#lippencott

Here we are again. A monthly walk to visit an old friend. Fascinated with the patina on this Corten steel sculpture in the PNW. Tighter and smoother almost paint like. Rust, almost like an astrolabe, showing latitude and weather conditions. This piece in the Mojave would show the longer days of sun and lack of precipitation in a much different hue. Thought food nourish me! Hurry, someone make me tick!

Griseldine Lippencott

Griseldine Lippencott (or just "Mrs. Lippencott", as she's usually called—almost no one calls her by her first name) is a resident of Teras Terrace who often seems to know more about what's going on than it really seems she should. Maybe she has some mystical power of precognition. Maybe she has some mind-reading abilities that operate subconsciously, and she's able to put together what she learns this way to draw conclusions without being consciously aware of what she's doing. Maybe there's some outside entity bestowing this knowledge upon her for reasons of its own. Whatever the explanation, Mrs. Lippencott frequently dishes out advice based on her strange "feelings", and often sets chains of events in motion herself if she feels it necessary, the actions that she takes to do so seeming baffling to an outside observer.

Entrepreneur.com recently published an interesting piece in whch Su Matthews Hale of the the design firm Lippencott explained iconic logo redesigns that her agency handled, as well as some of her all-time favorite logos (Apple, FedEx, NBC). 

While it's definitely a good read, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Of course, logos are important and branding is important. But what it all comes down to is design.

"A company's logo is its shorthand, a visual cue that tells a story of the brand's culture, behavior, and values," Matthews Hale says.

But I disagree. I see a lot of startups get bogged down and spend loads of money perfecting their logo when they should be focused on their product and marketing.  

In the article Matthews Hale goes through the nuances of her redesigns and the thinking behind them. 

Take the Walmart logo, for instance. It took Lippencott three years to create a new logo design that showcased the brand as "a place where people could wisely spend money and buy premium groceries," as opposed to a bargain shop. 

"They decided to keep the color blue, which Mathews said is the world's favorite color, but go for a brighter hue they believed evoked modernity and trustworthiness. They replaced the sharp angles of the original letters with "a more humanistic font." Finally, they decided on an asterisk-like symbol they wanted to look like "a lightbulb going off in your head," a metaphor for Walmart shoppers being smart for taking advantage of affordable, quality products. They chose a hue of yellow that appeared hopeful but didn't make it too bright because "bright yellow is associated with low-cost items in retail," said Mathews. She was happy to find that focus groups also interpreted the spark as a sun or flower, both positive associations."

While I respect research and focus groups, I disagree with the great amount of emphasis put on logos. A great logo doesn't tell the story of your brand, it's a design decision. An important one that tells the consumer more about the aesthetic of your brand and its voice than its culture and its values. The story of a brand comes through its products, customer service and marketing executions—or how it connects with its consumers in a meaningful way through those outlets.

Many iconic brands have redesigned their logos after becoming established. Some, like Walmart, want a fresh start, others, like eBay and Google, outgrow their initial logos and some brands, like Starbucks, change their focus. Also, a logo redesign may be reflective of the time, where an outdated design is modernized. What this should tell emerging brands isn't that the logo is the be-all and end-all of your brand, but rather that a logo isn't forever.