So, You’ve Decided to Rebrand Your Company, What Next?
If you’ve decided to rebrand your company or organization’s logo, you can avoid common pitfalls with clear communication and a plan for your project. As a graphic designer, I’m usually on the content-creation side, but I’ve worked with many businesses and organizations that have regaled me with stories of horrible projects and experienced project issues myself.
Thankfully, I’ve learned from personal mistakes and found many resources to overcome common project issues. The Graphic Artists Guild produces invaluable resources for creative professionals and provides industry standards for rebranding and other design projects. The Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines is revised annually and includes business practice essentials, professional issues, legal rights, trade customs and pricing.
Common design project issues when in a rebrand of your company include:
Can’t Buy Me Love
Cost overruns on design projects put stress on everyone: the design team may spend time and resources on a project, only to not get paid for their work when the commissioning company rejects their design and breaks their work agreement. Conversely, a company may pay a designer or firm hundreds or thousands of dollars and end up never using the unsuitable or downright bad final product.
Before beginning any project, both parties should sign off (in writing if possible) on a clear outline of deliverables, deadlines, means of communication, what happens if either party is unsatisfied during the project, and a detailed payment schedule. The Graphic Artists Guild resources include sample work agreements and pricing as a starting point for conversations about costs.
Communication Breakdown
Design professionals’ job is to translate and distill your message into visual communication, and this process can break down on either side. Bad designers who don’t honestly discuss their technical skills and conceptual strengths or who don’t listen carefully during the design brief and to mid-project feedback about what your company wants or needs will probably not end up creating successful work. Companies who don’t communicate their budget, timeline, specific likes and dislikes, and provide a process for reviewing in-process work can be at fault as well.
In either case, a thorough interview before beginning the project can help determine if the project is a good match between design team and client. A communication plan for major decision points and quick questions, whether in-person, via phone or email, or screensharing and presentations, can be included with a work agreement, so that everyone’s clear about their role.
Designers may want to show sketches, copywriters may want text revisions, and company project managers may find it easiest to meet in person or chat by phone. Thanks to technology, all of these means of communication can be embraced, so that each part of the team can play to their strengths.
Time is On My Side
Design projects that stretch out far past their intended deadlines can ruin relationships and cause damage on both sides. With a well-planned contract or work agreement in place, both client and designer should know what to do if deadlines are missed and be able to follow a defined plan to accommodate the missed deadline or terminate the working arrangement.
Under My Thumb
Micromanaged design projects can be brutal. Clients can feel forced to respond to texts, emails and phone calls at all hours from a design team who anxiously needs direction and feedback. Graphic artists can feels like their client is watching over their shoulder constantly or trying to do their job for them.
Take a deep breath: the answer to these issues is to stick to your work agreement and trust each other to do your part. Designers should ask as many questions up front as they can and get a good feel for their client, so they can feel confident presenting their work at the draft, review, and final stages. Clients should also carefully review design portfolios (like those on AIGA’s member directory) and request references early on, so that they can feel assured that the designer or team can fulfill their end of the contract on time and within budget without being constantly supervised. Creative professionals often love to share the tools of their trade and may be happy to let clients in on their process at some point, just not during every stage of the project: it’s all about listening to each other and providing feedback where appropriate.
Sweet Emotion
Being able to share criticism and feedback honestly and without creating resentment or hurt feelings as part of a design project can sometimes be bit difficult. Before beginning a design project, take a few minutes to discuss how best to address any friction that comes up, so that everyone can feel positive even if there are setbacks along the way.
Many designers are used to receiving and responding criticism as part of their academic or vocational training, but good writers, designers, and artists put their heart and soul into their work. It’s always helpful to include some kind of positive feedback along with criticism.
On the other hand, suggestions and direction for styles, other logos, fonts, or other design elements made by the company commissioning a logo can sometimes be dismissed by a designer, to the frustration of the project manager. Since designers deal with logos and branding all day every day, there may be genuine reasons not to use the suggestion that aren’t as obvious to a non-professional.
Either way, treating each other with respect will guide many projects to completion, no matter how avant-garde a designer’s first draft might look or how overly trendy (or outdated) a board member’s favorite logo style might seem to a design veteran.
More Than a Feeling
Sometimes bad projects happen to good people. As a designer, I often hear from companies that graphic artists are flaky and unreliable, that they hated the expensive logo or web design project that they recently completed, and that logo and branding projects just aren’t worth the hassle. On the flip side, many designers I know have been ripped off, micromanaged, personally criticized, experienced extreme delays, and had to end client relationships.
In the end, though, I love creating great logos for new and returning clients. Thanks to professional development through AIGA membership, resources from the Graphic Artists Guild, and hard-earned experience, I’m able to avoid project pitfalls and help others do the same.