Brand Identity Essentials by Kevin Budelmann, Yang Kim and Curt Wozniak

Article by Martin Gibson – @embody3d @martingibson – 02.10.2010

[rating:4]

Have you ever considered once what your company colour(s) even mean and what they say about your organisation to perhaps the thousands of individuals that interact with it day in and day out? Or was your company colours something that was conjured many years ago by a designer throwing a dart on a colour chart? Have you considered the psychology of your company colours? This is one of the many thousand questions that you will be asking after completing this book, which will give you a real wake up call, as to how you are perceived in the market by your customers, clients and suppliers.

The advice in this book is brief but sound and covers every area imaginable when it comes to logos and brand identity. Don’t expect sophisticated breakdowns and thorough justifications; expect generalities. But man oh man the content of this book regarding scope, quality and length is spot on for the subject matter. Even to my surprise it covers areas that I haven’t even seen covered yet by other books which makes it a delight to explore. There is nothing more irritating than seeing another logo design book that just talks about how you can have 3D logos and ones with pretty swirls, this book hits the mark in originality. The writers of this book including Kevin Budelmann, Yang Kim and Curt Wozniak hold great authority and experience in this area from their roles at ‘People Design’ a 25 person firm that helps leaders transform their businesses through brand experience design. Early on you grasp this experience by some of the innovative logo and brand concepts that are detailed, some of which include: symbol vocabularies, logo structures, editorial style, brand stories, personal logos, logo context, logos and online social media, brand partnerships and hierarchies and logo style guides, you name it.

The book features some extremely helpful illustrations, diagrams and logo/brand samples which really sustains this book. One doesn’t even need to read the headings on each page, the images say it all. The captions are actually useful as they give a micro analysis of what’s going on rather than just telling you who the work was done by. The book is also culturally very relevant. Facebook is mentioned half a dozen times, so is Google, and even the 2012 New York City Olympic bid logo is featured! The literary voice throughout is very practical and authentic and highly opinionated, which is fantastic. It is great to hear people expressing their views in a way that doesn’t fear what others say, which in hindsight might even put their own personal brand identity (haha) on the line. For example, in the chapter An Aesthetic Niche it talks about the importance of finding a unique visual cue that captures your organisation and not one that is borrowed. It then openly dismisses businesses and designers whose livelihood depends on photo sharing websites like iStockphoto, where images often fall guilty to cliche.

By far this books greatest downfall is its purposeful lack of structure. Although the list format of “100 Principles for Designing Logos and Building Brands” is very fun and popular these days, it doesn’t give a clear narrative for the audience to follow. To give you an idea of this structural incertitude the chapter “Brand Psychology” is followed by “Idea Generation” and “Prototyping”; all of which even to an untrained eye could assume have no correlation. Parent chapter titles like “Logo Aesthetics” “Intellectual Property” and “Brand Identity” would have made this book go a lot further and made it a far more valuable reference tool. With all due respect to the literary quality of this title, it is a real shame to see this structural composition despite the editors best efforts to make the list format flow.

The book is really a call to action to think critically about brands, to make them special and unique and more powerful than once thought. One must remember the importance branding has been in the Cola wars. Is it somewhat puzzling that one of the most successful companies in human history, Coca Cola, doesn’t even advertise how great the taste of its core product is? Coca Cola really advertises the types of people that enjoy the product or the different environments they may experience it in. Think about this, now think about your brand, and then maybe think about buying this book:

Brand Identity Essentials – 100 Principles for Designing Logos and Building Brands

Published by Rockport