Understand your brand values—but trust the professionals, too

Information Outlook, April, 2003 by Tim Owen

Take the Tie to Get It Right!

TIM OWEN EXPLAINS THE BACKGROUND OF THE CREATION OF A NEW CORPORATE identity for the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), which was formed when the UK Library Association and Institute of Information Scientists united.

Don't try to understand 'em!

Just rope and throw and brand 'em!

So went the theme to "Rawhide," a 1960s TV series (for those old enough to remember) about cattle driving. That may have been good advice for branding cattle, but when you're creating a corporate identity for a new professional body with a rich and complex portfolio of products and services--and strong professional and ethical values to boot--such advice would be disastrous. I found that understanding the organization was vital, as was interpreting that understanding to the professional designer who was an essential part of the process.

I was pretty well placed to provide that interpretation. I arrived on the staff of the Library Association (LA) about seven months before the planned unification. For most of my information career I had been an active member of the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS), the other partner in the unification venture. So while undergoing a crash course on how the LA operated and what it offered to its members, I was able to compare its activities and values with those of the IIS, and thus begin to imagine the values that the unified Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals would wish to embrace.

For example, I took a phone call one morning from our principal designer, who was wrestling with concepts for CILIP's main promotional brochure. He asked if I could suggest some words that encapsulated the new organization's aspirations. I came up with "commitment," "community," "global," "influence," "strength," "agenda," "expertise," "vision," "practice," "delivery," "support," and "awareness." Not only did these words provide the stimulus our designer needed, but he actually incorporated them into the brochure design itself.

I did not attempt to dictate to the designer on matters of design, color, or layout. I had my trade and stuck to it, and he had his. In branding, it is important to develop a close relationship with your designers, brief them thoroughly, and then trust their judgment.

The brief to our designer for our basic logo was clear: a clean, classic look, reflecting the new institute's professional authority and credibility. Established, complementary fonts for the logo and strapline: Baskerville and Gill Sans. No pictorial images that would date easily; because once you have a logo, you have it for a long time, and you don't want it to start looking tired. We could not use IIS or LA corporate colors, so no lilac and purple, no red. Above all, the logo had to have impact, to stand out in a crowd--in a row of partner logos on a conference brochure, for example, or a line of links on a website.

So what happened when the joint committee of IIS and LA members to whom I presented our shortlisted design ideas didn't like our choices? We managed to avoid the trap of having the logo redesigned by committee. Instead, we took the committee members' views back to our designer, who gave them some thought and came up with a redesign that addressed their concerns. Thus, we had a committee of clients with firm views and a professional designer to devise something that worked in design terms. It was a good combination, and the revised design sailed through.

With the logo design finalized, we needed to protect it against misuse, even accidental, well-meaning misuse. No unauthorized tinkering with the proportions or the colors could be tolerated. When a familiar design looks wrong, you may not know why it looks wrong, but it's unsettling nevertheless, and you don't trust it. We couldn't have our members, partners, clients, or sponsors unsettled. The logo would also have to work satisfactorily in every medium: stationery, glossy flyers, display material, signs, internal memos, PowerPoint presentations, websites.

So we set our designer to work on rules: when you had to use the portrait version of the logo and when you were allowed to substitute the landscape version; what to do when you could print in only two colors and neither of them was the CILIP pink; how much space you had to leave around the logo to ensure that it wasn't jostled by rival images. Anyone who was entitled to use the CILIP logo (our groups and branches, organizations in liaison, partners, sponsors) received a design guidelines package, including an illustrated booklet, high-quality artwork for scanning, and a set of electronic versions of the logo on CD-ROM, in formats suitable for PC and Mac, suitable for high-quality printing work and optimized for the Web.

Not until we reached this stage could we start designing our portfolio of promotional and other literature: brochures, guides, handbooks, reports, a new website, and new exhibition stand panels. Up to now we had relied on just one designer, but with the style guidelines in place we could open the field to others, provided they conformed to the basic rules. We needed more designers because vesting day for CILIP was fast approaching, and we wanted to have a complete set of basic rebranded material in place. So another important lesson in rebranding is project management: establish a timetable, meet deadlines, and be ready with a backup plan. You don't want your launch day to arrive when only half your promotional material is ready.