So I’m going throught my website again tonight to revise the descriptions for each piece and trying to hold back from giving too much of the story on each. Just the professional stuff, right? Seems like a few of those have some typical story of being rejected for being too weird, or are the result of something toned down to meet the common ground of a large committee. Ahh, the typical plight of designers to have to produce the bland in some corporate attempt to please everyone. Perhaps I get a wild hair all too often, but I think I’m supposed to in my line of work. One such example is Indigo. In the early days of designing our corporate I.D., there was a matter of debate over what color ‘indigo’ really is. My solution was to simply abandon blue altogether, and make the logo orange. I figured it avoided the comparisons and brought added intrigue and attention to our little logo. Of course, reality sets in and despite having all our team being on board with the idea, owners will require the most logical and straightforward option and thus the logo is blue.
Then there are times when we design something we’re all behind and joyfully have the option of tactfully telling a client to take a hike. Example: Baghaa. A snowboarding, skiing, rollerblading, etc. company needs a logo to put on the gear they manufacture. Their initial suggestion is a ‘b’ and a ‘g’ where the loops form the eyes, and the descender of the ‘g’ forms a smile, with kind of a kid-drawn crayon look to it. But, they said, they’re ‘wide open to ideas’. Never trust a remark like that from a client. It means they’re married to their original idea and they want you to make it look good by some miracle. We, of course, quickly moved on from their original idea and designed a logo to fit a wintersport genre, involving the ‘b’ and ‘g’ integration, but aiming for something more sporty (see above). The client rejected it as being too weird for extreme sports. We, in turn, suggested they present both logos to a focus group, and of course we never heard from them again. Good luck to them. I’m glad we kept to the design that we knew was good, and not allow design by dictation. If a client wants that, there’s little point hiring a professional designer.