Does every business benefit from design? Think of your favorite hole-in-the-wall BBQ joint, or the local bakery down the block. Each time you go there, do you find yourself mentally re-designing their logo? Have you decided that the one thing keeping your favorite Thai food place from becoming a national chain is a new identity system and a modest media buy? (more…)

First, an admission. I belong to a fraternity. A huge, national, button-down shirt, blue blazer, captains-of-industry kind of organization that celebrates all things left-brained and tangible. At one point, I was even president of my chapter. But that’s another story.

As the token creative in the group, my job was to “design” party t-shirts. Of these, one stands out in my memory. You’ve probably seen it — or one exactly like it. That’s because the “concept” was as follows:

1) Start with the logo for one of Bavaria’s… er… Germany’s most recognizable sports car brands
2) Cleverly add the fraternity’s Greek letters in place of the three initials in the existing logo mark
3) Alter the carmaker’s ubiquitous tagline by one word — replacing “driving” with “party”

This last step — the ingenious substitution of a single word in the tagline — sent a clear message: “Compared to other ‘machines’ engineered for the specific purpose of partying, we consider our fraternal organization (or ‘machine,’ if you will) to be the ultimate.” (more…)