Picture this; it’s Friday evening and a group of six of your closest friends plan to meet up and go out for dinner and a movie. So everyone meets at the designated spot, and time. Here is where the discussion begins: Where are we going for dinner?
All Six individuals have arrived with preconceived ideas as to where and even what they will be eating, this preconceived notion is otherwise know as their version of happiness. So when all six begin to share their ideas and six different places to eat have been named the reality sets in, happiness all around is unattainable and the negotiating begins: She is a vegetarian, he doesn’t like chinese, she had a bad experience at that one, and he refuses to set foot in there because of this, that, and the other.

For some reason everyone still has the common goal to stay together, so individuals start looking for a compromise, a restaurant that has a little of this and little of that for everyone. In the end all six find themselves in a place that no one really wants to be at, eating food that is not what anyone really wanted to be eating. This is known as Mc Food.

 The only real victory in all of this is the group survived and no one’s feelings were hurt. During dinner the topic of what movie the group should see begins and the compromising starts all over with an identical end result. So in the end the group as a whole ate food that was Ok, saw a movie that didn’t suck, and spent 50 bucks for this unmemorable experience. No one was unhappy and that is the important thing. The impact of this experience is minimal, 4 to 5 hours of time and a minimal amount of money, not really impacting the future because even if the evening was a loss to your idea of happiness, you were together, and the group will repeat this ritual again next week and the week after.

Consider scaling this analogy up and applying it to a group of people working with a designer. When there is a group of individual looking at a logo this same scenario happens, all parties are looking for a result that is watered down, the Mc Logo. Happiness or success is based on no one being completely unhappy. This is known in the design world as design by committee.

Individuals in these types of groups never act in the best interest of the company, but respond in a selfish “I lost so therefore everyone must lose”, attitude. This is so much more detrimental because the loss is so much more significant than a dinner and a movie. This type of decision making does not take into consideration what the audience wants to see. This inability to speak to the audience prevents the company from competing visually. Now the logo is working against you sending clients to competitors who do speak to the audience. Now consider this misstep lasting for 5 to 10 years, this is the average life of a logo in existing companies.

Real Scenario ( The names have been changed to protect the guilty )Our initial meeting with Russell Robbins was with their office manager, in this meeting we go through the standard meet and greet where we learn about the company and the design job they would like us to perform.

Russell Robbins informed us that they want a simple 'wordmark' logo. They know exactly what they want, having done research prior to our meeting they provide us with a few cliche examples of existing logos from others in the industry that they felt was ideal to “borrow” from.

Design, Round 1:
We covered the bases by designing the client's name in each of the styles they pointed to as liking, even going so far as to do one exactly as they described as what they wanted. As any great design studio would do we went the extra mile and investigated additional design possibilities feeling that a less cliche font and style would be more effective in speaking to their audience.

Design, Round 2:

The "we are almost there" daily phone call required tweaking to 3 or 4 of the designs as well as numerous tweaks of the 'Bs'. At this point they began contradicting themselves and had a different direction each time they contacted us (12 times in one week). We did however, hammer-down 2 fonts they liked. We gave them at least 20 variations of the R on each. We also gave them 5 different 'icon' divider variations to live between the between the two names.

Design, Round 3:
They suddenly decided they wanted the word mark on one line and inside a box., then outside the box, in the same instant they became unsure what style of font they wanted and asked that we work up a new style so we provided many san-serif alternatives.

Design, Round 4:
So one of the "accountants" took a crack at designing a logo and it was a complete departure from what they wanted. The office manager sent us an example of what they came up with (Engravers MT) only with a customized 'B' We duplicated their design and the panel was happy. Stale, outdated and terribly generic, way to go Russel Robbins!

The bad decisions that were made by this panel are only amplified by additional decisions like having their business cards printed on a very thin vellum, so thin the "cards" actually curl up and cause paper cuts. When we come in contact with their competition we can not help but to inquire what their thoughts are and the results are consistent. Their professionalism is always called into question, based on their Brand.

The BIG Takeaway:

The lesson for me from this particular project is difficult to sum up since working with panels is always tricky and often times there is no way around it. So here it is my education

1. Always have a leader or point guard on the panel with a spine.
2. Never work with a company that has a panel that knows "exactly what they want".