Grateful to the ever excellent Brand New website for the analysis of the new Argos identity. At a glance, the identity has been cleaned up – from the original one could intuit a smile, and also a sense of speed (appropriate to the somewhat magical pace at which ordered items appear at the counter). This has been simplified to a cleaner font and a cheerful smile. So, more single-minded. One could argue that the old version was closer to Amazon’s smiling dynamic arrow. But somehow by simplifying things, the similarities become actually stronger in the mind’s eye.

What do you think of it? A cleaner design? Or an opportunity to be truly distinctive that has not been fully taken? Argos has to appeal to a huge spectrum of shoppers, but mass appeal need not lack a particular personality, as (for me) the Amazon logo proves. Perhaps the brief was to clean up the identity system, rather than create a catalyst for change.

Looking over these closing titles from various westerns, it strikes me that while they all do a creditable job of looking the part, they are all completely interchangeable.

In our neck of the design woods, packaging wordmarks are probably the most vital element of a design. They have to help set the tone of the brand in a way which does not jar with the product or category, but also be reasonably unique. But being too neat a typographic fit to the story can make one blend in rather than stand out. Not too much of a problem when the credits roll, more of an issue in a shop. Yet all around us we can find similarly category generic typography in packaging. If the credits below were a pack they would be the ones to get noticed. They might not do the best job of saying “western” but they have the virtue of avoiding cliche.

Paddington and marmalade sandwiches belong together. Robertson’s Golden Shred have lured him back from his work endorsing Marmite, which makes total sense. Unilever’s response to losing their star signing is brilliantly arch “It seems fitting that a bear as prone to mishaps as Paddington should turn up at Robertson’s after developing a savoury tooth” they told The Grocer.

Like premier league footballers, when one hires the talent rather than owns it, I guess defection to another team is always an occupational hazard. This got me wondering – can you think of any famous brand mascots who have been adopted rather than specifically created for a brand, but who have come to be an integral part of the brand non the less? Fido-Dido was around as a cartoon for a little while before signing up with 7-Up, but it would now be hard to imagine him anywhere else now.

And the Playboy rabbit has travelled in the opposite direction – when Playboy Enterprises Inc entered talks with bidders late last year fashion house Iconix Brand Group stated that it was more interested in the company’s saucy symbol than the photo spreads of naked women that made the magazine famous in the first place. The magazine, with its declining sales and advertising revenue, they could take or leave.  But the brand image, and what it powerfully symbolised, was still considered of great value ($300 million was the figure quoted). So even when you create the mascot, it seems it can still outgrow the product.

Costa Coffee has enjoyed a great run lately, with sales up by 9.5% in the last 3 months. It is also set to launch the first points-based loyalty scheme in the coffee industry. However, as you can see from the image above, while the card mechanic might be innovative, the graphic design is relatively functional. Which begs the question – why are so many loyalty cards a little workaday?  As essentially an advertisement in your wallet, they surely should aim to express the brand’s soul and visual equities in the imaginative ways more typically seen in online or packaging manifestations.

Costa certainly isn’t the only brand that plays things safe rather than using the card as a creative canvas…

Loyalty is arguably about more than redemption mechanics - its also about creating emotional engagement with the brand. For example, Puccino’s offering seems more ownable and speaks for the brand in a much more distinctive manner:

A new book by Sven Voelker gives a design overview of the graphical decoration of racing cars. I’d recommend this short film to anyone who likes cars or design. In it he explains how the original designs (effectively amateur efforts by the mechanics and race teams) were described as “warpaint”. They were intended to make cars look faster and to intimidate the competition.

It’s fascinating to see the examples of cars as blanks transformed into superfast-looking machines with the judicious application of some stripes. And the best brand exponent of this art must surly be Martini for Porsche – the cars were unmistakably sponsored by the drink, but the brand livery was brilliantly re-configured to make the car look streamlined and fast.

Paint might not physically make a car go faster, but by generating confidence, perhaps it can help. It’s a neat example of how decoration can say “No.1” before the race is even run, and how this approach might give one an edge over the competition. It’s only a matter of ink and confidence, whether it’s a racing car or a pack of biscuits.

The book is Go Faster, The Graphic Design of Racing Cars. Published by Gestalten.

Can you name any of the famous authors above?
The only one I would confidently recognise is Tom Wolfe, for the simple reason that he has been wearing his famous white suit since 1962. As you can see below, over time the suit has been augmented with other props – spats, a cane, a hat. But the basic image has become the mans trademark.

Wolfe claims that the outfit disarms the people he observes, making him, in their eyes, “a man from Mars, the man who didn’t know anything and was eager to know.”
But it’s equally true that the outfit has helped make Wolfe the centre of his own stories, a visual distinctive shorthand picked up on in book and magazine covers and helping further boost his standing.

Wolfe turned eighty yesterday, and he offers in his persona a simple lesson about branding; that single-minded and repetitive consistency is much more effective than  make-overs which revamp the image in pursuit of whatever the current zeitgeist happens to be. I hope his dry-cleaner sent him a nice card.

The other authors, by the way, are (l to r) Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen and Gore Vidal.

With the premier of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland comes the expected brand tie-in’s and merchandising. Clipper are the “official hot drinks’ partner”. I think their design for a limited edition Alice blend works really well because it sticks faithfully to the brand’s house style. And it’s able to do this because Lewis Carroll and illustrator Tenniel created such a rich and recognisable stream iconography in the first place. Which in turn made me wonder, do any of the brands riding the Alice film really require “official” status? What does such a thing cost, and what does it buy? Perhaps I’m being naïve - perhaps such tie-ins are free, generating publicity for the film studio and in return getting premiere tickets to use in competitions etc.

The visual cues of Alice (blue dresses with white pinafores etc) are presumably beyond copyright. Both Selfridges and Claire’s Accessories are running pop-up shops selling Alice inspired jewellery, much of which plays with the familiar devices (top hats and playing cards etc) rather than Burton-specific imagery. Could these designs have been created without Disney’s blessing? Would a more opportunistic/entrepreneurial use of the source material be wrong from a consumer perspective?

Either way, has any other British book been the wellspring for so much universally loved imagery? I think it’s testament to the original source’s quality that the fancy Alice jewellery (below) on sale in Selfridges is not, at a glance, much more arresting than some of the designs on sale a little further down Oxford street in Claire’s Accessories.

Sometimes one’s inspiration and influences can be worn a little too clumsily on one’s sleeve. “Vote for Change” was coined for Kerry against Bush, and was much in evidence in the Obama campaign. This text book example of successfully branding a candidate has clearly influenced the Cameron communication. But the Conservative’s attempts to appear an up to the minute brand have an inverse effect to the one desired - “Conservatives launch iPhone app” should not be at number three in the things they are excited about on the Conservative website I would hazard. And so it goes - “join us on facebook, sorry, our Twitter is down” etc. etc. They even have an online shop where one can get some ersatz “cool graphic” posters (in the broadly modern style of the famous Obama ones):

It all feels like watching one’s dad dancing. A conundrum for the marketing guys I’m sure – after all designing to an aesthetic which might appeal to old Thatcherites (perhaps a tie in to the Franklyn Mint?) wouldn’t send out the right message. The identity is tasked with heralding “modernity” but acting cool and cutting edge feels equally unconvincing, in the same way that David Cameron’s “I love darts, Guinness and Sky+” and his airbrushed photo claims have attracted derision.

In graphical terms, I think the Vote for Change logo is a good example of how aiming for broad appeal with a little bit of this and a little bit of that can produce a design soup which ultimately adds up to nothing memorable or coherent. In another bit of borrowed cool, the vote for change logo seems to owe much to the above work of Barbara Kruger (although her messages were subversive, zeitgeisty and generally had more teeth). Colourways: bright blue (a zesty new pantone for the old brand), with green (reflecting the new-ish tree logo and offering a suggestion of an eco-aware agenda). Then, oh cripes, we might be alienating Norman Tebbit with all this, let’s slap on a Union Jack for good measure.

The resultant hodge-podge says nothing specific to no-one in particular. The definition of weak brand image. Mocking the Conservatives for overtly courting a dress-down Friday image has been like shooting fish in a barrel since William Hague donned a baseball cap for some team building, but one wonders why the party does not play to its strengths and project an image with a little more reserved gravitas. Is such a tactic at odds with suggesting an evolved party?

These observations are not intended to be political – after all one might be a true-blue tory and still despair over the party’s re-brand. But in the interests of even handed-ness, it’s worth mentioning that Labour’s home page with its sub-Guardian newspaper rainbow of colours, and the LibDems’ dreary efforts (which look like they took their inspiration from a financial services homepage) are no oil paintings either. Elections are never going to be won and lost on the quality of the graphics, but with a hung parliament predicted, one might have imagined one or other party coming to the conclusion that it might be worth having a distinctive, honest, decent looking and original approach to the branding of their values.

Over the last few years we have seen a dramatic transformation in how a Fairtrade status is perceived. Where once it seemed like a niche endeavour for a niche market, the accreditation has spread across categories and brands to become an everyday occurrence. And where once only certain lines from big brands might carry the marque, it is now more typical to see a whole-hearted adoption of Fairtrade policy across entire ranges from participating companies. Happily, the exception has now become the rule with an £800m growth in Fairtrade sales to match.

This is a massive achievement, but of course success creates its own challenges. For example, when the marque becomes ubiquitous, does an adoption of it begin to look generic? The Starbucks and Nestlé communications above both fall into the rather anachronistic “hessian = authentic and worthy” clichés. The lack of integration between Fairtrade and brand makes theses initiative appear a bit bolted on. Conversely Cadbury demonstrate how Fairtrade can comfortably translate to the mainstream. The beauty of this example is that Cadbury puts this principle at the heart of the brand, with the Fairtrade communications well integrated and tailored to a Cadbury feel. The same can be said of Harry Hill’s nuts. While they are a non-profit brand, the packs feel fun, colourful and very Harry Hill. Doing good does not have to look do-gooding.

Another challenge that comes with success is that suddenly one is in serious competition with others fighting for a share of brands (and we shoppers) attention. Marketing reported this week on the growing schism between Fairtrade and the Rainforest Alliance.

The received wisdom seems to be that Fairtrade accreditation is harder to earn, but that it focuses on producers’ welfare (with sustainability as a second string), while the Rainforest Alliance is more single-mindedly fixed on protecting bio-diversity. Most right minded shoppers would rather not have to make the choice. Clearly Fairtrade had to stand for something in particular – this simplicity of message will in large part have fuelled its growth. But has this painted the brand into a corner? Going forward Fairtrade will need to amplify its environmental aspects to become a rounder offer. Otherwise, in logo terms, we consumers will be faced with declaring a preference for people or flora and fauna.

Weighing the pig more isn’t making it any fatter
It’s a curious paradox that as business grows more confident about the value of design, it’s becoming less confident in exercising judgement about it - to the extent that few organisations will today implement even cosmetic design changes without extensive pre-testing.

The prevailing culture of accountability and management by measurement suggest this trend is set to continue. While it has undoubtedly brought some benefits with it, creating a great body of work for design to be benchmarked against and rewarding the elevated status of design with its own studies, rather than a few minutes discussion at the wrap-up of an advertising focus group, it certainly hasn’t been making design better.

With the recession, many marketing budgets are being pruned, so design testing isn’t receiving incremental investment, but frequently being funded by the reallocation of money away from the insight gathering that might otherwise inspire more transformational design. Put bluntly, the current trend in research is at best making design safer, not better.

The research world shouldn’t regard the situation with complacency, however. The legacy of high profile failures of ‘extensively researched’ re-designs, such as Tropicana in the US and Mr Kipling cakes in the UK and a thus-far more quietly expressed disquiet about disappointing paybacks from positively tested design revisions herald an urgent reassessment of the role of research in design and how to improve it.

Paradoxically, this recession isn’t the time for Market Research to play it safe, it isn’t the time to be doing the wrong type of research a bit righter, it’s the time to invent techniques that exploit newly available technology and insights into human psychology to help organisations to design better.

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