But what do you do when you’re not branding an organization? What if you’re branding an event?

Events are transient; they are here one day and gone the next.  Their target audience does not necessarily reflect the target demographic of the organization that’s putting on the event.  For instance, take the Macworld Expo.  It’s main sponsor is Macworld magazine, a periodical aimed squarely at people who have purchased a computer made by Apple, Inc. in the last ten years.  The Macworld Expo, however, is aimed at all technology companies and vendors primarily, and secondarily at technology consumers.  Notice the word “computer” isn’t mentioned.  The Macworld Expo competes mainly against technology expos like E3.  Therefore, the branding of each year’s Macworld Expo is completely independent of Macworld Magazine.

Macworld Magazine Website Homepage

Macworld Expo Website Homepage

So, let’s get down to the how-to part of this article.

1. Interview someone who carries the vision/mission for the event.  This usually doesn’t have to be the president of whatever organization is putting on the event.  You’ll probably find someone in management or an event planner that understands the core purposes of the event.
2. Don’t get caught up in the administrative details of the event.  When you are doing the interview, most managers will want to speak about what the conference will do; that’s not important for the branding.  The promotion and branding must come from the vision, the purpose, the “heart” of the event.  If there is a central theme to keynote addresses, these will be more important to communicate than any particular element of the event.
3. Decide on a central person to highlight in the advertising.  Usually there’s a keynote speaker that’s relatively famous.  You’ll want to make this person central in the advertising. Remember that people connect with people; there’s no greater draw to an event than a human face.  If the event you are branding doesn’t have a keynote speaker, there’s probably some major event or offering that you can highlight.  For instance, if you’re marketing a state fair, you could focus on a favorite competition or a new roller coaster ride.  This “rule” has to be held loosely.  Sometimes it’s best to make a theme the focus of your marketing efforts instead of a person.
4. Decide on a primary and secondary target demographic.  Hopefully the event organizers already have a demographic in mind.  If so, make sure your visual language fits the audience.  You don’t want to use dark, grunge, death metal imagery if your target audience is women over the age of 65 living in rural Georgia, USA.  Conversely, you don’t want to use pink doilies in your design if the target audience is men under the age of 30 living in London, England.
5. Your theme should be original enough to stand out amidst it’s medium (direct mail, email newsletter, website ad banner, etc.) but not so trend-setting as to be unrelatable to the target audience.  This is the core of what it means to be a trend-setting designer. You have to push the boundaries—your own personal skill boundaries and the perceptions of your viewers—but you have to keep your design sufficiently rooted in pop culture. That is, unless you’re looking to shock people.
6. Get a budget figure up-front for all the marketing of the event.  You’ll have to figure in printing costs, shipping for printed materials, domain/hosting for website(s), stock photography, or hiring a photographer, etc. All of that has to be taken into consideration before you quote a price for your part in everything.
7. Lastly, remember to have fun. You’re branding something that’s going to be here and gone very quickly, so don’t invest too much into the project emotionally.  If it gets too tedious, drop the project and move on!

• GoDaddy
• Network Solutions
• StartLogic
• FatCow
• Bluehost
• Rochen

Those are all the hosts I’ve used.  Yes, I know there’s lots more, but if you go read enough reviews, you’ll find that pretty much everybody else out there will fit into a category that one of the above also represents.  Here’s the problems that each one has:

GoDaddy uses proxy servers for https connections, so if you’re going to be using secure https connections, applications like VirtueMart will not be happy.  It takes tons of work and phone calls to customer support to get the necessary options in place.  Not worth it.  If you’re just doing a static HTML site, GoDaddy’s fine, as are all the other listed hosts, but if you’re using a dynamic site, avoid these guys.  Plus, their adds really piss me off with all the near-porn.  Come on, guys—really?  Lame.

Network Solutions has unreliable and exceedingly irritating https connections most of the time.  Sometimes they’re slow but usable, most of the time they drop out after a few seconds then reinitialize.  This leads to multiple charges in web stores and frustrated site visitors that blame the web designer.  Plus, Network Solutions is the most prideful, self-absorbed, self-important, over-promising, under-delivering, uncaring web host in existance.  As one of my web design customers put it, when you call them up for tech support, they answer your question by telling you how great they are, then they close the support ticket.  It’s like living in a Dilbert cartoon working with these guys.  One day I’ll be able to look back and laugh at the insanity that is Network Solutions, but for now I’m still working to get out from under their oppresive stupidity.  I have chosen the words in that paragraph carefully.  There’s no hyperbole going on.

StartLogic is friendly and they work hard, but they’re just too slow in regards to database queries.  Unfortunate, because they’ve got a lot going for them.

FatCow is the most friendly and fun to work with group of folks I’ve yet to encounter.  They advertise in Mac magazines too, which is a big plus.  Their site interface actually makes you happy.  Crazy, I know, but there it is.  I love these guys.  One problem: abysmally slow database connections.  My WordPress installation is beginning to get angry even as we speak.  Yes, WordPress can get angry.  So, if you’re going to be using a MySQL database, avoid FatCow like the plague.  In addition, there is no ability with FatCow to install your own SSL certificate.  You can only use their shared https connection, which doesn’t work with many ecommerce applications like VirtueMart.  That’s a deal-breaker, no matter how friendly you are.  I’m in the process of leaving FatCow right now.

Here’s where it gets good.  The last two hosts in my list are my recommended hosts.  One is for those with little-to-no web development experience, and the other is for those who need control and options—those who have experience with web development.

Recommended Web Hosting Companies

Bluehost www.bluehost.com

Pros:

1. Fast in both HTML and PHP/MySQL applications
2. SSL-ready
3. Friendly, unofficially Mormon company
4. Great cPanel interface, easy to use
5. Perfect for anyone who doesn’t know much about web development.

Cons:

1. A reputation for being ‘‘controlling’’
2. They will close down your site if you use cursewords or host pornography.  Not a problem for most, but it’s indicative of broader corporate policies.
3. If you register a domain name with them, they are reticent to give it up to another registrar if you move to another host.  Reticent is an understatement.  They have a reputation for being downright bullheaded about it.  Please note that I’ve not had experience with this issue with Bluehost, but that’s their reputation.
4. Unlimited data transfer, unlimited storage space.  That’s actually a bad thing because it means they run a load-balanced server structure.  So, if you use tons of storage space, or lots of transfer bandwidth, they will restrict your speed so that the other websites on your shared server don’t experience slowdowns.  Anytime a web host advertises unlimited anything, know that if you use a lot of it, your site’s gonna run slow.  Again, not a problem for most sites, but if you’re running a large site, Bluehost may not be for you.

Rochen www.rochenhost.com

Pros:

1. As fast (possibly faster) as Bluehost with PHP/MySQL usage
2. Amazingly great https/SSL setup.  They do most of the work for you.
3. Friendly, completely knowledgable tech support staff.  They work hard to make sure you have no unanswered questions, and that you’re completely happy with your hosting experience.
4. You’re given complete control over your server space, even on shared hosting plans.  It’s magnificent!
5. Good options for managed private servers, virtual private servers, etc.
6. Free, automatic enterprise-level backups to offsite, encrypted backup facilities.
7. Data center in Dallas, TX
8. Amazing customer support forums
9. MyRochen area with detailed past, present and upcoming invoices for easy bookkeeping and accounting.
10. Great resellers program.  Awesome.
11. They are the official www.joomla.org web host, so they are absolute Joomla masters.
12. CGI runs in your site’s own directory, so you never have to CHMOD any files or folders to 777. Ever. That’s security!

Cons:

1. For the novice, you’re given too much control.  It can be daunting.
2. There are a couple too many places to go when dealing with Rochen.  Such as, for tech support, you can go to the Customer Forums website, where you’ll get answers to your questions from customers and Rochen staff, or you can go to the MyRochen website and get answers just from Rochen staff.  They both are confidential, but the MyRochen site is run under https, and not even other Rochen customers see what you write.  Plus, there’s your site’s Control Panel.  Setting each area’s access is done separately, so it takes a while to get every area going.
3. Expensive.  Rochen charges more for what they do than most others, but after working with them now on 3 websites, I see why.  They offer more than everybody else, so they charge more.
4. All tech support and customer support is done by help ticket, chat forum or email.  I’ve yet to find a telephone number anywhere.  I prefer it this way, as this is the way of the future: no central office, no one telephone number to call.  If you have an issue, all the staff is alerted, and the first to respond is the one that takes the ticket.  But, if you’re used to calling a person, you might end up feeling slighted that you can never speak to a human.

So, the final word:

If you’re inexperienced with hosting, or if the site will be handed off to someone who’s inexperiences with hosting and the website in quesion will never be as big as amazon.com, Bluehost is the ticket.

If you are a professional web designer or developer, there’s no better choice than Rochen.  If you’re running an ecommerce site, Rochen’s the way to go.  If you want to become a reseller, Rochen is the deal.

BBC Logo

Eric Gill is an interesting figure in history, with his autobiography recalling events which, if true would mean that he was either sexually perverse or insane.  It is also possible, considering his incredible wit, that the sordid events written about in his autobiography never actually occurred, and that he was using his autobiography as a way of pushing the public’s “buttons”.

In any case, we can look at his life, works and perspective on design and learn a great deal.  I’m recounting here several amazing quotes from Gill that can help us see how he thought and operated.

When asked to describe his early artistic motivations,

Eric Gill began to recount the first time he saw his mentor, a true calligrapher, writing.  He described those experiences thusly:

On those occasions I was caught unprepared. I did not know such beauties could exist. I was struck as by lightning, as by a sort of enlightenment. On that evening I was thus rapt. It was no mere dexterity, that transported me; it was as though a secret of heaven were being revealed.

Hopefully we can all relate to that experience, whether it was seeing a beautiful work of art as a child, or seeing a clear rainbow after a summer rain, there is nothing as inspiring as beauty.

On comparing typography to other forms of art:

Moreover it is a precise art. You don’t draw an “A” and then stand back and say: “there, that gives you a good idea of an ‘A’ as seen through an autumn mist”, or: “that’s not a real ‘A’ but gives you a good effect of one.” Letters are things, not pictures of things.

This is a fascinating take on what makes typography stand apart. When we view a painting or a sculpture, we are looking at a depiction of something else, whereas with typography and in an abstract way, photography as well, we are looking at the actual thing – not a depiction of something. But what happens when we add imagery to a typeface? What about old illuminated manuscripts, wherein letters were often embellished to appear like a person or something from nature?

In his later business life, Eric successfully broke into the world of architectural drawing, carvings and inscriptions. Historically, these things were all done by the architect working on the building in question, but Eric began to gain the trust of architects, and would remove this part of their workload from them.

One secret to his success:

My chief claim was that I could relieve the architect of the necessity of supplying drawings in connection with one craft at least. But such a claim depended upon my ability to give them something better than they could get otherwise. Therefore I had to profess to “know” — and to know better than they did themselves.

This is the task of all designers, and in fact, any business seeking to provide a good or service that the customer could potentially provide themselves. I have been asked before, “Why should I pay you to develop a website for me, when I can get a free one included with my GoDaddy hosting plan?” Or, “Why should I hire you to create a custom logo for me, when I can use a Microsoft Word template and do it for free?” We must be true experts, we must truly know more than our clientele about what makes a design work, and how to communicate visually. We must be completely fluent in the visual language. That is the key to success as a designer: the ability to understand and communicate in the visual language of line, shape, color, contrast, movement, structure, form, purpose, and so forth. But just as important as commanding the visual language, we have to be good with verbal language — we have to help our clientele understand why they should hire us and not go it alone. We have to “know” better than they do, and we have to communicate that knowledge.

What is Good Lettering?

And what was fine lettering? It was in the first place rational lettering; it was exactly the opposite of “fancy” lettering. That was the new idea, the explosive notion, and, you might say, the secret. For the world thinks that art and reason are complete opposites, that the artist is the irrational person and all his works the product of caprice and emotional temperament. Art dealers, art critics and artists themselves have more or less consciously conspired to preserve the fiction. Thus art becomes mysterious and a false glamour surrounds it — and better prices.
And what applied to the “fine” arts applied to all the others. As soon a thing was given the title of “artistic” it was supposed to be a work of fancy, and irrational. Artistic lettering meant lettering in which legibility was sacrificed to something called beauty — beauty, “the beautiful”, that which tickles your fancy.
On the other hand, following Morris, following Ruskin, following the universal practice of the world, we were in revolt against the whole conception of art as being irrational.
What is good lettering? That was the job before me. And at every point a justification must be found in reason. Of course we weren’t teetotalers about fancy work, but it must be kept subordinate, and even fancy work should grow out of legitimate occasion. What is decoration but that which is seemly and appropriate?

What is Legibility?

Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to.

What a great way to look at it. This is an essential principal for all successful designs. We must not put roadblocks in the way of the audience — this is why website intro movies, and sometimes even Welcome pages are a bad idea. If someone visits your website, they are doing so to see the content that the site holds. They aren’t coming to see a movie about how great you are. They want to know what you think, and how you operate. Unless, of course it’s a movie or television network site. In that case, visitors are coming specifically for video content. This applies to print design as well, in that an otherwise good design can become completely ineffective if it is too far outside the understood norms of the target demographic. Know who you’re designing for; who you’re trying to reach. Operate within what those people expect, while simultaneously pushing the boundaries and expectations just enough to give your design a breath of fresh air. It needs to stand out, but not be conspicuous; it needs to grab attention without being gaudy. We need to set trends without turning away those who would follow our trends.

Nevertheless, seeing the whirl of eccentricity into which modern advertising is driving us, it seems good and reasonable to return to some idea of normality, without denying ourselves the pleasure and amusement of designing all sorts of fancy letters whenever the occasion arises. A man who knows his road can occasionally jump off it, whereas a man who does not know his road can only be on it by accident. So a good clear training in the making of letters will enable a man to indulge more efficiently in fancy and impudence.

On Having Good Design Sense:

Good will seems to be a common possession of mankind, but good sense, i.e. intelligence, critical ability, and that intense concentration upon perfection which is a kind of genius, is not so common. Everybody thinks that he knows an A when he sees it, but only the few extraordinary rational minds can distinguish between a good one and a bad one, or can demonstrate precisely what constitutes A-ness. When is an A not an A? Or when is an R not an R?

On Modern Manufacturing:

So we have the designer who designs what he never makes and the worker who minds the machine which makes what he never designs. And we have the salesman who neither designs things nor minds machines but is supposed to know what the public wants. But the public doesn’t know what it wants, and it has no means of finding out.
My one complaint against machine-made goods is precisely this: that they too often hide their light under a bushel of “design”. Think how decent alarm clocks might be if they were just as plain and well-made outside as they often are inside!
If we insist on the ornamental we are not making the best of our system of manufacture, we are not getting the things that system makes best. The process by which a railway locomotive has become the beautiful thing it now is, this process must be welcomed in all other departments of manufacture. … And ornamental typography is to be avoided no less than ornamental architecture in an industrial civilization.
The truth is that a thing fit for its purpose is necessarily pleasant to use and also beautiful (i.e. seen as being in itself delightful to the understanding). I think an artist is not a person who makes things beautiful, but simply one who deliberately makes things as well as he can — whether he is a clock-maker or picture-painter; because machine-made things are very much better when no “designer” has had anything to do with them — when they are just plain serviceable things. I think that if you look after goodness and truth, beauty will take care of itself.

As you will see through this series, having a good knowlege of your client does not guarantee a quick design solution.For this client, I wanted to emphasize the community and global aspects of their mission without negating either side.  It’s a fine line to walk – community vs. ubiquity, but I set out toward that end with the logo comps in my previous post.  I began with the concept of the Trinity – the theological term that describes how God is one in His nature, but three in person.  It’s a mind trip, to be sure, but God is completely and eternally unified and is a single entity, yet He is also eternally revealed in three distinct persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit).  As you can see, this is the perfect reference point for an organization that seeks to empower it’s members to be unique, singular, and different from each other, yet simultaneously unified under a set of common goals and values.  A community of unified individuals.  It’s quite a wonderful paradox, just like the Trinity.

Trinity Symbol (Triquetra)

So, I began with the Trinity symbol: three distinct lobes that are connected to form a single unit.  Kind of like a moebius strip.  The second inspiration for my first designs was the concept of growth and newness.  Therefore, I created a design that referenced plant forms, without overstating the “leafiness” of the forms.  I chose Helvetica as the wordmark because of it’s ubiquity and immediacy to the viewer, also because it is used internationally and can bear the weight of a large organization.  The “international” wordmark uses Museo, and great new semi-slab serif typeface from Jos Buivenga.  Museo is also an international font, and retains a bit of the classical feel of slab serifs, but is distinctly new, while Helvetica carries an age, despite the fact that it’s a sans serif.  I’ll attach the logo, in case you haven’t read my previous post:

First Logo Comp

As you can see, I also worked a cross into the negative space of the logomark, as a response to one of the main tenets of Grace Churches’ mission is that it’s members are unified by way of the cross of Christ.  The response to this logo was generally positive, but it wasn’t right for them, and reminded some of the leadership of Christmas poinsettias.  Ha!  What’s funny is that I didn’t see that coming!  As soon as the client said it, I chuckled and now that’s all I can see when I look at it.  The human brain is a funny thing.

Now onto the image at the top of this post.  After the first logo’s rejection, I still wanted to stick to the organic idea, and move into an idea I had of a spirograph – overlapping shapes that create a new shape at their intersection.  The images in the graphic at the top of this post are the result of some expirimentation toward that end.  The problem with them is I was still aiming at too young of a target crowd.  Those images work on their own, but when tied to Grace Churches International, they stop working because they don’t carry enough professionalism.  The Grace Churches leadership opperates with a strong work ethic, and these new logo ideas didn’t show that.

Tune in next time to see the next step – still clinging to some youthfulness, but with less pizzaz…

I’ll be using this opportunity to take you all through my typical logo creation process.  You’ll see the good, the bad and the ugly.  The rejected designs, the ones I liked but the client didn’t, and pretty much everything in-between.

This post shows the first completed design ideas I presented to the client.  They came with a full color scheme as well.  What’s so funny about this, and is not all that unusual in the design business was my client’s reaction to these designs:  “We don’t sell Christmas poinsettias.”

Gotta love that red and green Christmas image that’s been burned into all American’s brains!

In my next post, I’ll explain the purpose of my client’s organization and mission, and you’ll get a better idea of why this logo brought that reaction.