So, up until March of 2009, the most common status update motif was to state what you were doing or how you were feeling with a status update like “is happy,” which would show up as “Lars is happy”. When this changed, the usage of “is” dropped off dramatically and usage of “I” doubled almost overnight. After March, people started updating with “I am happy” instead of “is happy” to achieve the same message.’

However, what is often overlooked is the influence of the provided means of reaction by other people. We’re social beings, we supply content and share it to be admired, liked, to be understood, to feel accepted or solely heard. Consequently, sooner or later, consciously or not, we design our messages so that they’re more appealing to our target group. At the same time, it’s difficult to remain personal and relevant if you’re talking to 47 people at once. Besides, imagine that the person next to you is capable of only two reactions: ‘I like it’ and ‘I like it and repost’. Undoubtedly it would limit the scope and depth of a conversation, wouldn’t it?

Looking at this image, it’s hard not to draw a conclusion that we’re living in the Recommendation Age (or, to be precise, the Repost Age). Still, as much as soup.io is social, it’s a quite accurate tool for spreading memes, no less and so is the larger part of other social platforms.

2 Limits of control

Obviously, the majority of the social networking sites has some limitations to at least the length or the subject of the messages you exchange. If you ever tried writing movie summaries in 140 characters or less, you know that in most cases you inevitably end up with genre descriptions stripped of any kind of particularity that might have made a movie gripping. It becomes slightly more bearable if you apply E.M. Forster’s distinction between narrative and plot (Plot is ‘The queen died; the king died.’ Narrative is ‘The queen died; the king died of a broken heart.’). The difficulty is that if you’re not a screenwriter or currently suffering from dissociative identity disorder, you tend to think about your life expieriences in a plot rather than a narrative. Not to mention the miserably flat amplitude of real life drama compared to most of the stories we read/watch.

3 One to rule them all

Social networking sites are created as mass products, carved for the so-called average user. They are based on universal truths, universal paradigms and equally unversal models of interaction, expression and needs. At the same time they’re designed to provide means of personalization and become as transparent & technologically friction free as possible. The catch, as always, lies in between.

When considering technologically advanced, mass market tools or products, the simple rule applies: The more you try to make it universal, the more uniform the outcome is. One way of evading that is clearly through customization (e.g. NikeID), but still, does it make a product more universal or merely less uniform?

The deeper problem lies in the process of finding these universal truths. We’ve become infatuated with data, their patterns, networks and correlations. Evidently this is the age of information, since like never before we’re able to accurately compute and estimate almost every single thing. However, what we’re often missing is the difference between analysis and reasoning. Analysis is a description of a current state (think: Hans Rosling). Reasoning is taking the risk of forming judgements about the things that are not clearly visible in data. It’s the search for insight and superior understanding. We have knowledge, we need more wisdom. Without the latter we’ve created great tools for being connected rather than feeling connected.

Still, the infatuation with data and our computational capability is a mere side effect of the broader cult of staying up to date.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m an average, slightly addicted social media user, clicking Like button 9 times a day, writing 25 comments and spending around 55 minutes per day, just to stay up to date. As such, I’m also inherently ‘resistant to being levelled, swallowed up in the social-technological mechanism’, as Georg Simmel described it.

One of the last lines of Synecdoche, NY (which I cannot recommend enough) goes as follow:
‘You realize you are not special. At some point this is everyone’s experience, every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone is everyone.’

In a deeper sense, we are the same. We live the average, encounter the same joys, tragedies or monotony. Yet, what makes us exceptional and our relations meaningful are ideas. Not some abstractly conceptualized ideas but ideas expressed through our emotions, beliefs and broader idiosyncratic context. One may call them stories, I call them personalities:)

Karl Gerstner wrote in his Designing Programmes:

“Instead of solutions for problems, programmes for solutions — the subtitle can also be understood in these terms: for no problem (so to speak) is there an absolute solution. Reason: the possibilities cannot be delimited absolutely. There is always a group of solutions, one of which is the best under certain conditions.”

The above paragraph was published in 1964, at the peak of the modernist crusade. The same decade Neuburg introduced his contructivist, functionally minded Neue Grafik at ICOGRADA in Zurich, and Paul Rand was working for IBM.

The 60s set the bar in corporate identity design. Modernist, focused on the ‘consistency, consistency, consistency’ mantra, helvetica and simplicity.

At the same time, the concept of brand has been evolving fundamentally. Brand as  product, organization, person and symbol — all those notions became a part of the brand identity systems. Yet, the visual identity remained more or less a slightly stretched result of the constructivist paradigm. As Paula Scher states:

“Generally, there’s a paradigm of what things look like in any arena. What you want to be able to do is find a new way to stretch that paradigm forward, to break its own mold.”

For years logo was treated as a base of an identity system, augmented with graphic means only essential to make it visually coherent in multi-channel environment. Used as a stamp or badge, such identities culminated in Umberto Eco’s “closed texts” — visual systems with unequivocal, static meaning, recurrent structure & disciplined sequence.

Eco juxtaposes “closed texts” with “opera aperta” (open work): open, internally dynamic “opere in movimento”, in which the the artist (or designer) deliberately leaves the arrangement of their compontents either to public or to chance, giving them a multiplicity of possible arrangements. By definition such works are simply much more engaging to the user.

Digital media have vastly reshaped brand landscape and thus allowed to stretch the paradigm a bit further. Technical restraints that limited design for half a century are gone. Together with rising consumer awareness (cogent brand conversations, no logo movement etc.), they gave the means to think of identity as a vessel for expressing personality rather than consistency.

The recent AOL rebranding is one example of a series that shift from the “logo as a badge” strategy to the identity as a visual language flexible enough to convey a number of ideas. Others include: the controversial London 2012 Olympic, Natural History Museum, Walker Arts Center, City of Melbourne, Casa da Música, and, undoubtedly most known: MTV, changing countless times throught the last 26 years and Google.

All these identities (named “flexible identities”) have in common:

1. endless permutations of the logo itself (often designed through customized software);
2. versatile and  distinct visual language (colors, typography, imagery, etc.) allowing adaptation to different environments, executions and contexts;
3. the concept behind is a system rather than a particular design, giving the designer almost unlimited freedom (though within some contraints);
4. they empower the organization with almost complete visual and verbal laguage, open to virtually any message it may need to convey;
5. the visual differentation does not spoil the fundamental, thought-through brand personality & identity that stands as a benchmark; a signifier may (and does) fluctuate but the meaning stays fundamentally the same;

Although the flexible identity solves most of today’s brand identity problems and seems a logical development, the static brand probably is not coming to an end. A dynamic branding model obviously has some constraints, but I think that it is an evolution phase rather than a trend. Of course, like any other idea it might enter a stage of an overused fad, quickly making the static brands trendy again. Evolution by definition is a gradual process.  Maybe we’ll reach a moment, in which a simple, straightforwad and “classic” logo and identity system will seem refreshing.

Gerstner’s “boîte à musique” identity designed in 1954 in all likelihood was the first example of flexible identity, a “programme for solution”. Unless the possibilities will be delimited absolutely, the flexible identity looks like a reliable strategy.

Andrzej Tomaszewski. The Typographer.
[pronounced as: Andrzej Tomaszewski point THE Typographer (capital T!) point].
To say that his designs are elegant, flawless, or impeccable, would be an understatement. I suppose that there’s a level of perfection and elegance, that can be only described by the word: virtuosity. I had the pleasure of meeting him during last year’s KrakTypo, and was literally blown away by his vast knowledge and commitment to share it.

Lukasz Dziedzic, type designer.
In essence, Lukasz is like lowercase “g” from Helga: slightly eccentric & rebellious, eminently agile and above all incredibly enchanting. Every single font he designs has this intangible feature commonly described (for lack of a better word) as coolness. He just told me that he’d rather be vanishingly-gray than portrayed, so I’ll keep it short: when I grow up, I hope I’ll draw at least a single glyph like he does.

Marcin Wolny, co-owner of Studio Otwarte, a graphic designer himself.
I doubt I’d be where I am today if not for the immense creative freedom and autonomy I’d received while working at SO. No matter how strong the dissent or how heated the discussion had been, as long as I could reasonably justify a concept and its execution, I had his full support, even if personally he would not agree. The most important lesson I’ve learned from him: when leading a design team, your role is to water rather than weed.

Last but definitely not least:

Karina Wieczorek, inspirer.
Karina is not a designer (although she’s got much to do with design in her job). We’ve known each other inside out for years now, so rather than elaborate on what a great friend she has been, I’ll quote her colophon: “Glenn Gould once said “The purpose of art is not the momentary ejection of adrenaline, but rather the lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.” I have no ambition of being an artist, but I find the feeling, which is a cross between curiosity, joy and surprise to be the best inspiration and antidepressant.” She’s been my first reviewer and her visual intuition has prevented me from sheer ugliness several times. And one of the most joyful and inspiring of people I’ve ever met.

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.]
2. Great name cluttered with an excessive symbol
   If the name is exceptionaly good (quite rare these times), don’t clutter it with an  excessive symbol, with apparently no or little meaning of itself. For instance, if the name of the product is Sun, drawing a sun symbol is entirely useless. It might of course provide a handy visual device to implement allover the promotional materials, but it does not bring a meaning. It’s just an illustration. There’s one exception, though: a symbol is virtually essential if it is to endorse other brands.
   [Sidelink: Symbol or Wordmark? by Tony Spaeth]
3. Symbols oriented backwards
   If you ask somebody to draw an arrow pointed up or forward, almost certainly you’ll get ↑  for up and → for forward. Yet, there are at least dozen of logos heading backwards, with no logical or aesthetic reason whatsoever. So unless you want to highlight a company’s upcoming downfall, keep the symbol up and forward oriented.
   [Sidenote: The matter has a lot to do with left-to-right reading and is thouroughly discussed in Emotion matrix by Artemy Lebedev.]
4. Message-in-a-bottle logos
   By definition, a logo is a quintessence of a company’s idea or conception expressed visually. Or in a more straightforward way: a compelling, conceptually relevant message conveyed with a single graphic idea. It’s like a figurehead at the prow of a ship, indicating the concept behind a brand and demonstrating its values, target image, positioning and/or other characteristics. Sealing this message in a bottle and releasing it into the ocean (so as no one can read it) is the worst scenario there might possibly exist.
   So first of all: find the message and express it in a creative and visually appealing way. Secondly: don’t ever put a meaningless dingbat just to have something there. Great logos are made by great concepts, not great dingbats. Thirdly: always keep in mind the positioning. Missing the target is a deadly weapon.
5. I’ve-seen-it-somewhere logos
   There are two common scenarios that result in I’ve-seen-it-somewhere logos. The first one is plagiarism or counterfeiting, obviously to be condemned. The second one occurs when a client approaches with “we need a logo and we’d like something like that”, pointing for instance to Sony Ericsson symbol. There are at least two pitfalls behind this kind of reasoning. To begin with, companies are different, so the likelihood of the same corporate culture, target, etc, is close to zero. As a result, the logo will almost certainly fail to express the idea behind the brand, not to mention fitting the industry it operates in. Secondly, the stronger the pointed brand, the harder it will be for a company to gain distinctiveness.
6. Snowboard-to-jewelry logos
   It’s kind of a no-brainer, but it’s often missed: a logo has to be appropriate for the target industry. If you’re designing a high-end jewelry brand and the resulting symbol could easily fit a snowboard manufacturer then — most probably — something is wrong. At times it’s a company’s strategy to break the rules (e.g. because of a specific positioning). Otherwise, it’s extremely risky and hard to successfully launch without significant promotional budget.
7. Missed-the-context logos
   Logos are by definition seen in context. A logo might look great on a website, with all these gradients, shadows and so on. It probably looks even better printed beautifully on an expensive paper, A3 size. But is it going to work in the actual context, for instance on a supermarket shelf with all the other products around? When the customers are moving and not particularly intent on focusing their entire attention on a 3x3cm sign?  Does it grab attention?
   So: Do your homework and check the designs used by competition, find ways to be distinctive. Double-check readability, use mock-ups whenever possible. Prepare variations of the sign for particular applications (low-resolution, monochromatic, etc). Remember, that a sign is not a stand-alone symbol, but a basis of an entire visual system.
8. Head-scratch logos
   In the end, a logo has to be easy to comprehend. The are several implications of this statement: it not only has to be legible and look good in most applications (from letterhead to billboard), but it has to communicate the message within just a few seconds. So don’t try to express more than one attribute per logo, it’s not a piece of art to be contemplated for hours. Thinking that it must contain entire message in detail is simply ignorant of how human brains operate. Focus instead.
   Again, remember who’s the target. If you use a sophisticated metaphor for a generic beer brand, the potential buyers might simply feel intimidated. And if you happen to do so, make sure the message expressed literally is relevant and appropriate as well. For instance, I might have never heard of Hermes‘ winged sandals, but when I see the Athlete’s Foot logo I get the message.

Cayce Pollard, the protagonist of William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, suffers from a rare disorder: psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols. She reacts to logos and advertising as if to an allergen, suffering panic attacks at the sight of Louis Vuitton luggage. Acutely sensitive to branding, she laboriously removes every trademark from her apparel or appliance.

Although entirely fictional, the novel seems to have anticipated a prevalent epidemic of sensory overload with brand labels. In bygone days marques used to be the most prominent feature of a product, providing a sense of identification and affiliation. Luxurious, heavily branded products used to be an evidence of wealth and social status. The equivalent products nowadays would most probably result in status asthmaticus at the most.

There may have been some exaggeration on the part of the asthma reaction. But the shift in the way product logos are perceived and often looked down upon is far from fictional. The corporate obsession to brand lifestyle rather than mere products brought the repercussive no logo and anti-consumerist & anti-corporate resistance.

What once was marginal, now gradually gets mainstream. Consequent increase in trademark consciousness makes people think twice before, for example, wearing apparel were every garment is heavily plastered with a logo. The customers have been paradoxically sophisticated by excessive labeling (along with the overall refashioned social context) and now require a significantly subtler approach.

Thus, creating a brand that people identify with to the extent of wearing it as a statement has become a strenuous endeavour. There are a few strategies companies have been undertaking to keep pace with the shift:

1. Attract and appeal.
   Great brands started to attract like-mined customers rather than serving their targeted audience. Targeting specific and often multiple audiences still plays a huge role in creating a brand, but in the meantime brand loyalty evolved into brands loyal to their customers. Think of Apple’s religious user group.
2. Hold to your values and beliefs.
   Their behaviour ceased to be driven by customers’ insight and fulfilling their verbalized demands. Polls and surveys so often provided what people say, rather than what they mean, that the results were frequently misleading and useless. Instead, the conviction brands emerged, i.e. brands vigorously held together by a central belief or purpose.
3. Brand is more than a label.
   Instead of labeling tangible items, emphasis is now on expressing the values beyond the logo: on branding the experience, interactions and impressions with both: customers and staff.
4. Bland uniformity challenged.
   As far as visual identity is concerned, predictable consistency has been replaced by variety. Either the logo itself is adaptable or the execution is varied to keep the brand “on-message”. Yet, holistic view of brand design enables consistent and easily identifiable advertising. The well-known SAS wetwipe branded only by the use of corporate typography became the most popular item in the industry. It doesn’t carry a logo at all. No risk of repetition.
5. “No brand” branding.
   Some companies pursue “no-brand” strategies, where products are not branded at all (Japanes Muji being the most known example). Alternatively, the entire shopping experience is branded. As in Muji’s case: focus on moderation in all things except quality and awareness that “modesty and discretion are the better part of a style“. [slideshow about Muji]

One might object that some of these strategies have a niche status and represent companies with a minor share of the market. I have to admit that I have no proof whatsoever for whether the shift will have gone mainstream by next year or decade.

However, more and more often something “unbranded” (in the traditional sense) becomes the most strongly branded piece of communication that people actually want to own and take home with them. While not meeting your audience’s expectations might be a vice, underestimating your customers might be a deadly sin.

John Ruskin once wrote, that the best work never was and never will be done for money.

The truth is most of us work to keep a paycheck coming in. Yet, a sense of accomplishing something that really matters (gasp), of excellent quality, creatively fulfilling and most of all – serving the client’s needs – seems essential to keep one’s sanity. Otherwise you risk losing your heart and gradually drifting away from your initial moorings (Presupposition: we all aim at more than little).

So you care about the output of your work, strive to keep the standards and use all your experience and knowledge to convince clients, that some of their revisions or modifications would bring conspicuously shoddy results (And I’m talking about significant alterations, not changing type from 10pt Garamond to 12pt Caslon).

The problem starts, when although you’ve clearly articulated your reasons, the client says: ok, we understand. Still, we want it our way.
At this point you can follow two paths:

The pragmatic approach would respect, well, the paycheck still coming in. There is the opportunist cost of prostituting yourself, but ultimately it’s all about the money, isn’t it?

On the other hand, some – that means not all (not even the majority of all;) reckon it’s an ethical matter. In the long run, if you don’t have integrity, you have nothing and obviously, you can’t buy it. (I guess this is the point at which the relationship between professional standards and personal values might in some cases require revision.)

In any event, Howard Gardner (whom you might have known from Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds) in his decade-long research provided quite useful Good Work criteria:

“Good work involves three considerations:
1) it is technically Excellent;
2) It is personally meaningful or Engaging;
3) it is carried out in an Ethical way.
(…) In most endeavors, “good work” involves more than making a profit. The carpenter is expected to make a table that does not collapse, the pilot should be polite and cheerful as well as sober and resourceful. When the requirements of a job get to be quite complex, traditions serve to remind practitioners of their duties, and often these are formally set down into professional codes, such as the physician’s Hippocratic Oath.”

So, personally, I’d rather say no to a proposal of making a shiny but rickety table, and it’s not only about my deeply held principles. It’s about reciprocity – I wouldn’t like to risk my favourite china next time I buy one either.