← The Angry Designer Graphic Design, Freelancing, Branding & Creative Business Podcast
The Angry Designer Graphic Design, Freelancing, Branding & Creative Business Podcast
Why Designers Chase the Wrong Logo Trends & What to Do Instead with LogoLounge's Bill Gardner
01:26:38
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- [00:03]
Massimo
You're listening to the Angry Designer podcast, where we help frustrated graphic designers crush the industry chaos, ditch the social BS and build badass, rewarding careers that actually pay now. Powered by WIX Studio. What's up, Angry Designers? All right, we've had some pretty big logo. What do you want to call them? Masters logo. The hot guys of the space right now. You know, we've had Alan Peters on the show once or twice or three times, you know, James Bernard. We've had all this stuff. Okay, but what if all these guys look up to someone else and that there's this, like, logo sifu that they all look into and they are, like, scared to go against or. Or who holds all this power? I think our guest today is. Could in fact be that guy. All right, we're talking. He hasn't published one, two, three logo award books. He's published like 15 plus other ones. And we are talking about the book Logo Lounge. Okay. And we're. I know.
- [01:11]
Bill Gardner
And we've got the camera right now. You need to move it over closer. Look there.
- [01:14]
Massimo
Look at that bad boy.
- [01:16]
Bill Gardner
Look at, look at that.
- [01:16]
Massimo
Look at that. And we've got the guy who came up with this crazy idea, Mr. Bill Gardner.
- [01:23]
Bill Gardner
Hey, you guys, I'm, I'm, I'm expecting you to bring in the sound effects and all the. The applause. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [01:32]
Massimo
There's a whole crowd of 50,000 people cheering at this point.
- [01:35]
Bill Gardner
Right. How you guys doing?
- [01:37]
Massimo
Dude, this is great. Only because, I mean, again, I followed your book, you know, I think the very first Logo Lounge book I ever got was. Would have been the first one, and it was when we actually moved into this studio where we are right now. So we're talking like 16, 17, like early 2000s.
- [01:55]
Bill Gardner
We're talking 2003. If that was the first book.
- [01:58]
Massimo
Yeah, actually, I think we were 2004. So I probably got it the year after.
- [02:02]
Bill Gardner
Yeah, it was a history book by then.
- [02:07]
Massimo
Well, now. And now it's a collectible.
- [02:09]
Bill Gardner
So.
- [02:09]
Massimo
So. And I mean, so this is why it's really cool because. And then again, we've heard, you know, other people talk about you.
- [02:14]
Bill Gardner
Right.
- [02:14]
Massimo
We've heard Alan Peters talk about you and James Bernard, you know, attributes a lot of his cool. You know, what's happened to him because of your crazy book. Like, this is really cool because you're like a real life historian and you have kept, you know, this whole print.
- [02:30]
Bill Gardner
Like, you.
- [02:30]
Massimo
You're still printing these, are you not?
- [02:33]
Bill Gardner
Yeah, yeah. I've got a little press over here in the corner. You can't see it, but I've got minions over there just cranking these things out and Dilla Dot Matrix nailing them off. And. No, it. It. It's been entirely crazy. And, you know, I, I often tell people, sometimes you come up with a really stupid idea and it works. And, you know, but probably what helped was it even though we launch 2001 Logo Lounge, it probably started as part of the thought process in about 1998, so there was about three years worth of, you know, trying to figure it out, trying to find a partner that could help me get this thing coded and built. And, you know, so it gave it time to really molder and turn into what I had expected it to be. And there weren't a lot of surprises. Yeah, well, early on.
- [03:25]
Massimo
You mean there weren't a lot or there were.
- [03:26]
Bill Gardner
There have not been a lot of surprises.
- [03:28]
Massimo
Well, did you have the agency prior to the book?
- [03:31]
Bill Gardner
Oh, yeah. So, okay, so for everybody, just a little bit of housekeeping here. BILL Gardner Gardener Design I'm going to age myself here. It goes back to 1983. I was out of college and nobody would hire me, so I just started freelancing and doing my own thing. And then it just kind of bloomed. And so, you know, that. That was that. I've always been fascinated by branding and identity and logos. And early on, I mentioned this to you right before we. I put my way through college doing magic, and I. So I, I was traveling around the country doing magic, and I was, as a teen and early twenties, and we were putting on conventions with Siegfried and Roy and David Copperfield, Lance and all this shit. Yep. So I'm. I'm that guy. And. But as we would travel, I would always find the designer in the community that I, you know, just idolized. And, I mean, put me into Saul Bass's office, you know, sitting across the desk from him, you know, just kind of sucking up his. His own and. And the likes and any number of others. And it really built a foundation of, you know, these various designers that I knew that were the ones that had contributed to Logo Lounge when it first started. And I'd call up and I'd go, I've got this goofy damned idea I. What I'm going to do. And keep in mind, this is 2001, and people especially didn't get the idea of uploading a logo. And I'd say, I need you to upload all of your logos. They go, yeah, yeah, I could do what's. What's upload, you know, and so we. We'd go through an educational process. And I'm not just the ones that people have seen, but I. I need to see everything. Oh, give me all the shit that people didn't buy. Well, okay. We can do that too, you know, so that was really the foundation of where all those logos came from. The first 2000, when we cranked open the digital doors on Log Lounge. Right.
- [05:36]
Massimo
So that was. Okay. So early years. Like, what, were they sending them over in zip drives or were they actually. You had FTP access?
- [05:44]
Bill Gardner
No. So the site was set up so that they could, you know, literally. And sometimes it was scanning a logo or if they were designing it digitally, we would end up having them drop across the files or, you know, upload it to the site. But we did. We literally were getting designers that were sending me paper logos. You know, I mean, they'd printed them out and we'd put them in for them and stuff. But the thing that worked with Logo Lounge is that it was this idea of designers got competition. You know, they understood, okay, I'm going to design a logo, and I'm going to pay 25 bucks or 50 bucks or whatever. I'm going to send it off to CA or I'm going to send it off to, you know, graphis or some competition, and it may or may not get in, and I may or may not ever hear back from them. But then guarantee we'll cash my check and I'm out that money.
- [06:42]
Massimo
It's kind of what we always razz on, don't we?
- [06:46]
Bill Gardner
But it's okay. I mean, we got that. And as designers expecting to build a reputation, you want to put your shit out there. And this was, listen, you pay 100 bucks annually, and it gives you the ability to upload all the logos you've got. Well, of course, we want as many logos as they've got, but there was no limit. So it wasn't like 25 bucks per, 50 bucks per or whatever. And they got that, and they liked that. The other thing on this was, obviously, there are those people that don't want to upload that want to go take a look at those things. So as they put them in, they'd put in keywords and somebody else would go put in, I give up, Fox. Because they were designing a Fox logo, and it would pull up, you know, 100 different Fox logos, which beat the shit out of going and pulling down all your books and sitting there and post it, noting, you know, those books full of logos for hours and hours. And that was the Basic premise, you know, behind it.
- [07:49]
Massimo
That was really early on, was it. But you know, again, I, maybe I miss it, you know, but I still remember like, and again, I'm talking like, like we've got number three here. Okay, Logo. L and I still to this day love just kind of skimming through, looking at everything. There's something analog about this. So have you seen a decline on the print side of this at all?
- [08:09]
Bill Gardner
Oh, sure. You know, I mean, but frankly, I mean, we're so, we started this, what, 20 plus years ago, 25 years ago almost. And you know, I mean, hell, there's, there's designers that are producing kick ass stuff that weren't even a glimmer at the moment that this thing started. So obviously technology has shifted. The way that we think about finding reference has shifted. But the fact that you're still going to a site which you can, you know, you're still digitally, you may be looking at it on this as opposed on this, but you're able to still find whatever you need to as a resource and that's where you go. Maybe the, the other thing that was part of this from the early stage was that I knew that we had to publish a book and think about the anachronism there. It's kind of like, I guarantee you that if you upload a logo, somebody in Australia designed a logo for a baker this morning and showed to the baker and they uploaded it to Logo Lounge and you looked at it on Logo Lounge before that baker sold their first loaf of bread.
- [09:17]
Massimo
Oh my God, that's amazing.
- [09:18]
Bill Gardner
It's that immediate. But at the same time, I'm going, you know, I've got this book over here, sell you this book that you're going into and that book is going to permanently have your look. So you can go to your mom and say, I know what I do.
- [09:34]
Massimo
As soon as it's in print, you've made it. It feels like it.
- [09:37]
Bill Gardner
Right?
- [09:38]
Massimo
I don't know if the whole digital thing has the same. It doesn't, it doesn't.
- [09:44]
Bill Gardner
I can tell you who cries out there amongst designers because I have had more people drop me book openings where they'd go, oh, here's, here's my logo. I, I designed that, you know, and all of a sudden you start tearing up and I'm going, don't do it, don't do it. No, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to bust my sales. This is great, you know, but it works.
- [10:16]
Massimo
So you, so you, in essence, obviously, you've kept all the logos from logo. Logo Lounge 1 and it all archived. And so is this like actual. You're like, what is it? Way back finder. The, the, the website tool. But you're doing this for logos since you've started this, have you not? Like we can go back and see.
- [10:34]
Bill Gardner
You can get the first logo uploaded.
- [10:37]
Massimo
You, you run in a report every year as well, don't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and the report entails.
- [10:45]
Bill Gardner
So the very bottom, probably second year is out 2023. I had a call from Gordon K. Who puts out a publication called Graphic Design usa. Everybody gets it. It's, you know, free to the industry. And Gordon said, could you be interested in writing an article? I'm kind of tracking your Logo Lounge thing here that you're doing and tell us something about logos. And at the time I think maybe Felix Sokwell and I were having a conversation, we started talking about trend. I was going, you know, I could, I could probably produce something and put some trend ideas together, you know, from what we're seeing. And it went over so well. We did what, 15 trends. And it wasn't just a matter of, you know, saying, hey, I think this is a trend. But I mean the, the cool thing about Logo Lounge is it gathers analytics. So I mean, think about this. When somebody is, when you're designing a logo, it's still six months from being public, it's still a year from being public. So if you're going onto Logo Lounge and saying, hey, I'm designing for a food truck and you know, well, I start to see a lift in the number of people hunting food trucks as a key word. So I mean, you can start to look at analytics and we can start to see, you know, well, here's the direction we're going. Here are words that people were searching for this year that they didn't search for last year. And you, you start to see what's going on. So we produced the report for him. He loved it. He came back the second year, the third, and pretty soon people all around the world started contacting me and saying, could you come to our conference and tell us about the trends because you're a genius. And I'm going, no, no. But I wrote these 15 trends. So whether it was self prophecy or whatever, it's turned into literally walking me through Red Square in Moscow to Kiev, to throughout India, throughout, you know, Italy, throughout Ireland, throughout. I mean it's taken me around the world.
- [12:59]
Massimo
So what's, what's something that designers get totally wrong about the logo trends report, then like that they assume and is actually surprising.
- [13:09]
Bill Gardner
It. Well, you're setting me up here because that's the point. Every, every, every year I end up getting an email from somebody saying, well, thank God I didn't make the report. I would hate to be thought of as being trendy. And if, if it was a trendy report, which it's not, it's a trend report, you know, I, I'd give them a little bit of credit, but I'd say, you know, yeah, absolutely, you didn't make it because you're not a trend setter. You, you know, and it is, you know, we're reporting on what we see and it doesn't mean that I like it. Some of the stuff I show I think is shit. But I mean there's, there's a lot of stuff that, you know, I mean, it, it's the direction people. So think of it this way. I think of a trend as a trajectory or evolution. I'll give you, I'll give you a quick little conundrum here. Imagine I gave you a map and that map of the US And I stick a pin right in the middle of it and I say, this is a person. They're traveling. Where is she going to be tomorrow? Okay, well, you don't have enough information. You don't know which direction she's traveling. You don't know how she's traveling. You don't know what the agenda is. I mean, you don't have enough information. But if I were to come back and say, okay, I'm going to place a pin here, here and here, where she was the day before and the day before that and the day before that. And it looks like, wow, she started in California. She's traveling about 500 miles a day. So she's probably driving, I'm guessing, and she'll probably be in, I don't know, Nashville, if she's smart tomorrow. Okay, we can predict that now, can't we? Okay, so if you take a look at a logo and I always tell people it's better to know how you got there than to know where you are. Because if you just take a logo and you go, okay, this is where we are, you don't know which direction to go, do you? But if you know that this logo came out of this logo which came out of this logo which was burked by Paul Rand back here, you can start to see the evolution of lines drifting through the IBM logo and into the AT&T logo and drifting up into the stars. In Motion logo that Robert Miles Runyon did, where he started to break it into, you know, shifts of a line, and you start to go, wow, okay, if I push this forward, maybe. Maybe it's the lines, but maybe the lines are curving or maybe the lines, instead of doing shifts, maybe they start to, you know, contour and you start to be able to press an idea forward because that's how things evolve.
- [15:51]
Massimo
Yes, yes, yes. So, so are you. Were you able to see, like, you know, the. The trend lately? Not lately. Maybe it's kind of going back the other way. But the oversimplification of logos, how everything's just becoming so bland, you know, we're calling them blanding and people are dropping marks and just going to one color fonts. And did you see that coming?
- [16:13]
Bill Gardner
No, I didn't. Well, okay, so we're going to talk about pendulums for a minute. Just. So think of this and kind of imagine this scenario, which is a little bit goofy, but it helps if you do for every trend. So let's take type and let's say that one end of the spectrum is sans serif, the other is serif. Just for the purpose of conversation. It's easy to talk that way. And let's say that we're having this, you know, blanding of the world, and we're taking all the fashion logos and we're dropping them back to Helvetica or some kind of Swiss type, and that, that's the extreme end of the pendulum swing. So it's going to start to slow down as it reaches that point, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's going to take a second, then it's going to start to swing back. And, you know, so trends are cycles, but you got to keep in mind that there's a shitload of pendulums swinging here and they're all not swinging in accordance with each other. So maybe this one's on color, maybe this one's on thickness, on weight. Maybe this one over here is on typography. Maybe this one over here is on transparency. Maybe this one's on flat versus, you know, fill in the blank. So your judgment is to look at any one of those things and kind of go, boy, you know, there have been so many logos with gradients. I'm willing to bet we've just about reached a saturation point, that pendulum's going to start swinging back. Or I'll bet we've just about played out that Glassine kind of look that everybody's putting on. Shit, I'll bet You people are going to get tired of people using AI to take a logo and express it in 17 different fur styles, you know? So, I mean, you. You look at that and you start to say, okay, well, there's. There's some logic to why things go the way that they do. Yeah. Wow.
- [18:10]
Massimo
So.
- [18:10]
Bill Gardner
So I don't mean to get deep on you guys.
- [18:12]
Massimo
No, I mean, again, that's. That's pretty heavy. So then, with that being said, you know, were there any surprises along the way that you were. You almost saw coming and you were shocked at.
- [18:23]
Bill Gardner
Always. I mean, always.
- [18:25]
Massimo
Oh, really?
- [18:25]
Bill Gardner
Oh, yeah. I mean it. So as much as I'd like to profess, I've got a crystal ball. There are certain ones that you can kind of track the trajectory, and you can kind of see them moving. Then there are ones that just kind of slap you up the side of the face, and they come out of the blue, and you have no idea where they came from. And then I have to kind of go back and go, well, crap. I mean, things happen for a reason. They don't just happen spontaneously. So where does it come from? And I make my best guess at it, or I turn to other designers and say, kind of help me walk through this. Grab my hand and lead me to the fountain of knowledge on this, because I don't know where it came from. And, yeah, I think once you have kind of figured it out, you go, oh, well, that makes sense. I mean, it. It's the same story we've lived with all of our life. You know, something that doesn't make sense to you, somebody points out to you, and you go, oh, well, that's because my mom and dad were both redhead and I got black hair. I guess. I see. I see what happened. Yeah, Yeah. I mean.
- [19:41]
Massimo
So, yeah, okay, let's. Let's. Let's take it down right to the beginning here. So you started, you know, like, 20 years ago. We'll just say, and I'm guessing early days. You probably took whatever you could get. You created your first book, and you probably sifted through it in the past five, ten years. How? Or not even the past three to five years.
- [20:02]
Bill Gardner
35 on average a year. Yeah. That's 35,000 per book, approximately. Wow.
- [20:09]
Massimo
So how the hell do you do this? How do you go through? Because you'd no doubt touch every one of these before they get to the book.
- [20:15]
Bill Gardner
Yeah, I just take the top 2000 and stick them in the book. But how. How do you get them in the top? On the. On the top.
- [20:27]
Massimo
So Submit late.
- [20:28]
Bill Gardner
I don't. I don't even look at them. No. You know that I'm completely BSing you. So, you know, early on, we. We decided that the best thing. And honestly, the ditching process has not changed in all these years. And we kind of came up with a methodology where we could approach just name brand designers around the world and say, would you be willing to be a judge? And you can sit at home, we'll send you a bottle of wine, and you just click through the logos and you give them a score. And it's a pretty simple process. So now we have 10 judges. We started out with eight, but it got to the point where there were just too many. So. And every logo that is submitted is seen by three of the judges. Exactly. Three. And every. A logo page appears on a screen for them. And they may have thousands to go through, but it shows up 20 logos at a time. And each one has a radio button. 0, 1, 2, 3. And it's set to zero. And as they look at that logo and it says what the name of the logo is and what the industry is, that's it.
- [21:49]
Massimo
They don't see who did it.
- [21:51]
Bill Gardner
They don't know. They don't have any idea who did it unless they know them. But they can click on 0, 1, 2 or 3. They can leave it as a zero if they want to. Three is, hey, I think this thing is just amazing. Two is, you know, that's a damn good logo. Or, yeah, two. One is, yeah, I see some value here. This is still a good logo. Zero is, you know, I'm going to pass. And with that, the highest score that any logo could potentially get is nine. Okay. And surprisingly, out of 35,000 logos, like in this book, 15, which we just finished during, there were two nines. So it's, you know, it's. It's that all the judges have to be in sync with each other. That. That is the very best of best. You know, Polish years got to believe that that's the very best of best, if that's drew on. On that. So it's a. It's, it's luck of the draw, but we've statistically worked it out. And then you come down to the eights, and there's usually, I don't know, about 15 eights. And then you get down to the sevens and there's 60, 60 or 70 sevens, and then you start getting into thousands, you know, but no judge can get a logo in the book just by one vote. Even if it A3, it may not make it into the book because the other judges don't give it anything. So, yeah, it's probably.
- [23:15]
Massimo
Is there. What. What makes a logo stand out amidst all these from, like, the thousands and thousands of the 35,000. Are there characteristics, something similar that everybody sees? And I'm guessing they range from black.
- [23:28]
Bill Gardner
And white to color that's sitting there in front of you. And look at it. And that's your answer. It's, you know, I mean, seriously, if. If. If you want to ask me what makes it in it. All of those logos went through the same process, and they're. They're typically, you know, and I. And I. I hate to admit this, but it's true, because the judges are going through so quickly. They've got to make obviously, a real kind of quick neural, you know, judgment is that, wow, that. That one strikes me. But if there's some terrific nuance that's in a logo, it may not be in front of them long enough for them to pick up on it. If, you know, so it's got to be a quick read. If it is teeny tiny, they're not going to be able to see it very well. If it is logo and type with it. Sometimes that makes the logo smaller and they don't spend as much time with it. I mean, these are just kind of common sense things. But if you look at the book, you're kind of going. And I've had designers that ask me this question, you know, post competition, when they didn't make it in, and I'll go, go look at the book. See, you know, only done this for a few years. Go, go see what makes it in and. And why it made it in. Yeah.
- [24:47]
Massimo
You know, and it's crazy because looking through this book there, although, okay, obviously you've done a great job. The book is broken down. Like, you see, heavy type fonts are all. See, very minimalistic ones altogether. So it's an easy read. It's not a hodgepodge of just everything.
- [25:03]
Bill Gardner
And not only that, but if you. If you sit there and if you. This is. This is where I. I get really anal about this. If you sit there and you look at each logo, you can kind of see that it kind of connects to the next logo, the next logo. There's very, you know, so it's. It's not just an abc. It, you know, I mean, even if you're looking at shapes or at things, you know, if you look at symbols, you'll see how the symbols wander through each other. So that heart Next to fire. Because the logo in between him is a heart on fire. You know, it's, you know, I mean, it's, there's a sequence that happens here. Yeah, yeah.
- [25:36]
Massimo
Have you, have you ever been confronted by anybody out in the wild that it's like, why didn't my logo make the book? I submitted it to you. Or like, anybody.
- [25:46]
Bill Gardner
Famously, James Bernard whines all the time.
- [25:49]
Massimo
James Bernard is a whiner, isn't he?
- [25:51]
Bill Gardner
Such a crybaby. He is.
- [25:53]
Massimo
Now, that doesn't surprise me, you know.
- [25:57]
Bill Gardner
That we're like this. I know, I know. This is James and this is me. No, no, we're. James and I are dear friends and.
- [26:07]
Massimo
I love it, by the way. He does, he does. And he attributes a lot of Israeli success to, to actually being chosen into your book.
- [26:15]
Bill Gardner
I, I.
- [26:16]
Massimo
And we raz him about it all the time.
- [26:18]
Bill Gardner
But it's true. It comes back to he's a hell of a Designer.
- [26:21]
Massimo
Yes, agreed. 100%.
- [26:23]
Bill Gardner
You, you earn your way in it. It ain't whether or not you know me. Yeah, yeah.
- [26:27]
Massimo
Has there been any logos ever that you, you've been like, wow, like shocked that they didn't make it?
- [26:34]
Bill Gardner
Yeah, but I usually shove them in anyway.
- [26:40]
Massimo
Oh, my God, that's amazing.
- [26:43]
Bill Gardner
So the back page, I do have a little bit of. So if, okay. And somebody's gotta, gonna eventually figure this out. You know what? Once I start scoring those things and I get down to a certain pool of them, there are 3,000 logos in a book. Well, number 3,001 may have had the same score as number 3,000. So there's got to be a little bit of judgment in there, doesn't there? So, yeah, I've got some say in there to kind of keep the quality of the book up and the likes. There are judgment calls that have to be made. But one of the things that happens that is really brilliant, I think, on one of our programmers part is if you go to logolounge.com and by the way, plug 100 bucks, throw some shekels at it, because it's the best spend you'll ever make just for research. If you don't even enter anything. But if you go and you search on the search mechanism, you can indicate, okay, give me, give me a topic, dogs. Give me every dog logo that's out there. And you can also say, okay, give me dog logos that are just in people's collections. So people have kind of made a judgment, added them in. Or you can say, give me the dog logos that have ever Received any score from a judge. So that means that if a judge gave it a one, it'll still be in there. It's going to be in there. Or you can say, give me stuff that's been in the books. And so you got those different, you know, and it basically cuts it down by about a quarter every time. So, you know, stuff that maybe didn't make the book but was thought of fondly by the judges. You can create resource guide. Yeah.
- [28:36]
Massimo
How do you do your judges? Do your judges switch every year?
- [28:40]
Bill Gardner
Oh, yeah, they do. Okay. Yeah. Because.
- [28:43]
Massimo
So this is how.
- [28:44]
Bill Gardner
Find out who they are. They start to bribe them.
- [28:46]
Massimo
No, fair enough. Fair enough. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised about that. But how do you keep yourself then from getting desensitized? Because I'm guessing that you're still part of that process.
- [28:55]
Bill Gardner
Well, I don't judge at all. No. No.
- [28:58]
Massimo
Oh, geez.
- [28:59]
Bill Gardner
Okay. Well, that's.
- [29:00]
Massimo
That's brilliant.
- [29:01]
Bill Gardner
My judging is what I just went through with you, which is that. Yes. You know, as you make the final calls, if there's some of those logos that are all within that same number, that those. I've got a. You know, and in all fairness, you've.
- [29:13]
Massimo
Earned that right to be able to make that editorial.
- [29:16]
Bill Gardner
I'm glad to hear you say that. Yeah.
- [29:20]
Massimo
I got your back, Bill. We got you. We got you.
- [29:22]
Bill Gardner
I want a metal. Damn it. I want a big one with ribbons and some applets that I can put up here on this.
- [29:29]
Massimo
I'll get James to work on that right away. Anything. Anything weird and wacky that you've ever seen come through there.
- [29:36]
Bill Gardner
You know, honestly, my. My first thought was, you know, people are going to start loading penises and stuff like that on here. You know, I'm going, what do I do? You know, that's a good logo. It's stiffer than I thought I was, you know, but I.
- [29:51]
Massimo
But I think stiff competition.
- [29:52]
Bill Gardner
Yeah, stiff competition, but. But I think that the fact that if you're going to upload something to the site, your name is on it. So it's kind of like you spent your money. You're, you know, we. We got your address. It. You know, your name's attached to it. It. And if you want to put it up there, you know, we'll probably pull it down. But I think I've only pulled one penis off the site in all these years. Just somebody had to try it a bit.
- [30:22]
Massimo
Sean. Wasn't that the one you submitted? Sean? Probably.
- [30:28]
Bill Gardner
Sean. Okay.
- [30:30]
Massimo
Okay, here's a question. Would you ever Consider letting a logo be. Be either printed or on your site if you knowingly knew it was created by AI.
- [30:43]
Bill Gardner
Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. How. How would I know?
- [30:48]
Massimo
No, no, no. The question is knowingly so you know, it is it.
- [30:52]
Bill Gardner
What's the difference if I know or if it's just in there because somebody created it, uploaded it.
- [30:58]
Massimo
So you're just saying that you don't know. Regardless if they created it using 20 prompts and they got to it versus drawing it up themselves in Infinity or Illustrator.
- [31:08]
Bill Gardner
Let me kind of break it down backwards here for just a minute. We'll work our way up to that, which is that, you know, at the very beginning of the story, I said, I want you to upload all your logos, even the ones that didn't make it. The reason that those logos are important isn't because the client picked them. The reason that they're important is because there was serious thought that went into why that would be a good logo, or the design of it may not have been right for that client, but it may inform other designers to be able to stand on the shoulders of it. Okay, so when. So when you start to think about that, then you skip forward to any number of years ago, designers started uploading logos that maybe they were creating for sale that weren't ones that had been commissioned, they weren't a logo that they worked on as a logo project. And you can pick those out if somebody does the entire Alphabet. And it just so happens that person did 26 logos at you, or basically that you, you know, that there is still value to the design of those and that I'm not making that choice, but the, the judge looks at it and goes, you know, that's a nice mark. It did, you know, so when we start talking about stuff created by AI, and what do I care if it's created by AI or if it's created by somebody's chimp that's got a crayon, you know, I mean, honestly, it has to go through the vetting process to get into the book. And if it is created by AI and a judge looks at it not knowing that it was created by AI, but still believes there's benefit or value to it, stand on the shoulders of it, then they've made that call, haven't they? You know, so, you know, I mean, you could get into the whole AI argument of it's sourcing materials that weren't it, or, you know, that didn't. It didn't have access to, or that it, you know, is looking at Copyrighted stuff. I mean, you can get into that whole thing, of course.
- [33:32]
Massimo
But I mean, in the same vein, haven't we all done this? I mean, I have got, you know, like, I've got so many logo books. I've got logo modernism, dude. I have looked through your books for inspiration in the past.
- [33:43]
Bill Gardner
Right.
- [33:43]
Massimo
Like, and I.
- [33:44]
Bill Gardner
That's why they're there. Right. It's.
- [33:47]
Massimo
It's a resource. It's a valuable resource. And you're right. So that's that whole AI argument. That's, that's something else that I think people need to step back and, you know, think, haven't you been guilty of that yourself? Just, you know, you, you chose to do it where AI was just a bot, that somebody else made it for it.
- [34:03]
Bill Gardner
And, and from time to time we have somebody upload a logo and somebody hits me up and says, you know, so. And so just uploaded a logo. And I think it, frankly, it's a knockoff on one that I'd done and, you know, which is also on the site. And that's an interesting point. Is that when you upload something, it is date and timestamped.
- [34:25]
Massimo
Yes.
- [34:25]
Bill Gardner
So you can attest to, you know, I did that logo, you know, and uploaded it at 3pm on, you know, August 19, back in, you know, whatever. So it gives you a level of proof. But the thing that we end up doing is saying, you know, could be we suggest you contact them. Here's, you know, you two work it out. Let me know what you come to conclusion on. We'll pull down that logo if you want, you know, if you decide that's the direction you want to go. And they are always surprised that I suggest that they talk to the person that uploaded. I'm going, guys, I determined early on that I wasn't going to be the arbitrary. Yeah, that. Yeah.
- [35:08]
Massimo
How do you, how do you absolve yourself of this, though, with that being said? Like, I mean, we know that there's always copyright claims and this stuff's always in the courts. How do you, I mean, do you absolve yourself with a service agreement when they upload their website or upload their logo or what.
- [35:23]
Bill Gardner
What, what does it matter if they upload? If, if they're stealing, they're stealing and it's kind of like, like, you know.
- [35:31]
Massimo
Fix it and you're not supporting it or, or in, in one way or another, like supporting the artist, what they're doing. It's just the site.
- [35:38]
Bill Gardner
Yeah, you know, okay, I did it, but I changed the color or I You know, I did it and I re adjusted and, and you, you get those. You know, there are, there are those logos that are so Art center in Pasadena and USA Today both have the same logo. It's a circle, you know, so there are those logos that just because of the natural geometry of them, it's going to get recreated, you know, or there are going to be iterations that are kind of like, you know, the other one. How many yin yang logos can you get that are an S, you know, that, I mean, how many times have you seen this? And it's going to happen and it doesn't mean that somebody stole that idea from you, but there are those logos that you're kind of going, okay, that monkey on that bicycle with its tail curled with bananas hanging off of it. It, that's, yeah, probably stole that one. Yeah. You know, and if, if you're stupid enough to, to do that, then, you know, I, I don't need you as a member. But, but we've, we've got smart members and, you know, good folks. Yeah.
- [36:48]
Massimo
So I think what was brilliant and what you've said earlier on was there's a difference between what's trending and trends. I think that's brilliant.
- [36:58]
Bill Gardner
Between trendy and trend.
- [37:00]
Massimo
What's. What's trending and the direction logos are trending versus trends.
- [37:04]
Bill Gardner
No, trendy.
- [37:06]
Massimo
Trendy. Sure. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, Fair enough, Fair enough. What, what are some of the worst trendy things have you seen over the past 20 years? Like things that you wish you could just erase from your eyes.
- [37:17]
Bill Gardner
Oh, I'll give you this super quick one which I think everybody can kind of pick up on. And unfortunately we've got a built in system that kind of eliminates things which designers cancel each other out pretty quickly, which is the idea of give me a cross and I'm going to stick a letter here and a letter here and a picture of a fire here and a picture of a skull here.
- [37:45]
Massimo
Jeez. And the hipster keeping special.
- [37:48]
Bill Gardner
Yeah. You know, whatever you want to stick in those quadrants of that. And the thing I loved about that was it developed so quickly that designers burned it out before it ever really, you know, interesting. Grabbed, Grabbed any serious traction and those things happen. And I get it.
- [38:11]
Massimo
And now a word from our sponsor. All right, designers, let's cut the bull. How many times have you had a killer website design only to watch it fall apart because of code or developer telling you no, no, no. Or maybe you've held back from web design altogether, thinking it's just Too complicated and too technical or totally out of your wheelhouse. Either way, it's time for a change. Wix Studio is designed for design designers, removing the barriers that limits your designs. Whether you're tired of developers watering down your ideas or too intimidated by the technical side of web, wix Studio puts the creative power back in your hands. No code required. With a drag and drop interface that feels designer intuitive, plus no code, animations and even AI powered tools, you can create fully custom websites that match your vision. Every pixel, every detail. And if you're worried about the learning curve, don't be. Wix Studio is designed to feel as intuitive as your favorite design tools. Some designers here even say more. So that means you can jump right in and focus on what you do best. Designing badass brand aligned websites that take your business to the next level. So whether you've had enough of developers holding you back or you're ready to finally step into web design, check out wix studio.com and take control. That's wix studio.com go and take back web design for graphic designers. Is there anything that in your opinion that you've seen that designers can do differently to prevent themselves from jumping on these types of. Without even knowing. Right. Because you're right. For a little while. I saw the ex with a little campfire and this.
- [40:05]
Bill Gardner
Yeah.
- [40:06]
Massimo
You know, and the letters or the date and guilty of probably using it at least once in my career.
- [40:12]
Bill Gardner
I love this thought. And Tom Geismer shared this with me at one point. He said, nothing dulls so quickly as the cutting edge. And I thought, what a beautiful, what a really beautiful comment. So if you look at the stuff that. Chermav Geismer. Chermav Geismer, you know, Sagi Aviv, you know, I mean, that they did. I mean it's very classical generally and you know, it's going to stand through time and it's kind of like when you play really close to the fire. You're going to get hot quick, but you're also going to burn up in a second. And I think that that's what happens to a lot of designers. You, you kind of look back at your list of designers that had their period where they were just flaming good stuff, you know, and they generally kind of flame up and it's because they had a specific style and let's hope they put money in the bank while they were there because you know, it, it doesn't last forever. So that's, you know, the other thing that I kind of, I'm, I, I Haven't told you this, but I'm in the middle of wrapping up a book for Rockport Pub. It's going to be called Iconic Branding that they came to me for based off of all this stuff I got up here, I guess talking about the process of trying to think forward, trying to imagine where branding is going to be tomorrow. And I'm loving the stuff that I'm writing and the example I'm pulling together and actually, and I kind of love this part about it and I hope others do, delves into the history of design quite a bit. To set you up, it's back to that road trip that I was describing for you that you've got to know what happened here before you know what happens here. And as you start to think about it, I, you know, think, think about this and I share this with people, which is that. So we're, we're starting to work in different environments that we never worked in before. You know, if it's augmented reality or metaverse or AI or whatever. And imagine that you, you know, you got your goggles on or imagine that we figured out a way for you to go in there without that and you're wandering around and you see this logo and you walk up to it and it is a cool logo and you turn it around, you go, oh shit, it's cardboard on the back. God, I forgot to do something about the back site. Is it exactly the same thing on the backside or is it something else? Or if you touch it, does it touch your back and is it rubber? Is it, you know, what's the texture of it and does it inflate? Does it change as you're holding it? Does it look at you and recreate itself based off the emotion it reads in your face? If you drop it, does it break or does it break into dance? You know, we're that close to haptic technology where if you touch a screen and it looks like water, it feels like water and you know, or if it looks like flame, you know, imagine where you're going there. So, you know, all of a sudden you start thinking about all of these things that are out there and those are just the things in the door that's open right now that we can kind of see just ahead of us. But there's a shitload of doors up ahead that we haven't opened up yet that are going to mean that branding's going to keep shifting. And you know, humans are incredibly self centered. In a good way. You know, I mean, mean, maybe God made us that Way for a reason, because we focus on ourselves. But it also means that normal to us is what we think normal should be to the rest of the world. And it means that, you know, because the weather was this temperature when I was a kid, and it's not the temperature it was when I was a kid. It's. It's screwed up, you know, or, you know, I mean, we look at things this way, so we. I want you to keep in mind that right now we're looking at screens. I'm looking at you on a screen which is basically a moving piece of paper, right? It's this flat surface still. And the screen came out of a flat piece of paper because that was a technology we understood. I mean, that's the reason. If we had been working on dimensional surfaces to communicate, I assure you the screen would be a dimensional surface. And I also assure you that in 20 years, we aren't going to be looking at each other on this screen. There is going to be something else that we're utilizing as that tool that we're working back and forth with. And as visual designers, our objective is to deliver that visual essence. And hopefully we're more than just visual to people, but it's in using whatever tools are being used at the time. And hopefully we're not a slave to that tool and just using it in its most rudimentary fashion. Hopefully, you know, when we set our hooks to go fishing, we're not fishing in the same waters that everybody else is, that we set ours a little bit deeper and we start reeling in stuff and going, holy, look at that. I've never seen anything like that before. Because that's where the great ideas exist.
- [45:37]
Massimo
Do you think with that being said, then, that the importance of brand is going to surpass the market itself in the future? The record. The record.
- [45:46]
Bill Gardner
It already has.
- [45:47]
Massimo
It has.
- [45:48]
Bill Gardner
Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, and I, you know how much I love logos, so it hurts me to say that. But imagine this, you know, you've got that much real estate, and that's the tool used by 83%, if not more, by now, of the world that, you know, you. You guys both remember when we used to create an identity and we said, well, okay, we. We're going to put together a business card and some letterhead and an envelope for you, number 10. Wow. Here's your corporate ID. Yeah. And. And nowadays they look at you and.
- [46:29]
Massimo
Go, you know, that's it.
- [46:31]
Bill Gardner
Yeah, this is. Right. I don't even, you know, that that.
- [46:35]
Massimo
List has gotten bigger and a lot more Digital.
- [46:38]
Bill Gardner
So we've got clients that, you know, entirely digital world. And people get pissed at me when I say that. But it, you know, it. But yeah, I mean, it's tail and dog. The dog is in the digital world. They may have a tail if they want to embroider a shirt or if they need pins. But, you know, outside of that, the dog lives in the digital world. And, you know, the, the information that we deliver instead of it being cmyk, so that light has to come down and hit something to pound back at our eyes. Now we're looking at light bulbs that are projecting light. So there's an entire generation that looks at color differently than you. And I learned how to look at color so they respond to it differently than you or I do. When you start to think about this idea of your question of is it going to get to the point where maybe the logo isn't as important? The logo probably is always going to. Going. Let's hope that it's always going to have that capital place at the top of the hierarchy. But honestly, what works better? Animation. Color. Really, really important. Pattern. Yeah. Damn. Texture. That's what fills the acreage on that screen, not the logo. You know, you can only make a logo so big on a screen, and it's going to be useless. So we recognize more and more identities. You know, take Instagram. You know, everybody thought they were completely goofy when they went from the Polaroid camera, right, to like the icon looking thing, icon. But I think that at the time, the art director there understood, okay, you know, we've got more folks that don't understand skeuomorphism or what a Polaroid is, is because they, you know, that wasn't ever part of their life. And they look at this thing and they go, it's Instagram. I don't know what that is. And now we look at that Instagram wash of gradient from that kind of warm golden blush up through the violet, we don't need to see the logo, do we? We recognize just because of that gradient that it's Instagram. And you know, who, whoever thought that you'd look at a gradient and say, well, well, what color is that? Well, we do. It's not a color. It's, you know, a group of colors, but we think of that as the color of Instagram. And, you know, and again, an example of, you know, you, you look at that and that is the representation visually of the brand, not the logo as much.
- [49:17]
Massimo
Yeah, what, what can designers do then in this kind of world to try to break through all this because, you know, unfortunately, you know, logo design is still something that everybody. I mean, it's been your who. It's something everybody loves. It's visual, we're drawn to it. But what can they do to break through all of this to still make sure it's a sustainable future?
- [49:40]
Bill Gardner
So we all know what a house looks like, but you need a key to get into it, don't you? It's, you know, your logo is that key and then it's a little lock there, and it is that impermature. It's that, it's that verification that this is who you're talking to. It's not just somebody else that likes that color gradient that Instagram has. And so you're going to come back to that and it's still going to be that hallmark that identifies you as who you are. And it could just be a word mark or a letter form or something like that, but ultimately you need that level of verification when you look at it and say, oh, that's them, that's them. Unless I'm being spammed and, you know, scammed and somebody else is using the logo and sending it to me in the email, which they're going to do that anyway.
- [50:34]
Massimo
So do you think, what is your. Where am I going with this? You know, so when, when designers are building a logo, should they present a logo or should they present a system, something larger than, like, can they get there at that initial stage? Like, is there even purpose for that?
- [50:55]
Bill Gardner
I think it depends on how much money they can drag out of the client. It's. Well, seriously, I mean, obviously that full system takes a lot of thought. And you and I have both been in that situation where we've been working for a client and we start talking about. And we could put together some standards for you. They said, yeah, I definitely want that. Something that shows me what my envelope, my letterhead, my business card look like the other thing, or what my fleet graphics are going to look like. You go, okay, we can do that, but, but I don't need you to design my fleet or my business card or letterhead or envelope. Just, just put the standards together so I know how to. You. Well, okay, but I've, I've actually got to design them before I can tell you. Here are your standards, don't I? So, you know, we, we all find that client that needs to, you know, understand that there's value you to all of these things that we create and that they may just come to you with enough budget to Create a logo. And God forbid, because that's the worst scenario is you launch somebody out with a logo that doesn't know what to do with it.
- [52:04]
Massimo
Yeah.
- [52:05]
Bill Gardner
You know, and we, you know, somebody gave us the ability to say no. So that if somebody comes to us and they say it's on, look for. You can still say know, you know, you. You've got permission and you can explain to them the value and, and the need. And if they're beyond that, then they're going to go to Fiverr anyway and they're gonna, you know, and. And it's probably not somebody you wanted as a client. Yeah.
- [52:37]
Massimo
Is there anything you can do, in your opinion, to stop them from going to that level? Like stop them from going to suggestion hell and, and telling you what to.
- [52:46]
Bill Gardner
Do, or do you want to work for them?
- [52:50]
Massimo
No, I don't.
- [52:52]
Bill Gardner
So, I mean, you. Kind of early on, I'm going to date myself and say when the computer came out and we were all going, God, people are going to start doing their own church newsletters, Right? Oh, wow. Did we really want to do church newsletters? You know, no, we want them to do. That's fine. And so I get it. There are certain jobs that you don't want. It gives you the ability to better educate those clients that are willing to understand what the value of a brand is or the value of an identity is. And it's not, again, it's not just the logo, but it is the visual vocabulary that hangs with it and how it's utilized and the tone of voice that you speak to people in and the, the touch and the feel of the package in the product that they're going to be making and, you know, the design of the product that goes inside of that package or their, you know, their digital interface in here, and what that process of going through that feels like to them. And does it feel like the same process that they get when they see anything else that comes from that brand? And, you know, as designers, I tell people we do two things. We. We build clarity and we build consistency. I don't. I don't talk about anything visual at that point. You know, I mean, that's what comes out of what we do. But all we really can do is we, if we're smart, build clarity and consistency for the client, because that. That makes them money, doesn't it? Yeah, just, you know. Yeah.
- [54:33]
Massimo
All right, so there's too much wisdom here. So this is. You really are that.
- [54:38]
Bill Gardner
Sorry, don't you.
- [54:39]
Massimo
You're that sifu, right?
- [54:40]
Bill Gardner
Just say Some funny stuff. Okay.
- [54:46]
Massimo
You've, you've probably looked at close to a million logos. Okay. In your lifetime.
- [54:49]
Bill Gardner
It's scary to think, okay, well, okay.
- [54:52]
Massimo
But is there, do you believe in the idea of a perfect logo?
- [55:00]
Bill Gardner
Maybe at the moment?
- [55:02]
Massimo
Oh, interesting.
- [55:03]
Bill Gardner
But, you know, no, I guess not.
- [55:10]
Massimo
Because they should be timeless, shouldn't they?
- [55:12]
Bill Gardner
No. Should the, should the LA Olympic logo be timeless or should it appeal for the window that it's going to be measured? Right.
- [55:23]
Massimo
Well, that's interesting. Yeah.
- [55:25]
Bill Gardner
Should, should, should a, a concert logo be timeless? Should, I mean, just. Should, should a fashion logo be timeless? I know, don't I? You know, I mean, there, there I think, is that conundrum that people tend to believe a logo should be timeless. You know, if, if you take a look at the Coca Cola script, you know, the Coca Cola script, you go, well, you know, I remember hearing about this. He, he, he pulled out his ink pen and he scrolled that thing out when he did his first bottle of Coca Cola and he stuck it on the bottle. And it hasn't changed since. Well, it has. And every seven years, Coca Cola, regardless, pulls that out and goes, okay, let's do an evaluation. Is this the right slant to the obliqueness is our curvature and the weight on the, you know, most recently, the dynamic swoosh went away, didn't it? So you start to think about things. So, yeah, even the most timeless logos are basically those ones that we put in that category are there because they have had good stewards that understood that there was need to occasionally change your underwear. And it's just, you know, sometimes you gotta move things along. And it doesn't mean that you gotta, you know, it means you can wash them and put them back on. But, you know, it doesn't mean that you need to dramatically change things, does it? It's just a matter of, you know, there's, there's some work to be done just to keep things working. So, yeah, I think, yes, there are those. You know, I mean, we could all go, well, that Apple logo, that Apple logo, you know, or that Nike swish, or. I mean, all the things that everybody comes in and says, I want to, I want to swish that people know without my name on it, all of those. I don't know if they're timeless, but they, they certainly have had a longevity because they have had really exceptional stewardship.
- [57:41]
Massimo
Interesting. How can, how can designers incorporate that mentality into their own work and what they're doing?
- [57:48]
Bill Gardner
Now, keep in mind that the stewarding of a logo is typically not the job of the designer. Designer.
- [57:55]
Massimo
Not even as an expert or an advisor or.
- [57:58]
Bill Gardner
Well, I mean, if, if you're the corporate designer for a company and that. And you are the steward of that logo. Yes. And maybe you've designed it. Yes. But as a rule, you know, we birth the child, we hand it off, and we. About 2/3 to 3/4 the work that Gardener Design does is actually replace, rebranding or refresh. It sounds draconian to say a rebrand and always throws the client off. But in fact, when those companies come to us, we know that one. They're probably here because they've had good success. So they did something right to get here to this point. Still alive. They probably have the budget to do it in the right way. They may well have their own marketing department, department or their own designers. Fabulous. Because we love that, because it means that there's a tool on the other end that knows how to manage something. So, you know, we work hand in hand with them because they're going to have limitations. Their boss may not have bought them anything more than Figma. You know, they may still. They, you know, so there, there are things that you've got to work with in conjunction with, with that to produce something that works for them. And, you know, we, we all want that child to grow up healthy and strong and, and still be active out there years from now because it shows us off that we were able to birth something that, you know, was pretty cool and that people love. But it isn't us that gets it over the line. It's other people that end up getting over the line. Typically.
- [59:42]
Massimo
Yeah. Interesting.
- [59:44]
Bill Gardner
So am I getting too deep?
- [59:47]
Massimo
I wouldn't say. So that's all right.
- [59:50]
Bill Gardner
Pull back out.
- [59:51]
Massimo
I'm just trying to pull out from all this vast knowledge that you have. You know, what, what designers can take and move forward. Like, you've been responsible for documenting the evolution of logo design over the past 20 plus years. Right. So. So I'm trying to pull out some wisdom from you that designers can take to move forward, because it's a very interesting time for designers. Some are scared, some feel, you know, technology's gonna take over and there's a lot of, you know, what's my next step gonna be? So what, what kind of advice would you give designers moving forward?
- [60:32]
Bill Gardner
Let me throw out one really practical thing and this, all that doesn't cost anybody anything. But those people that have taken my advice on this typically come back and go, I get it now. And it's that if you go to the Logolon site, on the free side of it, it doesn't require you to be a member, are every one of the trends that we've reported since 2003. It's a shitload of trends. 15 trends at a time explains why. And you don't have to dig all the way back to the back, but you can go in and you can look at the last several years. And as you look at those, realize that, okay, chronologically, these are logos that came out from 20, 18 and 19 and 20, yada, yada, you're going to start, start to pick up on. Lines are starting to get thicker, color is shifting towards more neutrals. Okay, now it's starting to get brighter. You can, I mean, much as I asked you to look in the book and you can tell by looking in that book, okay, I can kind of tell you what kind of logo is going to make it in. If you look at the trends, you can start to see where that woman was in California and then Albuquerque and then Denver and then Kansas. And you can, you can see that path. And that's probably the. Again, I'm going back to that same statement that it's better to know how you got there than it is to know where you are. It's, you know, I mean, that's the pathway forward. And, you know, Steve Jobs said the most wonderful thing. He, he at one point said that you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can connect the dots looking backwards, but you just have to trust. You have to trust that somehow the dots are going to connect in the future. And I think that that's the way that I kind of design is that by looking backwards, at least I can see how I got to where I am today day. So that I can look at those dots ahead of me and I can kind of go, I think we're moving towards that dot over there, not that one. And it, you know, again, because I, because I've experienced what happened before, and I'm not just saying I'm going to do this design because I saw a logo that looked like that. It was cool. And the other brilliant thing here is that that your client is going to pay you more money if you can validate why the decisions you're making for him are the right decisions.
- [63:30]
Massimo
Brilliant.
- [63:31]
Bill Gardner
And if I am showing a client a logo and they say, why is this the right logo? And they may love it too. And you go, I just kind of felt like this speaks of you. You, how, how, how valuable is that versus, you know, we did a survey, we Went to Jennifer Aker who developed these great personality surveys and determined that as a company that you're 60% sophistication and 40% competence as opposed to being excitement or as opposed to being ruggedness. And we've used these tones, which happen to be the tones that signal sophistication or that signal. And if we can start to validate for them why we're doing what we're doing, that person is objective minded and we're subjective as designers. And when they hear that, they understand the connection between objectivity and subjectivity and they have go, ah, okay, right. You wrote me a brief that explained that, didn't you? Yeah, I did. I. Before we ever started. That was our roadmap that we both agreed to. Ah, well, let me, let me pay you more then because I know I agreed to this somehow, but I think you're worth more. No, I, you know. Yeah.
- [64:54]
Massimo
You know what you're doing.
- [64:55]
Bill Gardner
Yeah. And it's, it's gonna, I, sometimes I show people a, a slide or presentation graphic that shows four logos. Four. It has the Rolex logo, it has a Louis Vuitton logo, it has the Oakley logo and maybe Coco Chanel. I forget Nike logo. We'll say Nike. And I ask them if they can identify those logos and they can. Rolex crown kind of throws them off occasionally. Also Budweiser. But you know, you get there and then I show them four pictures of those logos and applications. So you see the Nike logo on a shoe and the Louis Vuitton on a purse, so on and so forth. And I say, probably easier to identify it this way, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Except for the fact that all four of these products are counterfeit. Oh.
- [65:52]
Massimo
Oh, snap.
- [65:54]
Bill Gardner
And despite the fact that you see that logo on there. Last year it was estimated that the World trade organization identified 2.5 trillion doctrin dollars worth of counterfeit goods that were intercepted. Wow. That's just the ones that got intercepted. So when you talk to a client about the value of the logo that you're designing for them, imagine how valuable that $2.5 trillion worth of merchandise would be if there were no logos on it. Yeah, wow. Nobody'd buy it, would they?
- [66:32]
Massimo
Yeah, that's true.
- [66:34]
Bill Gardner
It's, you know, so what's the value that you bring to a client and you start to realize, oh, I'm kind of a big deal. You know, the stuff I'm doing for the, this individual is going to make them money and it's going to be around for a lifetime. So if I were to amortize my cost across their lifetime. I'm getting paid pennies at my current rate for what I'm designing.
- [67:02]
Massimo
What you're designing the value for how, you know, it's.
- [67:05]
Bill Gardner
It.
- [67:05]
Massimo
Value is a hard thing for designers to try to sell to people. Right. Especially if they're still newer.
- [67:12]
Bill Gardner
It's not. No, no. You say. Why, why do you think it's hard?
- [67:17]
Massimo
Well, I think, I think a lot. For a lot of newer designers, the idea of, you know, trying to price your logo to the value it gives to customers is very different than, you know, here's the end result. And I agree with you.
- [67:30]
Bill Gardner
I'll go with you.
- [67:31]
Massimo
Yeah, I agree with you on the importance of, of value and, and what it does long term. But it's just trying to, it's trying to find how to, how to price it, you know, and how they can speak to it up front without that end result of saying, you know, a Rolex value is.
- [67:49]
Bill Gardner
No, you're, you're speak, you're speaking the truth, which is that, you know, let me, let me talk for a second about story. Maybe this will help because my, my example I just gave you where you're able to share with that client a little bit of information about why this work works. I've always been intrigued that people can sell words for more than we can sell pictures. I can sell a white paper to somebody explaining their marketing strategy for more than I can sell a logo. And that hurts me. Sadly, you're right, you know, because I, I know what goes in to that mark. But, yeah, there's that, there's that difference between those two. So when I start to think about the idea of what you're selling, I think about the idea that really what we're selling oftentimes is a story. We can probably not do a very good job of describing a logo to somebody that we'd just seen. It's this cup, it's this ring, and it's got another ring inside of it. They're red and it's, you know, it's a target logo. Okay. You know, but try and describe that monkey on the bike with the bananas. You know, I mean, it's, it, you know, it gets tough. But if you hear a story behind a mark or a logo or why it was created and the essence that it conveys for that particular client and why it relates to that client and speaks to their aesthetics and their ethos, those. You'll remember that story. You'll be able to share that story. Now it's connected to that visual moniker. So, I mean, that's that little imprimatur, that little device that helps remind people of that story. So that when I see those rings, all of a sudden I know this much deeper story that goes on associated with it. And I think that too many designers fail to think about the reasoning behind a mark and selling that in conjunction with the work that they do. I'll give a really goofy example here because we do a lot of nomenclature here as well. And by the way, anybody who's out there doing naming, if you call it nomenclature, you can charge twice as much.
- [70:24]
Massimo
I know it's a fancy word that I can barely pronounce under pressure.
- [70:28]
Bill Gardner
Let's talk about neologisms. Next is we have clients that come to us and we have to think about the name. We had an investment group that deals with some really incredible, some of the wealthiest people in the world that came to us. But it's based here in Kansas, where I am. And they know that many of their clients are from Kansas. Some of them appreciate Kansas, some don't. And they said, we need a story for this. And we came back to them with the name 6 Meridian and the numeral 6, and then Meridian and tell me the story. Well, in 1855, the US government's expanding west. We've just bought the Louisiana Territory. And we don't know the elevation of things. We don't know the longitude and latitude of things. And if we're going to plat out the rest of this United States moving towards the Pacific Ocean, we've got to have a point to start from. So they sent out a surveyor that started on the east coast, ends up at a point on the Nebraska, Kansas border. Now, at the time, it was one big Louisiana territory, and. And he ends up using that as what was called the sixth meridian, sixth principal meridian. You've maybe heard that term before. But they set this little bronze medallion on a stone at that point, and there's a vertical line in the United States that drives straight north and south from that point. And surveyors could see, set their instruments at that point. They knew exactly what elevation they were, they knew where they were so that they could move forward accurately. That line drives right through the middle of Wichita, which is where I am. And there's a Meridian street in Wichita, and it's on the meridian. So it's the sixth principal meridian. And as I start to think about financial advisors, they're thinking about the future future of their clients and how they're going to map out the rest of their life, how they're going to map out the value that they've earned and bring it to its greatest value. It's, you know, this, this is what they do. And by giving them this story, they're able to share with clients, because the clients go, six more Meridian.
- [73:08]
Massimo
Six.
- [73:08]
Bill Gardner
Meridian. What? Yeah, I don't know if they share this story and they will never forget that story. And not only that, but what do we do with stories? We share them and they share that story with other people. And if I had just designed a logo and it had this little six up on top of the letter M, which is a transom, you can look it up, then people would kind of go, oh, I kind of see it's a transom and a letter M. But if they don't know that story, it doesn't have the depth of meaning nor the ability for them to share it. So as I think about Mark, story is so much more valuable. And how many times have you told somebody at a party when they ask you what you do that you're a designer? And they go, oh, yeah. And you kind of get, no, no, no, come back, come back.
- [74:01]
Massimo
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's cooler, trust me.
- [74:03]
Bill Gardner
No, you, you misunderstood me. I'm a designer. No, I said come back. You know, it's, it's, you know, tell them you're a storyteller. Yeah, there you go. And then they want to know what kind of story you tell, and then you tell them this. And, you know, I'm, I'm just trying to give you advice so that all those socially inept designers that are out there that feel badly at part probably feel good. I'm a designer. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, thanks.
- [74:33]
Massimo
Goodbye.
- [74:35]
Bill Gardner
We're done.
- [74:38]
Massimo
It's so true, though. So. So do you feel that, that that logo designers then still have a future?
- [74:46]
Bill Gardner
Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. I, I think that. I think that people that are understanding of what branding is and will be have a future, and I think that design will be attached to it. And hopefully we'll still be designed in logos in the future, but we may, you know, transition to something else. If you come to me 20 years ago and told me that the different tasks in developing a website were going to be subdivided into six different categories, I would have gone, well, all you need somebody who knows how to code and can draw a picture, you know, but, you know, I mean, we, we continue to segment our capabilities and we continue to learn to do things that we didn't know that we could do before. And, and, and again, back to that self centric thing. The reason I said that is because we all think that the, the world of evolution stopped here and that today is as good as it gets. And I can guarantee you that you're going to look back, back in five years and go, man, that was so old hat. Or, you know, and the rate at which things are changing, we're going to be going, what? Why, why did they say it's old hat? Because I don't even know what an old hat is. I don't even know, you know, but I mean, we're migrating and, and people always have migrated and when we think about what branding is, branding is really just being able to convey that essence that we want to chime that bell in their mind about whatever it is we're pushing. It could be a car, a bottle of water, or it could be a financial advisor, but that's what we're pushing. And it's kind of like, what do they feel like, what do they look like, what do they sound like, what's their voice? And all that stuff is what we do as designers. Designers. God, you know, we are so much cooler than marketers because marketers, you know, we, we design shit and give it to them and say, okay, go sell it. We get to figure out what it is. We're, we're the ones that design what people are going to want. Marketers don't do that. Marketers just are given the thing and their job is to, you know, build a customer base face. Yeah.
- [77:13]
Massimo
And even at that, you know, sometimes just kill the great ideas that we give them. Marketing often is where good ideas go to die.
- [77:25]
Bill Gardner
So true. So true, Bill.
- [77:27]
Massimo
I mean I could, I can talk to you for hours, seriously.
- [77:33]
Bill Gardner
And I'm going to have to know.
- [77:35]
Massimo
We'Ll, we'll do this in the future again, there's no question. But, but where can people go to find your website, your books?
- [77:44]
Bill Gardner
Where can people go to give you money? Yeah.
- [77:47]
Massimo
And they'll give you money for it, hopefully.
- [77:48]
Bill Gardner
No, it's all good. It's all good. So logolounge.com and it is a hundred dollar annual membership. We just did a fresh up on the site. It is AI activated to some degree to help you in some of your keywording and the likes of. But there are 450,000 logos. A few less than that, right? I think it's 449,000 and a thousand of them probably came out by AI. You're right. So it is, you know, and it's all contextualized so you can search by, you know, designer or industry or keyword or quality or yada, yada, yada. But it is. Is probably one of the best investments as a design firm that you can make. And, hey, it's a hundred bucks. It was 100 bucks when I started.
- [78:42]
Massimo
Yeah, this is a service that you're providing that's worth so much more than.
- [78:48]
Bill Gardner
I've got to pay off my daughter's wedding. And I got. Throw some shekels at me and feel sorry. And, guys. So book 15, we are. Kinsey Kessler is in the other part of the office doing the assembly on book 15. We've got the logos we're putting in place. We'll be announcing soon to the winners who. Who. Who made it in. So book 15 will probably be out just before Christmas, just in time as a Christmas gift, hopefully.
- [79:21]
Massimo
And I just want to say ahead of time, James, just because you know him, it doesn't automatically mean you can get in there.
- [79:30]
Bill Gardner
Oh, crap, I need to go tell her to put one of his logos in.
- [79:36]
Massimo
Otherwise you'd be mad.
- [79:38]
Bill Gardner
It doesn't work that way, guys. Fair enough. Additionally, I'll draw a little bit more blood out of your audience while they're at. And again, all the trend stuff is out there to look at free of charge. Literally, those logos are. We've had 20,000 members worldwide that have submitted these things. And it's just, you know, what an incredible resource. We do a series of courses on LinkedIn learning. I say we. I do. So you can go look at my ugly face talking to you about why design works and why trends do what they do. And they're much more educational than I am here. And there are, I think, about 20 courses on there, if you want to, because they pay me for every 10 time somebody watches the course. If you've got a membership, just line them all up and hit play. And if you're around while they're playing, that's good. Or if they're just playing and ringing up cash for me, that's good, too. That's good, too. Either way, I love it. I think people enjoy them. And the last thing is the iconic branding, which I'm feeling so cool because Rick Land of a book designer that works with Rockport, is doing the design on the book. And he. And I just got off a call before this, and he was sharing cover covers with me. I know I'm not designing my own cover. I feel badly about that. And our designers don't feel badly about it because Rick is such a talent that I'm Sitting there going, it's going to be a real book. And this thing is really going to be an amazing map into the future. And it's got great. Not only interviews with some of the biggest designers around the world that are thinking larger than we are about where design's going. And.
- [81:30]
Massimo
And when does this come up?
- [81:32]
Bill Gardner
It. I think that it comes out probably spring of 26.
- [81:36]
Massimo
Nice, nice, nice.
- [81:37]
Bill Gardner
Just want to. Iconic brand. It's a logo lounge guide to iconic branding from Rockport, so.
- [81:41]
Massimo
Oh, I can't wait for that. Okay, sweet. So not to put you on the spot, but would you come back, like, later this year, close to. Close to when we enter 26 and to talk about. No trend. Trends. No, not trendy.
- [81:54]
Bill Gardner
No trends.
- [81:55]
Massimo
Come on, you are the guy. You've got all the information.
- [81:58]
Bill Gardner
I'd be delighted, too. I've got another shirt.
- [82:01]
Massimo
Yeah. And hopefully they're washed. So.
- [82:07]
Bill Gardner
I, you know, I. I come up with these analogies and the people in my office hear these and they go, oh, you didn't.
- [82:15]
Massimo
Yeah, the underwear analogy was brilliant.
- [82:18]
Bill Gardner
Right, right.
- [82:18]
Massimo
That was a good one.
- [82:19]
Bill Gardner
That was.
- [82:19]
Massimo
That is so, so good.
- [82:23]
Bill Gardner
We all. We all wear them. We all got hopefully. Yeah. I could have changed my mind. No, I'm not gonna ask, but, I mean, let's just assume whether you do or not. John, I don't.
- [82:36]
Massimo
No, please make him. Make him do it. I've had complaints.
- [82:42]
Bill Gardner
You guys are too fun, and I didn't detect too damn much anger out of you.
- [82:45]
Massimo
So everybody says that.
- [82:47]
Bill Gardner
No, no, no, no.
- [82:48]
Massimo
We're not angry anymore, my friend. When we get to have cool interviews and meet cool people like you guys, who've shaped your space. Yeah, it's. We are too passionate about this space to be angry anymore. We've gotten everything off our chest now. Now the anger is. Is passion and. And love for the. For the industry.
- [83:02]
Bill Gardner
The last thing you can do is come to Gardener Design. Yes.
- [83:07]
Massimo
And see when I'm in Kansas.
- [83:10]
Bill Gardner
Well. Or go to Gardner design dot com.
- [83:12]
Massimo
Yeah.
- [83:13]
Bill Gardner
And.
- [83:14]
Massimo
Oh, no, I was just going to come knock on your door. Yeah. But hey, okay. I guess you can go viral.
- [83:18]
Bill Gardner
And it. You'd be surprised the number of people that have knocked on this door and said, I came to Kansas, there's nothing.
- [83:26]
Massimo
Else here to see. So.
- [83:27]
Bill Gardner
No. Oh, there's a kid. I love Kansas, which does a great.
- [83:31]
Massimo
For the record, my last visit to Kansas, and again, I'm Kansas City, so it's a little far from Wichita, but again, I fell in love with a.
- [83:38]
Bill Gardner
Few people that know that by the way, but go ahead.
- [83:40]
Massimo
Yeah, but. But again, it's. I fell in love with that city, and we. We found some good art. There's still so much more. I found a whole new area of that explore. I can't wait to go back. So Kansas City's. I got half my heart over there, so I love it. Yeah. Amazing, my friend.
- [83:57]
Bill Gardner
I'll come back. Thank you for the invitation.
- [84:00]
Massimo
Oh, dude. Thank you so much for this. And, you know, by all means, you know, angry designers, you have to go check out logolounge.com, you've got to go check out these books. There's so much value on this platform, and I never realized the amount of value that there is in looking, you know, looking not at what's trendy, but looking at what's trending and how to actually look at that foresight. And this is what his site more than anything. There's so much value in that. So please check out his site. You know, say hi to our friend Bill and you know, and you know where to hit us up on Instagram, on YouTube. And, Bill, where's your socials?
- [84:36]
Bill Gardner
That's a good question. You can, I think if you just go to Logo Lounge under anything, it's going to show. Show up.
- [84:43]
Massimo
Yeah, that's right. All right, everybody, My name is Mossimo.
- [84:47]
Bill Gardner
My name is Sean.
- [84:47]
Massimo
And you are. Stay creative and stay angry.