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Branding Inspiration from Hollywood

Inspiration for developing brands can come from the strangest places. I'm watching a scene from Iron Man 2 and am struck that this is an amazing lesson about the history, hopes, dreams, and limitations of brands.

Howard Stark breaks scene and faces the camera:

"Tony ... you're too young to understand this right now, so I thought I would put it on film for you. I built this for you — and some day you'll realize that it represents a whole lot more than people's inventions... it represents my life's work. This is the key to the future... I'm limited by the technology of my time — but one day, you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is and always will be my greatest creation... is you."

[As a dad... I'm not crying! You are!]

You can't say you're sexy

When you’re looking for a soul — or crafting the mission statement — of a brand, keep a few things top of mind: there are things that you can’t say — and there are some things that are simply expected.

My old creative director Paul Bennett used to say: “You can’t say you’re sexy… you just have to be sexy”. What he meant by this is that some things have to be shown — and saying them is not only weird but kind of invalidates them.

What makes "It" it?

I was reading a review of the upcoming movie “It” (Stephen King) which contained the following line:

Muschietti (the film’s director) understands the Spielberg-ian rule that creating a recognizable and convincing backdrop makes the payoff moments of coulrophobic terror and supernatural awe feel tangible and believable.

— Peter Hartlaub

It’s a bit of a reflection back on the discussions we have in our classes — specifically branding classes where students are challenged to recast the mythos of an existing brand — about the role of the believable being the foundation of the unbelievable is a good thing... or if you tell a far-fetched story, having ties back to things that are tangible and recognizable today can help to engage your audience a good bit more.

Liz Lemon and The Illusion of Choice

If you haven't seen it, the TV show 30ROCK is worth binge watching. It’s a great take on pop culture and entertainment as mixed with modern day life and the compromises we have to make.

In the 5th season (2010), an episode called Brooklyn Without Limits (BWL) features a fictional brand (think: TOMS shoes, American Apparel, etc.) that the show’s protagonist, Liz Lemon (a TV producer for a comedy sketch show), falls in love with.

A letter to a student about their future referencing my past

The below is an excerpt from a round of correspondence with a student this semester. The student was having a hard time connecting the great ideas tin their head with a way to properly communicate them through design... as well as how to get the most out of the in-class critique.

Upon reflection, I thought that some of the sentiments might be beneficial to a wider audience, so here you go:

...

"... you have so many excellent ideas kicking around in your head (and you’re so anxious to get them out) that pacing them is hard.

I know it can be frustrating when someone tells you to slow down and take your time — or worse when someone might overlook something that you think is important because cause they’re not able to dive into the details… but, as you can imagine, these are lessons hard-earned myself. As someone who was also once young and full of good ideas — and also anxious to get them out — it took me a while to understand that not everyone was on the same page.

In fact, I remember exactly when that was:

Listening to Understand

Listening is a skill. As a designer, listening is as much of a skill as picking the perfect typeface… more so, really. But when we say “listen”, we often forget that the concept has many facets.

Like George Nelson showed us in his book How to see, listening — like seeing (vs. looking) — can have very different outcomes depending on how you approach it. More often than not, we approach it from the wrong angle.

We listen to reply.

We need to listen to understand.

Keeping yourself honest

When you're working on a project, it's easy to get distracted... and even procrastinate. It's important to keep yourself honest along the way. There will always be bad days and time will slip away, but it's important to know where you are and make realistic plans. Conversely, don't try to fool yourself.

For instance, If I was a field hand and I needed to shovel 50 pounds of grain per week, I might look at it this way: If the week started out rough, Monday might be a wash. Tuesday and Wednesday might also suffer... But on Thursday, I might kick it into high gear and finish out the day ahead. For this, I feel really good about myself and the overall scope of work — and I worked hard, so there should be some satisfaction there. On Friday, still feeling good, I treat myself to a slight break... hey, it's Friday, right? I finish out the week feeling pretty good and enjoying the break I gave to myself. Sound familiar? Of course, it does... we all do it. Of course, we also fail to go back and look at the reality of the math and see that we're nearly a day behind schedule.

Brand frameworks: Circles and lines

We know that people have a need to wrap things up, compartmentalize, and see things in tidy boxes. It's how we're wired. When creating communications, we keep that tendency in mind and find ourselves boiling down complex ideas into more manageable bites, or diagrammed out via doodles... or both.

The framework of the universe that a brand creates is no different. The idea behind Mr. Clean is just as easily drawn as it is conceptualized... but when drawn, you can see how something might live outside of the "brand universe" it has created.

In our branding classes, I encourage students to "draw it out" as well. Following my mantra: If you can't draw it, you probably can't properly explain it... by drawing out how a brand presents itself (and where it lives and/or doesn't live) can help to structure it in any number of positive ways for both the designer and the audience... generally helping to frame it in the minds of both.

Genie Questions (+ the 3-question rule)

Students always have questions… which is awesome (when they don’t, we worry). As instructors, we try to help guide them to answers (and sometimes simply provide them).

This semester is particularly busy and time is in short supply. For brevity, I’ve had to qualify and clarify the idea of questions. I’ve not looked at fancy delineations like questions for clarity or questions of intention. Those are great frameworks, but, like a lot of things: what works in a textbook doesn't work as well in a classroom.

Instead, it's about: Genie Questions.

[Boom Zahramay: Do genies really deserve the bad rap?]

Gill Sans and Orange Chicken

Typefaces and their personalities can be like spices and sauces in cuisine — they can be very specific to a genre or area and give off very specific feeling. But, if you’re not familiar with the nuances and subtleties of them, you might miss quite a bit along the way.

For instance, if you’re not familiar with the varied cuisine of China you might think of Panda Express as great Chinese food… and you’d be missing the point (and minimizing a great culinary legacy by way of a mediocre chain restaurant). In a similar way, someone not familiar with Roman typography might look at sans-serif faces and consider them all basically the same.

However, a typeface like Gill Sans has a legacy in Great Britain that is tied to pride during wartime. This sentiment is not shared by their American counterparts — and late 20th century allegations into Eric Gill's personal life questions whether we can separate the art from the artist (For the record, I'm not a fan). They would have feelings towards different faces — also based on where they might have historically encountered them. For instance, faces like Franklin Gothic would make many Americans think of early educational materials like flashcards and children’s books. However, to someone with only a vague familiarity of the nuances of the two typefaces, Gill Sans and Franklin Gothic might seem pretty much the same — they’re both “Orange Chicken”.

“Keep Calm” was one of three posters created by the British Ministry of Information in 1939 in response to public concerns over Hitler’s invasions into Europe.