"The practice of creating trademarks" - a book about how to create an identity and intelligently use it

Last week my book came out in the publishing house Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, it is called The Practice of Creating Trademarks.

Here (on Habré) there are a lot of people who write and discuss, and for sure there are those who thought about their book. This post is for them. This post is also for designers and managers - freelancers, from studios and agencies.


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Despite the title, this book is not about legal subtleties, but about design and project management. And the book contains only real, applicable in daily work considerations and approaches to creating a working identity.

Therefore, Igor Mann left such a review about the book:

I love these books! Read, take and do. The topic is closed.

I wanted to write a book that would help my colleagues and customers to navigate faster in the process of creating a corporate identity (“identity”), to put in order (that is, literally - organize) the necessary actions, link them into a set of logical and simple actions.

At the same time, I wanted to separate the work on graphics and separate such a differently interpreted concept as “branding” and from actions that can be assessed rationally and as clearly as possible.

And further. For several years of work in design and sales, I noticed that often problems in design go hand in hand with problems in creating information materials in principle: people cannot really even write a text about their activities (which can actually be done for free, without attracting a studio or agency) - and it turns out that there is simply nothing to do. And when there are no sources of ideas, when there are no materials for decoration and there are no specific goals, the work on graphic design becomes simply doubtful.

Of course, I was not the only one to come to such conclusions. But, not to be unfounded, I described one of the mechanisms for generating texts - interviewing, deciphering texts, editing drafts.
This is quite a capacious process, but it helps to overcome the stupor of the “clean slate” and get text (information) that can be actually drawn up.

Texts and descriptions provide grounds for reflection, search for ideas and material for design. That is, this is the most basic need.

Why about trademarks, but not marks and logos?

The answer may be a little unexpected, but it concerns the acceptance criteria. This is the most important and usually controversial point, because it is extremely difficult (but necessary!) To define rational criteria for accepting work that are most often taken on emotions (“pictures”, “I (un-) like”, “something confuses me”, “This is secondary”, “I don't know”, etc.) - that is, there is no transparent set of criteria.

The easiest way is to start from the fact that there is little point in arguing and that it is the same for everyone (both customers and performers) - for example, from laws.

Therefore, it was logical to investigate the legal component and the existing laws that define just the minimum basic requirements and clarify them. This is all that concerns the registration of trademarks: and the ICGS (international classifier of goods and services), and the verification process - about the uniqueness of names by class, graphic identity, and the like.

Operating with the base minimum it is already possible to build a system:

• first explore the competitive environment (and how to do it with respect to identity);
• how to register a trademark (central part of the base, shall we say);
• what then to do with all this is the technical requirements for the results (which also leave an imprint on the requirements for the result, thereby making the process even more transparent).

Key points of the book

The registration of the mark confirms a certain abstract maturity of the company, the formality of the procedure forces many people (on the customer side) to look at the importance of the process in a new way, and in my understanding it can serve as just those formal and rational criteria for accepting work.

Coupled with the prepared texts that will set the nature of the design, rational criteria will help guide the creative component in the right direction. Studies will tell in which direction to move is not necessary.

There are also financial and technical aspects that cannot be ignored.
Technical aspects - production, media types (electronic and physical) - this is the second large set of rational criteria (or restrictions, if you will).

I referred to financial aspects, however strange it may seem, including the management of graphic assets. Too often, I have watched companies reorder the same work that they did not so long ago, but with a loss of time and qualitatively different results. The financial implications here are colossal: this is the work time of several people, loss of identity (blurring of the visual image), which in turn reduces the value of advertising investments and gives a rather modest result even in the medium term.

So, the book describes the stages of research, development, registration and implementation (the latter - from the standpoint of managing graphics, rather than conducting presentations and the like).

And of course, the book is mainly about design, and not about trademarks. Therefore, the key words in the title are “the practice of creation”, and in order to determine the important, significant result of the application of this practice, we fix “trademarks”.

Two effects of reading the book, which I was glad

This, of course, about the first reviews of readers.

1. All reviews that are logical to write in the category of "positive", it is noted the practicality of the book - and both designers and customers.
2. People who read the book while working on similar tasks found in the book much more useful information applicable to the work than those who read it just like that (because I asked, for example).

Why does this make me happy? Because this is exactly what I thought about: to answer the questions that will be asked in the process of creating corporate styles and trademarks.

Why about practice?

Some of the first readers said: "Vanya, it is boring to read: I would write something philosophical." But there are already books, after which the sensations are good, and it is unclear what to do specifically and how.

So I decided to do ungrateful work :-) and try to systematize specific work.

By the way, I deliberately wrote nothing about specific tools, such as photoshop, illustrator, and the like. It was important for me to show the task as the customer sees it and the way the performer sees it. And this is the practice of relationships and agreements.

Book's contents

How to read, if now there is no problem, but I want to know for the future

This, by the way, I also found out thanks to the first readers.

In short, the answer will be this: if a chapter is read with difficulty, you can safely move on to the next one.
All chapters are very different in mood and degree of detail, because they describe too different components of the process.

Each chapter of the book about the creation of trademarks is quite an independent size, and in some cases they can be perceived as a text autonomous from the “book as a whole”.

There are chapters about design (usually it is more interesting for them to read just to curious people), there are those that are most about management issues - they are a bit more boring, but there are some interesting moments in them too.

Finally, there are, let's say, purely process chapters - about creating texts, conducting research and interviewing, about preparing mockups - they may seem quite boring, but this will be so until you take active steps, that is, practice . Then everything is aligned, and sometimes these same process chapters become more interesting than texts about graphics.

A few words about working with the publisher

The choice of publishing house was a difficult process (in fact, it is a mutual process, because publishing houses also choose authors).

I quickly threw the idea of ​​“doing everything myself” out of my head, although the manuscript was already sent to the publishing house in the form of a laid-out layout (yes, the layout is also mine, although the publishing specialists did the final layout).

Here are two main reasons:

1. Distribution. I didn’t want to deal with this issue myself, much less store stocks in the office or at home (after all, it’s necessary to make the book reach the readers, otherwise it’s not a book).
2. Promotion. It’s not at your fingertips, and with your own means, especially when there are people with ready-made solutions and an audience.

As a result, I was lucky, and the book was published in the MYTH. This is the best publishing business literature (I have a lot of their books, and I am far from an exception).

There is another cool bonus: working with the publisher, especially such advanced, like MYTH, allows you to meet and talk with other authors, and these are very interesting people.

Useful links:

1. A description of the book and several chapters are available on the publisher site
2. So far there is only a paper version, you can buy it at Ozone and soon the book should appear on the shelves of stores with which the publishing house cooperates .
3. My blog , and in particular a great post about how I worked on a book (process description, technical: when and how he wrote, tools and the like) .

www.create.tm

Soon we will launch a special site on which the model described in the book will also be presented in the form of a calculator of terms and costs of work on such a project. We are testing the version in which anyone can contribute the cost of the work of specialists and their expert estimates of time, and get a rough picture of the project in the form of a calendar.

While the site is being completed, there are a couple of interesting first reviews about the book.

I will answer questions, ask :-)