If a client approaches an industrial design firm with a project, he is likely to walk away with an industrial design very much like the one he ordered. If, however, he approaches a graphic design firm and asks for an identity, it's difficult to know exactly what he will come away with these days, says Michael Vanderbyl, principal of the 30-year-old design firm, Vanderbyl Design, located in San Francisco, Calif.

This isn't necessarily a failing of graphic design: It's just that the field is so much more holistic today that clients who don't know exactly what they want look to designers for help in many things. The design professional must learn not only to provide creative, but to serve as a business counselor as well.

It used to be much simpler. When Vanderbyl started his career in 1973, logo design was still largely dictated by the precepts of Swiss design. A logo design project was a logo design project. Now, a logo design project could wander just about anywhere, without the proper guidance. The designer feels it is his job to be that guide.

In his logo and identity work today, Vanderbyl subscribes to a number of precepts that help him and his client discover exactly what the client needs. “Our job is in the delineation of the problem, not necessarily in providing creative,” he says.





• Remember that you are not designing for your client: You are designing for your client's client. Even more difficult, it's crucial to convince the client of this fact.
“Once they acknowledge this, they can remove their personal tastes from the equation,” he says. “They are not buying a suit. The logo is not about them. You have to convince them that they are here to make money, not to have personal preferences.”

• In the course of these discussions—if he or she is truly unbiased—a designer may discover that the client doesn't need a logo at all. It's the designer's responsibility to tell the client that, not saddle them with a mark that has no real use, Vanderbyl says. Maybe the job simply requires some sort of type treatment. Having an actual logomark just is not as important as it used to be.
Or, a logo might be useful but not necessarily burdened with representing everything about the client. He cites an example from his own history to illustrate. To his eye, the Nike logo, when it swooped onto the scene, looked pretty awful. But, over time, he came to see how the mark could serve as an effective member of an identity team without necessarily being its captain.

• Get clients to think long-term. A brand can be a single product or service now, but down the road it may be many products or services. Being too specific or thinking small will cause the client to need a redesign in a matter of time, as well as cause him or her to lose valuable equity in what you have carefully, although short-sightedly, created.

• Realize that although they may know their own particular business, clients almost never know what is appropriate when it comes to an identity.
“Usually, they will have seen something that they like, or something from your own work perhaps, and they will want the same thing. That is exactly the wrong way to go about any design,” he says, adding that clients often want their logos to take on the style of whatever look is currently in style. “Logos must come from the subject matter at hand.”

• To purge a client of erroneous expectations, Vanderbyl says, “Listen to them forever.” The designer not only gets the full laundry list of what the client wants, it also educates him or her about any objections that are likely to come up during the presentation.

• Get the client to think in an abstract manner, at least in the beginning. This doesn't mean that the final design will be abstract, but rather that his or her mind should be tuned more to the symbolic rather than the literal.
“I ask them to describe their organization using several adjectives—but they can't use anything from their mission statement,” he says.

• In creating the actual logo or identity, Vanderbyl feels that being figurative is more successful these days—especially when considered against the doubtful attributes of the abstract geometries that have plagued the industry since the “dot bombs” came and went.

This is a different notion from the period of his training, when abstraction was far more prevalent. But whether people are too busy today to unravel abstract logos, or whether the glut of logos out there already demands a different approach, a figurative logo that tells some sort of story seems to be easier for people to grasp these days.