Very recently, one of the “reputed” design firms of India visited our workplace to share a presentation of the identity design work that they had done for one of our famous brand !
It would be an understatement to say – but they weren’t quite prepared to get the kind of feedback they got after the presentation. It was clearly evident from the way they were defending their work desperately by giving irrelevant examples and references !! For one instance, one of the company official asked “whats the reason of selecting the BLACK as the color for logo and logotype?”….. the answer which came after was both shocking and hilarious :- ” Its BLACK….because of BATMAN !!! Batman is the perfect example of black..no need for any other color ” !!! It was just the beginning of the things to come…….. what followed later was unbelievable stuff……… we were even advised to change the designs of the components, standardize the components, modify the way we design graphics, stick to ONE-COLOR products and what not…..!!!!!!
The way the feedback session went…….clearly meant either of two things :
EITHER that reputed design firm was totally unaware of the way our industry works…i.e. facts like Vendors, Component manufacturing, Consumer insights-their likes and dislikes etc.. were alien concepts for them…
OR they were just trying hard to defend their work by being as adamant and stubborn as they could !!
Whatever it is…….i really don’t care! I feel that the team of people who is responsible for designing any product / service, should be the same people who should decide the related factors like identity, logo, color, graphics, promotion etc etc. The former and latter has to work in cohesion…and for that same matter, assigning either of those jobs to some external agencies is absolutely useless……because these design firms will never be able to relate to the thoughts and emotions that go behind the design and development of a product…….and for a company who believes that consumer is king….to blindly trust some external agencies to come up with something really worthwhile…..that too after giving them only “Half the job” ….. should be a hard learnt lesson for the decision makers !!
In short……either do everything “IN-HOUSE” ….or OUTSOURCE every damn thing……….but just dont do the mistake of dividing design and marketing (or product and promotion…….whatever you call it) !!
Anyways…..when you will see the so called “DISTINCT” logo out in the market in some weeks time……..it will be another example of the so called ” MISTAKEN IDENTITY” !!!
