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- [00:08]
Rob Meyerson
Welcome to How Brands Are Built, where branding professionals get into the details of what they do and how they do it. I'm your host, Rob Meyerson. Thanks for listening. Today's episode is a recording of a live in person event. On Thursday, April 25, 2024, we had a book launch for the sixth edition of Designing Brand Identity. The event was held at Noise 13, a strategic branding and design agency in San Francisco. Noise 13 has some work in the book, one of their case studies for a project with a brand called Adventure. And during the event we had a panel. The panel was moderated by Rob Goodman, a content strategist and content producer. The panelists were Deva Guthmiller, the founder of Noise 13, Robin Goffman, the creative director for Designing Brand Identity the sixth Edition, and me. You may already know this, but Alina Wheeler, the creator of Designing Brand Identity and my co author on this sixth edition, sadly passed away in December of 2023. So that's why she obviously is not on the panel. And you will also hear us talking about that during the event. But we covered other topics. We talk about the book quite a bit, we talk about Noise 13's work in the book and then we have some general conversation about branding and identity design. I hope you enjoy the conversation. Here it is.
- [01:40]
Deva Guthmiller
I am so impressed that there are so many people that came out. This is the first time we've had a big event at Noise 13 in a while since we were doing Invisible Salons and I am overjoyed to see this many creative people in one room. It makes my heart sing. So thank you, thank you very much for joining us at Noise 13 and also thank you to all the other agencies who have stuff in the book. I think it's amazing to see our peers and celebrate the fact that we're all in this amazing book that's celebrating brands of the future and hopefully training people as we move forward. So I am Deva Guthmiller. I'm the founder of Noise 13 and we have been around for a long time, 24 years and we've been in this space for about 10. And this is our old Invisible Talks office, which I'm thrilled to still have the passcode too, even though we don't rent this space anymore. So yay, good landlords. But yeah, Rob, I'll let you take it from here.
- [02:45]
Rob Goodman
Awesome. Welcome everybody. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. Give it up for yourselves for making it out on a Thursday night and post Covid or whatever era we're in to be live all in the same room together is amazing. I'm Rob Goodman, creative and content leader and was honored to be included in the book in the content strategy section. And I want to give a big thanks to Deva and the Noise 13 team for doing so much for getting everything ready for tonight. So give it up for noise 13 for the space, for the bartending, for everything. Also want to thank Wild Women in Leadership and Design initiative from AIGA San Francisco that is empowering women and non binary designers as a collective, giving them power and visibility in the space. So thank you so much for your partnership here as well and thank you all for coming. I also want to thank so many of the agencies that are featured in the book. Many of them are in the room today. Manuel operative enlisted Tolson, Noise 13, of course, all of case studies featured in the new edition, the sixth edition of Designing Brand Identity, which is why we're here tonight. And big thanks to our panel, Robin, Rob and Deva for being up for this. So one of the quotes that came to mind for tonight comes from Alina Wheeler, who passed earlier this year and is the co author of the sixth edition and the author of all the previous editions. And that's no one Does It Alone. And I think this book is a great representation of that. And the brand and design community is certainly another incredible representation of that. And tonight we certainly honor Alina. We honor her memory. And Robin has said that one of the things Alina told her is that we don't celebrate these moments of our lives enough and we don't celebrate all the hard work that goes into putting together a book like this. So really the celebration is in honor of her memory. So that's what tonight's about. It's a good time. Want people to hang, ask questions and be celebratory and remember Alina. And just talking about Alina, I want to share a little bit more about her. She was a daughter of a sea captain and polish was actually her first language. She was a founding board member of AIGA Philadelphia and over 20 years ago she published Designing Brand Identity, which has become one of the best known and most recognized books in brand design. Some Designing Brand Identity facts. It's been Translated in over 11 languages. Over 200 case studies across the six editions and hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold. AIGA Philadelphia created a memorial fund in her name and in her honor. Any profits from tonight are going to go to that fund. And also if you're interested in donating directly, we really encourage that as well. All right. And tonight it's all about the book. We're going to talk about branding. We're going to have a q and A with this amazing panel. We want questions from you all as well. There's books for sale, as you saw. And we're going to wrap up somewhere around 7ish. A quick show of hands. We just kind of want to get a sense of everyone that's here, even though there are, like a lot of familiar faces, which is amazing. How many of y'all are students here tonight? Okay, not a lot of students. Okay. Students of life. Yes, students of life. We've got one right here in the front row. Designers. All right, we got a lot of designers. Marketers. Some marketers in the house. All right, give it up. Writers. Any writers here? Okay, we got some writers in the front, folks that are at agencies. They're working at agencies in the agency world. Okay. And how about in house? In house, people? Okay, good mix. Amazing. Well, thank you all for being here. And let's kick things off. Let's give a round of applause for our amazing panel here. All right, we've got Rob and Rob and Dava. Please, let's go around and do some quick introductions.
- [06:58]
Rob Meyerson
Rob Meyerson. I'm the co author of the sixth edition of Designing Brand Identity. I also run Heirloom, my own agency here in the Bay Area. I am a strategist and a namer, so I'm not a designer, despite being the co author of a book in which the first word is design. And yeah, that's me.
- [07:17]
Robin Goffman
Hello, everybody. I will give you credit. You are a very good PowerPoint designer. I'm always impressed with what you do in there. I'm Robin. I just want to echo a big thank you to everybody for being here. This is like a dream on behalf of Alina to have this celebration. So thank you for coming and thank you for hosting. I'm the creative director of the sixth edition. I also worked on the fifth edition with Alina, and although I wish this was a full time job outside of it, I run my own design and creative strategy studio and I'm based on the east coast.
- [07:52]
Rob Goodman
Awesome. All right, well, let's get things started. Rob, with you. What is Designing brand identity for folks that may not know? And how did you originally get involved in the sixth edition?
- [08:03]
Rob Meyerson
Sure. And Robin reminded me. I forgot to say thank you, Deva, so much for hosting and the whole Noise 13 team has been amazing. I got here hours ago and they've been working their asses off to clean up in the other room. And get all that food out for you and everything. So thank you so much. So Designing Brand Identity is a book written by Alina Wheeler 20 years ago. 2003 was the date of the first edition being published. She said that she wrote it because it's the book that she wished she had on her shelf, which I think is a great reason to write a book. It's also the book that she wished her clients had on their shelves. An ulterior motive for this was she was going into client meeting after client meeting and being asked the same questions about what does brand mean? What is brand strategy? What's the right way to do it? Why does it cost so much? And so she felt like this book would be a service to the industry, useful for herself, and she did want it on her shelf. The book is written. It's almost like an encyclopedia of brand. Every two pages are a different topic related to brand. And so she would have said, also, it's not a book you read front cover to cover. It's a book that you leave up and you pull down as needed to learn about, study up, remind yourself about a certain subject. The way I got involved, I met Alina in 2020. So not that long ago I interviewed her on my podcast, How Brands are Built. She is, everyone who knows her knows she's the kind of person that kind of doesn't let you go too easily. Like, she stayed in touch. She followed up. She wanted to know what I was working on. She wanted to know about my life. And just, she's, she's. She was the most sort of friendly and giving and generous person. And we became friend and stayed in touch. I wrote a book about naming and I asked her to write the foreword to that, and she did. And I think that's probably what kind of clinched the deal. I mean, I had no idea that she was going to ask me to work on this edition. But working on my naming book, we got a chance to write together a little bit and edit each other. And I think just grew closer through that. And then she asked if I would do this. And it was not an immediate yes, believe it or not, she said it's a huge amount of work. And I figured it would be a huge amount of work, so deliberated a little bit, but decided to do it. And I'm so glad that I did.
- [10:19]
Rob Goodman
Amazing. Dave. I want to hear a little bit about the adventure case study that's featured in the book. And then I'm also curious about the difference between a brand new kind of brand project Versus a refresh versus a rebrand. If you can kind of break down Adventure and then how you approach these different styles.
- [10:41]
Deva Guthmiller
Sure. So when we started working with Adventure, they were like all tech startups. They had something that they paid somebody $5 or maybe did themselves, which is appropriate. Right. When you're, when you're first out there at any kind of company, you don't want to be spending 50, 100, 200,000, a million dollars for your brand identity system or even your brand strategy. It's just not appropriate. So they had a beta product, which was really great and was gaining traction. And they needed, first and foremost, they needed strategy, they needed positioning and messaging to really help them explain this product, which is a drag and drop video interactive interface. Miriam can probably define it, the. The brand strategies on the other wall over there. But it was more than just video. It was about creating experiences and interaction and changing and evolving with your customer and having this kind of conversation back and forth. So this project specifically was probably like halfway between starting from scratch and a brand refresh. Who they were hadn't changed. They just hadn't defined it yet. And I think for Adventure, part of our project outside of brand strategy and positioning, was an identity system that felt as flexible and movable and in motion as their interface does. So that's what we built. We built an identity system and visual tools that they're just now starting to grow into. And I will say a learning curve is really ask who the client's internal advocates for brand are and the team are. We were a little bit under the impression that there was somebody in house that actually knew how to use these tools. But that's only recent that a new. That a creative has been hired that can actually utilize, which is amazing because they're doing very, very well. The founder is an amazing guy, and they're like a rocket ship at the moment. But to your point of not doing it alone, I mean, we definitely brought in Miriam, who has been our strategist for many, many years. And then also Jerome Harris, who was a form. He spoke at Invisible, and Ariana knew him really well. And there's Ariana. She's my. My invisible partner. And it sounds really weird. It's like I have an invisible friend. But she knew Devo, who is the owner of Adventure, and also was very familiar with Jerome. And we brought him in just for his, like, really ultimate creative spirit. He is a designer, a dancer, musician, and we really wanted that, that push creatively. So we brought him as a collaborator for, like, the original concepts and he worked with Elaine, who's one of our designers, and then Andre, our team over there on the left hand side. So, yeah, not doing it alone. It was really awesome for me, the difference between starting from scratch versus a rebrand versus a refresh, I think starting from scratch, you're sort of looking external a lot because there's not that, who are you and what do people know you for and what do you need to carry over legacy wise, both verbally, visually, Strategy. When it's a refresh that tends to be a little bit more surface level, your strategy is there. Who you are is not changing. But you might be adding products or services, or it might have been eight years and times have changed and you just need to look younger and fresher. A rebrand is when something is really core, is changing about who you are, which then you're going back to the strategy and positioning and sort of bringing that forward again in my mind.
- [14:45]
Rob Goodman
Awesome.
- [14:46]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah. The rebrand is treacherous. It's tricky territory because you're dealing with brand equity that exists and if you don't want to misstep and damage that. And I think increasingly, you know, it's conventional wisdom in branding that consistency is key and you don't want to change things that you don't have to. But I think increasingly there's research to really support that, that one of the biggest mistakes you can make with a brand is to change something unnecessarily. So we loved having this case in here because it does show what a rebrand looks like. We also have cases where the agency decided that the logo was too precious or had been around for too long or was too well known to change, and they changed everything around the logo, which was really cool to have. We have new brands that were created from scratch, so it's great to be able to show that diversity. And it's one of the things that we wanted to convey through the book.
- [15:40]
Rob Goodman
Awesome. Deva, I wanted to ask you, you mentioned the 24th anniversary of Noise 13 is coming up or upon us. And for the discerning eyes in the audience, they may have noticed there's some different logos for Noise 13 happening in the space outside all of that. Talk to us about what's going on with Noise 13.
- [16:01]
Rob Meyerson
And speaking of brand refresh.
- [16:03]
Rob Goodman
Yeah, exactly. Brand refresh and how you're thinking about kind of celebrating milestones and updating what's. What's coming.
- [16:10]
Deva Guthmiller
I want to ask a question first. Who of you have tried to rebrand yourselves? Who of you would do it again? Yeah, I I've had my company for 24 years, and I hate every single time that we have to do a rebrand or refresh because clients come first. And so our work takes 10 times longer than you want it to take. And it's a little bit painful, right? And especially for me, I'm the only one who's been here the whole time. And so it's very personal to me. So especially when it comes to the strategy and the messaging part, I am very grateful for partners like Miriam and people who are slightly outside of noise 13 who can come to us with a fresh eye and take a look. But what happened with us is that, you know, we've been everything for everybody for 24 years, which is most agencies in the world. I used to say we're like the room of requirement, if you watch Harry Potter is just open the door and wear what you need whenever you need it. Which we are, right as creatives, we don't want to say no to stuff. But after 24 years, I've realized that we have never actually marketed ourselves, ever. I do not have a sales team. I do not have a marketing team. And doing things the same for 24 years, what, and expecting different results, it's like insanity. So we have decided after an audit and a lot of other things, to refocus our audience of the clients that we want to work with. And in order to signal that change, it's not really. It's more of a refresh in my mind, because it's not us doing something new. It's just cutting off some of the things that we used to do in the past. So. And in order to signal that change, we wanted a visual change as well. So it's the easiest way for people to notice that there's something different. You know, you just all of a sudden wear color when you always wear black and white. And they're like, what's different? You're like, ah, you know, I got a facelift.
- [18:07]
Rob Meyerson
But you.
- [18:07]
Deva Guthmiller
I don't see it because I have color. So. So we are in the middle of that ourselves. So a visual identity and a website and messaging to really focus on the food industry ecosystem, which is why you see plates on the wall, because we're kind of embracing that as just some of the fun that we do in the office. But we've had over the 24 years experience in everything from how we grow, gather, deliver, share, prepare, and recycle and fertilize our food. And so we are going to focus on that food industry ecosystem a little Bit more. Hence the new circle underlying plate situation that's happening inside of our logo.
- [18:57]
Rob Goodman
Robin, I want to hear more about your backstory and how you got involved. I know you said you worked on the fifth edition, and then, of course, we're really integral in the sixth as well, and we're such a close partner with Alina, So share with us how you came to designing brand identity.
- [19:15]
Robin Goffman
Yeah, sure. So I was a sophomore in college, and I was like, two weeks into one of my first design classes, and my professor, Kathy Mueller, who worked on the fourth edition and a little bit of the third edition, reached out to me and asked if I wanted to work for Alina Wheeler. And I was like, sure, that sounds great. And I'll never forget my first interview with Alina. I had. I called my mom right after, obviously, and I was like, I have no idea what she was talking about, but I think I got the job. I think part of that was just me young. And the other part, Rob, you know this Alina just spoke with such vastness that it was like, I think I know what you're talking about, but I'm not really sure, like, how it connects to this thing yet, but you eventually get there. So I worked with her before she even started the fifth edition, through the fifth Edition and some of her client work and got to continue on with Rob on the sixth edition. And it is. I said this my sophomore year that this is my career peak. And I'm now like, a little over 10 years later, and I still think that that's my career peak. So I'm not really sure if that says something about me and my choices or Alina, but just a very incredible experience, Very grateful for it.
- [20:39]
Rob Meyerson
Alina was a big idea person. I think that's part of. Part of that vastness that you're talking about. So, yeah, Alina was. You ask what Alina's like.
- [20:49]
Rob Goodman
She.
- [20:49]
Rob Meyerson
She was big ideas and, like, sort of. It's like talking to a popcorn machine, like just here and then here and then here and then here with all of these ideas that were sometimes connected and sometimes not and all sort of amazing and very much interested in your ideas as well. She was one of those people who you could really tell was listening and the fact that she could focus that kind of energy into something that when you read this book, it is very organized and cleanly laid out is, I think, a sheer act of will as well as, again, the teamwork of having people like Robin. When I got involved, they. One of the first things Alina and Robin did was share all of the files for the 5th edition, and there was a folder that said Mothership on it. And I said, what is Mothership? And Mothership got creative. Mothership was created by your professor, Kathy, and it is just sort of the everything of, like, the layout of all of the pages. It's all very gridded, as anyone who is a designer can tell. And so that is sort of the bible of, like, how to create and create new parts of this book. So, yeah, we should give a shout out to Kathy as well. Not only Robin's professor, but also a critical part of the book.
- [22:03]
Deva Guthmiller
I have a quick question about the book. I think you mentioned that it's used also as a textbook, Is that correct?
- [22:09]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, yeah, it is. So, I mean, I don't have 100% visibility from the publisher of like, exactly where. Where it's sold, but I. I know some professors that have used it. I'm going to be speaking to some professors in the US and around the world that are using it as a textbook for, I think, undergrad design courses, but probably some graduate as well.
- [22:29]
Robin Goffman
Kathy started branding master's program at Temple University, and she used the book. So undergrad and beyond.
- [22:37]
Rob Goodman
Robin, I'm curious about this idea of organizing all of this brand information and putting it in the book and what that was like, but also how that relates to how in house teams can think about organizing their brand work in a way that's meaningful and intentional and educational for the teams that they collaborate with. Is there any kind of learning there that you think translates to practitioners?
- [23:04]
Robin Goffman
Yeah, a lot. It's funny because years later, I'm now very close friends with Kathy and I asked her, why did you. You barely knew me. Why did you pick me? And she said, because my design files were impeccably organized. So it does all come down to design and organization. I'm sure there were other things, but. So I think from a design standpoint, designing a book about design is kind of scary and there's a lot of pressure around it. Fortunately, the structure of this book really hasn't changed over the past 20 years, which is kind of incredible because it's held up and the content and the brands featured are really the stars. I. From a tactical standpoint, I'm very grateful to Rob, who was all on board for Google Docs and Dropbox and spreadsheets and platforms. Trello.
- [23:59]
Rob Meyerson
Very hip.
- [24:00]
Robin Goffman
Well, I can say this because I love Lena and she would say this that she was not. So it was a big upgrade to create organization in a Collaborative way. And it sounds so simple, but having those things in place and systems in place really makes a difference, which can be applied to a 330 page book, but also a brand center and how to organize your brand assets. I think another big piece of it is making it a priority to stick to whatever system that has been created and making sure that it's accessible and scalable to the most important people that are going to be using it. And I think also from a sort of broader standpoint, taking everything is so tactical all the time. Especially. I mean, every spread in this book is different. And taking a step back and thinking about it a little bit more holistically helps a lot. I think with this book as an example, we had certain goals for every single section. The case studies as an example. There's so much incredible work and agencies out there. How do you narrow it down? We very often sort of stepped back and thought about what our goals were. We want to have a case study from every continent, a diverse range of B2B, B2C, all of these things. And so I think with every project and thinking about how to organize and make decisions, just really like pausing and sort of zooming out and thinking about bigger picture was a huge, huge help.
- [25:36]
Rob Goodman
Robin, you worked so closely with Lena and she can't be with us today. Is there a learning that kind of sticks with you that you'd want to share with all of us from your time with her?
- [25:50]
Robin Goffman
That's like the hardest question in the world to answer because the list is absolutely endless. There are so many. And in Rob's podcast episode, at the end of it, I think it was at the end of it, yeah.
- [26:04]
Rob Meyerson
The last question was just like, any advice for young.
- [26:07]
Robin Goffman
She rattles off like the most incredible advice. So go listen to that for more. But I'll just rattle off some. Generosity can get you very far. Obviously, we all have to have our boundaries with how much we give to others, but she was just the most generous person and it came so naturally and experiencing that you actually got to see the outcomes of it. And I will. I remember you say this. I think you've said it in a few podcast episodes. That part of your concern, you were like, I'm just gonna reach out to all these brands and agencies. Like, no one's gonna answer to be highlighted, featured in the book. And the majority of people respond and they're like, oh, it's for Alina. I'll get it to you tomorrow. And a big part of that was because of the generosity that she. That she shared in all of her relationships, so that's a big one, I think. Another one, something I learned just early on is that people are really just people. I'll never forget one of the first big meetings I went to with her. She was like the CEO's dad. His daughter's like, your age. He's just a guy. And that's really everybody. So we should just be sending the email, reaching out to the person, not overthinking who that person is and what cool job they have. They're all just people and every. I mean, full circle. No one does it alone. Working with her every day was like, just, I'm stealing your line. A master class in collaboration. How she connected people and thought of people for opportunities and wanted to work with people. Collaboration is just really magical thing. And I'll just say the last thing is to have fun and find humor in everything. She often said that laughter can bring light to a lot of situations. Not all situations, but a lot of situations. And I would say, like, at least three times a week, we went on a fun field trip to, like, break the day up and to bring fun into the day. From, like, ice cream breaks to going to get a bouquet of flowers, to brighten the afternoon, to wandering in a museum for an hour.
- [28:29]
Rob Meyerson
It seems like it was mostly ice cream.
- [28:31]
Robin Goffman
It was mostly ice cream. Yeah.
- [28:32]
Deva Guthmiller
She.
- [28:33]
Robin Goffman
She was addicted to ice cream. I think that we can all bring sort of small moments of joy like that in our. In our daily lives.
- [28:42]
Rob Goodman
Awesome. Thank you all so much. I have a few more questions, but I want to make sure we have time for questions from you all. So if you have a question, raise your hand. I'll probably be a mic runner. Unless we have a mic runner in the back. Okay.
- [28:57]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah.
- [28:57]
Deva Guthmiller
For Rob, you've looked across its book.
- [29:01]
Rob Goodman
You'Ve gathered all these different case studies, and I was wondering if there was anything going into the book that you.
- [29:07]
Rob Meyerson
Thought about brand that may have changed.
- [29:10]
Deva Guthmiller
Or if there was anything that surprised.
- [29:12]
Rob Goodman
You that you gathered together.
- [29:16]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, thanks for the question. I mean, the vastness of the book is it's a lot to try to handle, I think, in one book. And Robin mentioned it's always been three sections since the first edition, and that's part of the genius of Alina Wheeler. The first section is sort of fundamentals, definitions. The second section is process. So going all the way from research through implementation down to uniforms and truck livery and things like that. And then the third is all those case studies. There are many places in there that I'm not An expert at all. There's sections on crisis communications and sections on big data analytics and sections on. I mean, even I had to write a section on social justice for the first time, which I did not feel I was the right person to craft that. And so for all of these two page sections, of which there are over a hundred reaching out to experts was a big part of it. And so I definitely learned this was a big part of the reason I took the project on was, was partly the opportunity to meet these people which in, in many cases were sort of heroes of mine on the agency side. You know, the people who did the Chobani rebrand. Let's go talk to them. These things that I've been a fan of for a long time. And then in terms of expertise. Yeah, let's see what I can learn in an hour long phone call with an expert on this topic and then an email exchange that lasts weeks to learn about this different topic. And so I don't think there were a lot of things that really kind of changed the way it was more just augmenting my understanding to the degree that you can learn through that kind of process. Yeah. So, I mean, it was an amazing experience in that regard.
- [31:02]
Rob Goodman
Awesome. Any other questions? Yes, another hand in the back. We'll get you a mic.
- [31:09]
Rob Meyerson
We're seeing all these covers of the past issues of the book as well as other slides. Thank you for that. But I just want to know, this is the first one that has a number on the COVID and I wondered how that came about. So, yeah, thanks for asking. This edition, the COVID was done by Eddie Opara, who's a partner at Pentagram. We felt very excited to get him involved. Alina sort of handpicked him and we were all pleasantly surprised when he jumped at the opportunity to do it. The brief to him was relatively loose. I mean, we sent him all the old covers. We had some requirements, obviously there's some mandatories and we wanted some consistency with the old editions. But it was really, I think it was Eddie, he sent some sixes back to us in his first exploration. I think he just found it to be sort of an easy thing that he could start to build off of. It made us a little nervous. It made Alina very nervous because as you said, none of the previous editions had had it. And so he explored other things as well. But we ended up loving this direction. And it was funny because Alina had this whole game plan where she was wanted to. We literally had calls to strategize how we were going to sell the publisher on this because she's been dealing with this publisher for over 20 years. And so she felt like, okay, I know them, I know how we're going to sell this. She used to literally drive to their offices and walk in and give a presentation of what the next cover was going to look like. Obviously, times have changed. I didn't have that experience and I said, you know what, Let me play kind of dumb and just email it to them and say, here's the COVID and sort of like, see if they call our bluff. And they didn't. They said, okay, great. I think they had a few little tweaks. But Alina was blown away. She was like, I love that idea. You're just gonna send it and just pretend like it's just fine. You're just gonna. Let's do that. And I was like, yeah, I think let's try it. And that worked.
- [33:07]
Robin Goffman
The one other thing part of the brief was with a new co author. Wanted the COVID to make a little bit of a statement and be different than the past ones, to sort of make it highlight co authors. So I think the six became this symbol of differentiation for that reason.
- [33:27]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah. Alina had found that people who have multiple editions or agencies that do will refer to them not by the number but by the COVID It'll be, you know, get the one with the clouds on it or the one with the stripes on it. So she wanted it to be the one with something. So this is the yellow one or the one with the six on it. So, yeah, that was part of the brief and I think that's how Eddie delivered on it.
- [33:46]
Rob Goodman
Thanks for the great discussion.
- [33:48]
Deva Guthmiller
Curious what the selection process was in. Like, how much of this was you going out and asking people to submit work versus people coming to you with.
- [33:58]
Rob Goodman
Work that matched a particular category and everything in between. Like, how did that.
- [34:03]
Rob Meyerson
I love that question. I asked Alina that question when I interviewed her four years ago, and I said, I imagine at this point on the fifth edition, you're getting just email spammed constantly of, please put me in your book. And she said, nope, never get that. And I was shocked. But no, did not get a lot of that. It was 100% me contacting agencies. The criteria, obviously, great work, although that's subjective, but I think we wanted to have a certain tier of work in there. But you probably remember the email, David. It was. I had this sort of wish list of things that we were hoping case studies could be. A lot of it had to do with diversity so we wanted, in every sense of that word, we wanted a case from every continent. If we could do that. That was one of Alina's goals. But B2B and B2C, we wanted different industries, we wanted different sizes of agencies.
- [34:57]
Deva Guthmiller
Different sizes, different sizes of companies.
- [34:59]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, right. Startups. Yep, yep. So as we started to kind of populate and we, We. It's easy to get a lot of, like FNB and consumer goods, you know, that have made a big splash because of the design. And we obviously wanted. I said Chobani. That literally was one of the first ones where I was like, we got to get that in there. So you then you sort of figure out how to strike a balance, like, what's a great B2B case that we can get? So that was part of it. And then we would ask great agencies. I asked Brian Collins who else he thought we should reach out to if there were smaller agencies he knew of that weren't otherwise going to be represented. But it's not super systematic other than really trying to get a nice diverse spread of great work from around the world. It is a textbook, among other things. And so we wanted to put ourselves in the reader's shoes of how can we give them the best cross section of great brand work and brand design work. So, yeah, another part of the diversity was the nature of the project. Like I said earlier, is it a full rebrand, is it a new brand, is it sort of an evolution, but it's really just the diversity.
- [36:14]
Rob Goodman
I have a question for everyone. Given all the research that went into this book and you all working with so many different brands, what are the trends that you're seeing happening in branding and brand design that over this past year and what do you think is kind of coming over the next years ahead? Things that are really popping for you all?
- [36:36]
Deva Guthmiller
Well, when I think about brand, it's not just identity. It's never been. And I think finally that has become even more important to consumers. So I feel like consumers are being more picky and more aware and holding brands accountable for the entire experience more, which I think is great, because then it makes companies that are brands and not just companies that are transactional. So I hope that that trend continues, because then the strategy and the messaging and the experiences that you have and the customer service and the products they produce, all of those things together are what makes the brand, not just the identity system. And with that, I feel like the identity systems also have to be more flexible and less precious, unfortunately, as coming from a design side that kills Me, because I want everything to be precious and beautiful like a star. But it's not. And we have to let go of that a little bit and realize that it's the whole entire thing that matters the most. Which I'm. I'm happy to see that that trend is happening.
- [37:45]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, I think. Well, one thing to mention. Yeah. Brand being more than design. Another revelation from Alina is that the original title idea she had did not have the word design in it. I think it was managing perceptions, or at least that was the concept behind the title. So she didn't intend this to be like a visual design book and it really isn't, although it obviously covers that. She also thought of brand, of course, much more holistically than that. Yeah, I don't want to talk about specific. I mean, we can talk about like, like which colors are hot right now and stuff like that. But some things I'm watching. One thing that I think is fascinating is the degree to which brand education is becoming really accessible. Of course there's YouTube and people putting out like low quality, but also some high quality YouTube type things. But there are also just everything from these mini MBAs down to $5 courses on Skillshare. If you work hard to find the quality, it's out there, I think. And so people are able to train themselves. People are coming into agencies at 21 or younger with pretty good skills. And so I think that's really fascinating to watch. I think it's going to result in higher quality work. Of course, AI is also kind of coming in and resulting in both way lower quality work that's done by AI, I think, at least for the time being. And also higher quality work because it's taking out some of the grunt work that designers might have to do. So I don't want to predict what the future holds, but I think there are a lot of sort of cross currents of education and AI and what that's doing to quality. And some days I feel like every brand is able to make themselves look incredible and other days I feel like, oh my God, there's so much crap out there and all you have to do is be decent and you'll stand out. So I'm sure different industry to industry and things like that kind of wild west right now.
- [39:42]
Robin Goffman
Well, I was going to have similar answers, but I think that a big difference with the sixth edition of this book is that we mentioned earlier. Alina created this book 20 years ago because this did not exist and she needed something to educate her clients with so that she wasn't spending hours on end educating them. And I think that's just a lot different now. I think the book is still very much needed and beautiful and everybody should have it. But branding as a whole is just, as both of you just said, so much more accessible in a way that I don't think it has been in the past.
- [40:15]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, I got into brand consulting around the time the first edition came out and I was working in new business and I don't know if you remember, I remember going to pitches and like half the pitch was like, what is a brand? It was like very basic education stuff. And I, I don't. I mean, I'm sure it's not just that. It's not just an external change. I think I'm probably pitching different types of clients, but I don't remember the last time I did something like that in a pitch situation. It's just kind of right into like, here's the scope and here's how we're going to do it. And I think, I don't know how much better the understanding is, but there's at least a recognition of how important it is to understand and therefore maybe a willingness to pretend that you understand it enough to get through the pitch meeting.
- [40:58]
Rob Goodman
Yeah. And I think that's a testament to Alina's work over the past 20 plus years. And, you know, an amazing.
- [41:05]
Rob Meyerson
Yeah, she succeeded.
- [41:06]
Rob Goodman
Yeah. With that. I really want to thank our panel tonight. Thank you so much. Give it up for everyone here. My pleasure. Thank you to this amazing audience. Really appreciate everyone coming out tonight. Big thanks to women in leadership and design in AIGA San Francisco. We've got books for sale. There's still some fun stuff.
- [41:30]
Deva Guthmiller
So much food and drink. Please go have more.
- [41:32]
Rob Goodman
Yeah, exactly. Go hang out, meet and greet these wonderful people, ask them more questions. And again, huge, huge, huge thanks to noise13deva but her entire team here who set up the room and are bartending and got all the food and are running everything. So a big, big cheers and thank you all so much for coming out tonight.
- [41:54]
Deva Guthmiller
Thank you.
- [41:55]
Rob Meyerson
Thanks, man. Rob also appreciate it.
- [41:58]
Robin Goffman
Thank you, Rob.
- [41:59]
Rob Meyerson
Thanks for listening to how brands are built. If you like this episode, please leave a rating and a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about designing brand identity, you can visit dbi book.com the book is also available for purchase on Amazon. To learn more about Noise13 and their brand and identity design work, you can visit noise13.com and you can learn more about Rob Goodman, Robin Goffman or me. By typing in our names and adding.com at the end, all of us managed to get our exact names with the dot com. So that's robgoodman.com, robingaufman.com or robmyerson.com how brands are built is a production of Heirloom Agency. Our theme music is by Esha Erskine Project. I'm Rob Meyerson and I'll talk to you next time.