Mind Design.

Interviews with Mind design. I have highlighted points I find interseting in purple, to show what I am reflecting on when reading through the interview. 


Interview for IdN Magazine, 2009.

Is there any special reason naming your studio as Mind Design?
The name was more of a coincidence. In college I was very interested in visual poetry and word games. I just liked the fact the word 'in' is inside the word 'mind' so it could literally read 'in mind'. I still find it fascinating how subtle typographic arrangements can alter the meaning of a word. My first job after college was to design a window installation for a chain of fashion shops. I worked with words on large blocks and the word 'mind' was on one of them. Just when I was standing on a ladder my accountant rang asking what I wanted to name my company. At the time I didn't expect to last very long as self-employed so I didn't give it much thought. The word 'mind' was just in front of me and I told him to call it Mind Design. We actually never liked the name very much as it sounds a bit too clever. Nowadays we use all kinds of phrases that include the word 'mind' on our stationary so that it becomes a bit more random.

From your professional point of view, what makes a good identity work?
A good identity should be honest. It's like the face of a company, organisation or product and you do not want to be looking into a mask. Obviously it is nice when a visual identity has a certain design quality but this is very much dependent on personal taste and the fashion of the time when it was designed. I find it more important that an identity is applied in a consistent way. A logo on its own doesn't really make an identity and I would prefer to see a bad logo applied in a consistent way to a good one in a messy overall environment. Consistency doesn't mean that everything must be the same, it just means it should be consistently well designed and thought through.

The natural of identity has evolved greatly within these few years, it changes from being one single logo to an entire system. How would you respond to such evolution and do you foresee how far it would grow into?
Flexible logo systems are interesting and challenging for designers as they are more playful. They often work well for clients but not always. On the one hand they add more variety and move away from the rather stiff and authoritative aspects of traditional corporate identity, on the other hand they are much more difficult to control in their day to day application. We design many flexible identity systems but only do so if we are fully in control of their application, which is mostly the case with smaller companies. The last thing you want as a designer is the marketing department calling you every day asking 'which logo do we use today'? Even a single logo needs variations: a black and white version, often a version for small sizes, it must be saved in different file formats and colour modes. So one logo can mean ten different file formats; if you have five different logos the numbers can easily spiral out of control. Flexible logo systems either need a very detailed identity manual or the long term commitment of a design company.

What is the major difference you found designing an identity than any other design project?
Unless an identity is for a specific event or exhibition that has an end, they develop a life of their own. They almost become like children — when they move out of their family home, their parents are still concerned how they are doing. It is important to plan identities carefully and consider their possible applications in the future. Other design projects come back from the printer and they are finished. When they look good it gives you great satisfaction, but after a while we put them in our work archive and start to forget about them.

Would you care to elaborate the differences between identity and branding?
We never use the word branding in our studio. In my opinion it is something very different to what we do and seems more relevant to sales and marketing. Brand positioning always compares with what is already out there but we don't care too much about that. It also seems to be a very analytical 'one way' approach: if you want to achieve this you must look like that because your competitors already look like this... We have a more emotional and probably more random approach. I don't think there is one best 'solution' for an identity design. Something that I just happen to see on the street can give me an idea for a logo, if I would have walked down a different street I might have had a different idea. Focus groups don't work that way. We also put much more emphasis on craftsmanship. Often an accidental letter combination in the name can lead to a great logo or a certain form can be an idea in itself. Branding seems to develop forms out of ideas, we often develop ideas out of forms. With branding there also seems to be a tendency to overrate identity design. We work a lot for start up companies and if their product, management or service isn't good the best identity can't save them. 

What do you think is interesting and even magical about identity design that isn’t found in other type of design?
Identity works across different media (print, web, packaging, architecture, etc). I always find it fascinating when the different parts of a puzzle come together and suddenly make sense as a whole. Especially when a design shows variation and an individual approach to each application.

What is the common challenge you often face when you are designing identity?
The early stages of an identity development are the most challenging but also the most interesting. We often find it difficult to decide how far we should include the client in the process or when to stop. If we show all our sketches they might think we don't know what we are doing, if we show just one final version they may not value the amount of work that went into it. Its a funny thing, in a way the amount of work doesn't make the logo better, I think its really possible to design a good logo in your lunch break on a napkin but on the other hand when we are working on something really hard we often feel we want to show the whole process to the client. I suppose flexible identity systems still retain more of the process as well as different possibilities.