GRAPHIC DESIGNER AND ILLUSTRATOR
When you are commissioned to create a logo, why would you create a new type face rather than use an existing one?
Well, that’s a fairly broad question. I designed a number of type faces where the quality that I wanted specifically wasn’t available, even though there are hundreds of thousands of type faces. For instance, I did a type face that was very successful called “Neo Futura” which is now known as “Glazer Stencil”. I wanted a stencil type face, they were only two or three available and none of them had the character that I wanted. So I adapted them because I found that I had a lot of use for it. I basically did my own vocabulary of form.
If you’re doing a logo you very rarely use existing type faces without modifying them because the whole game of logo design usually is “identification by a shape”. If the shapes are familiar or reoccurring you have to do something to make them aberrant or strange. So you may often start with a type face but you modify it. Obviously what you’re trying to do with a logo is give it distinction. It’s hard to do something distinctive when your vocabulary is the same as everybody has available to them.
So you create type faces first, and then eventually apply them?
Yes. Well, some came out of a job that I did where I designed a word and said: “Hey, this would make a nice alphabet.” So it works both ways.
Was the New York Magazine logo type for instance created for the magazine?
It was originally created when the magazine was in a newspaper, the New York Herald Tribune. It was based on Caslon which was a type face that was being used at the time in the newspaper. Because the old New York logo was contained within the newspaper, it didn’t have to sell on the newsstand. When we went from being a newspaper to a magazine, we needed something that was more assertive, more colorful, more visible. So we sort of moved away from the Caslon which didn’t seem to have any relationship with any typography that we were using, to a completely different letter form that was more assertive and stronger. In that case there was a real functional requirement. It has to be visible on the newsstand at a certain distance and the old lettering was just too thin.
When you created the New York Magazine logo, you were involved with the magazine at different levels. Is this often the case when you design a logo?
No. I’m simply called to do… The most famous logo I did was the INY logo. For that I just got a call from the commissioner of commerce. You get calls like everybody else to help on a project.
Magazines logos often don’t have a specific color, New York Magazine doesn’t…
No, it doesn’t, but Life magazine always has a specific color. Time magazine changes now, but the border is always red and that border is as much the logo of the Time as the word “Time”.
For corporations color seems to be a more important element of identification…
Generally it’s true…
What determines the choice of colors then, the nature of the business and the visual impact?
Partially. Without knowing too much about it I would say that 70 or 80% of the logos in America are blue. Next category is probably red and after that there is a tremendous fall, but I would say that red and blue amount to 90% of the market. It’s surprising but of course it is also contextual that somebody would start using a color because of all the associations… We discovered that what people associate with color has the most important effect on their decision to use one product over another. If you design packaging for instance, you discover there are certain colors that you can only use within certain genders or categories. If you design a cola package you can only use red, blue, silver and a kind of Coca Cola brown. As soon as you use other colors it stops looking like a cola beverage.
The fact that all other banks have blue logos would tend to make you quite unexpectedly use blue logos as opposed to something that would contrast with it, because blue has become the color of banking. So if you’re willing to use some reds you have to deviate from that practice and most bankers would not be inclined to take the risk.
Would you say that this also goes for type face, that some types are identified with certain categories of businesses?
I don’t know because certain logos are typographical and some are not. Some have an image in combination with type and generally speaking they don’t use typography, they use hand lettering, a special sort of letter form, often based on certain typographical forms, that is specially created to produce unique configurations of forms.
On a job, how much input comes from the client and how much restriction is imposed on the designer in the choice of these colors, shapes and so on?
Well, restrictions, or boundaries (this is a better word in this case), are part of the practice of design. There is no design without boundaries. This includes the prejudices and opinions of the clients, and their preferences. I mean, if it’s stupid to use blue, and red is more appropriate, you have to argue for it. And the arguments are not based on individual taste but fundamental function, symbolism and effectiveness. So the argument that you conduct with a client is not about wether they like a color more than another, (or at least this is not what it should be) but rather whether that color functions better in the world, right?
In design, you always try to isolate what the boundaries are, identify them, and then begin. You can only begin within the context of what you’re doing. You can’t design as though you’re painting, as if you’re doing a piece of work that is essentially self expressive. That’s not what design is. So boundaries and restrictions are in fact the depth of the brief to the designer as to what can be done, and usually they’re very helpful, because they tell you what you should avoid doing and not waste your time at the beginning.
Now, how much of these briefs is usually based on marketing research?
Well, there is a lot of marketing research that is useless and not much marketing research is very effective in terms of interpreting what you have to do for a logo. I mean, you can get the generalities. Say that this is aimed at a target audience between the age of eighteen and twenty four, you don’t think of it exactly the same way as if your aim is between fifty and fifty five. The nature of the audience also conditions how you think about it. So from that sense, the marketing, in terms of who you’re aiming at, is important. But they can only give you that information, they can’t tell you how to solve that problem. They can’t tell you what symbols or what forms will attract the target. It’s too abstract, too evasive.
I would think that if a client comes to you instead of going to a studio with anonymous designers, it’s because they expect you to give a lot of personal input into the project?
To some extent, yes. I suppose that those who come to me, come because they want some aspect of my personal view of them. But my personality… Basically, doing logos requires more of your intelligence than of your artistry. Usually, most logos, most corporate logos are the product of intellectual rigor rather than esthetic invention.
And yet some turn out to be very esthetic.
Some are. There is an esthetic component.
You work in many aspects of design, logo design is not your only type of work…
Thank God, no! I don’t think it’s particularly interesting.
I find certain aspects of it interesting. It’s like a little problem. It’s like doing a puzzle, it’s that level of interest. It’s essentially very demanding and limited in terms of… adventure. It’s an intellectual problem more than any other kind of problem, but it’s not a very sensual activity.
How much time does the creation of a logo require?
I don’t think you can tell. It depends on how complex the problem and how demanding the client. Sometimes for major campaigns (we rarely do this kind of work) we may do 200 or 300 sketches. When I worked in packaging many years ago, we would submit 100 ideas, not 100 good ideas but 100 ideas. Some people submit one thing, some people submit three and let the client choose. It depends on the client, the nature of the relationship you have, the budget… Sometimes you can do a logo in a day, sometimes it takes months. Like all the things that you do professionally, you try to spend as much time within the budget to achieve the desired result. If you have a bigger budget, you spend more time,… generally speaking.
Most corporate logos need to be updated from time to time. When you create a new logo, do you consider important that the design hold in time?
I would say that logo design in general should not be trendy. It should not look as if it belongs only in that year obviously, since the nature of logo is more durable. They have it for a life that may go on for hundreds of years. So you try to consider that, although it’s very hard to think outside of your own time. If you try to do something classic, that will last a long time, very often it’s a view of classicism that can only occur in the 80’s or the 90’s. But in general you have to think in more classical terms, because of the nature of the logos, the fact that they’re not ephemeral like book covers or magazine covers. You don’t go into it saying, ”How could I modify this in the future.” That will be somebody else’s problem, or your own in ten years, but I don’t think you start that way.
Some domestic logos have to be modified when the companies start to export their products and services abroad. In what way does the perception of a logo in foreign markets influence its design?
In all design problems, the market, the audience defines the form of address. So if you’re speaking to children you have one audience that understands certain forms of vocabulary. If you’re speaking to teenagers, that changes, if you’re speaking to adults, that changes, if you’re speaking to the college educated, that changes. The audience is, along with the client, the most serious definer of what the form should be. So if you have an international audience, you have to eliminate all the sorts of localisms or national things that would cause confusion. They have this problem with research for names for international products, like being stuck with something that means “shit” in Thailand, right? The same thing is true with certain kinds of forms that are not attractive or not comprehensible. In graphism, I don’t think it’s as complicated an issue as the language issue, but it is still something you have to think about.
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