We extend congratulations to the following clients for being named “Your Honor Award” national finalists by the Legal Marketing Association:

• Choate Hall & Stewart (Events)
• Gesmer Updegrove (Website)
• Hemenway & Barnes (Identity; Firm-wide, office or practice group brochure)
• Lewis and Roca (Advertising)
• Nixon Peabody (Practice development)
• Steptoe & Johnson (Announcement)

Last year, nine of our clients were awarded the following distinctions:

• Choate Hall & Stewart (Events, 2nd place)
• Clifford Chance (Recruiting, 2nd place)
• Faegre & Benson (Website, 3rd place)
• McMillan (Identity, 3rd place; Events, 1st place; Advertising, 1st place)
• Nixon Peabody (Market research, 3rd place)
• Practising Law Institute (Identity, 2nd place)
• Poyner Spruill (Firm-wide, office or practice group brochure, Honorable Mention)
• Sterne Kessler (Website, 2nd place)
• WeirFoulds (Website, 1st place; Announcement, 1st place)

We look forward to learning this year’s final results at LMA’s annual conference in March. Visit lmaconference.com for more information.

To learn more about our award-winning work, click here.

Lately—well, in the last 20 years or so—we’ve noticed many of the brands we’ve created go astray. All the money, time and effort spent in creating the brand is forgotten, as the brand grows older. Recently—well, in the last year or so—we’ve determined to take a close look at this drift in order to help our clients sustain their brands.

Our entire creative team (strategy and design) sat down to review two or three brands we developed with clients recently. We spread out the creative work in front of us as well as on a nearby monitor. Then, in each case, we promptly disagreed on many details that constituted the “brand.” As the meeting wore on, some light bulbs went on, such as…

Insight #1. Newborn brands share a lot in common with babies.
As brand strategists and designers we believe we know what we have created but, if our brand review was helpful at all, we learned that the only thing we’d created was a baby. We had no fully-formed notion of what the brand would look like when it was six years old, much less a teenager.

Don’t get me wrong. A baby is a miracle but requires lots of care and feeding to help realize its potential. Sure, a brand has your firm’s eyes and complexion, but there’s more unknown than known. So we realized job one is to take lots of pictures. Literally, spread everything out and create a baby album. See what the brand looks like from every conceivable angle. Analyze the font usage, the relative white space, the type of imagery used. Tickle the color palette. Listen to the voice.

And finally, see if it has five toes on each foot. A newborn brand has everything implied in its early shape and form but not every detail has been worked out. For example, imagine the as-yet uncreated small-space charitable ad. How will that future creative application reflect the brand? Your PowerPoint might have the right logo in the corner but does the overall presentation reflect the brand?

View full article

Burkey was one of 12 judges two weeks ago in Louisville, KY judging Creativity 39.

Among a pile of mostly uninspired work, one suite of materials stood out. It was—I am surprised to say—the 50th anniversary work for Barbie! (See barbiestyle.barbie.com.) The work was, in almost all aspects—design and production—brilliant. What struck me (and others) is that the bags, brochures, media kits, in-store displays and environmental graphics were completely on brand. In my experience, the challenge of being “on brand” escapes most designers (and, remarkably, clients!). How easy it is to go bumping happily off the road without a clue to the damage being done to the brand.

What made this work revelatory for me is that I understood the Barbie brand for the very first time. A eureka moment. Suddenly, I understood that it is Barbie’s glamour, not her impossible plastic beauty that inspires girls. Glamour was writ large in oversized brochures where Barbie was shown in almost human scale. Glamour was writ large in store displays where she WAS full-size. Glamour was authentic because the design and brand team embraced and celebrated Barbie’s plastic self. Understanding your brand is central to protecting and growing it. It hardly matters whether you hate the idea of Barbie (such an easy target). For those whose job it is to promote her glamorous brand, it was a job well done.

It is crucial in today’s market or any to communicate a unique message that clearly defines your business. And what do you think the forms the foundation getting that message across while distinguishing you from your competitors? You guessed it. A logo. A good logo. Seriously. If your logo looks professional your business looks professional. But how do you know if you are on the right track in the process? OK, well you’re in luck. We’ve synthesized the 10 common mistakes in the logo design process from Gareth Hardy’s excellent article in Smashing Magazine. Read the entire piece here, or go to school on this short abstract. View full article