“I actually like that they gave me so much, because it gives me great insight into their expectations. But I’ve noticed something when clients have done this before: Client-provided materials can be toxic to new, innovative design. When I see so much of their past material, it has a huge influence on my design, and then I realize that I am just moving in the direction of duplicating their previous work. It creates a massive design block!

“My question is, how can you use client-provided material to assess their wants, needs, and expectations without it becoming toxic to your creative process? Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated!!”

—————

Daniel,
Smart of them to bring you up to date! It sounds like they liked their previous stuff and that it worked for them. Did they ask for something new? Is their venue the same? The theme? What more do you know?

—————

John,
The client is a very large, nationally recognized non-profit doing their annual fundraiser. They’ve not really asked for something new; they seem to just want it done in time for the event in three months.

The main item is a 150 or so- page catalog of items for their silent auction, as well as information about those who have donated auction items, and about the organization itself. They’ve indicated that they really like the style of Food & Wine magazine, but that’s about it. I get the impression that they’re changing up designers every year in an attempt to get closer to their vision, which they seem to find a bit vague.

—————

Daniel,
My guess is that you’re trying to innovate when innovation is not called for, you’re getting predictably stuck, and the resulting “design block” is why you’re falling back on what’s been done before.

This is why a good creative brief is invaluable. It gets on paper what’s to be achieved in terms of message and image. A creative brief gives the project objective goals and keeps the critique at a high level. It is valuable for both you and the client.

You’ll almost certainly have to tease it out. You mentioned that their vision was “vague.” This is normal. Design is difficult to articulate. It’s a right-brain thing, more “feel” than words. And words are only part of the issue. Chances are high that your client is not entirely clear in his own mind what he wants. Explore together until it gets clear for both of you.

Be specific, too. Avoid statements like, “We want to make a good impression on our audience,” or, “We want the design to inspire readers to participate.” These are emotions, not design directives.

Instead, say, “We want our program to look like a high-end auction. To do this, we’ll use classic book margins and fine typography — serif type with wide leading — on glossy paper. Every item will be professionally photographed against a white background, with uniform lighting. We’ll give major items a full page, and minor items we’ll group four to a page. All pages will have a distinctive heading and a small, consistently placed space for auction notes. The cover will be black with thin, gold trim, and the title will be understated.”

Of course, this is only an example. Before your next meeting, you might get a copy of Food & Wine and study it. Ask what it is about Food & Wine that the client likes. Is it sophisticated? Trendy? Understated? Perhaps they like the colors or images or typography. Can they say how Food & Wine’s look applies to them?

(You’ll also need to ask yourself if you’re capable of transferring attributes from Food & Wine to the auction program without copying or losing the feel.)

Then comes the hard part: achieving your stated goals. I can’t count the times that I had a clear idea of what I wanted, but what I put on paper looked nothing like it. You’ll have to slog through this. Seth Godin calls it “The Dip.” But now, instead of defaulting to past imagery, you have a visual goal by which to measure your work — and by which the client can measure your work.

Remember, too, that you’re a team, not a lone wolf. Stay close. As you work, more will often be revealed, and new ideas, sometimes great ones, will arise.

—————
Dear readers, can you add to this? Have you experienced being influenced by a client’s past work — or your own? How did you handle it?

When I think of a logo, I think most often of two kinds.

One is a signature, which is a distinctive way of writing your name and includes no additional marks . . .

The other is a cattle brand; it’s a simple, memorable image that identifies you in the herd. A classic example is Nike . . .

(Variations are military insignia and the family crest, which, historically, marked your presence at a gathering or coronation or battle.) . . .

Everything else falls into a large-but-vague morass of complex graphics and typefaces and colors and “target-audience” intentions that do a whole lot of nothing much. Some are well crafted, some are not, doesn’t matter. The net is zero.

One reason, perfectly valid, to have a logo is simply because you want one. It’s a means of personal expression. Online avatars are of this kind — unnecessary but kind of fun.

But do you need one? Ask, can the job be done without it?

In the case of Nike, absolutely not. Nike needs a logo. How many shoes and shirts and pieces of sports equipment does it mark? At a glance, it identifies a hundred million products to billions of people in every nation, culture, and language on earth. Could that happen without a logo? It could not.

Many companies are like Nike, especially those with many products and competitors and locations. Apple, Starbucks, Ford, on and on.

Campbell’s needs a logo to distinguish its soup from lookalikes on crowded shelves. Campbell’s logo is a signature.

And so on.

But our thrift store. There is only one. It’s in the neighborhood. It has a name. It won’t be confused with something else. It’s where you shop for second-hand bargains. Occasional shoppers know it as the thrift store. Veteran shoppers know it as the Restored Blessings thrift store, which is different from the Restore thrift store across town.

What purpose would a logo serve here?

I’d say none.

But here’s where the line blurs. You have to write the name on the store front, on the Web page, on the stationery, and everywhere else. The written name looks like something — blocky, swashy, funky, whatever. So what it looks like becomes, by default, the logo, assuming that you write it the same every time.

This kind of logo — a consistently applied way of writing your name — conveys an understated sense of organization and professionalism, a good thing no matter what the enterprise, and always appropriate.

Do you need more than that?

Reader Johanna took Wednesday’s Design Talk post one step further than we did. In coloring our letters after releasing the compound paths . . .

. . . we filled the voids with background color — in our case, white . . .

. . . which works fine. But if we then change the background color . . .

. . . the voids must be recolored, too. This can be avoided, said Johanna, by making the voids transparent, as follows:

(InDesign) Select a void and bring it to the front. Then shift-select the void and its letter outline, and go to Pathfinder > Subtract . . .

. . . which rejoins the two items and makes the void transparent again.

“I find it easiest,” she concluded, “to make sure the voids are white before I begin, so that I don’t overlook any, especially with detailed scripts.”

Thanks, Johanna!

—————

Susan Childers asked the name of the “cute font” in the subhead.
The font is Tweed. It goes really well with LiebeDoni because it has similar full, round shapes, similar line weights, and a touch of whimsy.

—————

Tim, who said he bought LiebeDoni to use as a title font for a CD project, asked if we could recommend a second font that would go well with LiebeDoni — “something readable that could be used for the body of the text. (Maybe Bodoni itself? Or might a sans-serif be preferable?)”

The answer has everything to do with the subject matter and tone of the CD and how much text there is.

His choice of LiebeDoni suggests a playful design, or at least informal.

The face to not use is Bodoni. Two reasons: 1) Bodoni’s super-fine serifs tend to disappear at text size. 2) Bodoni conveys stateliness, elegance, and glamour, all different from LiebeDoni. The two are incompatible mainly because each has too much presence but of different kinds.

There are countless typefaces that will work. For informality, try Tweed (above) or ITC Highlander (below). Look for typefaces with full, round letterforms and line weights similar to LiebeDoni . . .

(Above) ITC Highlander text

As with most display typefaces, LiebeDoni will play well against plainer, low-key fonts. A good example is Avenir (below), which meets the shape and line-weight requirements and also has a wide range of weights . . .

(Above) Avenir text

Avenir is an unusually clear, simple typeface that will not steal the show.

Generally speaking, avoid fonts that have strong “personalities” or shapes or other distinctive characteristics that compete with your primary type. In this case, most serif fonts will also compete by adding too much detail, so for LiebeDoni we recommend sticking with sans-serifs.

Responding to our recent post about the LiebeDoni typeface and InDesign’s Glyphs feature, reader Jackie Ponderosa asked what tool or feature we used to color in the fonts to create the stained-glass look. Of course, different software will handle this differently, but it’s easy in InDesign.

Set your type in LiebeDoni Outline . . .

Select the text frame, then go to Type > Create Outlines, which changes the type from a font into a drawing . . .

Go to Object > Paths > Release Compound . . .

Click on each filled shape, then color . . .

This works for any typeface.

In Adobe Illustrator, the sequence is . . .
1) Select your type
2) Go to Type > Create Outlines
3) Go to Object > Compound Path > Release
4) Color

30% off
Remember that Ulrike is offering Before & After readers 30% off on LiebeDoni through the end of September. Enter bamagazine_30% in the gift code field.

A free, printable Extra of this article is available on our Web site.

On most designs, there’s something that you don’t know how to do.

Maybe you have a poster to make for the company retreat, and you’re stuck for an idea. Or you don’t know what typeface to use or how it should be illustrated.

Yet you sense that there’s an answer. And this sense pulls you into the work.

You dig for images, set type, try layouts, looking. Are you hoping that something cool just happens? Or is there a vision, unarticulated, that you’re working toward, and you’ll know it when you have it?

What do you know that you don’t know you know, and how do you find it?

.

Reader Glenn Kramer writes: “When I last went grocery shopping, I had the fortune of spotting boxes of the new Diet Pepsi logo side by side with the old design. I happen to love the new look. The sans-serif geometric font with the smiley e, paired with the new Pepsi circle, looks forward-thinking to me. I like the change, even if it’s hard to tell that the Pepsi circle is supposed to be reminiscent of a smile or smirk.

“However, when I posted the photo to Typophile’s Web site, it seems like everyone so far pretty much hates the new look. I wanted to know your take on it. I’m attaching the photo that I took at the grocery store. It’s interesting to see the old and new next to each other for easy comparison.”

———————

Thanks for the photo and your question. This is a big makeover. Pepsi says it will spend $1.2 billion (that’s a b) over the next three years to re-brand its carbonated soft drinks plus its Gatorade and Tropicana lines. Considering the fantastic number of cans, bottles, Web and print ads, point-of-purchase displays, vending machines, billboards, sportswear, stadiums, on and on—worldwide—that must be changed over, well, the scale is mind-boggling.

So does the design boggle you? I’ll give you my observations next week, but this week I’d like to hear from our readers.

A couple of points before you write.

One, don’t go with your knee-jerk reaction, good or bad. Let it simmer awhile. What you know and like (or not) about Pepsi is attached not to the new logo but the old one.

Two, try to be objective. Focus on this design, not what else it may look like. Almost every image looks a little like something else. Ask, “Do I like this look? Would I reach for it? Would I be happy with it?”

Three, try to articulate the reasons for your impressions. (You’re Before & After readers; you can do this.) Keep in mind that we’re interested in design here, not business, marketing, strategic planning, what-were-they-thinking?, none of that. Just, “Do I like this and why?” To get you started, you might look at our Gestalt theory: Equilibrium (article 0676) preview, (which is free), and Simplify, the back page editorial of print issue 32 (which is not).

Also, the can in Glenn’s shot is one in a series of five, all of which can be seen on Pepsi’s site; note how the logo changes from can to can.

Your turn.

(To leave a comment, click on “### Comments” below the print-issue images, then scroll to the bottom.)

For more on logo design, we recommend the following print issues:

I really enjoyed the current article, “How to use that typeface.” In fact, I find every article informative and useful. I was wondering, though, what typeface you might recommend for the business in the article — Alamo Flags — and why you would choose that typeface. Thanks. — Laura Jones

Hi Laura,

To recommend a typeface, I’d have to know more about the business.

A couple phone calls told me that Alamo Flags sells flags of the world, buttons, pins, patches and so on. So it’s a gift-quality flag store. Its employees who spoke to me did not know the origin of the name or if it was connected to the real Alamo. For a real project, you’d want to know those things.

So let’s imagine that Alamo Flags wants its sign to convey a fairly authentic image.

First step would be what we call “World of” research. Ask, what is the Alamo? Where is it? What does it look like? What is its story? What associations does it have? Are there lines, shapes, colors, textures that we might use? And so on.

For a real project, the client would give you most of these answers. For our example, we’ll use Google.

We find that the Alamo is an old Spanish Mission in San Antonio, Texas. Early in 1836, it was site of the most famous fight in Texas’s war for independence from Mexico. The Alamo was overpowered by the forces of Mexican President Santa Anna, and all its defenders were killed. Among the dead were now-legendary Americans Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett. After the defeat, the Texas colonists regrouped, and the term “Remember the Alamo!” became a rallying cry for the remainder of the war.

The Alamo has its own flag (although its authenticity is uncertain) with its own colors.

As you can see, even brief research turns up a story, shapes, colors, textures and various visual associations. Actually do the research; don’t just guess.

For a typeface to be authentic, it would have to have been in use in 1836. Usually, you can make do without being so literal. But having an authentic typeface gives you the confidence of knowing—you’re not guessing, or worse—making something up. You may decide to change it, but you’re starting on solid footing.

The original designer was just making something up.

What typefaces were in use in 1836? One of the best was the excellent serif Caslon. Sixty years before—on July 4, 1776—Benjamin Franklin chose Caslon for the first printing of the United States Declaration of Independence. Today, Caslon is available in many styles including several that are aged or distressed and look quite old. Caslon is an excellent text face.

In vogue were “fat” typefaces, some of which had extreme stroke-to-serif differences, like Adobe’s Madrone and Engraver’s LH and Linotype’s Inflex MT. Other fat faces were more slab-sided, like Adobe’s Blackoak.

Also popular were Clarendon-style typefaces, which have slab serifs but most of which are more moderately proportioned. And the calligraphic styles of writing master and engraver George Bickham set the standard for script typefaces.

Although without more research we don’t know what typefaces were present at the Alamo, any of these are entirely plausible and would be suitable on the sign.

So that’s the process. Pick a goal (“authentic” is only one possibility out of countless many), write the creative brief, do your research, then design to it.

Below, two possibilities. (Click for larger versions)

Engraver’s LH

ATOrlando and Bickham Script

I have read the book from Before & After, Graphics for Business. It’s always a good idea for me to work with design. But now, I get stuck on my head to design about “Bali Surfers” logo. Can you help me for give me ideas and sample, so that can inspiring me for make a logo? Thank you. —Fona

Hi Fona,
Tell me more about Bali Surfers. Who are they? Where are they? What do they do? Who is their audience? And so on. —John

Hi Mr. John,
Bali surfers is community of Balinese that liked surf. Balinese surfer always liked peace of mind and enjoyed surf as a beauty.

They live at any region in Bali and every weekend they have the schedule to surf and help people to learn surf in any beach in Bali.

After they surf, they will do something positive for people, like cleaning the garbage on the beach area.

Sometime the surfers from other places in Indonesia or other country want to joined, and we are welcome for them, but we must keep peace on Bali and this earth. Because when we always feeling peace of mind, anything we do will have a positive response from universe.

Mr. John that was about what I know about Bali surfers. Thanks for your help. I’m so happy. —Fona

Hi Fona,
Why do you want a logo? What will it be used for? Do you have images that you’ve thought about? —John

Hi Mr. John,
The logo use for my friend, I help them for give some advice to setup a logo. And they are not commercial community.

And I don’t have the images, I just think how to make it simple and looks interesting. Just the text “Bali Surfers” or with icon image combined with the text.

Can you help me please? Thanks.—Fona

Hi Fona,
Try this . . .

[rssless]

Hi Mr. John,

Thanks Mr. John for your design. It was very nice. Look simple and strong like a wave. I love it very much. You give the nice thing for it and good inspirations and idea to me to make designs.

I will try to make another and I will sent it to you and discuss with you Mr. John. Thanks for your help.

Regards, Fona

Everyone—
Some jobs, like Fona’s, are easier than others. But the logo didn’t pop out of a hat fully formed. Here’s how the pieces came together:

(Above) Although Adobe’s typeface Mojo has its roots in the psychedelic 60s, its soft forms and undulating lines have a rhythmic gentleness well-suited to the “peaceful” surfing that Fona described.

(Above) Surf waves have two components—the swell and the surface burble. The negative shapes in Mojo have plenty of burble. For now, the two words are set as one; we’ll separate them with color.

(Above) Lime and orange are citrusy, tropic-y, high-energy surf party colors. They’re a fun pick that would look great on shirts and surfboards, but they don’t pass the peaceful, laid-back requirement.

(Above) Two similar values of tropical blue say sun and surf, which lapping and sparkling in real life has a huge range of value. The very soft “edge” between words makes the setting mellow.

A gentle curve adds the wave swell that completes the logo.

For more on logo design, we recommend the following print issues . . .

[/rssless]

Angela Lantain

[Posted at 1:15 pm on August 21, 2008 by Angela]

Hi Angela,

There’s very little in design that can “destroy” an established business. Poor design can, however, keep a new business from getting traction. A design can be misleading. It can be inappropriate. It can be sentimental or corny or otherwise cloying. It can be amateurish. And so on. The design you want is the design that expresses unambiguously who you are, beautifully, simply, clearly.

Your project sounds interesting. Show us more.

John McWade

[Posted at 1:30 pm on August, 2008 by John]

[rssless]

I’ve attached a copy of the file containing my business cards and labels. The labels, I have to admit, look kind of weird at first sight, but there’s a reason for that. My retailer requested that I make two separate labels—a price tag that could easily be removed and reused, and a label showing my logo and the name of the product line.

I also thought you might be interested in seeing photos of my completed projects. You can find them in my public Web albums on Picasa.

Angela

[Posted at 5:40 pm on August 21, 2008 by Angela]

Hello John,

An idea occurred to me this weekend. Would you be interested in a project to
build the identity of a crafting business right from the ground floor? I’m sure that I’m not the only artist/crafter who is confused about how to convey a creative yet professional identity. I’d love to see what a designer could come up with. Except for my logo, I don’t really have a design in mind, so it’s a “catch as catch can” sort of project.

[Posted at 1:02 pm on August 25, 2008 by Angela]

Hi Angela,

Thanks, but no, I have a magazine to publish. That said, I spent some time on your Web gallery, and I must say that your stuff is beautiful! I mean really.

So my question—somewhat rhetorical—is, why do you think you need a logotype?

Why would you need this . . .

. . . when you have this? . . .

I can’t think of one reason.

Your art pieces are beautiful. They’re imaginative, professional, and—especially valuable—yours alone. No logo can give you all that. A logo will only put distance between you and your customer that’s not there now.

On top of that, what’s your goal? It’s to get your name—that is, your work and reputation—out there and make sales.

So if I were you, I’d put my art pieces right on my business cards.

Here are four business cards . . .

The cards are easy to make. Each has a photo of a product, plus your name in a clear typeface (Myriad), plus in smaller type the name of the product line. On the back would be your contact information. They would be easy to print on your desktop in small, gift-shop quantities. More conveniently, have moo.com print some card packs for you, and leave a pack on display for shoppers to take.

When I showed these mockups around the office, the response was, “Ooooohh, those [pieces] are beautiful. Whose are they?” (or some variation of this) And people instinctively reached towards them. I mean they physically reached out.

No logo will do that. When your stuff is so appealing that strangers want to touch a mere image, well, I’d say you’re pretty close to business-card perfection!

Try it.

John

P.S.: You need better photos. It says a lot about your pieces that their beauty shows through anyway.

[Posted at 5:48 pm on August 26, 2008 by John]

Hello John,

I think that would be a great idea! I can’t believe that I never thought of that myself, though I did give some thought to putting my artwork on my cheques.

I’m so grateful for your opinion about my work and the image I’m trying to project; without a formal education in graphic design or fine arts, I have to rely on my pieces to speak for themselves. I agree that I’m going to need better photos—especially if they’re going to be published. A digital camera is a definitely a must-have for artists and crafters, and it’s currently on my wish list.

Angela Lantain

[Posted at 5:35 pm on August 27, 2008 by Angela]

Hi Angela,

For Web work and desktop output, a $200 point-and-shoot camera is just fine. Two or three megapixels are plenty. For book-quality photos, you should have an SLR camera. I can recommend the Nikon D40, which on Amazon is about $500 with its standard lens. It’s excellent.

Buy a small tripod. You can probably find one for $25 at Target.

Turn off the flash.

Shoot against a solid, not patterned, background. White or neutral is best. I suggest shooting an entire collection on the same background. This can vary. Your artistic eye will know best.

Whenever possible, shoot in soft, ambient outdoor light, the kind you’d get through a north-facing window. Avoid direct sun, which makes harsh shadows. Avoid artificial light if you can.

If you must shoot in artificial light, set your camera to “fluorescent” or “incandescent” or whatever you’re using. This will help keep the colors true.

Pose your piece against its background. Set your camera on its tripod. Make sure it’s focusing on your piece. Steady finger, then shoot. If you’re indoors at night, the no-flash exposure will be too long to hold your finger steady, so set the camera’s automatic timer, and let it take its own picture. An SLR camera will come with a remote shutter release.

You’ll do great.

John

[Posted at 6:18 pm on August 27, 2008 by John]

Hi Angela,

You still need the price tags and labels that your retailer wanted, so here’s a suggestion that’s easy to do. Each art piece gets two tags—one price and one label. Size is 3/4″ x 1-1/4″, give or take. The tag with the price gets removed. The other says “Angela Lantain original” and remains with the piece when it’s sold.

Along the edge of each tag is a tiny palette of colors that are eyedroppered from the art piece. The colors are unique to the individual piece. If two dozen pieces are on display, the customer will see two dozen different color palettes, but otherwise the tags look alike. It makes a distinctive Lantain “brand,” and you can print them yourself—at least until you’re rich and famous!

See what you think.

John

[Posted at 4:46 pm on September 12, 2008 by John]

Hi John,

The pictures look just great! I especially like the colour palette idea; customers would be better able to choose suitable colours for frames and mats to display the pieces. Thanks for all your help!

Angela

[Posted at 5:41 pm on September 12, 2008 by Angela]

John, I have been a subscriber since the early 90’s and have all issues. As a matter of fact, I think the article you wrote on designing a report in your first two years of your publication was responsible for at least a 1 pt increase in my GPA since I used your format for all my papers.

Anyway, I have a logo I’m working on and was wondering if you could put your spin on it. How much would you charge for your services?

Thanks,
Bill Petrey

[Posted at 10:10 am on July 2, 2008 by Bill]

Thanks for the funny note. Happy to help get you through school! ;-)

About your logo, the short answer is that everything here is about the magazine. If we are able (and you are willing) to use your logo in an article, it costs you nothing. If we can’t use it, we can’t do it.

Why don’t we start by taking a look at it, and we’ll let you know.

[Posted at 11:25 pm on July 3, 2008 by John]

Would be honored to have you rip into my work and make all the readers feel sorry for me. Keep in mind that my only background in graphic art is being a loyal Before & After reader. The colors may be off a bit, but I was trying to simulate the colors in an ear of corn. Colorblindness is awkward when picking color schemes, but thank heavens for RGB %, hex codes and a wife. Okay, enough excuses.

The logo is for a blog/real-estate agent referral site that I call AgentHarvest.com. The site will be an expression of my real-estate opinions (believe me, I have many) and will market my service of finding the perfect real-estate agent to sell your house. I use MLS data to research an agent’s track record to find the best agents in your neighborhood.

The logo is trying to connect a farming harvest theme with real-estate agents. Except for the domain name, everything is fair game for you to play with or remove. The phrase at the bottom is sort of sloppy, but I haven’t come up with anything better yet. It’s all still pretty new. I’ll also be using the theme on the Web site, too.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing the results of your work.

[Posted at 12:05 pm on July 3, 2008 by Bill]

[viewing the logo] First question: Does Agent Harvest have anything to do with agriculture?

[Posted at 12:21 pm on July 3, 2008 by John]

No, Agent Harvest is purely about residential real estate (harvesting of ideas and opinions, and picking only the best agents from the entire crop of agents).

[Posted at 1:20 pm on July 3, 2008 by Bill]

Graphically speaking, this is well-drawn and cheery. Thing is, it looks really farm-like. Iowa. Corn. All that. That impression is very strong. Since your business has nothing to do with any of that, your logo is sending viewers down the wrong path. So before you can tell them who you actually are — already a tough-enough task — you FIRST have to reel them back from the misdirection. You won’t be able to do that, and even if you could, you’ve made extra work for yourself.

So you made a nice graphic, but it’s the wrong graphic.

My advice would be to rethink your approach. Rather than key on the word “harvest,” think instead from the point of view of the customer. I (the customer) have never heard of an agent “harvester.” All I want is to buy or sell my house. It’s a tough market. You come along and say hey, I can do X for you. So unspoken questions come to mind: 1) Who are you? 2) Do I understand what you do? 3) Do I need what you do? 4) Can I trust you? 5) What’s it cost? 6) How complicated is it? And so on.

You term yourself an agent harvester. What would the customer term you?

Can you take those issues and roll them into a word or an image?

[Posted at 2:16 pm on July 3, 2008 by John]

I knew something about it was off. Now, I’m thinking more about how to do a knowledge exploding head idea, similar to Godin’s Ideavirus. We’ll scrap the farm and go with the head.

How can the answers to your questions be graphically expressed? One approach would be to have ideas flying out of the head that would touch on each answer.

1) Who are you?
A real-estate investor who got a Realtor’s license to buy and sell my own properties, and found a fountain of useful info that non-agents don’t know about. I want to share the knowledge based on selecting Realtors and making sure they perform as expected. Also, beneficial advice for For-Sale-By-Owner sellers.

2) Do I understand what you do?
No, besides offering advice and tips, the find-an-agent service is based off the basic agent-to-agent referral, except that I’m finding qualified agents, not just someone I know to get the referral. As a matter of fact, up to three agents will get the referral and compete for your listing — like LendingTree.com does with loans.

3) Do I need what you do?
Yes, the right agent makes all the difference. I find that right set of agents for you to select your favorite from.

4) Can I trust you?
Maybe. I can build credibility through publishing articles on the AgentHarvest.com site and by testimonials, but ultimately all of my agent recommendations are based solely off provable, raw MLS data that can be given to the client. I’ll be on their side while they select their favorite agent.

5) What’s it cost?
It costs the client nothing. I get paid as a real-estate agent referral. In other words, I get my cut from the cut that goes to the listing agent when and if the house sells. It doesn’t increase your price of the real-estate commission, but it decreases the amount the listing agent would receive. After all, I did his/her marketing and client search for him/her. That part is an industry standard practice, except that it benefits only agents. My way benefits the client (by selecting best agents) and the agent.

6) How complicated is it?
If anything, I make the process of finding an agent easier.

Thanks for your insight. It’s like reading my very own personalized issue of Before & After.

[Posted at 2:44 pm on July 3, 2008 by Bill]

Now we’ll see if I interpreted your advice correctly. No more farm graphics, Hee Haw type fonts or corn-colored pod people. I also rejected the open head approach mentioned in my last e-mail, thinking it is more appropriate for the blog part of the site but not the actual logo or Agent Harvest identity by itself. With the logo, I tried to represent the theme of “Finding the best agents for free.” After all, that’s what the core business is structured around.

The graphic hopefully represents a rating scale focusing on the fact that we find the best agents.

[Posted at 1:36 pm on July 5, 2008 by Bill]

I wish I had more than a few minutes, but let’s see what we can do.

At Before & After we have a mantra: Beauty. Simplicity. Clarity.

Your new images miss all three.

I don’t say this to be harsh, just to move us along.

Before you start drawing, think more about the communication part.

You are a unique business. You are “Agent Harvest.”

What’s that? asks the mystified customer.

It’s “A free real-estate agent finder service.”

Hmmmm, that’s interesting. Maybe I could use that. Let me give this guy a call.

See what’s happened? Your name and tagline got you a phone call.

That’s good.

In fact, that’s great.

So the question is, do you need a logo at all?

I think you don’t.

Buying and selling a house isn’t like buying a Coke. How often do you do it? Once? Twice?

So your customer deals with you one time.

You don’t need a logo for that. Just your name and that good tagline.

Think about it, and get back to me.

[Posted at 12:29 pm on July 7, 2008 by John]

Hi Bill. A few free minutes. You explained that your service is to pick the right person(s) out of a field of many. One of your logos had people in it. Expanding on that . . .

If you showed this image plus your tagline, “A free real-estate agent finder service” to someone in your office, would they get it?

Try it.

Strictly conceptual. We’re not talking about a logo. Just an image.

[Posted at 12:17 pm on July 8, 2008 by John]

I was hoping you’d like the people concept. Your peeps line was a great idea. Here’s what I did with it. What about using a different slogan, one that makes it more personal? However, I can’t figure out how to put the “free” concept in there without making the slogan into a manifesto. Is the fact that it’s free to the seller important enough for the logo to convey it?

Does the idea of the “v” as a pointer come across? What type of fonts would be appropriate?

[Posted at 1:21 pm on July 9, 2008 by Bill]

Hi Bill. “Free” is vital. I (the customer) probably wouldn’t phone you if I didn’t know it was free. Your original tagline says it all.

Let’s get back to concepting, not logo-making. Logo-making is the last step in the process. In fact, you probably don’t need a logo.

The question was, if you showed someone the peeps line with the tag, “A free real-estate agent finder service,” would he get it?

If the answer is yes, you’re home free. It’s clean, it’s clear, it’s simple, and — especially important — it’s complete. ANYTHING you add will muddy the message.

If the answer is no and you have to explain your service further, pay attention to what’s said. What did you have to explain? What didn’t the viewer understand? Then get back to me.

You can use the peeps line (or a better version of it) as a blog header, but you don’t need a logo.

Example on a biz card:

No logotype. Works with or without the graphic.

[Posted at 5:09 pm on July 9, 2008 by John]

Just saw your business card idea. It’s perfect!!! Wouldn’t change a thing. Yes, they WOULD get it. And now, I finally get what you’re saying. What font did you use? That looks great!

No logo for me. The name and tagline work and simplicity rules the day! Thanks for the work you did and the many years of advice through Before & After.

[Posted at 7:26 pm on July 10, 2008 by Bill]

The typeface is Helvetica Neue 47 Light Condensed.

[Posted at 11:19 pm on July 10, 2008 by John]