Already in the clients briefs.

All about bud puns this morning after a very enjoyable client meeting yesterday afternoon. The brief is a goodun': Initally we're looking at the 'holistic brand development' of fashion retailer followed by 'a cross channel rollout of digital livery' . What this means is we'll being a corporate ID, they're too cheap to spend time (and money) on us coming up with a Visual language (read: Brand assets). So we're going to shoe-horn that into an actual project, that being a a Website.

What it also means is they will require, outside of scope, quite a few other things that will either, 1) they wont have any money for or 2) (most likely) the account manager, being spineless and clueless, will simply agree too do for no extra cost. They do this because they never have to deliver on the promises they make. They do this with impunity because they use the well worn line of 'trying to keep the client happy' which is a great way to defend the fact you know nothing about what anyone else does in the company.

Anyway, There was a lot of talk, a lot of hand flapping and people getting passionate about the "Brand". Notes were taken, account managers were there to agree with bloody everything the client had to say, and in the end, through all that, a brief was actually taken.

Now language is something that most professions use for, what i can tell, is for two main reasons. The first one is efficiency of communication. Talking amongst ourselves, designers use their own lexicon because of the improved efficiency in communication that accompanies words used that are specific to that industry. The other reason is that it excludes others and creates a cache of prestige that, inevitable, improves credibility to an outside audience, and by extension, means we can charge more. People tend to pay more for things they don't understand. In effect, they're paying you because you know things they don't. I wonder what Orwell would say about this.

However, design, well, its a pretty big church. And if you asked most people to define 'design' you would get a lot of different answers. Ask a designer, next time you see them, to define design. I can assure you they may struggle, unless of course they are any good, in which case they will say 'let me get back to you' and return with a proper response that that question deserves.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is back to this language issue again. The word most otfen chucked around the meeting room yesterday was the word 'BRAND".Hot on the heels of "Aol.'s" new branding exercise, this was topic-du-jour at this organisation. Now, this word is misued all the time, not only by clients (they dont need to know it anyway) but also by designers. Can I point out, that your corporate Identity is NOT your brand. I dont think I can make it any clearer than that. If you want more info, and primer on 'branding' then head on over to here

Looking fwd to this one. I love the smell of optimism that accompanies a new project. Ask me again what this project smells like when the many hands of account managers have had a chance to fuck things up.