🔴 What Makes A Logo Great & Iconic? w/ Sagi Haviv

[Music] [Music] [Music] welcome to the Future everybody happy Friday to everybody who's tuning in we are live on YouTube on today's show we have an industry heavyweight a legend a master design who do we have on the show we have segi have Eve and you're gonna want to know his story why is my deck not working there we go it's good looking man very sharp guys and today we're going to talk about one of his ideas which is why design is not love at first sight in his philosophies like you don't need to like a logo right away and there's a good chance you might not because they believe in taking a long term view and it's difficult to do this especially with clients these days because everybody wants instantaneous likes well this is driven by a belief a fundamental belief that a trademark gains meaning and power over time and if you don't know who Sagi Javie v' is you will off to this show he's a partner at Jeremiah guys Marv and javi of course segi is one of those name partners right there and they're known throughout the world for creating some of the most famous iconic trademarks in the world like the US Open NBC national Geographics Showtime oh my god Barneys New York Mobile maybe you've seen this icon for Chase and the Bicentennial logo something that some people have tattooed on their bodies and the environmental protection agency if you guys want to find out more about them go to cg h NYC comm i believe that's right and you're gonna see so many iconic marks we were showing some of the non designers here excuse me some of the logos they've created over the past 50 years and they were just blown away like no way they made that logo and that one yes they made all of those logos okay segi Aviv is the go-to expert on logo design for Bloomberg Businessweek Fast Company Howe and print he spoken at TEDx how design and brand new conferences Princeton University Design Conference Columbia Business School he teaches fundamentals of logo design at the School of Visual Arts NYC some very lucky students to have you as a teacher he's co-authored two books identity in 2011 and identity standard manual 2008 guys please help me welcome sucky haveve to the show alright looking good he's ready to go nice oaky you're gonna have to do more of the talking today because my voice my voice it's not holding up today see a little bit too much yelling at yesterday's party so how are you today doing good thank you okay excellent thank you very much for agreeing to do this and it took a little coordination I also want to thank Ben burns for for maybe tricking you to come on our show but will will take good care of you today okay so I'm just gonna launch in and I'm gonna ask a bunch of questions you guys if you're tuning in on YouTube go ahead and start writing your comments Matthew and Aaron and Ricky and Jonah will be monitoring your questions here's the first question let's just start off here this is the big one I just want to know the story how did you end up at your my f guys Mart and of course I've even now and how is that you became a partner yeah it started so when I was at Cooper Union studying design I came across this book never on my shelf PM guys mark which has a lot of you know simple bold logos and I was kind of mesmerized by all these shapes in strong sharp silhouettes but also it was like kind of that reaction of like wow they did all these logos so it kind of became my dream to work for them and one of the partners at the time step guys peeler who actually you know been with him for thirty years at that time he came to teach Cooper so he was my teacher so you know I already planned my speech for the first class I you know I mean I mean I'm sitting there in the front row and and he comes in he goes before anybody talks to me I just wanna let you know we're not hiring anybody he mess up your game plan the way okay okay before you go on I have to ask this question do you remember what you were gonna say to him yeah I was gonna say like you know I admire you all come work for you for free like that's what I was a sales pitch yes and you know what you have to lose right so you know after the at the end of the year he actually you know had the idea to kind of all all kinds of seniors being their portfolio and he actually ended up inviting me to present my work at the company and I came and I presented my work and they still didn't didn't call anything like that's like they email after email like two months begging begging I come work for free and finally you know he said okay you can come for three days a week no pay and I just hung out there and I was working you know just to be noticed like I I was the first one there in the morning or the last one to leave and I you know eventually I guess somebody noticed me because suddenly the office was splitting up into two into two entities one part more about exhibition the other part more about logos and Steph was going one way in - sure my friend from guys Mar were going another way and I was really loyal and Steph just assumed I was going with him but I haven't on were like well you know want to come with us and how do you say no to these two iconoclast but friend of mine told me he just just tell them you want to be a partner and they'll say no and then you can go to go step so I walked in and I said I want to be a partner and they were like okay so that was it Wow okay that's that's a pretty dramatic change from the hey I work for free I'll do whatever you know work day and a night for free - you know I'd love to come on board but you got to make me partner so you've only been at the firm I think two years at that point yeah and what years is I'm trying to get the chronology of all this 2005 2005 well and you know I have to say I was you you you you see new things in your life said to you and you know certain things stick with you and they can also help guide you you know it when I was graduated from Cooper the commencement was given by Laurie Anderson I thought you know she is the performer performance artist so I did that and at the end of her speech she said I have one advice to the graduates don't wait to be asked hmm you know go for yours you know knock on the door kick the door you know whatever do whatever you want don't expect people don't wait for people to recognize how great you are you know just just go for it mm-hmm and I think that that's a good advice for everybody you know sometimes you just need to have some food spy and just push your where I get the sneaky suspicion though that way before you even heard this commencement speech there's something about you that has the guts to be able to think I've done my research this professor is gonna be teaching I'm gonna approach him right away and I think there are a lot of people who have that same kind of admiration but don't have that same drive or courage to go and ask is there any advice that you can give to that person who may be watching this and saying yeah I've always wanted to do I always wanted to approach somebody but it just couldn't do that felt awkward I just felt like an imposter whatever they might be going through I would say this you know how we all walk around with this feeling like people around you like know something we don't know or like have had you know they got it going on and we don't and you know there's some secret they're holding they don't you know I think you have to keep reminding so that you know you know best and I have to say that you know working alongside Ivan Shema house he is one of these people that never had that thought in his head that you know almond Foster never crossed his mind and that's very inspiring you know you work inside somebody like this that just always thought you knew better than everybody else wait to get through life mmm you know it's an interesting I I share a very similar philosophy and a lot of creative people think god that's just being really arrogant aren't you just full of herself isn't humility something that we should strive for how do you respond to something like that well let me go back to Ireland for a moment because he was a mentor at first and you know then became a partner and he had you know in one way you could say that so you know egotistical or whatever but in fact he had the story of humility in a way in the face of this principle of good design so he would come you know we work together so he would come with a sketch it would be very excited about his like look look you know whatever and he would point to him a flaw with the sketch if something's wrong with it he would drop it immediately you know there would be no like fighting for his own schedule anything like that so I think that you know you could have both you could have both I think you need to care about something you need to be something that you care about beyond the money that you make beyond the client that you make happy and for us it's really designed like level of design you know when I picked up this book it was the level of design that they were able to maintain over over all these years all these decades and I think that's because there was nothing more important to him including his own ego mhm so what I'm hearing you say and I feel like I I think the same things which is self-confidence isn't it it's about believing in yourself and knowing who you are but not the belief that you're always right and I think a lot of people assume that to be self-confident then you get into this arrogance thing and then you're always writing it's an ego thing and I don't think that's it at all well I'm gonna take a slight detour here no you know what I don't wanna go there just yet I just can't wait to show people this photo and talk about this but oh wait a minute you know when I design something mm-hmm you know not just to you know my partners I show it to the entire office literally and ask what do you think what do you think and you know sometimes makes fun of me about that but I like to gather a lot of opinions I never assumed that I know everything but at the end of the day you know which advice resonates with you and then you make a decision but getting a lot of opinions is always helpful mm-hmm okay the thing I wanted to ask you that I just remember it is so when you accepted the position to be a partner as the agency was splitting how did the former partner is his name Steph Steph how did he take it I'm he brought you in you're the one who begged him to come in and he accepted you so how did he take it not well but with dignity I would say that and uh you know Steph is an unbelievable designer and in fact many of the logos that are in the company's portfolio was designed by him including the NBC logo so he's a great designer and honestly he was so at the end of the day so like nice about it like no nicer than other people would be I had to say he's still friend and I and what would emotionally was going on with you when you're thinking through this like it's wonderful that you became a partner but often a lot of times people don't want to talk about this but there's an emotional decision that has to go on and how did you resolve that within yourself that was very very difficult mm-hmm I would say you know I know his wife I mean it you know it was it was it was tough but the idiom of the day I mean I think that you have to also think about you know doing right by more than just one you know you have to think about where are you gonna end up and how much can you contribute somebody said to me you should go where you're needed the most mmm and I think that's good advice too you know when you know we always you know we're always looking for talent and there's always needs to be the right talent for the right place sometimes it's not redundancy sometimes it's somebody that brings in something that you don't have and I think that for me I realized that this is where I was needed the most and so it was the right decision I love that thank you all right let's let's switch up the mood a little bit I want to know how this young Eminem rap star who's wearing his puffy jacket look at this here this guy become this guy like look at how sharp you are here a trim three-piece suit just and that is skinny tie and just explain this to me I don't get that I would say it's good friends I what happened was you know I came from icky boots and I came to New York and I you know I think I stimulated very quickly with puffy coat and all that thanks for keeping it on this picture I appreciate it and then you know suddenly when I became but you know part of the face of the firm I had to I had to clean up so I have a close friend named Stefan Campbell he's a brilliant creative director and stylist and he took me shopping and he just you know this this this put this with this and it works look at that so you had a friend who is a a personal stylist for you once you became partner like like I got to look the part right and now everything every photo every video interview I see of you it's like you've just very sharp very tailored is this that is this now your this is the only way to live kind of I mean you know it's either this or sweatpants and flip-flops mm-hmm there's no in-between so that's that's how it goes perfect okay well I'm gonna do a little public service announcement here for everybody that's watching I think we have to ask you this question because I don't know of a more definitive voice to answer this so here we go Internet are you guys ready what is a good logo and then in contrast what is a bad logo there's a lot of debate about this and I hope you're gonna be able to clear this up because a lot of people mess this up so I will start by saying there are lot of misconceptions about logos you know people think a lover should say a whole lot about us or people should you know you know love it should be pretty or logos should you know we should love our logo or whatever actually all these are not not true at all a good logo really there's three things that it needs to be it needs to be appropriate and by appropriate that doesn't mean expressive you shouldn't try to say a whole lot it should just be appropriate in the feeling so it's like a personality thing it's that it's a core idea and the feeling of it so if it's in sport maybe it's bold and dynamic if it's in fashion maybe it's elegant it's a feeling mm-hmm the second one is that it'll be distinctive and memorable so unusual enough to persist in our mind we see it once or twice you can describe it to somebody but do too late on a piece of paper that's a good test and then the third one maybe the most important one it needs to be simple super super simple so it can be reproduced everywhere in tiny sizes and pixel formats and so on and I think that that kind of the continuum on which we work is really between distinctiveness and simplicity how special can we make it while still keeping it uncomplicated how simple can we make it while not going and becoming generic because the answer to what is a bad logo is something that looks generic is a bad logo on the one hand mm-hmm and on the other hand something that's too complicated is the bad logo and because it's gonna fall apart in small sizes and pixel formats and so on so that's the the magic is finding that balance between something simple and something distinctive and when we strike that balance we know you know we found the the right solution you know the one the one that we will push for okay I think this is a good opportunity for me to take a look at one of your books here and you guys definitely need to check this out so I'm gonna play the video while I play this I just want to keep this idea about simplicity you talked about a lot of things here you mentioned so let me play this is it playing there we go so you guys just look at that well flip through this is just some of the logos and Psyche asked me before did you I show every single page note take three hours for me to flip through every single page so you talked about having the doodle test to see if it's memorable that you're looking to capture the core idea or a feeling that it's not supposed to tell this whole story in fact it's supposed to do something quite different and to try to find this balance between something that's that's distinctive yet simple but that while maintaining that it's not keeping it not complicated and not generic so when we that gets more and more difficult as time goes by right because more and more simple forms are being claimed and owned and trademarked so you know I you know I joked with Tom Geisler who did the chase logo that when he did that in 1960 you know you could do a blue octagon and and run with it no bro we have to go to do trademark search and you know we worked with global companies those you know we need to check it in different regions and and it's always kind of a you hold your breath until you get the report from the attorney to see if somebody else thought about the same thing I thought about right well how do you respond to some of these comments that when people see a very simple mark where it's based on geometric forms that that's now not too generic because I get that a lot and I kind of scratch them I was like where does this idea come from what are they teaching kids in school these days that a local is supposed to do all these kinds of things for example if it's for a moving company they want to show that there's a guy moving a box or car that's moving really fast and that's the antithesis to what I think you are saying right and logo is not communication the logo is identification logo is the period at the end of the sentence it is not the sentence itself you can say a lot about yourself you know in advertising and marketing whatever outreach but the logo is meant to identify you strongly and clearly and the less it said the better so you know if you think about the best logos in the world you know they say very little I mean I'll give example from our portfolio of the National Geographic yellow frame it's so simple and it works the familiarity if you landed you from Mars yesterday and you didn't know anything about National Geographic you would say what the hell is this it's just a yellow rectangle it's nothing but in fact in combination with the name and through consistent years over the years it has become the perfect vessel for all the associations people have with National Geographic I think so you couldn't get more simple than this right right also distinctive so the distinction is the color is the proportion it's a relationship to the name you know you have to think about distinction of course but you try to you know really drill all the way to the simplest possible form and to peel away anything extraneous and honestly you know this didn't go out of the magazine right so it had a meaning originally right but how many people and you know in the younger generations now and even know that it was a magazine or that it is a magazine you know what is a magazine you get the point mm-hmm dizzy young is a yellow frame the the rectangle that you talked about does that come from the magazine first or was the identity created in conjunction with when the magazine launched no it started with the magazine okay was it was it was a graphic element so this is where research and history and preserving brand equity and transferring that over so that there's a reference to the roots in the history of National Geographic as as a magazine right that's right and research at the time research showed that the color yellow was globally associated national geography or than any other brand even you know Kodak at the time was yellow but really National Geographic was the most associated with yellow so it was clear that that was the right way to do it to preserve the equity and emphasize mm-hmm now I'm gonna channel our audience a little bit but I'm I imagine with the kinds of clients that you have today that when you present a simple mark even if it's a bottle at the beginning we're gonna get into that a little bit that a lot of people would then say like especially when you're dealing with smaller clients Turek well that was easy how long did that take why am i paying you more than five hundred dollars to do this do you ever run into that or and and how would you advise younger designers who are starting out and and are working with clients that don't have that level of sophistication to understand that we are trying to find something very reductive and very simple yeah I mean simplicity is the hardest thing right you you to make something simple that's still ownable is the hardest thing oh we lost your signal for some reason I think you're gonna get it back inside right yeah okay we'll cut to this right here it's very clever and and you know with that I think I do think that there is such a thing as and I mentioned that before you know in terms of people coming to work for you also when you go to work for somebody there is such thing as the wrong client if a client cannot appreciate how important on the one hand the logo is to their business and the logo is not important to every business right certainly it's very important and so on the one hand on the other hand the level of complexity in you know the process you have to go to to arrive at something that then can stick around for a long time then the point of the logo is to endure right and how do we know now what's gonna still work many years in the future well that's a level of expertise that you know is not possessed by everybody and you know for us you know we do every once in a while recognize that somebody is not the right client for us and then we say you know thank you but not thank you there has to be an understanding on the other side as well about the value bring to the table and a level of expertise there's so many follow-up questions here I hope people who are watching this on live or later on they're gonna comment and ask this but I'm gonna do my best right now to try to channel what it is that you guys are thinking when you hear this because obviously Sagi's at such a high level he's dealing with clients and he can afford to be choosy they've written the book on trademarks literally and they have so many examples so the natural default response that somebody's gonna have is well they can claim that they can go and make these bold statements they can choose to be picky and they can choose to make the argument that simplicity is the hardest thing but it's hard to kind of say if you're in a developing country and you're trying to just work with a mom-and-pop shop and they need a new logo and they feel like that it being simple is cheap and how can you respond to that like can you take yourself back to like when you were in your mmm days and you're just getting started and you've been dropped in some other country and now you have to kind of sell what it is that you know how would you attempt I think you you you know one way to get through to people is to show them what other people are doing what other companies are doing ooh any tips you know if you if you if you come back and say look look at the biggest companies in the world the bigger the company the simpler the logo that means that simplicity is you know there's something right about that because these big companies recognize that right little gray Apple Nike you know simplicity works you know in some way you know we found that that's a very helpful way to get people along you know help them along to understand the value of something because when they think about themselves you know they're all wrapped up in their own world and you know emotions and sometimes it might you know like something that they made or whatever then you kind of diffuse that by going outside and saying well look at look at these famous brands what are they comment Lobo is simple well that's what you guys need and you know that's that's very hard to achieve so maybe that's one way to do it mm-hmm okay Matthew are we getting some questions from from YouTube and maybe this is a good time to talk about this before I ask to you some some more difficult questions yeah we are getting questions but I think a lot of them actually are being addressed I think they are right the conversation that you and Ziggy are having anything Chris you're doing a good job of channeling our audience mom I know some money questions are starting to come up when people look at you siggy and you look at the the clients you've worked with a lot of people are wondering you know what do brand engagements like that look like like it cost-wise and I don't know if you're comfortable with speaking about that at all but I think people their imaginations are going wild right now as I can imagine yeah you can you process all that I'll say one thing you know we we are independent we're not you know owned by any big agency with you know I have an int all all these years really kind of were very adamant about staying independent because we care about good design and that and that's that's the highest kind of principle right so then what happens is that there will be projects that we're interested in that maybe you know can't pay very much and we will take those on even if you know we don't charge as much because there's something exciting about it because it's doing something good for society because you know all kinds of reasons so I'm not gonna answer numbers but I will say that we have a sliding scale mm-hm and you know what we would charge a large corporation and that can pay is not the same as what we charge you know a non-profit that maybe needs our help and we believe in their mission mm-hmm how do you engage that what a client can pay I think what you're saying is is charge the client and not the job so how do you gauge that just as a philosophy or approach without getting into numbers you mean what what they can pay yeah how do you determine what they kanpei do you just say like oh oh it's a really big company they're a bank they should be able to and that's not not-for-profit so they can afford less or we believe in their cause and the mission therefore we can charge less well it's actually the the calculation or the equation is a little bit more complicated than that we say you know we put all things on the table like you know do they seem like a good client and that will allow us to to create something good that's one two is you know is it gonna be very visible so you know that is kind of a consideration also and then we say you know you know is this is this a very difficult design problem like you know some problems are more difficult than others and then based on all this we say okay based on all this we we should you know which artisan a lot or we should charge them little and then that's the amount and if they want it they take it and if they don't they don't we're not trying to gauge like oh how much money did this guy have in the bank I say go for it so sounds like it's very intuitive and based on feeling or gut it absolutely and are you the person driving this or is there an account exact person who's like yeah I kind of feel like this is what we should do is a ghee or do you determine that no we don't have Account Executives we don't we don't believe in the middleman or anything like that and we we you know communicate with our clients directly and we do the design work also I mean we have a great team here of designers and you know some of the you know most famous lobe of the Kumar of the shop were done by you know a designer even an intern you know in the office so it's kind of like a family that everybody works together on every project mm-hm but you know if you ask me about like pricing and stuff and how how we price things we I see in conversation between the principles I you know we do it with invasive wow that's different okay yeah we don't you know we don't like not having a sounding board we like to the collab the collaborative work environment that Ivan and Tom established from the very beginning is really about checking each other all the time looking at each other's work you know barging into the room saying why are you doing this say not to use circles and it's like well but I was thinking that circle is actually what they need well but did you try it you know in red or did you try it thicker and then suddenly things get you know much better that that whole attitude of like we're in it together it goes to everything mm-hmm great Matthew you got another question I do I'm trying to process a way to ask this okay so there's been a couple questions about dynamic or fluid or response responsive logos because I think that's what's happening today with so many screens so many applications there's so many different ways that a logo could appear across the board and I think you did a fantastic job about telling people what the purpose of a logo is and those so profound like everybody's mind was blown on the stream so I was just wondering Aviva if you have any thoughts on maybe how to design those types of systems or if you have any just thoughts in general around that so I would just encourage caution on that and the reason is that the point of a logo is to kind of stick stick in your head right that that's silhouette needs to be seen as consistently as possible in order to you know build equity and become a valuable asset and I know Chris you wanted to talk about chase later on we can talk about that but the idea of you know a simple silhouette that that stays with you you know it costs a lot of money to you know get in people's faces to advertising through all kinds of marketing whatever whatever whatever media you know you're trying to get to people so to start to kind of compromise the silhouette in different ways is dangerous so I know you know there's a lot of talk about fluid and you know flexible identities and all that we don't we are we're kind of suspicious about that and it's not that we don't see the value in a lively system but other things can change other than the logo right there are many things around the logo actually you know you look at a website the logo is the least amount of pixels on that side then everything else photography graphic elements typography you know colors everything else can change the logo needs to be consistent and that you know that's what we believe and that's why we put a lot of effort into coming up with this distinctive silhouette so that it can take on different treatments different even different colors sometimes different production methods you know is it if it's in 3d without the color if it you know you want to apply a gradient apply a gradient I mean I think that you know the NBC logo is a good example of you know a logo that really gets every treatment in the pork and still looks the same everywhere because a silhouette is distinctive mm-hmm so that's why you know we're a little bit you know we leptin to to go and you know change the soy de lor create what you know what you mentioned like fluid whatever I mean the fluidity in our from our standpoint is that we create such a distinctive bolts the way that you can use it anywhere and it's still gonna be the same to the web that's the advantage of a logo and you know people may find like oh it's a slap on logo logo is the best the best compliment you can give a logo because that means you know you can slap it on anything and it's gonna look great and that's what we're going for that's what we worked word and that's why when we come back to the client with design options they're always applied across the board but we are careful about not getting too much into a visual language that's gonna be mesmerizing for the client and obscure the fact that the logo actually relies on the visual language visual language will change over time a website design would change over time faster than you think the logo should never have to change and that's why you know we really try to stick to coming up with a silhouette that's ownable that's appropriate and you know all the other criteria mention I never even heard that term before and now it makes total sense then how you call like a slap on logo I thought you were talking about that's a slap on talking about logos but you're dissing all the people who thought of logo as one thing but what you're saying is like it should just be able to work on everything and that makes a lot of sense and I didn't say this at the beginning the show it was a conversation Sookie and I were having before and I just want to appreciate you for a second because siggy sent me this massive deck it was like a gigabyte and I was opening it up and I was copying to my my deck and every time I would copy two assets over it would crash my my keynote and the reason was his deck is in 4k his images are probably 8k it just so out of control but as I'm going through your deck I noticed that when you're presenting your logo or at least the case studies that the logo itself was slapped on a bunch of different images I was like huh I wonder why he's doing that now it makes total sense okay you're doing because you know the logo will never be seen on a white piece of paper and a white screen mm-hmm and ultimately the logo is like you know a baby that's born and you pass it on to your client and you don't know how your client is gonna use it I mean you you know you're gonna put in place guidelines and you know you hope that they follow the rules about minimum size and minimum space around the law and all that good stuff but ultimately you know any type of strict system or whatever they put together is either gonna have to change over time because the organization involves the company goes into new areas new regions whatever new leaders and you never want that Louis to change so you have to show them that it's foolproof whatever happens around it you hold its own mm-hmm I'm making some notes here for my show recap I'm writing frantically to try and keep up with you sucky that's why you may be seeing me turn away from time to time or even bang keyboard okay let's transition a little bit I have more questions than we have time so I'm going to try and get as many of these in as possible so in your TED talk visual identity is more than just a logo I recommend you guys go check that out you talked about two stories about how the client hated the logo but somehow you managed to persevere and I'd love for you to tell us and that story well this this happens more than you would expect and just the other day you know we presented a logo to a CEO of a very large corporation and we showed you know five options and everybody was sitting around the table and then we finished a presentation and then everybody was looking to the CEO to see what he was gonna say and he was looking at the other he said well I can live with any of them except number two I hate number two mm-hmm and then an hour later into the discussion he wanted number two and he wouldn't hear anything else and that's the logo that they went with you know these things take time and seeing logos for the first time which is basically our the story of our practice is we present logos for the first time to clients that's kind of an absurd exercise because as I said before these things works with familiarity so if you were a client and you come into our office up to two months of you know giving us time to work on your on your project and we put in front of you a bunch of things that you don't recognize then it becomes very personal I don't like sharp corners oh I don't like blue I like red those are meaningless meaningless all kinds of like reactions that are there are instantaneous or meaningless and maybe by telling the first story you know it's gonna become more more evidence so maybe I'll toast what about chase okay all right and I'll track along with slides as you talk sure and you know obviously this was just happened before I was born so I heard this story many times and Ivan and you know that's a that's a story that taught us a lot so this happen in 1960 right very different world no internet no computers no social media and the chase National Bank in the Manhattan company merged to create the second largest bank in the United States at the time Chase Manhattan Bank and they were building the first skyscraper downtown Manhattan it was a lot going on there in a company and the bank was controlled by three people John McCrory was the chairman George champagne was the second-in-command the president and the third in command David Rockefeller was an art collector on the board of the Museum of Modern Art and he realized that you know that logo that they had that you're showing right now was a disaster you know it had the map of the United States it says well like banking in case you don't get it also showed the globe you know it tries to stay a lot which is what we said was kind of a bad idea so David Rockefeller brought in Ivan chinois from Tron guys mom back then you know in their 20s to take a look at the logo and they realized very quickly that there is no one to one representation of banking or finance you know is it bags of money is it a dollar sign what is it so they thought in the absence of a direct representation and maybe with the constant exposure of the banking newspaper you know advertising every day and so on maybe they can establish something abstract that over time can become you know the meaning they take on the meaning of the bank so they came back with you know they did a lot of sketches and you know all kinds of geometric shapes this is actually an original sketch and you know ultimately they came back with some options they show them ten different options but really this design of the octagon was favored by David Rockefeller who had kind of a trained eye for visuals so you know David was trying to push for it but John McCloy the chairman was like what the hell is this you know what is it new it's not us you know he said why couldn't we do a picture of the building as our logo you know he was so proud of his building so they brought it I said well you know every building looks the same you know it's not gonna be distinctive enough and the conversation went on for a couple of hours around the table and finally you know after a lot of pressure John McCloy said to David Rockefeller said okay David if you want it you can have it with a retail bank but I don't want to see it in my office I don't want to see her on my letterhead I don't see on my business card I hate this thing Wow so the bank went ahead and adopted this logo it was a very big deal and six months later Ivan and Tom ran into the chairman John McCloy in the hallway of the bank and as they were walking towards him they realized he's wearing a tie with a pattern of the logo and cufflinks of the logo and even baseball cap with the logo [Laughter] it makes my boy very quickly it had become the representation of his bank and he felt a sense of ownership mm-hmm and that's a great lesson for us that first impression can be misleading and you should put too much stake in you know what people think about the logo first off and you know in fact people you know sometimes companies come to us and they're like well how you're gonna test testing your logo you know we want to put it in front of consumers and we say we would never do that and that would be a make-or-break for us because it's meaningless not because we don't feel like doing it but because that doesn't help we feel that our expertise about identity what makes a good logo and the clients expertise about their business about their industry that combination is enough to gauge which is the best option for them to adopt mm-hmm sorry I mean this logo has been around now for you know obviously many decades and with the change of name change of honors here the constant being is this symbol and it kind of works really well in all the applications that could never have been anticipated back then and it's funny because you know the approach to make something bold indistinctly back then was because of limitations of production you know the the half stone scream in black-and-white reproduction on the newspaper and so on so it really had to be simple now these simple marks kind of drive in the kind of unlimited limitless possibilities of reproduction online and you know in apps and so on and they really cut through the clutter and that's you know kind of the the magical thing that they couldn't even I think that's the beauty of you guys and what you do is that the mark can endure over time for applications that have yet to be invented and I've seen this and I know what you're talking about because back in the day printing reproduction wasn't great so the logos need to be simple it could be printed in a phone book and it's very cheap printing and then we've gone through this arc of like high fidelity high rendering 24-bit color and then we've we seem to be going back to this simplicity because now you have to create a mark that the size I don't know like three pinheads put together for a web browser exactly so thankful cell that's right and when in the late 90s we know when there was the rise of the 3d and you know gradients and all that and you know there was you know if you really speak to the silhouette then it could take on those treatments and and still be distinctive but it doesn't go the other way around if you design in you know 3d or a few design you know using all these gradients in it and it really relies on this stuff then suddenly the trend passes if you remember early two-thousands like you know Google became flat Apple became flat Microsoft came out with their flat logo even then no ups we're looking at they're like oh my god we need to be flat and then they they kind of you know it's it's all trends so then we try to ignore the trend and really try to speak to us through wet will you know spend you know the test of time no matter what is coming next I think in that talk that you said that the world has changed but your process fundamentally has not changed and it just kind of reminds me of a film jiro Dreams of Sushi and at first he's considered like a master of sushi and he talks about trying to do something consistently the same day after day week after week and I started to go from like why would you want to do that that would suck - Wow I have great admiration for somebody that wants to just refine and perfect something and it doesn't bend to what the world wants and and follows a trend and I think that's the reason why some of the trademarks that you created are so well recognized and famous around the world and haven't needed to be updated well we really tried because I think going back to one of your questions before about like how do you make the case for what you charge or whatever you can say look the idea is that this thing lasts for you know X number of years divide whatever it is that you charge by the number of years and it doesn't sound so high hmm that's a good formula I like that I'm gonna add that to my sales on Chrissa and leave I have a question here from the audience okay I think it'd be interesting because I love you telling us you know what's the distinction between a good logo a bad logo and then obviously along the ways with this chase story some of the clients in the rooms the stakeholders in the room they didn't fully agree with the bold mark that was presented to them so for our audience who are working with clients who the clients may have either irrelevant or bad suggestions for the design assuming the designer knows better and has done their research how might they present the logo in a better way or how might they tell the the clients that their suggestions are either invalid or bad yeah now that's a tough one we we start every presentation with kind of a list of warnings and the first one like literally the first slide it says big on the screen it's never love at first I love that and then you know the funder clients are trying to be funny they're like oh you're trying to make excuses already and we're like no this is just a warning that we give ourselves as well you have to give it some time and then we go into an you know we say you know a good logo is not about what you like or dislike it's about what works and then we we might take out all the subject to subjectivity on the discussion so that we really can look at functionality and and if the lot of functions then you know it will it will grow on them over time so that's the idea and you know honestly we showed the example of the National Geographic logo and we say because everybody knows the logo everybody you know kind of you know likes the logo and then you know you kind of lead them with that and I think that it doesn't matter if you are you know a small design studio or a large company you can always use examples of successful logos out there show it to your client and say you know and talk about the properties of the logo to educate them a little bit and don't be afraid to have a strong opinion you come in with fiction you'll see they'll respond to it I think that's a great tip I really do and I mmm so many questions here I'm kind of losing myself and all the the information you're dropping I just want to say I do wanna hear the second story now thanks for asking me that do you use your own chase story in client presentations where you here's what happened with chase do use that in the presentation okay but use it it's like in case of emergency break the box yes yeah then it's like okay let me bring out some guys smart you know becomes like tell them the story and you know it never fails it always works mhm okay so tom is the nuclear option or the trump card that you play and if all else fails you break them out early and Pollan TV tells this story much better than me okay let's talk about the second one that you talked about in your TED talk mm-hmm that's 15 years apart almost on the you know really on the month you know those two stories and it's unbelievable how you know clients are the same and first of all we love our clients and we especially love Conservation International because they are really the leader in the environmental work around the world and they came to us with a logo that was you know very very complicated and from our standpoint you know you had the question before like what's a bad logo this that's a slap on that logo Matthew [Laughter] loved this logo you know and I mean and you can understand why they had it for 30 years you know the the monkey hanging in the tree was hand-painted by the president of the organization with a primatologist expert in monkeys you know and painted the logo into the monkey logo so you can imagine the level of attachment and it's worked for them you know for for all these years so why change because their mission shifted at that time from focusing on hot spots specific issues that are you know in different parts of the world you know this animal this species is three or whatever to issue the defect human globally he really no longer you know focus on this or that but really trying to focus about fresh food fresh water farmlands even cities and you know this logo obviously the hut is empty there's no human in there and so that was an opportunity you know to move away from something that looks like Club Med and do something that you know maybe has some you know gravitas you know he thought that the leader the leader in the world in this kind of Oh lost sorry that the leader can can really use something that you looked it has the potential to become iconic over time so we you know went into exploration we kind of came up with many many different ideas we always look at in many directions and ultimately you know the idea of the blue planet with the green underline so kind of an underlying and emphasis you know when you underline something you emphasize it and then we translated that into a single wage stroke and it ended up as a kind of a simple archetypical symbol that didn't look familiar to us I mean it's it's very simple it's a circle and a line it's extremely abstract but with the color you know you can kind of do a signpost you know point people okay the blue planet a green you know some of them part of it is a green sustainable path but it's really an abstract mark and what allowed us to do an abstract mark in this case it Conservation International is very descriptive so there's no question about what you know what space they're in and what they do it's extremely discreet so it allowed us to do a mark that's abstract and it's not a lustrated at all it's actually the opposite of the mark that they had so when we brought it involved we had conviction that this mark was the right one for them but they didn't agree with us at all you know what the hell does it's me was the question you know I did they're a bunch of scientists and they do amazing work but they were like you know we had this gorgeous painting and you're telling us to go with a circle and a line you know that doesn't make any sense and this started a journey of six months to try to make and you know so we explained to them like you know the logo is not communication the logo is not the end of communication about you in fact you know it always shows up in context in the context of you know a beautiful photograph of you know you know forest or or the ocean and we even design a series of posters to show them that this can be advice that can help communicate this instinct bucolic relationship between people and the resources people in nature you know we usually say never put a picture in a logo but this mark is so simple that we realize that it could take it it could work so you know we thought that surely will make the you know the case but they were not many conversation and finally what after six months what really did it is an idea that we had to maybe produce a simple piece of motion graphics we teamed up with a studio here in New York called Thornberry and Forester and this animation that actually started with the monkey in the tree but really ended up with an array of images that have to do with everything else that they're focused on kind of gave them the sense that you know maybe less is more maybe the simple typical mark can stand for everything that they're doing including the focus on humans including you know everything that goes into their new mission and I think also tying it into their history starting with the monkeys somehow you know gave them the final push and then they said yes and I was kind of magic you know there was a lot of trepidation when they first were gonna flip the switch we got calls that they asked in law you know from the people in charge saying like oh people coming into my office and asking me oh really changing and you know we're super scared and a once thing went for it it's it's just worked wonderfully for them mm-hmm and that's the the testament you know the power of a simple mark that you know if you go all-in and you you know your your step past and you don't you're not scared there's a big payoff there mm-hmm fantastic story and it's interesting that a piece of motion graphics was the thing that sealed the deal it could not help but to think of something that I heard Tony Robbins say before which is you want to be able to build rapport with somebody you have to connect something that they know with something that they don't know and so they know their tropical rainforest with the monkey hanging the tree and then you show them a mark like this it's beautiful in simplicity but it's so foreign to them that they can't figure out what the heck that is and so then you build that bridge between what they knew the monkeying the tree we have motion graphics and how it animated and transformed into the globe and there's a little lens flare and it completes a circle the type comes in very elegantly in the green bar kind of the path forward writes itself underneath it so there's a tip for you guys hire a great motion design firm to help you close a gap but most of time I think people just react to things that they just don't know or unfamiliar with so build a bridge it's also everything you said is absolutely true and it's also showing them that they can have a rich expression mm-hmm using that device that it's not you know they're not constrained to that simple mark because people are often really scared of the simplicity as you said in the beginning of the conversation you know this all we have to stay and I think that just any way you can demonstrate that the mark is a device that can help you know you know facilitate a question but it's not the totality of the expression mm-hmm beautiful okay Matthew do you I have more questions but I'd like to take an opportunity to address anything that's really hot on YouTube right now yeah there's there's a question from Dave Aude I mean I think it's very evident that you're very good at being quite oh let me wake that up at being pretty intelligent and in terms of how you solve a very complex problems for your clients and I'm curious do you have any dream clients like do you have any clients that you would love to spend time with and and help rework their brand do you want me to name one if you want if you have something up on in it always want to know who's your dream client for some reason that's what they always ask Capital One Bank bank really why not when it's been for a while I think they really need the help I think they're a great company you know they're actually really you know like there's super technical you know technology forward and everything and you can't see that from their logo their logo looks outdated so they you know it's it's it's time I love it I love that answer because a lot of creatives I think come from the space of well it's a it's a cool company and you know they're so creative and artistic and I want to make it look even cooler but I love that you're tackling it from the perspective well they're a great company and they have a huge problem to solve in terms of communication and identity so I would love to do that for them so I love your answer what else Matthew let's see there's I'm busy typing notes because it's soon I'm gonna have to wrap the show and there's just too much stuff for me to recap here so I need a little bit more time to finish my notes here yeah I mean I think with all of these stories it's very interesting how you have a pretty strong sense of okay once you've finished it and you feel very good about the functionality of the logo you're able to push that through in many different ways to sell that to the client I'm curious if there's any if there's a formal process that you guys practice over there in terms of creating identities that might be helpful for our audience to understand sure there's no formal process we don't draw matrixes and we don't you know have like mood boards we never do that but there is a pretty strict process that we follow and the main thing is never do anything you never put pencil to paper without before you heard from the client before you really immerse yourself in their world and you know in the beginning we really think of ourselves as a sponge trying to absorb as much as possible about their industry about their competition about their vision and their mission and who they are and who they want to be and who might there be in the future and and all of this kind of feeds into our you know ideas come up during conversation so sometimes you know we would sit in an interview because that's how we start with interviews with people you know they think we're taking notes but actually we're sketching the weirdest thing would bring you know an idea or an inception of a concept but that's really great and then but the reason you have to listen if they're at the end of the you know a couple months of exploration we end up with you know thousands of sketches sometimes and then how do you sit through them and how do you determine which is the most appropriate which is you know right for them and waiting like something that you just like visually and it's not appropriate to them at all because we are very disciplined about only showing the client options that are good for them and that is something that I have to you know credit open with you know you always they never put in front of a client something that you can't live with if they think because they're gonna choose that one and then will be blamed for it and that's kind of you know since been you know it's always kind of like the most important moment is when we come together to look at designs and you know and then sometimes that gets heated because if if there's something up there that one of our slides the other one can't live with if they pick then you know sometimes there's sparks but ultimately we always come around to you know mutual respect it's you know that's kind of the basic tenets of you know being able to live to to work together and that process of constantly looking together talking together making sense of things we are very concerned with arm-waving you know that conservation international mark is not the world it's a circle and we have to be very cognizant of that it is not the picture of the world it's a circle and if you realize that you have to have some humility also about and then you can understand how you can bring your client along to see it at the world oh and that will get them there because you come in and you just mesmerized by own idea it's very hard to speak to they're listening and understand where is the issue so we try to do you know we try to be very rational about it to look at the functionality of it and that's kind of the process and you know applying it to the various applications we're coming back full circle to that that's how we vet the designs and I will say you know we we hang them on the walls we come in in the morning we see you know just get all overnight and we really try to make sure that we're not gonna put something in place that they'll have to replace very quickly mmm I have a bunch of questions here coming on online from the YouTube channel here and I just want to ask him maybe you can give us really quick answers because I want to blast through as many of these as possible and here's a question for you from our toe ex-ceo or something like that the thing is people have this tendency to say that this resembles that so you're the conservation international logo he's saying it resembles an on button how do you respond to that sure so remember I said about this life that we put in the beginning of the presentation never know at Versailles logo is not about what you like or dislike so another one of those slides is it just said it reminds me of nice and that is a word of warning because when we see something new it's human nature to like our mind doesn't like anything so in immediately tries to associate it with something we know and that's completely natural and it's a completely natural reaction when we do it all the time and oftentimes when you then put them side by side they actually don't look the same at all and our response is always you know that's something that's gonna go away with time when you get used to it when it becomes familiar to you those Association will stop happening now of course some some things look similar to other things if you look at the logo for Chanel and for Gucci mm-hmm almost the same thing and they were created you know less than a decade apart they still live together side by side in the same industry you know another example is the red star that is used by Heineken and is used by Macy's and it's exactly the same silhouette and exactly the same color and they live side-by-side in harmony unit without a problem so of course we we do our best to create original marks but you know similarities are inevitable and we just make sure that within the industry they can own that silhouette mm-hmm perfect answer thank you very much in Irvin chenko wants to know how do you land clients land clients I have to say you know I have an inform you know over the decades established a very strong reputation and it's kind of like you know the internet and the 90s and now people just come to us from all over the world and you know oftentimes you know it's an RFP that we have to you know submit credential or whatever sometimes people come and ask for work on spec as part of a RFP because they think that they're fabulous and people should just do pre work for them never do that we never do that and nobody listening should ever do that and I hope that you know that is something that just goes away from the world because to ask the designer to do free work it's just not fair you know with advertising and in architecture it's very different you know advertising that they have to do a pitch because then if they win the job they land you know a contract that is ongoing and they make a whole lot of money same thing with argue that you know they land a project they have years of a project that they can build ours you know into whatever we design especially with the identity design all the work is done up front to arrive at that mark so why should we do it for free there's no reason to do that and I don't think anybody even in a small office should agree to do that the one thing I would say is that talk to them explain to them that it makes no sense for them either because if you if you engage a bunch of a bunch of designers to do a logo for you for free obviously you know they're not gonna have the right access to ask all the questions and also to push back sometimes as you saw from some of the stories to get them to the right place so the only way to do this properly is to engage one design one designer or firm and to forge a meaningful relationship between the designer and the client so then you know there's always a back-and-forth and you have to find somebody that you trust and somebody that you also listen to they want to offer an expert advice mm-hmm oh it seemed that it would go against your rule number one which is it's never love at first sight so pitch says you must fall in love at first sight and it seems like the reason why you're able to do such good work endures overtime is it requires you to have a relationship with a client as you're talking about with conservation international it took six months of talking and convincing going back and forth and exploring before they signed up and said yep that's what we want to do right mm-hmm yes absolutely and that's why we also insist to meet with decision maker right off the bat in the beginning of an engagement and you'll be surprised how many big cooperation you know the marketing people come to us tonight yeah we want you to work on our logo but the CEO is too busy and you know you really can't meet him right now mm-hmm like no way we have to meet with him right in the beginning so not just to get his input which is super important right but because he's gonna make the decision at the end we can't meet him for the first time when we bring a bunch of designs he's never seen in his life like you know carpet salesman trying to show you swatches no it has to be a relation he's working on his identity and he learns to trust us so then when we come back we can make a recommendation and he's gonna listen perfect you know Matthew I think we've dropped so much information I mean I know personally I can have this conversation with you forever yes but it seems like you preemptively answered so many questions on the Internet I think you've done a good service today sucky in terms of trying to move the conversation forward for what a good logo design is and how you should present it and how you should build a relationship with your client and it's about the long term so I'm gonna do my best to try to summarize the show we'll come back to you in a second but whoo let's see if I can do this okay so this is tom and ivan so I I pulled this from Ivan I think it's Ivan he said symbols don't make it clear what you do it makes it clear who they are the less they say the logos are the symbols the better we have to understand what our clients are and it's not necessary what they tell us I think that kind of sums up the entire philosophy and spirit and in terms of what makes for a good identity if it's appropriate if it's distinctive and if it's simple now here's all the notes I took during the so don't take no for an answer that's how you got in the door and you just you were very persistent and once you got into the into the firm you're first in and last out and that's how you stood out don't wait to be asked I hope I spelled her name correctly from Laurie Anderson your commencement speech speaker no but is it ello rie or Ellie okay whatever I will fix at some point go where you are needed most and a logo is about capturing a core idea and the feeling does it survive the doodle test is it memorable enough that somebody can sketch it after looking at it and you're trying to find that balance between being distinctive and simple making sure that it's uncomplicated but not generic and this was a big one for me logo is not communication its identification so think of the logo more as a period at the end of a sentence and counter-intuitively simplicity is the hardest thing to achieve because you want to make something simple but ownable and you talked a lot about finding the right client and also staying away from the wrong client and if the wrong client is somebody who cannot appreciate how important logo is to the business that's not something that you want to pursue and the point of the logo is to endure well into the future and it requires expertise there's more on that in a little bit what do the biggest brands do this is the way that you are able to respond to somebody who's like I want it to be more complicated or more interesting or ornate or decorative and then you can say well what do the biggest brands do how do they identify themselves is their trademarks simple is that complicated and then what do you want to do with your logo and what kind of company do you want to have and you just don't believe in market testing anything because it's meaningless because it's purely subjective and we need to shift the conversation to being more objective so it's not about what you like or dislike it's about what works does it function and I love this one I'm gonna be using this for sure it's gonna be showing up in future episodes here is whenever you want to talk about money and you're having a difficult time just take the cost and divide it by the years use and it seems really affordable at that point sometimes what you need to do is to show what's possible how can the trademark facilitate an expression especially if you're making a mark that's very simple only show clients work that is good for them otherwise they're most more likely to pick something that you all hate and insists on talking to the decision-maker so some of the the golden gems here from your presentation the warnings that you give out it's never love at first sight it's gonna take time and I love this part too I'm going to be using this it reminds me of that will kind of preemptively stop them from even bringing that up and I hate that that bugs me it reminds me everything reminds you of something but how is that gonna help move this conversation forward okay segi are you on Twitter at all officer okay that's what I thought I try to find you and I can't not find you you don't strike me as a social media kind of guy I'm not okay all right so we're gonna wrap up the show here so before we say goodbye hey guys congratulations for making it all the way to the end of this episode reward yourself by hitting like subscribe and hitting that Bell thank you very much everybody for for tuning in today and especially to our sustaining members and of course segi Aviv and he's not going to check this but somebody at the office will it's at CGH NYC is in New York City and you guys can check out all their wonderful glorious famous iconic memorable work at CGH NYC calm thank you very much so yeah I'm gonna say goodbye to you that's another show good job thank you so much wow so dance so good I'm gonna play some music that you take us out [Music]

Channel: The Futur

Views: 327,633

Rating: 4.9704165 out of 5

Keywords: sagi haviv, cghnyc, cheramyeff geismar haviv, the futur, chris do, matthew encina, logo, logotype, trademark, best, what is a logo, what is a good logo, iconic logos, most iconic logos, best logo design simple, pbs logo, nbc logo, mobil logo, national geographic logo, epa logo, what makes a logo great, how to charge for simple logo, how to justify simple logos, best logo, great logo, how to, make timeless logo, don't follow trends, nyc, branding, brand identity

Id: Fz-XGd8EX3U

Length: 77min 2sec (4622 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 14 2018