Break the Brand
I am not a marketing expert, I do not have any specialist knowledge about company branding. But between being frustrated with branding restrictions imposed on me by an organisation, at work today, and flicking through a magazine at home – I had an interesting thought process about what makes really exceptional company branding.
A few years ago I used to regularly visit the web site of artist Joshua Davis, whose site is full of examples of his experiments with Flash and image creation. I hadn’t visited Davis’ site for a couple of years, but flicking through a new magazine today, I saw a photograph of a man kneeling down with a sketchbook infront of a BMW. Below this photograph was a series of jagged, layered shapes, mostly in grays but with the occasional red or orange highlight showing through. It’s the type of vector graphic composition you really wouldn’t give a second look.
I didn’t give the images a second look either, but I did suddenly think to myself that the arrangement of these gray shapes reminded me of Joshua Davis, that I should have a look at his web site and see what he is up to. Going back to the article I was interested to see that it actually was an article on Joshua Davis. Artists do have signature styles, but I had never realised it was possible to have such an identifiable style from randomly generated vector shapes.
Whilst most likely unintentional, Davis has got himself an incredible branding platform. He is not recognised by a specific logo, signature, font or colour. He is recognisable by a randomly manipulated series of shapes – there must be some level of stylisation to these shapes, but it’s very hard to pinpoint exactly what elements it is that connects it so strongly to Davis.
It made me realise that the best branding has flexibility. The brand icon is so identifiable it transcends the branding. Think Marlborough Red, the Nike Tick or Mickey Mouse’s Ears. All of these are adaptable, scalable and with a natural evolutionary cycle they can be continually ‘tweaked’ to keep up with fashions without ever being ‘re-launched’. Nike never need to spell out their name. The Tick does it instead. It can be shown at any size, in any colour, in any context and still be instantly identified. The same with Mickey Mouse’s ears. Two black circles are all that’s required to make you think, not just Mickey but Donald, the Lion King, the Princesses. The whole Disney franchise. This is great branding.
Bad branding on the other hand is a logo, a colour scheme and a type face that is used in the same format every time in every single context. This is where branding is rammed down your throat – it never hits you subconsciously or by association. But what happens when this brand needs to be presented in a situation where the standard template just won’t work? If all your instances of company branding are identical, to suddenly have a piece of branding that is different just looks strange. It misses the point of branding because it is suddenly not instantly recognisable. The Nike Tick or Mickey’s Ears are such strong graphics they can be adapted to almost any situation and still be instantly recognisable.
So while company branding is essential and there should be guidelines in place for use of branding. Rule number one should be adaptability. Rules are there to be broken; so just do it.
