Recently, the New Jersey nets announced a move to Brooklyn. With that announcement, they revealed the branding for the new Brooklyn Nets. The logo was a throwback to the days of the sky hook and short shorts and it looks, in my opinion, really nice. However, there was a lot of controversy surrounding this logo because it was said that it was designed by rap mogul and entreprenuer Jay-Z.

As far as I was concerned, H.O.V. designed a good logo that was simple and extremely memorable but there were cries across the internet of “Jay-Z doesn’t know how to use Illustrator,” “He isn’t pushing pixels around,” and “Jay-Z isn’t a designer.” This made me start thinking more about what, exactly, constitutes being a designer.

So, if design is all about solving problems, that means that the essence of the design is the thought. The thought needed to solve the problem at hand. Whether or not Jay-Z even has Illustrator on a computer in his house is irrelevant. The design of the new Brooklyn Nets logo was his brainchild, so it was his design. At least in this instance, Jay-Z is a designer. Even if he has to communicate his idea to a production artist, it’s his idea and his design. This should lend to a point, also, that just because you know how to use Photoshop or Illustrator, that doesn’t make you a designer. You can be the best Photoshop user in the world, but without an understanding of design or the ability to properly come up with creative solutions to problems you are, at best, a production artist.

This entire arguement lends itself to a perspective of designers being pompous and conceited. This is a serious problem within the design community. I won’t go in to it deeply here, but I will expand on this idea in a later post. The crux of this argument is that designers have a stigma of holding to a belief that only designers can design.

The truth of the matter is, everyone can design. We all have the capability within ourselves to come up with a creative thought and, at least attempt to, implement it in the world. The breakdown comes between creating a design and being a designer. Being a designer should be considered more as a lifestyle than a job. Its about the continual practice in honing one’s craft and coming up with new and inventive ways to solve problems within a certain set of constraints.

“Remind yourself. Nobody built like you, you design yourself.” – Jay-Z

I’ve been sparked to a new concept. I’ve read a lot recently about perceived problems with humanitarian design. There is an argument that humanitarian design is not what it claims to be in terms of how one chooses to make a difference in the world and that using first-world ideals cannot solve third-world problems.

After reading some of these papers, I’ve decided that I want to start examining some of these concepts and clear things up for myself on whether humanitarian design is everything that is claims to be. To do this, I’ve decided to examine the One Laptop Per Child project (OLPC) and how their cutting edge computer design has changed the world. I chose the OLPC because I do believe in their core ideal of technology expanding educational opportunity and considering their upcoming release of the XO 3.0 tablet, there will be more information and coverage available on the organization than ever before.

I’m going to attempt to do this in a series of posts that I plan on putting together in a full paper at the end.

Get ready. Here comes something.

It’s been song long since I’ve blogged on these topics that I have decided to roll the last two into one brief post and move on to my next project.

Relatability
Having a logo or symbol that is relatable is a big deal in order to better reach your clientele. Your symbol or mark should be recognizable to the group you’re trying to reach. Let’s say, for a moment, that there is a food company who has a logo which is a picture of a hot dog. If they are trying to expand to a new region or culture that has never heard of a hot dog, their new clients will not have any idea what the symbol is or what it means to them. It would be in the best interest of the company to consider re-branding with a more universal symbol to reach their new market. You could think that your logo is the most clever thing that has ever been considered but if it does not read with your intended audience, all of the meaning, thought, and concept behind your logo is for nothing.

Memorability
Consider the billboard. How long does it take to pass a billboard when you’re driving on the highway? Roughly 3 seconds. That’s the amount of time that you have for your logo to have an affect on someone. If someone has to sit and study your logo for an extended period of time then it will be lost in the sea of media that inundates everyone, everyday. As a designer, you’re up against the challenge of competing with every other form of media for the attention of your audience. You have to recognize this fact and be conscious of it as you design in order to solve this problem. If you can take the other four qualities of a good logo and use them together effectively, they will have this fifth quality. Keep it simple, make it recognizable, allow it to be versatile, and let it relate to your market and you will have something that can be remembered.

What’s bugging you?

Having a versatile logo is one of the most important things about having a logo in general. You want a logo that can be printed in a magazine ad and embroidered on a shirt; a logo that can be read just as easily printed on a business card as it would a billboard. You want a logo that can go with your brand, wherever you want it to go.

Imagine, for a moment, a hypothetical logo. This logo has a rather large graphic at the top with a small wordtype underneath. This logo will look fine, as long as it’s scaled up. Once you start to scale it down, it becomes unreadable. If your logo only works on billboards, it is a bad logo.

A good example of this in the television industry, as that is what this who thing is supposed to be based on, is the use of “bugs” on tv stations. A “bug” is the small logo that identifies the station you are watching that is ever present in the corner of your tv screen. Some, more famous, examples of stations that use recognizable bugs are NBC, CBS, The Disney Channel, and USA.

Pay attention to these bugs some time. It’s not often that people actually, consciously attempt to do so. One thing that all of these stations have in common when it comes to their bugs is that all of their bugs are fairly simplistic. They don’t try to cram text in or use overly flowery graphics that wouldn’t read at the small size. This makes the bug identifiable to anyone just clicking through the stations, at many different resolutions and, as a result, in many different applications. This logic can carry over in to your logo design.

The difficulty in trying to create a logo that is versatile is in creating a logo that is both simple and different. The old saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. You want to create a graphic that is wholly new and original, but, at the same time, you do not want to create something so overly complex that it loses its versatility.

Then there’s the concept of demographic versatility. There was a recent study that was done that looked at how our minds responded to the recognizability of a face. The more complex the portrait that was presented to the participant, the less likely they were able to relate what it was. The more complex and highly rendered the face was, the more personal attributes were given to it, making it less identifiable to the study participant. The completely simplistic and iconic “smiley face” was recognized and related by every participant in the study. Essentially, the highly rendered face only represented a couple people that look similar to that drawing, while the “smiley face” could be anyone. This is sort of a long way of saying that simplicity gives versatility by making a logo more identifiable in more situations to more people. Certain cultures may have a different opinion or cultural significance that they give to certain symbols. Your logo is hardly versatile if the concept of your logo excludes a viable demographic for your business.

Consider versatility in design when you are working. When you’re designing, take a moment to scale some copies of your logo to varying degrees and see how they read. Try to break your logo down into universally recognizable shapes to make it more informative for all people. Watch television.

This is probably the most vague concept that I have presented in the “5 Qualities” series and it’s only number two. However, hopefully, I will clear up a lot of cloudiness in this post. Recognizability is mostly about consistency in branding; creating a brand for yourself or your company that can be identified in any situation. The best way to do this, when it comes to designing a logo, is to break down the logo in to two parts: the graphic and the wordmark. The graphic and wordmark should be able to work just as well independently as they do together. If your logo does not work when deconstructed, it is only half a logo and your branding is not as versatile as it could be.

Let’s take the Nike logo as a perfect example of a logo that can be deconstructed and still be recognizable. The forward slant of the work mark matches the forward motion of the “swoosh” and the weight of the two elements are similar. Keeping the elements of your logo similar in this manner helps to maintain recognizability when the logo is deconstructed and gives the branding more strength at the core. If you saw an ad in a magazine and it contained only the “swoosh” or only the wordmark, you would still be able to look at the icon and say “Oh, hey, it’s a Nike ad.”