An interview with
Bill Gardner
You can also watch this interview on my YouTube channel
Arek Dvornechuck:
What's up branding experts? — Arek here at Ebaqdesign. In this episode I interview Bill Gardner and we talk about generating logo design ideas. And Bill established himself as an influential figure in logo design space through his brand called Logo Lounge which is the world's largest logo design gallery, and book series. So every year Bill puts together logo design trends report surveying the logo landscape for over 20 years. And Bill still manages to work with clients under his own design firm Gardner Design. So he has released about 10 volumes of Logo Lounge book with extra four volumes; which are master series, and these books contain some of the examples of best logos from top designers, but bill also published a book about the process - the logo design process that's called Logo Creed ("Logo Creed: The Mystery, Magic, And Method Behind Designing Great Logos") and this is the book we are going to talk about today. So, Bill is an expert when it comes to logo design, and that's why I really wanted to have him on our podcast. Hello Bill, Thank you so much for taking the time to join us on our podcast!
Bill Gardner:
Excellent! Hey Arek, I’m so glad to be joining you! This is going to be fun.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Sure! You review a huge amount of logos, new logos from top designers every year. But you also design logos and brand identities for your clients. I wanted to make this podcast practical for our listeners. So, we would love you to share with us some tips for how to come up with better logo design ideas; because you are so experienced. Whether it is for designers who just want to level up and be more creative, or for entrepreneurs who would like to just learn about the process in order to generate better ideas for their logo.
Bill Gardner:
Yeah! One of the things that is just really fortunate for me through Logo Lounge is having contacts with so many incredibly talented local designers around the world, and becoming friends, we have a lot of good conversation. And this is a topic that comes up very often and probably is one of the most asked questions about; how do you develop great logos. And I suspect you probably know George Bokhua - the designer, he was one of our jurors in logo land book 11, and he made the comment to me that… and I love the way he kind of developed this analogy. It was that as designers that it's a little bit like fishing that if; everybody sets their hook to the same level and we're kind of fishing in that same water towards the top of a lake, or the sea, or a pond, or whatever it is, we're all going to catch about the same fish. But once you really get into a project, if you start diving deeper and deeper in that body of water, you're going to go through a period there where you don't appear to see much of anything. But then, you're going to get to the bottom and you're going to start to see fish and things that you've never seen before. And I think it's this amazing analogy of; too many people are fishing in that same water where we're all working with the same basic premises and ideas when we start to work on a logo, and it's too easy for us to quit when we think that; hey! We’ve got a couple of fish, we can eat these. But if you really put that effort into it, you're going to take that effort down to a level that other people haven't experienced before, and you're going to start introducing ideas that they've not seen before. And of course, that's an analogy. But in reality, I think the premise of what George was saying, and you know this is repeated by other designers - is that too many of us stop too quickly. We don't take our investigation deeply enough and try and get into areas that others aren't in. So, if you're looking at what everybody else is producing, and of course it's valuable to do that. Because it gives you a good sense of where the market is, but you also have the peril of potentially creating exactly what everybody else is doing and that may not be bad for some clients. But in reality, it doesn't move the industry and what we do forward with branding.
Arek Dvornechuck:
You right, and this is awesome. So you mentioned, investigation is really important right? And this is actually one of my first questions because you know every logo design project should start with some kind of discovery and research, right? So, in your book, you talk quite a lot about discovery phase when it comes to you know researching the company and its history; if it's a rebrand or its vision for the future, if it's a startup and then defining the scope of work, and perhaps the brand personality, and the tone of voice that would be appropriate for that brand. And then conducting some competitive research, because the ultimate goal is to differentiate us, right? So, can you just talk a bit about the importance of discover and research prior to actually jumping right into sketch, generating log design concepts, sketching ideas and thinking about the aesthetics? So how important is that and what questions should we ask; either ourselves, if we are doing this in-house or just our clients if you are working with clients?
Bill Gardner:
Yeah, you know it's a great question because I wouldn't enter into a project that I was not allowed to go into the discovery process first. How can you? If you think about it, it's kind of like saying ‘I want to be a doctor, I’m just going to go start cutting on somebody’, but you know nothing about what you're cutting, or surgical procedures, or you've never stooled as a doctor. And as designers, gosh! You know one of the great things is that we have that opportunity to learn new fields and new clients, every week we take on somebody different it seems like. And when you start working on what is going to represent that client, it's impossible to do that unless you have this tremendous foundation in; who their clients are? Who they are? What's their personality? How are they perceived in the market? Who are they selling to? How are they selling? Why are they selling? What's the history of this particular entity? How did they get to where they got to? And there's all of this information which ultimately impacts the decision of the consumer on why they're going to build a brand affinity in the first place. And you know, I hate the fact that there are so many designers that are very facile, they're very … they don't get into the discovery on the front end outside of some very, very basic questions. And you know, that that that is truly what makes the difference between an exceptional brand - And when I’m saying Brand, I’m certainly not meeting a logo, I mean that is a part of it. But what makes the difference between a tremendous brand and a failed brand is that entity's ability to understand who it's selling to and its consumers. So, when we start with a new client, certainly we meet with their stakeholders; those individuals that are going to ultimately have some say in this. But also imagine this. Your impression of yourself is probably not a real accurate impression to other people. The way I picture myself probably is about 20 years younger, but I realized that to other people, that's not what they picture. So, it's also so critical to spend this time through survey work, or coming to understand what the outside influencers think of that particular client. I think it was…I’m trying to recall who it was it made the comment that a brand isn't what we say we are, but a brand is what they say we are. And that's really so true. Maybe that was Jeff Bezos that made that comment, but that; how do we get to that point because if we're just listening to our client, and we receive a brief from them telling us what to do, then it is a very jaded perspective of what we're actually creating. The outcome of that discovery process really needs to be a design brief, or a document which serves as your guidelines and objectives; that is agreed upon by the client and by you. And I don't know how a designer can even get into a project without having that kind of a document because it does two really important things. One, it serves as your director, if you will, and gives you a set of elements that have to be achieved. But secondly, it protects you with your client. So that when it comes time to present to them, and you show them your work, and you state; it does this, and this, and this, and this, going down your brief - they can't deny it. You know, there may be some subjective opinion in there, but if they come back to you at that point and say “yes, but did you consider this?” That's your opportunity to say “well no, we didn't consider that. We didn't put that in the original design brief, but if you would like to put that in there, we can certainly go back and do some more design of course that's going to be at an additional fee if we want to include that”. So, that's why it's important that both the client and the designer agree to this document before the work process starts.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Nice. So, it's really important - just to sum up for designers or their entrepreneurs. So for both, it's really important for designers to understand the company and understand the landscape and then combine it with your design skills to produce great work. And for entrepreneurs, you have to have an agreement; sometimes - like from my own experience, I have sometimes clients; they ask me hey what do you think about this logo and that logo. But I wasn't involved in the process, I don't know the company, I don't know the history, I don't know your objectives. I can just judge your logo design contest from the aesthetics point of view, but you really need to have that foundation, right?
Bill Gardner:
Yeah. You and I both, because I know you're a very talented designer. Occasionally we'll see a new logo introduced for a company, and we'll look at it and kind of go “Really? That's the best they could come up with?” But at the same time, we also recognize; sometimes we'll look at those and we'll go “man I know they're a much better designer than that” and we can almost read into it that the client probably directed them down this alley towards a solution that ultimately didn't please anybody. Or we look at a solution and we go “wow”. I really hate that, but, I don't know what the design brief was. I don't know what they were told to do and as far as I know, they may well have you know surveyed their audience and found that this ugly design is the absolute thing that speaks best to them. So, you know, you make a great point that unless you know the objectives that a designer was designing to, it's really, really hard for us to make a super critical judgment of their work.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right. So you need to have some guidelines, you need to have some criteria. Otherwise it's just going to be like; whoever got the more power here, whoever is the decision maker is just going to be like about some personal preferences, it's not going to be objective, it's going to be very subjective.
Bill Gardner:
I love the fact that you just use the word “objective” in there. Because you know, designers live in a very subjective world, and I try to press this point because we don't work for other designers, we work for clients that usually live in a highly objective world. And just as a differentiation of words, if you're dealing with the any c-level position within a company; a CFO or a COO or a CEO, they are objective thinkers. And to them, if they brought in 12 accountants let's say, and said “add up this column of numbers” all of those accountants should be able to come up with exactly the same sum, that is an objective problem. A subjective problem is as designers, if they brought in 12 designers, they could have all of them designing a solution that would represent that company and all of them may be just amazing solutions - just incredible solutions, they will be very different answers.
Arek Dvornechuck:
(Now we are going to take a quick break here, but we will be right back. Listen! My mission is to help people design iconic brands. So, whether you're a business leader who wants to be more intentional with branding and all of its aspects or you are a creative who wants to attract powerful clients and truly be able to help them with branding, then you need to start with a discovery session and then develop a strategy that will inform all your creative work. And everything you need to learn how to do that, you can find in my online courses at ebaqdesign.com/shop; where I share with you my worksheets, case studies, video tutorials and other additional resources to help you feel safe and strong about your process. And now let's get back to our conversation with Bill Garner.)
Arek Dvornechuck:
So now I want to talk about different types of logos. Because in your book you say “Designers and non-designers alike are guilty of using words such as; ‘Logo’, ‘Icon’, ‘Symbol’ and ‘Mark’ interchangeably”. So as interchangeable synonyms, but they don't really mean the same right? So in your book you make this distinction, so can we just talk about what's the difference between different types of logos, and how to decide on which one we should choose for our project?
Bill Gardner:
Sure. Do you mean such as; whether it's a word mark or a symbol?
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right. A monogram, pictorial mark, abstract mark and word mark.
Bill Gardner:
Right. Let me share just a little bit more - maybe deeper thinking on this for just a minute, and I know that this is something that you're very familiar with because I’m familiar with your work with archetypes. But I’m going to talk for just a minute about brand personality, and how that affects your decision as to, if it is a crest or a monogram or a hard geometric conceptual symbol or what you have in there. There is a really wonderful individual whose name is Jennifer Aaler and I’m going to spell that last name so if any of your listeners want to look it up they can. It's A-A-K-E-R. And the professor at the university of Sanford, and she is in marketing. But back in 1997, she basically did a really incredibly extensive study that says; you know much like people have personalities, brands have personalities as well. And she ended up breaking down branding into a total of five different dimensions. And just very quickly, I’m going to say the dimensions are: ‘Sincerity’, ‘Excitement’, ‘Competence’, ‘Sophistication’ and ‘Ruggedness’. And for each of those different dimensions, there were a series of trait words associated with it. So, if it was sincerity, if a brand had a level of sincerity; words like ‘Authentic’, ‘Original’, ‘Family’, these are all words that have connotations of ‘Sincerity’ associated with them. And no company is just purely any one of those personalities. As designers, by trying to break down your client into a couple of those personality groups, and saying maybe that a company is 60% sincerity and 20% confidence and 20% excitement, then we have the necessary things we need to be able to make the kind of determinants that you just suggested. So give an example here. When we talk about ‘Sincerity’, companies that rank very highly on sincerity might be Coca-Cola, Hallmark, Disney, Campbell’s, Pillsbury, and if I think about brands like those; let's specifically think about Coca-Cola and its script. Think about the Disney logo, and how it's handwritten. Think about Hallmark and that kind of scriptures. Now, this isn't to say that all sincere companies have a logo that is done in script. But in fact, the reason that that's in script is because that autograph - that signature, gives the impression of authenticity or of the word of the individual behind it. So, as designers we intuitively know many of these things. If I go all the way down to ‘Rugged’ and I say rugged is companies like Dodge Ram or Levi or Timberland or Caterpillar, these are all brands that have these relatively chunky letter forms as part of their brand of their work. And part of that is because that letter form being as weighty as it is, gives that an impression of more solidness. Coming back to Ruggedness, if we look at competent companies, they typically are going to be companies that have a mid-weight letter form. A lot of times their symbol that represents them if you think of UPS or FedEx or Maytag or Lexus, these are all companies to fit into competency very squarely, are going to be midway letter forms often if they have a logo, it's going to be somewhat conceptual as opposed to literal. So, because we have these cues as designers that we recognize that help identify these types of personalities. If we can identify the personality of our client, then we can start to look at other clients that have that kind of personality and pick up on the tones that best represent that personality. I’m not sure that I would use a monogram as you had just suggested, that was very light and full of great detail and frill. If I was working on a company that sits squarely in a highly Rugged category; it might be more perfect for somebody in Sincerity. If I were using an old world looking crest, I probably wouldn't attach that to a company in excitement, because excitement tends to fit with trait words that are about things that make you feel on edge, or make you feel a little bit uncomfortable, or get your blood pressure or your pulse rate up. So intuitively, we as designers know those different visuals that represent different cues for a company. Does that make sense?
Arek Dvornechuck:
Yes it does! Yes it does. So just to sum up, basically brand personality plays a huge role in determining what kind of the style you should go with, and type of your logo. So just to go over those different types of logos just for our listeners, so basically, based on your discovery and research you could determine whether you should go with monogram; so for example like IBM, CNN, if the name is long, or for some reason you might want to use the first letter. Like a letter form or initial or perhaps pictorial marks, it could be a pictorial mark like Apple or WWF logo; which is basically just like a literal representation - a visual representation of some things, or an animal. Yeah go ahead.
Bill Gardner:
So your suggestions, you're making are all tremendous examples. The challenge that we have as designers is that - this is as valuable as I will tell you, using personality to help define a client is, its just one component of our brand of thinking. So you know, I mean as we both know there are so many different layers, complexities in considering; how to best identify a company. So when you start talking about is a monochrome, is it just a single letter that serves as a minimal device like caterpillars, letter “C” to remind you that; okay it's going to be a company that starts with the letter “C” or if it is something like ABC or NBC or CBS where we actually use a series of letters that represent the company or UPS. You know, those are all really critical considerations that you have to make in there; am I going to work with the initials company or am I going to cast those aside and spell it out as united partial service and deal with a symbol that like the one that Lauren had originally designed that was so beautiful. But even that had an opportunity for UPS. And you know, these are all just - there are so many thousands of decisions that we have to make. And I think as designers we forget that with our experience and sage-ness that we tend to take a lot of these decisions for granted because we just naturally know how to do them. I don't know how much you know about me, but I actually put myself through school doing magic. And in magic there are any number of moves that you can do to make an object vanish or disappear, so I could hold a coin in my hand and make that coin vanish. But it's a simple mechanical move that I go through, but I have to make it look very natural. And because I’ve done it so many times, I don't have to think about it when I do it, I can just make the coin vanish. But as a young designer, you know a young designer can become so caught up in the process that their decisions don't create a natural and an evident solution, and the more they learn, the more natural certain decisions come to them. They're designing for a client that has some level of elegance associated with their – sophistication, they naturally might go to all capital letters in a Serif font that are broadly letter spaced. I mean, they don't have to think about that, they just know that that is one of those visual cues that we use to kind of symbolize elegance. So, the more experienced designers have, the easier it is for them to kind of naturally not have to ask every question that's out there.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right. Yeah and I do know that you're a magician as well because I’ve done… yeah and I think it yeah, I’ve listened to support like on the logo geek podcast for example you tell the story. So yeah, so for you guys who, but most of our listeners probably will know you because you're pretty known in the industry, but for those young starting designers who don't know you yet, Bill is also a magician. So he uses this analogy just because you can make this three so you practice so many times to do the trick so it looks natural. And you use this analogy for designers who - because as designers we know our craft and if we do it all over and over and over and over again. Some things we just do unconsciously right. And it's so natural for us but it's also helpful, we sometimes need to like take a step back and just either write this down or just elaborate on that; like also explain it to the client why we've made those decisions, where we go with this kind of style or why we decided on ongoing with this type of logo. Because some types of logos will work better for some; either for some brand names or some categories or… there are some factors, there are advantages and these disadvantages of age.
Bill Gardner:
I’m really glad you said that, because you know it's a situation where sometimes we; you and I become so comfortable because we already have that knowledge that we forget why we've done it. And it's important to remember why you know we do something. Because over a period of times things change, and if I vanish the coin exactly the same way every time, eventually somebody's going to catch on to what I’m doing. So, it's important for us to be aware that things change. You know, different audiences view different things in different ways especially over time. Otherwise you and I are designing logos that really look like they should have been designed 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago, it's important that we too be very cognizant of those selections and decisions we make design wise, so that we don't find ourselves becoming dinosaurs.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right. Okay, so yeah there's a lot of things, there's a lot of different factors, but you go into details in your book, so yeah I really recommend for you guys to check out the book and there are many different considerations and the questions that you can ask your clients or questions you can ask yourself internally if you're for a business leader. So now let's just jump into like; so once we know once we've done some research and I’ve done some discovery and made some decisions, and have this design brief, now we want to know how to generate better logo ideas. So where do we find inspiration, where to start? Because in your book you say “There is nothing more dangerous than just having one idea” So basically you recommend to start off by generating tons of ideas and sketching a lot, sketching many different concepts and at the beginning you recommend to don't just stop yourself from charging them and just go for quantity, and then you go for quality and then you revise them maybe combine those ideas and so on. So, you shouldn't rely on some kind of a lightning strike of genius as you said. So you need to really sketch a lot and try different concepts and try different ideas and eventually you will narrow it down to some promising ideas and then you can execute them, right?
Bill Gardner:
I love the fact that you pulled that particular quote out, which is that “there's no idea as dangerous as the only idea you have”. Somebody shared that with me years ago but it's so true. You know, when we only have one idea then it's basically saying; you haven't worked very hard so far. So let me let me just say this in regards to I did generation. None of us, none of us live in a vacuum and our clients don't live in a vacuum, and the consumers don't live in a vacuum. Symbology and symbolism is continually shifting and changing. There are a whole series of elements that 10 years ago didn't exist, whether it would be the Wi-Fi symbol or the cloud symbol or a little hamburger that indicates more information on a website or all of these things. Symbology, it's a very active dynamic; it's continually shifting and changing. But one of my greatest beliefs is that as designers, we get somewhere quicker by standing on the shoulders of others, and that means you know taking a look at what other designers have done to give us some level of inspiration. Now, inspiration is very different than theft, and I’m not talking about stealing at all. But for instance somebody becomes a member of Logo Lounge and Logo Lounge which has close to 350,000 logos that have been uploaded by the members. And it is a paid site, its $100 annually. But when you go on there, you are able to search through those logos in such a way that; for instance if you were designing a concept, and maybe the concept was ‘excitement’ and you type in the word “Excitement” then you're going to get literally hundreds of logos associated with the word excitement so you can see how other designers have dealt with that, or maybe you've decided that you're going to design a logo and it's going to be a fish. And you type in “Fish” and you may get you know 2500 fish logos that come up or you can start to limit that down to the very best of logos, so you only get 500 fish or something like that. But you've got to be able to be aware of what other people have done because it is what the consumers are already aware of and responding to. Now again, not saying to take somebody else's ideas, but you know that - gosh before there was logo lines, there were plenty of logo books and there still are, and one of the reasons as designers would get them isn't necessarily to look at our artwork. It's to look at the work of others, and to look to them for influence and inspiration in how to show an idea that is fresh. I’ll end this comment with this; we work in a world of clichés and I hate to say that. But a cliché is that idea that's been used over and over and over so many times, but it's called a cliché because it works. It's called a cliché because people understand it. Our objective as designers is to take an idea that may appear cliché and overused and… like George Bokhua said “To fish so deep with that idea that we start to bring out new ways to demonstrate that idea” You know, it still may be a cliché but it's going to be something that somebody looks at and goes ‘wow I’ve never seen anything like that before’, it's how good we are as designers, it’s the proof of you know our ability to take a cliché and present it in entirely fresh concepts so that nobody realizes it's a cliché.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right, and I think it's a great tip for all designers - for all people who want to design better logos to just go beyond clichés and take it further and just experiment with that. So yeah, as you mentioned, you can look for inspirational Logo Lounge and you categorize all those logos and these are some of the best logos out there, because you know these are some of the top designers. And it's just easy to type in some keyword and account and it's going to show you a bunch of different; like how older designers approach a similar subject, right? So it can inspire you, it's not to copy; because that's not the goal of the logo and that's a theft. But you know it's just to inspire you and see what was done and how can you perhaps use that or combine some different concepts from different logos, from different designs. So this gets us closer to the last thing I wanted to talk about which is trend - trends in logo design, because you review a lot of logos and you're probably the most experienced person when it comes to logo design, the trends in logo design industry. So, we were talking about clichés, now I want to talk about trends a little bit. So what's the difference between a ‘Cliché’ and a ‘Trend’ and something that goes out of style, and how to determine whether we should rely on some trends or whether we should just be more conservative and try to make the logo timeless and classic, what do you think?
Bill Gardner:
Sure. So, when we put together the trend reports, and those by the way are for free on the Logo Lounge site, you can just go up under trends and take a look at our trend reports going back to 2003. Trends to me, now first of all let me catch this. Trends and trendy are two entirely different words. A trend is a trajectory. A trend is looking at evolution. If something is trending in a direction, it doesn't mean that it is stopped there, it just means that things are trending in that direction, they're moving. And when we identify trends, there are so many things out there that you know don't fall within our trends. They are beautiful design, they're masterfully done. So, it's not saying that you need to follow trends. The reason for identifying trends is so that you can start to see how design is evolving. And I’m going to use this analogy real quickly, if I were to show you a map, and let's say it's a map of the United States and I would put a pin right in the middle of it, and tell you that this is a person and that they're traveling where are they going to be tomorrow, you would have no idea because you don't know which direction they're going or how they're traveling, if it's by air or by boats or by car, you have no idea. But if I were to show you that same map and say; here's where that person is today, here's where they were yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. Then, you can start to see; well okay that person is traveling about 500 miles a day, they're traveling from the west coast to the east coast, and then you can forecast where you think they're going to be. So let's apply that to design, if you're looking at logos and you see that suddenly there's a lot of focus on the use of transparency. Or that suddenly this gradation that occurs inside of a monocline that shows transition, seems to be in effect. You have a couple of choices there. You can say; okay I’m going to disregard this. Or you can say; I like what's going on there, I’m going to emulate that in my design. And that's I think the worst. Or where you can say; what I like this idea of a gradation occurring inside of a mono line because it shows transition and it shows a path. But I like the idea of this line instead of it being a model line starting to open up and undulate. Then you've just evolved an idea forward, so that you are taking something that has already been going on, but you are introducing your own ideas into it in such a way that it's moving ideas forward. And this is the beauty of looking at trends that are occurring. Every one of us lives by trends; what we read, what we eat, where we shop, the things that we wear, all of that is based in trends. It's what we do with those trends, the way we elect to mix up our wardrobe, the shirt that we buy with the pants that we put on, with the shoes that we get. I mean, we make our own look out of that, but all of those elements came about because of trends and that's where we utilize trends in logo design - is to be able to identify where we're evolving to and the trajectory of design, not just saying ‘I want to do that trend’.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right. Yeah so, trends are about the evolution, right? So you look at the trends and then you think about how we can take it, and whether you can use it for your designs because you think it's a great way to express whatever you need to express from the brief. So let's say you have some keywords, you write down those keywords then you search for those keywords on Logo Lounge and you find some ideas, you find some trends, and you think; can I apply it, can I do something with that, maybe I can combine this with some, maybe I can do something similar but better because I could use it differently, and things like that. But also, I just wanted to mention for our listeners - some logos, they don't have a long lifespan. So like for example you mentioned in the book like Olympic Games, right? But other logo design projects, you might want to avoid trends and you may want to make it the logo super like timeless and classic, as timeless and classic as possible. So there are some considerations if the logo is one-off event, maybe you could use trends because the next time you will have to design a new logo or…
Bill Gardner:
All I do is I report on those. I never show a trend and say; boy I sure love this. What I do is I say; I’m reporting, I’m identifying these clusters of similar logos that are doing something technique-wise or subject-wise or in whatever way that are common and new and I’m reporting on them. And some of them I might hate, some of them I do like, but all we can do in a trend is report them, it's never a matter of endorsing it and saying ‘you should do this’.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right, and you even say that in your book, so you're basically… you're observing all those trends and you analyze them and you categorize them and you see where they're coming from, you look at the history of those trends and how they may evolve in the future, and you just try to advise designers. But you say that in your book that; it isn't meant for a guide - as a guide for best practices, these are just to show you some trajectories and how trends may evolve, so that you can just take those ideas and push your design skills to the next level, right?
Bill Gardner:
And the book that you're talking about, which is called Logo Creed C-R-E-E-D, I think we produced that in 2014, so six years old, the foundation is still perfect as far as what's in there. Some of the materials getting a little bit older but the foundation of how we do things is still in there. And I think one of my comments that I make in the book is that… and this is just exactly what you just said which is; it's more important to know how you got there than to know where you are. And that relates back to this idea of... if you just look at a trend and say; I’m just going to emulate that trend, you don't have any idea how that designer came to that decision, and why that trend worked for the client that they used it on. But if you understand how that trend came about, then you know how you got there, you know where you are and you know whether or not it is correct for your client or not.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right, so yeah. So I recommend for all you guys to check out the trends for 2020. Now you are probably soon you are going to work on the next book for 2021.
Bill Gardner:
We've got 2022 right now. We're just wrapping up Logo Lounge book 12 as we speak.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Oh okay, all right. So I just wanted to ask you as we are approaching the end of our episode, how you want other designers to connect with you, what's the best way to get in touch with you and I will just include those links in the description box. And perhaps for clients who want to work with you how they can get in touch with you as well?
Bill Gardner:
Sure, well they're always welcome to log on to Logolounge.com and that's the primary site. And again, it's a 100% annual membership but I guarantee with that, not only do you have access to this highly searchable database of hundreds of thousands of logos, but it also gives you the ability to upload your own work to the site, and any work uploaded is always considered by our panel of judges in the next book. So anything that somebody would upload today would be considered for book number 13 - when we do Logo Lounge Book 13. And Logo Creed is listed amongst books on the site as well as our books that we produce from our competition. If you want to reach out to me, feel free to reach out to me at bill@logolounge.com. And I’m a pretty easy person to talk to and I always enjoy speaking with designers that have been doing what I’ve been doing because they always teach me something new.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right yeah, and I see that quite a lot, you appear on a lot of different podcasts and different blogs which is awesome! Because we need someone like you to guide us and it's great. It's a pleasure.
Bill Gardner:
I might quickly add in here, if anybody wants to there is LinkedIn Learning; there are probably ten different courses that I have on there. LinkedIn Learning is such it used to be.com but it is such an incredible tool. And I go through my trend reports on there, if you're a member of LinkedIn Learning or if you want to buy a membership, lots and lots of tremendous designers like Bon Glick and you know, I can't even name all of them that are on there. But what we are talking about today is covered in those courses that I’ve produced on LinkedIn Learning. So, just go there and type in Bill Gardner and you'll see all the different courses that I do.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Sure, so I’ll include all those links in the description box for you guys so you can check out and be hopefully be able to generate better logo design ideas. So Bill, thank you so much for coming on the show and I really appreciate that!
Bill Gardner:
Well, I appreciate your passion for identity design and the work that you do as well, and thank you very much for having me.
Arek Dvornechuck:
So this is it for today's episode! And make sure to go and check out Bill's website and follow him on social media. You can find all the links on this episode's page at ebaqdesign.com/podcast/11. Thanks for tuning in, and if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe to my podcast for more tips on branding, strategy and design. This was Arek Dvornechuck from Ebaqdesign.
