One important part of every business, especially an online one, is the brand, because that allows a company to be immediately recognizable to your customer. The brand needs to represent reliability, stability, and seriousness of purpose. It has to instill confidence that when the customer needs you, you’ll be there for them. The brand is the most important thing a company owns.
That’s why, when my Creative Director came on board in June, the first task I set him on was creating a logo for our venture. I had in mind something elegant, yet playful; familiar yet different; striking, yet comfortable. In short, I wanted it all. But why not? As one of the most important decisions we would make over the life of Limulus Systems, I felt that creating and choosing our logo, our brand, would have to be just right. I knew the perfect logo was out there, we just had to unearth it.
Our Creative Director took up the task gladly. He agreed with the importance of branding and confidently stated that he could come up with preliminary ideas in no time. Why, he could knock that project off in his sleep, he stated. It was the sort of thing he does all the time, he said. It was a little hard to pin down exactly when I could expect to see some designs, but it sounded as if they would be coming forthwith. Fine, I said, I eagerly await them.
A week went by. No designs. That’s OK, you can’t rush great work. Two weeks. Now, I know something about artists and how they work. They spend forever creating a work, you look at it and think, “That’s great! We’ll use it!”, and just as you’re about to approve it, the sensitive artiste tears it up in a fit of pique, proclaiming something about a smudge being out of place. So I know that if you want good work, you have to put up with a bit of temperament, and when three weeks went by, I knew not to push him too hard.
But that was in June. It’s October now, and still nothing! By now, I have some temperament of my own, and it’s not the positive kind, if you know what I mean. Should I fire him outright? I mean, should I come down on him like the big boss man and demand something?
I gave him one last chance. I told him that if I don’t have something on my desk by the next day, he’d be out the door. Well, lo and behold, a miracle occurred! He arranged for a grand “showing” of the new logo, said something about how he had just finished polishing it up. I figured, OK, let’s see what he’s got. We met in the upstairs conference room, where he had a big poster board covered up with a maroon velvet cloth, very dramatic (you know those artists). I won’t go into all the details of the presentation, it was rather lengthy, but finally he said, Voila, and pulled up the cloth.
There were the words
Limulus Systems
printed on a piece of paper. I said, That’s great, but let’s not wait any longer, let’s get to the logo. He said, That’s it, I said, What’s it? He said, That’s the logo. I’m afraid that I laughed then, which apparently insulted our little trembling flower of an artiste, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t believe it, frankly. He spent five months to come up with the company name in Italics? Then he started to go on about the virtues of Italics, and its’ place in the history of typography, and I’m sorry to admit that I lost it. I won’t say what transpired in that room, but it wasn’t pleasant.
So there I was, no logo, no brand, nothing to show for it but a badly injured so-called Creative Director. What would I do? Then I thought: what do I need him for? I’m a creative guy, I’ll just come up with a logo on my own. How hard can it be? And in a short order, I was able to come up with this:
Not bad, eh? I know it’s just a start, but I think it has a great future. Who needs a Creative Director?
Ummm, PAC Man projectile vomiting? Right? It is cute though…. maybe if you could italicize the drawing, it would look more 21st century.