GRAPHIC DESIGNER AND AUTHOR OF SEVERAL DESIGN BOOKS
When you first sit down to design a logo, how much freedom do you have to create something that will be aesthetically pleasing to you ?
Well, you have a lot of freedom. Freedom depends on your talent. If you’re very good, you do a beautiful job and you can call it freedom if you like. In my case, I won’t do a job unless it is beautiful. I just won’t do it. I mean, it has to be beautiful for me otherwise I’m not interested in doing it. A better question would be: if the client wants to change it, would you change it? and my answer is: no I wouldn’t change it, and I don’t change it… unless the client has a reasonable excuse to change it and it makes it better. But that’s very rare, very rare.
I assume that some clients have requirements based on research and some indications of what they want ?
Never. Mostly they don’t tell you anything of any use. In the case of NEXT the only thing I was told is that it was gonna be a cube and it’ll be very dark blue. That’s all. He didn’t say to me: ”Make a cube.” But I heard cube and that’s what I made.
Is your work ever tested by you or by your client ?
I think that’s all nonsense. Advertising agencies test everything, but that’s to give the illusion that everything they do is very scientific and dependable. Which is also nonsense!
I never had anything tested. Maybe a client did..
How about research ?
Well, research can mean anything. For instance I did a logo for a Bank, a diamond with three pluses inside, because they wanted no initials, no name. They just wanted some symbol that says “bank” or “investment”. That was printed in green and somebody saw it (you could call him part of the research) and he told the president that it reminded him of a cemetery, cimetière you know, three crosses. So I said: “We’ll just change the color, we’ll make it blue instead of green.” That was it. That’s reasonable.
When you created the IBM logo in 1956, you designed something that you liked and they had to…
They didn’t have to, they just used it. I mean if you go to a doctor and he tells you that you got to use some medicine you don’t tell him: ”Well maybe that other medicine is better…” You don’t do that with a doctor.
Well, maybe you go for a second opinion…
Well, not if you have a headache. You don’t need a second opinion. If you have cancer, yes. I’m not opposed to second opinions and I think that sometimes it could help, because when you do something you get so involved in it that you can’t see every possible mistake. You’re too close to it. So somebody else can say: ”Oh no, you better not do that.” But usually if you’re very serious and work very hard, you always know what’s wrong or right.
Assuming that you know enough about your client and your client’s market…
It makes no difference. What do you have to know about your client when you do a logo with two letters? What’s the difference?
Do you consider that having a logo designed is just a headache, a simple problem ?
Well, I mean nothing is going to happen. The bridge is not gonna fall down. If it’s a lousy design, it’s just a lousy design. Nothing happens, people don’t get sick, they don’t die…
Companies don’t go out of business ?
No, certainly not for a logo. There are plenty of companies that went out of business with good logos, plenty. And plenty of companies that are successful with bad logos. It has nothing to do with the logo. The logo is an innocent by-stander.
Coca Cola is a good logo for what it is, for what it does, but intrinsically as a design, it stinks. It’s lousy lettering. But they would never change anything because they think it’s some magic. There are two reasons (for its success): one the time of exposure which is a long time and the vast space that it covers, all over the world.
The whole business of symbols is a myth. For me, the only thing that a symbol has to do is have a presence. It has to look terrific, that’s all.
Well if your clients are selling heavy machinery or if they are making perfume, wouldn’t you approach the design of their logo differently ?
I don’t think it makes any difference, and I’ll prove it. There are cosmetics that have maybe just big numbers you know, 22 or… Chanel is the perfect example of the kind of lettering that was used on trucks, Mack trucks, and Madame Chanel who was very keen, who really understood design, designed that logo with the two C’s. I just did a logo for a Japanese bank. I could do the same thing for Limited (the chain of women’s clothing stores), what’s the difference? A logo is not an illustration. There are very few logos that illustrate anything. I did it with UPS, with the package, but it’s very rare that you can do that..
Don’t you think that the public will associate certain typography with a certain forms of business ?
No, they’ll make associations no matter what the type is. If you are an engineering company, you use a fine Spenserian letter and they see it often enough they’ll figure it’s an engineering company.
It may take a while…
It may take a while no matter what the type is. It won’t take any longer. If you use this company and they do a terrific job, you’ll remember it. And if they do a lousy job, you’ll remember it too!
So all this is nonsense, complete nonsense. What makes you remember logos is how often you’ve seen them. If you see them every morning when you go out to pick up your bottle of milk, you’ll remember it no matter what it is, it could be a dead horse, you’ll remember it.
If you look at existing logos, you’ll see that anything goes for anything. Take for example, a letter head for an industrial organization like IBM: The management letter head is very fine Spenserian type:”International Business Machines Corporation,” and you can’t get them to change it because if you get to be vice-president, and before that you had the ordinary “vin ordinaire,” you’ll be very disappointed if you don’t get that letter head. You see, it’s a symbol.
And anything that you do becomes a symbol which means that it stands for whatever it stands for. One of the best symbols was the swastika and look what it stood for…
It stood for a lot of things before it became the Nazi symbol…
That’s right, but you can’t use it anymore. So there you are.
On the other hand, by creating strong designs and positive associations, you create references that will be used by other designers…
Yes, everybody uses stripes today. When I designed IBM nobody had stripes.
It wasn’t on the original design. It happened 4 years later. The client didn’t come back to me and say: ”Would you please give us stripes.” If I had given the client stripes in the first place, he wouldn’t have accepted it, because it was a very conservative company. They had a logo that was very similar to this before. It was a type face called Beata. It was a flat serif also. I did the new logo so that there would be no great break from the old one, and then after a few years I added the stripes. Nobody asked me to, I just did it.
And they were ready to accept it then ?
Nobody was asked. We just used it. My wife, at the time, was manager of design worldwide at IBM. Nobody said yes or no. I had a job to do. I did stripes and we used it.
You are still working for IBM, right ?
Yes, 35 years..
So even now you can…
No, you can’t, no way. They would never let you do anything. You would have legal problems now. Lawyers would get you if you changed anything..
Do you feel the same about color as you do about type ?
Yes. Red is a very effective color no matter what you do with it. Coca Cola for example uses red.
When I got the job for UPS, I said there’s no sense in changing the color. They could have used a grey, a pink, any color. It wouldn’t make any difference whatever color they use, that’s what you would know.
But if they had used red, you wouldn’t know if it’s UPS or Coca Cola…
A lot of that stuff we’re talking about is mythology. It’s all nonsense. In other words, it has to do with problems of seeing, perception problems. It has to do with habits. It has to do with exposition, how much the thing is exposed, for how long. That’s a matter of time. It’s a matter of experience. Suppose you have good experience, or bad experience, you’ll remember it… associations, you met your girl friend on a Coca Cola truck, Mister Coke killed Mister Cola, or whatever. It will be remembered for a lot of reasons. It will be remembered because the drink is good. It will be remembered if the drink is lousy, (but it won’t be remembered for long because it won’t be in business for long).
You remember logos by associations… with the product. That’s how you remember them. But you don’t remember them because it’s a great design. Most logos are not great designs.
Do you mean that it gets recognized as great design because it’s associated with a good product ?
Because you associate greatness with success and money. These are the statuses of greatness in the world.
So it works in the opposite way from which one would expect ?
It works any way you want it to work.
It’s a very interesting subject. I think that many people probably try to make it sound very scientific and reliable, and practical, but it’s not a science. It’s not a science where it says “red is for this” and “green is for that”. That’s all bullshit, nonsense, merde.
I mean, business people think they know everything. Well, they’re the boss and a boss has the notion that he is omnipotent, or omniscient. He knows everything. He doesn’t. He certainly don’t know a God damned thing about design or about logos. But he knows what he thinks he knows. So if you run into a client who tells you what to do, you better watch it. You’re in real trouble.
It probably doesn’t happen to you very often, because of your reputation ?
Not even when I was a little kid… I’m a doctor, you see? If you come to me and I tell you “you use aspirin, or Coca Cola, or whatever…” And if you don’t wanna do it, pay me and “good-bye.” That’s all.
How do you proceed to create a logo ? Some designers say: “you just do it and it’s good or bad but it has to come out right the first time…”
That’s the way I do it. Then I work it and rework it…
… but what makes it original comes out…
Most of the time it’s the first idea.
Do you submit more than one idea to your client ?
No. The presentation of a project is very important. It’s our show business. You can do it for good or for evil. It can be a swindle or something that makes you feel terrific. That what the art of design is capable of doing. What we’re doing, (designer and client) is making the company more important than it was before. You’re giving it a face, a personality.
I may do hundreds of drawings. I may show all the variations I tried printed in a little book. And then show: ”This is what I suggest.” Psychologically it’s a good way to do it because the client is given the opportunity of seeing that I worked very hard. Its a lot of work. It shows the process, it’s all logical, it’s really a lesson in design.
I just did a logo for a Japanese bank whose name was “Okasas” and I used their initials in the logo. I used the initials OK. So I made up the logo from the word OK. That was a pretty good word in any language. But you have to see it. That wasn’t my first idea. It should have been, but it wasn’t. I did it like this: (1)
But you show it this way:(2) and I put a circle around it (3)
(1) (2) (3)
It looks Japanese, doesn’t it? But it’s just OK, that’s all it is!
These things you have to see. If you don’t see it you’ll never do it. “Oh yeah, that’s easy, OK, anybody can do that”. But they’re so many ways that you get into designing logos. Ideas come from a million different places. And let’s face it, most ideas are arbitrary. I could have done something else. I didn’t have to do this. I could have moved it a thousand different ways. So there is a big aspect of arbitrariness in freedom. But if somebody says to you: “It’s got to be this way,” then you’ll be very lucky if you do a good job. It’s true.
But it’s a very bad thing to tell the client that it is very arbitrary because he will say: ”What do I need him for? Anybody can do it if it’s arbitrary.” The client doesn’t understand that kind of language.
I think we have problems in our business with the lack of respect for people in the arts. It’s still: “bon vivants, nouvelle époque, dandies…” That’s still in the mind of most people. “Artists are funny people, they’re not practical…”
Artists are much more practical than other people, I can tell you.
That’s probably why a lot of designers create around their work an image of it being very scientific rather than artistic, to get more respect…
That’s why the computer is so popular. They say they did it on the computer, big deal!
Do you use computers for design ? I mean it’s only a tool…
Right, but it’s quite a tool. It isn’t just a tool, it’s an amazing tool, in terms of time saving, not for all jobs, but for many jobs it’s unbelievable. And it will do jobs that you can’t do by hand. You just can’t do it.
But I don’t recommend computers in art schools, absolutely not. Because the student never learns to do a thing by hand. He doesn’t get a feel of the job. If you don’t draw letters by hand at some point, you’ll never understand them. When I went to art school, I used to draw a lot of these letters. We used to do a lot of these by hand. It’s like playing the violin. You have to feel it.
But there are things that you can’t do by hand, or it would be foolish to do it by hand, it would take you a year to do a job that you can probably do better in a day on a computer. Today you have to use both.
I just finished a logo that was done on a computer by several of my students. I can’t do it because I don’t know how to work a computer and for them it’s just a mechanical job. It’s not a creative job. I don’t give anybody any credit because anybody can do it. What is important is the idea, what HAS to be done, not how. The how, anybody who has experience can work a computer. Some people are better than others but the product is always the same. In art it’s not so. When you do it by hand, the product is always different. Three people do it, it’s all different.
How would you define the difference between an artist who paints for self-expression and a designer ?
We all have to perform jobs of some kind. The difference between a designer and a painter is very slight. The measuring standard is the same in terms of aesthetics, no difference between a painter and a graphic designer. The content and the form have to work together. The additional problem that a designer has, is that it also has to function as something else, not just itself. That’s the difficulty. So in a sense it’s more difficult to do, to do the perfect design. A painting has to be perfect for what it is, but it doesn’t have to do anything. The perfect design functions not only in terms of content but it does a job. It functions to sell or to do something. You can do a design that may be perfect to you but if the thing doesn’t work or if you can’t read it, it’s useless. So art in advertising and in design is of a much more difficult type than it is for painting because you have two functions. You have seeing and working.
I think that good designers don’t appreciate what they contribute. Think of all those nice things that design has produced.
It certainly brings colors to the cities that would otherwise be all grey…
Look at the old communist countries. I remember East Berlin, there were no signs, there was nothing. You felt as if you were in a ghost town. It was bare. All these letters and colors running around give some vivacity to a city. That’s why cities like Zurich are beautiful because most of the stuff is damned good.
IBM is a very simple kind of art. It functions. You know exactly what it is, and it has a certain look, whether good or bad. But if Mondrian does something, it doesn’t have to do anything except be perfect by itself. When we designers do something it has to be useful also.
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