Imprint magazine by J.Cruz

Imprint contribution

Imprint magazine

#1/2009

Editor in chief: Art director:

VISUAL IDENTITY

Don Ryuan Chang Jaclyn da Cruz

Photographs:

HKML, Scanpix, Getty Images

Contributors:

Naseem Javed, DESIGN, Robert L. Peters, Hans Kleefeld, Rebrand101.com

Publisher:

ICOGRADA Media 455 Saint Antoine Ouest, Suite SS 10 Montréal, Québec Canada H2Z 1J1

Imprint magazine

Imprint contributions

Editor in chief: Art director:

Don Ryuan Chang Jaclyn da Cruz

Photographs:

HKML, Scanpix, Getty Images

Contributors:

Naseem Javed, DESIGN, Robert L. Peters, Hans Kleefeld, Rebrand101.com

Publisher:

ICOGRADA Media 455 Saint Antoine Ouest, Suite SS 10 Montréal, Québec Canada H2Z 1J1

Imprint magazine

Imprint content

Customers are colour blind

Contrary to branding beliefs, customers don’t really care about, and are completely oblivious to, a corporation’s image being tied to a specific colour.

When the branding circus comes to town

Pregnant mothers are being pooled to place ads on their round, shiny stomachs as part of “tummy branding.” Welcome to guaranteed-to-fail branding.

Branding lessons from Africa 12 African branding and design industries addresses markets with both a local approach and an international level of confidence and self-assurance.

The best of ICOGRADA

Naming that thing again

The top 20 mistakes made when rebranding

A gallery of the best original design work submitted to ICOGRADA by its members.

Without a prope placement of a clear name identity and a sophisticated naming strategy, branding is a lost cause.

Smart marketers evolve their brands over time to keep them relevant. To gear your next rebrand for success, sidestep these all too common mistakes.

On the mark

With thousands of new visual identities flooding the market all the time, is it possible to create anything that hasn’t been done before? Yes, you can cut through the clutter. But it starts with understanding the history and rules of effective design.

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BRAND LESSONS FROM AFRICA Branding and design in Africa is challenged by an exceptionally multicultural and diverse population and offers us lessons on how standard design and marketing approaches do not always apply. In this interview conducted by International Design Media Network magazine and representatives of the branding company HKLM illustrate how African branding and design industries must address markets with both a local approach and an international level of confidence and self-assurance.

Words by DESIGN magazine / Images by HKLM

It’s about time that Africans started to believe in themselves and their ability not only to compete on the world stage, but to lead. This is the view of Gary Harwood, director at HKLM, a brand company with several offices in South Africa, as well as Dubai, Nigeria and Kenya. This comment stems from the fact that Harwood has declared himself ‘sick and tired’ of pervasive Afro-pessimism.

Despite masses of evidence to the contrary, the majority of African companies and industries still regard their international counterparts as superior. Many people, the branding and design industry included, only regard international experience as truly meaningful. That’s emphatically untrue. Multicultural Understanding “Lots of organisations are getting ahead of the competition in Africa, simply because they have a better understanding of the complexities and challenges of doing business in diverse and multicultural environments. Yet ‘Africa-bashing’ remains fashionable. Talking ourselves down is compromising our growth - both personal and economic, says Harwood. A firm believer in the African renaissance, Harwood says that more organizations are being forced to do business on the continent. Previously, companies went into Africa by choice, now it’s becoming an economic imperative.”He warns that success doesn’t come easily. “It’s often said that Africa is not for sissies,nor is it for the brave.

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Branding in Africa requires a unique approach that takes into account all the nuances of all the different regions and there are no companies or people better equipped to do the business than home-grown Africans. In the telecommunications industry, for example, countries are developing their own brands that are leaving their international competitors behind, such as Nigerian Glo, which was awarded a license in Ghanal. From a branding perspective they may not have huge budgets but they are much more tactical in their branding activities and that’s paying dividends. The opportunities are growing by the minute. The real deal will be to translate these opportunities into effective and sustainable interventions that can deliver real returns to all stakeholders.” Adds Sean McCoy, group managing director of the HKLM Group: The group has leant certain lessons about branding in Africa since the inception of the company in early 2003.

Both Glo and Stanbic Banc have benefited greatly from HKLM new brand thinking.

Idea shaped: Glo, a Nigerian based mobile company required a new brand strategy, including design and implentation solutions, to allow it to be more competetive across West Africa. Idea delievered: The Strategy came alive through an emotive visual language which resulted in 500 000 mobile subscribers within six months of the Glo braund launch. Which is an Afircan record.

Firstly, there is always something new when it comes to brands in Africa. Textbook theory simply doesn’t apply here. Brand-builders have to look for alternative solutions to traditional challenges. Change is born out of necessity and if a brand embraces creative re-definition, it will thrive. Success Stories The second lesson is that Africa is a melting pot of cultures with a myriad of ethnic groups and an estimated 2 000 different languages (including dialects) spoken in 53 countries. Says Harwood: “Africa is not homogeneous. It won’t accept a unilateral branding approach. Harwood highlights a recent campaign by Stanbic Bank as an example: “Recognising this, Stanbic Bank ran a communications campaign in eight countries that centred on the bank’s core brand values, but which was tailormade for relevance to each individual country. The result was a community-specific brand intervention that talked to the individuality of each area. Stanbic recognised the growing importance of corporate social responsibility as a brand imperative, Harwood says. And we as branders and marketers have a responsibility to direct our client’s activities into areas where they make a meaningful contribution to the environment.

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Branders and designers should be more persistent and insistent in finding ways of enhancing as well as increasing their clients’ social responsibility investments. “Brands that really care about the world around them, not those that merely paying lip service, are becoming preferred choices as consumers look for partnerships that actually deliver on their environmmentel and humanitarian promises. Let’s not look internationally for benchmarks, let’s find them in our own continent, Harwood adds. “Why create another Starbucks in Africa, or another faux Tuscan town? We have a unique heritage here and much to celebrate, let’s relate that back into branding. Thinking Outside The Box Branding in Africa requires a more flexible approach, and with that, perhaps a relaxation of traditional identity rules and conventions. Take Mocambique’s homegrown cellular operator, mcel, for which HKLM Idea shaped: developed new Stanbic Banc needed a continent wide public iconography and relations campaign to bring a truly African brand to life. Idea delievered: A campaign was devised to be effective across the continent. “Inspirations lives in Africa” was targeted towards eight of the seventeen countries the banc operates, establishing Stanbic Banc as Africa’s first banking partner of choice.

A fresh approach to creating brand identity has re-juvenated the Mozambican cellular company, mcel.

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a much simplified colour palette that enabled practical, costeffective and consistent reproduction of the visual language across a diversity of applications. Many mcel outlets aren’t even permanent structures, let alone have electricity and shop fronts, Harwood says. Yet the brand had to be visible and effective, so we organised brand activation crews, armed with paint and stencils, to enable the sellers to create their own branded outlets. The result is a visible brand presence, without the regulated control of a corporate identity manual. It’s about making a brand work within the challenges of an African environment. Nation Branding The third lesson that HKLM has learned is that there are many branding success stories in Africa and that country branding is on the rise. A number of countries have recognised the value of their own country brands and are looking at investing in brand-building. Says Harwoord: “There could be so many more success stories. We’re going to see much more nation branding from African countries. The approach of 2010, when South Africa will host the FIFA World Cup, economic growth, the increasing appeal of Africa as a tourist destination and growing recognition by the countries themselves of the tangible value of self promotion will see a huge rise in nation branding initiatives. I think South Africa is missing a huge opportunity to brand itself, especially with the 2010 spotlight upon us. Our brand is confused, fragmented and disparate, yet this country has the resources, experience, knowledge and skills to change. Let it not be a massive wasted opportunity.

Idea shaped:

Idea delievered:

The Mozambican cellular cellular company mcel, required a transformation of the fragmented brand into a more streamlined, fresh and inspirational one that would radiate energy and sophistication. With a new competitor in the market, a clear differation and unique identity were essential for the survival of the brand.

HKML harmonized the African economic context with the vibrancy of mcel’s world class products and services by gaining insight into Mozambique’s various culturees, languages, buying habits and influences. Monolithic brand architecture was developed, with a colour palette and smile icon that refleted mcel’s proudly Mozambican heritage. The Fun loving spirit of Brazil was introduced to capture the strong South American aspirations that lives in the country.

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CUSTOMERS ARE COLOUR BLIND Words by Naseem Javed

Trying to use a colour for corporate identity can actually lead to trouble. For example, Orange Mobility, a British mobile phone company of France Telecom, is one of the largest telephone players in Europe. Just to make its point, as a gimmick, the company painted an entire town in England orange. Now, Orange Mobility, fully drenched in the color orange, is asking courts to disallow Easymobile, a new mobility service, the use of the colour. Easymobile is a division of Easygroup, and it, too, has been soaked in orange for more than a decade as a part of its parent’s preferred colour. The founder of Easyjet, high profile entrepreneur Haji-Ioannou of Easygroup will fight back, claiming his corporate right to use the colour orange as a branding strategy.    End of the Rainbow   So now a colourful fight breaks out, and the arguments will all end up in a punch bowl. Can great teams of lawyers claim exclusive rights to a colour and attempt to convince the courts? Yes. However, in reality one cannot own the exclusive global rights to a specific colour. In the long run and at the In today’s e-commerce age, where everyone is forced end of the rainbow, a single corporation to type and remember names with absolutely correct can’t own trademark rights to a single colour, just like it can’t own a single spellings, companies with big branding campaigns number or a single letter of the alphabet. only hurt themselves with their old fashioned, painted, Imagine if only Ford were allowed to have blue cars. Or if the number seven colourful advice. Contrary to branding beliefs, exclusively belonged to Walt Disney, then customers don’t really care about, and are completely there would be nothing between six and oblivious to a corporation’s image being tied to a eight. Similar is the alphabet: “W” is only for Westinghouse? Come, join the fight.

specific colour.

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Think of the colour blue, and what often comes to mind is a blue ocean. A blue sky, perhaps? Sometimes, it may be Big Blue, or IBM. IBM truly acquired a secondary meaning with its legendary position of being recognized by a colour. After all, it was a great army in blue suits that pushed forward its towering blue mainframe computers. This corporation being recognized by a single colour represents a very small chapter in the long history of branding. Today, blue is the most common color used in corporate business and liberally used by all types of technology companies. This is why Dell Computer’s logo and many thousands of other computer-related businesses are in blue. IBM never went to court on this issue.    This fight over orange has two issues: One, the use of the word “orange,” and two, the use of the colour of the fruit. The linking of the two makes a unique combination, but not a guarantee for a global restriction on use of the orange colour by anybody else in telephony. Orange Mobility will have a nightmare on its hands if the company decides to go global. It knows that well. The situation is like a bank in Japan called Tomato, also using the word along with a designated red colour. But can the bank then stop all banks in Japan from using the colour red? No.    Fruity Branding   There are two reasons why this issue over orange is going to court: One, an overly fruity branding strategy, and two, the overly zealous legal wits. The odd origin of the word “orange” comes from “naga ranga” in Sanskrit. According to a seventh century B.C. incident, apparently one day an elephant was passing through the forest when he found a tree unknown to him in a clearing, bowed downward by its weight of beautiful, tempting oranges. The elephant ate so many oranges that he burst. Many years later, a man stumbled upon the scene and noticed the fossilized remains of the elephant with many orange trees growing from what had been its stomach. The man then exclaimed, “Amazing! What a naga ranga.

In reality one cannot own the exclusive global right to a specific colour.

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Decades ago, in the age of technological scarcity, to be identified by a specific color or even called by that name was considered a great corporate image coup. Today, it has no value. While big corporate identity firms have clearly run out of unique, powerful names, they are now desperately trying to support weaker and poorer names with a specific colour theme as a calling device to identify a corporations corporate identity, by a single unique colour, that is.    With red, blue and yellow as primary colours, how far can you go in reminding customers to differentiate among 100 million brands? Will “Pink Magenta” or “Dark Cherry Black” be the new highly exclusive and protected corporate colours? In this scenario, courts would be swamped over the slight change in a shade or a tint. It might be great for a short publicity stunt and some huge legal costs, but practical? No.    The color brown is a new calling device for UPS, the United Parcel Service. “Brown makes me happy.” Really? In another example, Pepsi recently introduced a blue-colored soft drink in a Pepsi bottle called Pepsi Blue, maybe as a counter attack to Vanilla Coke, a dark coloured coke with vanilla flavor. Unfortunately, to some, Pepsi Blue looks more like Windex or 2000 Flushes. The marketing of blue fluids has often been associated with sanitation products, even when it comes to mouthwashes, like Clorox and Listerine in blue. There is also blue, green and purple ketchup these days. So what’s next?

The use of colour as Conflicting Considerations   Yellow is considered to be for the soft at heart and the timid, but a name or to identify then there are the useful Yellow Pages. Also Yellow Freight, a gigantic freight company of strong men on the super highways. a corporation is far too stretched. The customer is somewhat colour blind to these branding tactics.

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Who knows? Green thoughts are often reserved for money, grass and vegetables, but sometimes, for the Green Party, which is for the environment (and flush with green money).    H&R Block, the tax preparing giant, is now clinging to a green block as its image and its exclusive colour. Perhaps it wants to be recognized as a Green Bloch [sic]. Henry Bloch correctly picked the name of his company as H&R Block to avoid spelling and pronunciation problems. When he appeared as a spokesperson with his correct name, it caused confusion, and to correct the whole thing, he simply changed his own name to Block. Well done, the consumer thanks you for this easy spelling of Block, Mr. Bloch.    The use of colour as a name or to identify a corporation is far too stretched. The customer, at large, is somewhat colour blind to these branding tactics. Customers are already recovering from the awkward, dumb and, at times, obscene names from the wild branding era of the last dot.com bubble: PurpleFrog, PurpleCow, PurpleDog, PurpleRhino, all the way to BlueFrog, BlueCow, BlueDog, BlueRhino, etc. These poor animals were subjected to much verbal abuse and named in just about every colour of the rainbow, almost creating possible strikes at the local zoo.

Every time you see green, do you really think of money, the IRS or just grass?    A specific coluor cannot motivate the customer to alter his perception of a branding connection. Every time you come in contact with the colour brown, wouldn’t you prefer to think of a chocolate bar, rather than calling UPS or hugging one of their delivery guys on the road? Every time you see green, do you really think of money, the IRS or just grass?    Name-Driven Economy   If naming corporations by colour is really that important, then perhaps a lot of corporations should simply be called Red, red in embarrassment, blushing or simply for bleeding too much red ink, or pink, if cleared by the SEC, and rosey, if on the rebound.  Logos and big colour schemes are things of the past, but they are still used more and more for packaging designs. In today’s e-commerce age, where everyone is forced to type and to remember names with perfectly correct spellings, companies with big branding campaigns only hurt themselves with their old fashioned, painted, colourful advice. They must all reconverge and regroup and re-align their thinking to cope with today’s name driven economy. For now, it is best to leave the pretty colours of the rainbow in the sky.

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The branding circus has arrived creating brand confusion along the way.

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WHEN THE BRANDING CIRCUS COMES TO TOWN Words by Naseem Javed / Images by Scanpix

Roy Disney said, “You need branding when your product has nothing to offer.” Roy’s uncle, Walt, invented Mickey Mouse and created the Disney empire. At the time, the word “branding” was reserved only for cowboys branding their herds of cattle by the fiery iron. The word “branding” is dangerously overused. Many people use branding as a cure for all kinds of problems in all kinds of businesses. To lay claim to a deeper understanding of this elementary word, branding agencies all over the world have developed some cute variations of it, from “emotional branding” to primal, sensory, musical, internal, external, holistic, vertical, abstract, nervous and all the way to invisible branding. However, to see these distinctions, I pooled to place ads on their guess you’ll need special 3D spectacles.

Pregnant mothers are being round, shiny stomachs as part of “tummy branding.” Some argue that this is how news is created. To some, this is “desperate branding” in action. Welcome to “guaranteed-to-fail branding,” a process that ensures a top spot on the list of branding failures. These projects are sometimes called “reality branding.” There is no limit to these weird processes.

The list of branding types is almost like the three MIT wizards who took an academic conference for a ride by submitting a paper in all fake jargon: “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy.” Their paper was actually accepted, believe it or not.

Hazard Branding There are hundreds of such branding terms pointing to the same thing. How did this historical process of branding ownership marks on animals get transformed into a word circus? Bending the state of mind among corporations, institutions and many governments. Branding is often presented as a culturally, emotional or lifestyle crazy, sugarcoated packaging process. Sometimes it is like rap music, with spinning colors or psychedelic pastel overtones accompanied with hip-hop idea drivers. Other times it comes with esoteric concepts to camouflage the products or services just long enough to get the customers’ attention. Most of the time, it comes as juicy ideas under some new blanket term of branding that is designed to create a safe and secure feeling for the corporation while waiting for the thunder from the charge of anxious customers.

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Empty concepts, poorly designed and beaten up products can’t be resurrected with some abstract branding terms along with some flashy campaigns.

For some reason, if the highly anticipated traffic doesn’t show up, then the term is changed immediately to the likes of “primal branding,” with a twist or a new dance style added to the circus. The very same promotional process is then renamed repeatedly. The idea is that when share prices fall, just call the branding team and let it apply its “fiscal branding” to mail fancy brochures to shareholders. When products fail, let the “visual branding” make logos make over, and when elevators don’t work, give it to the “yo-yo branding” unit, as they are real experts in north and south mobility. Today, branding is a mixed bag of basic, traditional advertising tools, simply waxed and packaged to appear as intellectual advice with an expensive price tag. It is targeted to fit any hungry frame of mind, and is designed to make corporations feel ever so comfortable with terms like verbal, digital, audio, smelly, silent or loud branding, as all these terms are designed to offer great safety and invisible lifelines to sinking ships. But does it work?

Is this what it has come to, using the human skin as a billboard? All though it might bring your brand some attention it does not create any brand value.

Just Promotional Tools At times it does, as corporations do need solid and real branding. However, it most often fails, frequently due to lack of substance, quality, intelligence and experience. What is now being offered in the name of branding includes perfumed stationery at the banks, as sensory tickles, jingles and chimes for the funeral parlor, This is nothing but raw promotional tricks, that doesn’t bring long lasting customers. These approaches fail because they are just basic promotional tools and skills, and because they are trendy quick fixes. Branding has been defined so many times by so many experts that it is almost useless to redefine it. Like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The presentation of fancy fireworks at a huge marina as a big branding exercise might be merely ordinary to some other company. Hundreds of hired people walking on a busy street with their foreheads painted with the names of products might be kinky, tacky or too smart, all depending on the culture and mental level of the client.

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Pregnant mothers are being pooled to place ads on their round, shiny stomachs as part of “tummy branding.” Some argue that this is how news is created. To some, this is “desperate branding”, to others it is getting the word out at any cost. Welcome to guaranteed to fail branding, a process that ensures a top spot on the list of branding failures. These projects are sometimes called “reality branding.” There is no limit to these weird processes. Most of the time, the creative powers overtake the process, and fancy jargon becomes the Band-Aid while the Laws of Global Corporate Image, Rules of Corporate Nomenclature and Name Identities, Cyber Domain Management, Principals of Marketing and Global Branding are all completely ignored as being too rigid, too serious and too formal. Solid Training, Thorough Skills Let’s face it, these branding rules are very hard to learn and very difficult to apply because they require solid training and thorough skills. Simple, raw promotional skills backed by big budget fireworks are only “accidental branding” at play, where everyone becomes happy as long as there is some noise. In the recent past, this is how “high volume” or “intense” branding got the center stage. Today, in this budgetless environment, it is only a dream for most agencies to get such mega breaks. U.S. businesses are still very much overdosed with overbranding. Massive turnover in the advertising and branding industry, compounded by the Internet , e-commerce and outsourcing has created a large glut of branding consultants with too many faceless, nameless consulting services and Web sites. The market is simply glutted. Western branding agencies are losing their grip by not producing world-class standards and are becoming a laughing stock by adopting, in a panic, monkey-seemonkey-do campaigns.

In reality, you definitely need proper branding today; the type is not the issue. However, first you must have something very good to offer. You also need highly specific and proven branding with highly tactical positioning skills, under proper corporate and brand name identity and image laws, rather than raw graphic and promotional tools. Useless Branding? Empty concepts and poorly designed and beaten up products and services can’t be resurrected with some abstract branding terms along with some flashy campaigns. Big money spending will not buy big image anymore. It worked in the past, but times have changed. Today, the latest cyber-branding techniques are in big play. Corporations are opening up to a debate on this subject among senior management and ignoring the old and traditional branding methodologies. As e-commerce matures by the minute, the masses of customers have successfully ignored the expensive blitzes and pretended to have some type of an early Alzheimer’s condition to justify their memory loss. Nothing sticks in mind any longer. The blasted, useless messages are instantly forgotten. The 15-minute fame suggested by Andy Warhol is now only a 15-second blip on the global e-commerce landscape. What was previously shoved on 24-7 ad campaigns and lasted at least a year is now completely forgotten the very next day. Should we now re-define branding all over again? Should this word be re-invented? How about “useless branding?” No, not quite yet.

What is now being offered in the name of branding are just promotional tricks. A pig used as a promotional tool for Louis Vuitton.

Imprint gallery

Opposite page, from left to right:

This page, from left to right:

HTC logo designeed by Marco Molteni. The logo is

NY poster designed by Oded Ezer as an homage to

Milton Glazers iconic logo.

designed as a visual representation of a mobile phone in the palm of someone’s hand.

Book covers designed by Iva Babaja. The idea was to capture the atmosphere of each work without it being a

The Publik Drinkhouse and Eatery designed by Roy

literary illustration.

White & Matthew Clark. The visual identity is made up of clever pairings with the word “Publik” set up as a verbal

Industrial brand designed by Mark Busse, Ben Garfinkel

and visual language for the identity with a bit of attitude.

and Matt Samycia Wood. The logo is designed to resembe pipes and infrastructure, and represents both

Altreforme designed by Marco Molteni and Margherita

the process and panach.

Monguzzi. he logo for the brand was designed as a monogram from “a” and “f”.

Helvetica poster designed by Boris Ljubicic. The concept behind the poster is that Helvetica has

Poster designed by Alireza Siddighi, were created for the

outgrown itself and become far more than just

“Animals on posters” exhibition, held at the Dutch Poster

typography. As with the Swiss Army knife, in typography,

Museum in Hoorn.

Helvetica can do anything.

Imprint gallery

Opposite page, from left to right:

common ground, forming not only a ‘C’ but a human

Poster designed by Andre Poppovic. The idea is based

eye representing vision.

on Coca Cola’s strong image. Using only a few elements of its identity still makes the brand recognizable.

Nedbank Flash mailers designed by Johan van Wyk, is an Introduction title sequence and on-air identity.

Fraser Valley Regional Library logo designed by Kevin Broome, represents the library’s role in the community.

This page, from left to right: X-games ad designed by Cross Colours. Given the

The Perpetua Calender designed by Leila Mariani, gives

extreme, almost aggressive nature of the X-Games as

you the every day date of past, present and future years.

well the ad shows a close-up of an injury in the shape of an X1.

Pepperjack Cabernet Sauvignion designed by Chris Perks and Alan Morrisson. The design reflect the

Fully Loadedtea brand identity designed by Matthew

characteristics of the wine as being genuine, confident

Clark, Steph Gibsona and Roy White is is the bold, full-

and unpretentious.

flavor, big attitude line of whole leaf and all-fruit teas in a world of the “watered-down” and “wishy-washy”.

Cube3 logo designed by Gary Domoney. The logo expresses the companies architectural approach.

Poster designed by Lana Cavar, Ira Baletic and Ivan Krizan. The solitude that is shown in the play, is also

C31 logo designed by Gary Domoney. The 31 dots

presented on the poster. The whole concept was based

are representative of individuals coming together on

on an esotheric atmosphere that prevails in the play.

magazine

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magazine

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VISUAL IDENTITY

WEEK

#1/2009

Vancouver, Canada 26 - 29 April 2010

DESIGN