Branding humanity

Some symbols seem to have been around forever: think peace signs, the skull and crossbones on a pirate flag, or the ubiquitous McDonald's Golden Arches. Others, like Nike's "swoosh" or the bitten-fruit silhouette on Apple products, may be more recent, but they enjoy near-universal recognition nonetheless.

Now, a group of politicians, activists and graphic designers has started the Human Rights Logo Initiative, a project that aims to create a symbol representing human rights. For a competition that is running through July 31, 2011, they have invited people around the world to submit their suggestions for a design to the website humanrightslogo.net. The process is called “crowdsourcing,” and submissions will be judged by a star-studded jury that includes the likes of Burmese human rights icon Aung Sang Suu Kyi, ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as top names in the design world.

The website's challenge says the initiative "was established out of conviction that a human rights logo will make a peaceful contribution towards the global spread and implementation of human rights," and the submissions are already pouring in. But is that too much to demand from a simple graphic design?

'Lowest common denominator'

It is too early to tell, but according to German communications designer Uwe Loesch, the amount of traction a logo gets in society doesn't necessarily reflect whether or not the design is good. What it does mean, is that once it is widely known, a logo becomes "the lowest common denominator" for a brand.

"If a product has a positive image, then it can promote itself in the smallest possible space using a logo," Loesch said. So if Lufthansa sponsors a concert, "they don't need to write a novel about it, they just need to reproduce their logo on the flyer. Then everybody knows Lufthansa stands for culture."

Loesch is not part of the Logo for Human Rights jury, although he regularly sits on the jury of the Germany's prestigious reddot design awards, and has been showered with communications-design awards over his long career.

He notes that, despite the fact that we are surrounded by highly recognizable logos, creating a good one is anything but easy - especially for a concept as complex and multifaceted as human rights.

Qualities of a good logo

Aside from being attractive, a good logo needs to be original, unmistakable, and recognizable, Loesch says. It also needs to be easily reproducible in different sizes and on different surfaces. Moreover, it should be timeless, and it should travel well across international borders by avoiding colors or images that carry negative connotations in different cultures.

Ideally, it also needs to be flexible or vague enough to represent a company as it develops into new, possibly unforeseen business areas: "If Deutsche Welle decides to start broadcasting from the moon, it should be able to take its logo with it," he quipped.

A good design is one that is pared down, but many of the most successful designs are so basic that their meanings need to be learned, Loesch said.

Take the Apple computer logo. "It could just as well be for a vegetarian restaurant, an apple cider brand, or the city of New York," he said. Similarly, the Nike swoosh is a design that was derived from the curve of the wing of the goddess Nike, “but we had to learn to associate them with that brand,” Loesch added.

Big business, pervasive advertisements

It is impossible to estimate how much money businesses pours into logo design and corporate communications, since these figures are generally subsumed by larger advertising budgets, experts say. But it is clear that with the increasing prevalence of media and images in society, corporate design and communications - including logos - are growing in importance.

Yet there are general rules of thumb when it comes to overall spending on marketing and advertising, global branding group Interbrand says. Typical, fast-moving consumer goods companies - think soft drinks or washing powder - spend the equivalent of 10 percent of total sales on advertising alone, which means total marketing costs may go up to 15 or 20 percent of sales. More traditional businesses, like Ford Motors, are said to allocate a sum of up to 1 percent of total sales for advertising.

"And finally, we suspect that businesses like Nike spend much more on marketing - up to 30 or 40 percent” of total sales, according to Interbrand.

Lava, the Dutch communications agency that won the coveted European Design Agency award for 2010, ties a campaign's budget to broader questions of rights and distribution.

"You can spend just as much time on corporate design for Shell Oil as you can for the grocery store next door, but the grocery store might just put the logo in its window, and Shell would reproduce it worldwide" so the pricing is different, explained Lava strategist Anne Miltenburg.

Given this massive spending in our increasingly media-saturated world, it's not surprising that logos and brands are so pervasive.

The crowdsourcing question

But for designer Loesch, the ongoing give-and-take of status between brands and consumers creates a questionable modern phenomenon that turns people into unpaid advertisers for corporations.

"People willingly become billboards for advertisers; its really amazing when you think about it," he said.

This, of course, could be said to be the ultimate achievement of a successful branding campaign - and it may well be the reason that the organizers behind humanrightslogo.net chose to use crowdsourcing to create their new human rights logo.

First of all, it can be less expensive to design a logo via competition than it would be to hire a company - a phenomenon which is on the rise in the corporate world too, professional graphic designers note bitterly. Moreover, the organizers clearly hope the involvement of thousands of artists around the world will create a buzz about the topic of human rights.

For Lava strategist Miltenburg, crowdsourced design projects "raise a hard question." On the one hand, she says, it's good that the public can engage in competitions that are fun and creative, "but on the other hand, it's a real profession - there is a reason people go to school and work in the field for years before they take on assignments."

So what makes one logo known around the world while another gets lost in an endless sea of corporate identities? Clearly, the answer depends on a very complex set of factors, including - but certainly not limited to - the design itself. Yet one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that the logo must avoid being too crowded with information, or too literal.

Logos - a thing of the past?

As Miltenburg puts it, bad design is design that takes a "comic book" approach to putting ideas across. "People who have no design experience might say, ‘We are a global company so there should be a globe in there somewhere. And we're environmentally friendly, so make it green.'"

Or, as Loesch puts it, "the opposite of good design isn't kitsch - it is design that means well." He was referring to the sunflower logo of Germany's Green Party meant to emphasis the party's commitment to nature and solar energy.

Yet according to Miltenburg, even having a discussion over logos means you are no longer on the cutting edge of the design process; she says logos are "sort of a past stage" in design; her company creates what she calls "dynamic identity systems" instead. These may use recognizable images, typefaces, or patterns to send a message, but they are not fixed - they can be changed according to the media or environment in which they are used.

"I think the mainstream is a bit behind on the fact that, for designers, logos have been on their way out for a long time," said Miltenburg. "Nine times out of ten, you can cover up the logo and still identify the product."

Author: Jennifer Abramsohn
Editor: Kate Bowen