An interview with
Michael Johnson
You can also watch this interview on my YouTube channel
Also check out Michael's course on Domestika.
*PS. Below you will find an auto-generated transcript of this episode.
Arek Dvornechuck:
What’s up branding experts? — Arek here at Ebaqdesign, and our guest today is Michael Johnson. And Michael is one of the world’s leading graphic designers and brand consultants. His studio, Johnson Banks, is responsible for the rebranding of many notable clients...including brands like: Virgin Atlantic, Think London, BFI, Christian Aid, and MORE TH>N, and he has won plenty of awards in the process. Michael is also the author of the book: “Branding: In Five and a Half Steps”. Michael is an expert when it comes to branding and that’s why I wanted to have him on our podcast—to talk about the process of branding a startup. Hello Michael, thank you so much for taking the time to join us, on our podcast.
Michael Johnson:
Um, well thank you very much for inviting me.
Arek Dvornechuck:
So first I wanted to say that, um, your book is quite different than anything out there is quite a big is a big format just for our listeners who are either creative professionals or, uh, business leaders. And, uh, it's pretty heavy, but it's easy to read because you give us a lot of examples and case studies and it's full of illustrations if you guys can see. So you really gave us a ton of examples, so we can understand all of this know tools and techniques that you talked about and, and your process. So which really makes, makes it easy to comprehend of all the different aspects of a brand building. So, um, I just wanted to talk about, uh, I just want to make it actionable for our listeners and talk about your process before that. Can we just get on the same page in terms of, uh, what is branding because many people, different people would define what a brand is and what branding is and in different ways. So what, how would you define what's the best definition of, of what our brand is?
Michael Johnson:
I have, I have pretty broad definitions of branding, really. Um, my work covers all aspects of branding, um, the definition of a brand and the brand identity, I guess, the way it looks. So, um, I like the definitions of brand, which are all about that, which take a very wide view. Um, and a friend of mine has a definition of brand being like film production, getting all of the elements together, um, and then expressing a clear idea. Um, I think that's a nice way of looking at it. I also think that, uh, Jeff B's comment about Brandon is a good one. A brand is what, you're, what people say about you when you're not in the room. Um, I think that's another nice way of saying it. So I am very much of the broad holistic view that it's the words and the images and the identity that you use that make up this concept of branding.
Michael Johnson:
I have, I have pretty broad definitions of branding, really. Um, my work covers all aspects of branding, um, the definition of a brand and the brand identity, I guess, the way it looks. So, um, I like the definitions of brand, which are all about that, which take a very wide view. Um, and a friend of mine has a definition of brand being like film production, getting all of the elements together, um, and then expressing a clear idea. Um, I think that's a nice way of looking at it. I also think that, uh, Jeff B's comment about Brandon is a good one. A brand is what, you're, what people say about you when you're not in the room. Um, I think that's another nice way of saying it. So I am very much of the broad holistic view that it's the words and the images and the identity that you use that make up this concept of branding.
Arek Dvornechuck:
So you present us, uh, with, uh, five steps, five and a half that's right. Uh, so the first step would always be about investigation or research. So the first step would be to find out, you know, where the bandstands as of now. So if it's a startup, maybe it's more like about where we want to, where do we want to go? Uh, so which requires, uh, invent to investigate immerse our self in, out of a research, right? So we need to understand the issues before we actually propose an a development solutions, because as you say, in your book world, the biggest amputation at the start of any branding project is for someone to stand up and declare that they know exactly what the problem is and how it should be fixed. So it's, so can you just walk us through the research phase because give us some tips on how to properly conduct audit in order to focus on the right types of problems?
Michael Johnson:
Yeah, well, I think that, um, as a bit of background to this, um, I really am for, in my twenties, I spent most of my time as a graphic designer and I was frustrated really, because I would think that I was providing, finding the perfect solution, perfect design solution to a project. Yeah, I would present it. And I would realize that I was presenting a great solution to the wrong problem often. Um, and I know this comes with experience I suppose, but also it made me realize that I had to spend more time working on what the problem really was. And sometimes a client will say, well, the problem is this. And then when you a little look, when you investigate, when you look at the market that they're in, or you look at their competitors, or you look at the sector, you realize that even when sometimes the client has it wrong and they, they think that the problem is X, but really the problem is Y. So, um, we have for really, for quite a while now, accouple of decades been spending quite a lot of time digging, looking at a market, looking at a sector, looking at competitors, finding out what other people say, um, for, so that's for established brands and organizations for startups. You're really looking at the sector where they're planning to go. And, um, usually startups have an idea about where they will sit in the sector. So you're just checking if the gaps that they've identified, whether there's a market in that gap and whether that's the best idea, um, startups usually have a pretty good idea that there will be a gap. Um, that's why they're starting up. So that's what we do. I mean, we do a lot of visual and verbal auditing, and sometimes we do a lot of interviewing with established funds to find out what people think, uh, that, where they think they should be going and what they think the problem is. So it's, uh, it's kind of research really. Um, and it can take it many forms in many levels and it could take as little as two weeks, or it could take two months, three months, four months sometimes, but that's what we do first.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right? So it's always the first step. So just so some of my takeaways, but I will listen to it. As you talk in your book, you talk about visual, all the variable, all the behavior, all the competitive audit and paid all of it. Right? And you describe all those types of all this hair analysis, which is about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, target market analysis, which is about looking at the customers and creating, uh, uh, personas and using archetypes to identify those customers. And then also present us with this exercise past present and future, which is, you know, about, uh, attributes as of now and how they have changed. If, if it's unestablished confidence, you just said how, uh, how it has changed, uh, from the past and what are our aspirations for the future, right? Yeah. So, so that would be the first step.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right? So it's always the first step. So just so some of my takeaways, but I will listen to it. As you talk in your book, you talk about visual, all the variable, all the behavior, all the competitive audit and paid all of it. Right? And you describe all those types of all this hair analysis, which is about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, target market analysis, which is about looking at the customers and creating, uh, uh, personas and using archetypes to identify those customers. And then also present us with this exercise past present and future, which is, you know, about, uh, attributes as of now and how they have changed. If, if it's unestablished confidence, you just said how, uh, how it has changed, uh, from the past and what are our aspirations for the future, right? Yeah. So, so that would be the first step.
Arek Dvornechuck:
And then the second step would be to strategize. Uh, so in the second step of your bending process, uh, you, you talk about it's all about the waters, right? It's all about the variable. It's all about describing and defining that brand before we actually, before it actually becomes a visual. So here you say, quote, you can choose to have your brand defined by your customers or clients, or you can choose to try to define it yourself and quote. So can you talk about many different tools and techniques to define that allows us to define brands as well. And, uh, you know, I start, you talk quite a lot about brand purpose, brand personality, of course, positioning and so on. And there are many different aspects of branding. So, uh, can you just talk to us about this strategy, not the stance and what, and perhaps, can you walk us, just give us an overview overview of your six brand questions framework.
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 build and 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 professional who wants to attract powerful clients and truly be able to help them with branding, then you need to start with a discovery session in order to develop a strategy that will inform all of your creative work and everything that you need to learn, how to do that. You can find in my online courses@ebacdesign.com slash shop, what I share with you and 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 interview.
Michael Johnson:
Yeah, well, the reason why I started doing this, and for years I would work with strategists, but I, I, I became a little, I'm not sure happy with the work that they were doing to me. And also I started to work about 20 years ago, I started work with more not-for-profit and what we call NGO clients. Um, and they often didn't have the budget to do a massive strategic stage, but we knew that we had to help them define what they stood for. So you find the words that they could agree from, which we could then build a visual brand around. So the verb brand would then lead to the visual brand. So we would, at that time, 20 years ago, we were still using the kind of, um, what you might call the brand jargon. I wish a lot of people still use, you know, what is your brand destiny and what are your, your overwhelming brand vision and all of this stuff.
Michael Johnson:
And actually what I to did was take all of that jargon out because I discovered that many of my clients didn't really understand it. I felt that I was hiding behind the job. And so I just started that very simple question. Do you know, who are we here for? What do we do? Um, what makes us different? What do we value the most? Um, what's our personality. So the sever, very simple questions. And by asking these really simple questions, I realize it would work much, much better in meetings and workshops because people go, oh, well, okay, what do we value them? So rather than saying, ladies and gentlemen, we're doing brand values. I just say, what do you value the most? What kind of personality do you think you have or would you like to, and that actually are much, much more useful and it led to much better discussions. And then as we kind of plotted these questions, we would end up with this the most important question, which is why we're here, or what have you been caught on this earth to do? And this is especially useful for my clients. Yes. Thanks.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Just wanting it to show out until I was listening. That's what we are talking about.
Michael Johnson:
Particularly complicated version of the diagram that's the real kind of detail.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Most of are more advanced. Yeah.
Michael Johnson:
In the middle of this program. There's this idea that it'snot such a new idea. If you take most of the brand models from most brand consultancies across the world, there's always something at the core, but people have all sorts of different words. And I like the idea of just saying, well, what's the why, why are we here? What's up purpose. What's what, why, what, what, what have we been put on this earth to do? And I find that very useful because that's, then people have to answer the question. Why are we here? Okay. So because of the world needs beta, or where building a fair education for everyone, or, you know, those kind of questions, they're very high questions, but they've really helped people because most clients, most companies, unless organizations are really good at talking about what they do and how they do it, but really bad as in what I do once I can help them with the why, then all of a sudden things get much more interesting and much more powerful and much more emotional. And we've become much more able to build a really solid defendable, unique and interesting brand, which is the point of the exercise. Right?
Arek dvornechuck:
So it's not easy to, as you said, it's easier to ask the question of what we are doing and even how we are doing, but it's a little bit harder to answer why we are here, why we are doing this. Yeah.
Michael Johnson:
Some clients do struggle with that. Um, you know, oh, I don't know, Michael, why are we here? I said, well, you know, why are you here? And it doesn't, it isn't something you can maybe do in attending the zoom call, but it's, it can mean workshops. That can mean often we would, we would write scenarios for them about what we think, why we think they're here, but we won't go and say, you know, here it is, we'll say, well, I do think this is right, or this is right, or this is right. And so we will, we will use if you like scenario a lot, do that because that's, we've discovered that's the best way to kind of tease out for people, um, where they should really be. It seemed to work very well, especially for our clients who are very good at describe in generally every single one of our clients is, uh, a purpose driven ethical client. So this is very helpful for our instance. Uh,
Arek dvornechuck:
And especially when it comes to nonprofits,
Michael Johnson:
Right? Yes. Yeah.
Arek Dvornechuck:
So, yeah. So my takeaway, so the, so you present us with this framework, six spend questions just to give an overview to our listeners where they can expect from the book, if you want to check it out. So the first question would be, what do we do and what, and how we do it. So you, you would start with this question if you want an existing brand. So you, you quite, you give us some tips on, you know, where to start. If you are to start up or whereto start, if you are an existing brand is going to be a little bit different, but it's the same framework, right?
Michael Johnson:
Yeah. You might do it. You might just do it in a different quarter. Yeah.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Independent otherwise. So the second question would be, who are we here for? The next line? Is, would it be, what do we value the most what's our personality. What makes us different? And why are we here? And so does the last question, but if you are, you know, if you want to start out, you would probably start, want to start here and why you got a kid with this question, right.
Michael Johnson:
Probably although I think for staff, why are we here? And what makes us different? Those are the two very important questions. Because if, if they, if they don't know why they're here and they don't know why they're different, then why bother? Yeah. So that's what I mean, the questions, the importance of the questions changes slightly, depending on who you're working with. But the point of the book was that Lisa just put something very simple on the pains and then people can modulate it. They can play with it and they can experiment with it. As I have been doing for, you know, 15, 20 years ,I just didn't want to make it look. The whole point of the book is to say, look, here's a framework that you might find useful. It's not the reason why the book is quite big. It's because it's like all of the scratching and stuff.
Michael Johnson:
And then all of the design stuff, all in one book, the point, the book, it's all there. In one book, you don't have to read a ton of straps, your books, and you don't have to flick through a ton of design books, but you could you'd need, you'd need to go through 15, 20 strategy books and a hundred designers to get all that information. So really the point of the book is to try and, and, and it may not be that successful. I don't know, actually, it's, it's been very popular for books, so maybe it has been successful. I see. And the estimate.
Arek Dvornechuck:
So this is what you were talking. Actually, I should have said that in, in the, in, in production. So this is what you talk about in the introduction is what you just said. You know, there's so many books on design and we have a lot of books on strategy, but not, but they just, uh, it's not, it's not like this is one book about strategy and design and how to bridge that gap. That's why this book is different. Yeah.
Michael Johnson:
I don't know. My idea was someone who was interested in strategy would read the front and maybe keep reading and learn about design and design of wood woods would pick up this book and go, okay, well, you know, I know about this. Yeah. I know about this line, but what's this stuff at the beginning about scratchy, I, the two, the two sides, which are often slightly opposed with the wood, they kind of cross over. That's the point? That's the idea.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Yep. Yes. Yeah. And I've checked out many different book sand as you said, it's true. It's true that our books are about design or there are books about strategy, but there is not really a, there are not really many of them, you know? So this is, uh, a great tool for designers who want to be more strategic or strategists who want to like a, about design. So if they are, they like projects for example, and stuff like that, they can be more involved or, you know, understand how designers work as well. Okay. So we've talked about the investigation part and the strategy is that the jiving, uh, and the variable defining, uh, valuable available brand. So now there is two and a half step, right. Which is this, uh, that's why the book is called five and a half steps. Right. So two and a half is about bridging that gap.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right. So, uh, can you make a point that, uh, branding, isn't always a linear process and like logical. So you go like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.Sometimes we just need to go back and forth, especially between strategy and design. And especially in those cases, when our design process can prompt someone ideas, so we can go back to strategy and revise, start the job. So that's what this step is all about. And especially you talk a lot here about the Mamie architecture, but not only that, right? So as I said, sometimes design exploration can inspire our artists that strategy, or inspire us to revise our strategy and focus on something slightly different. So can you just us, you know, uh, give us some examples of scared or talk a bit about what was the process when you're working with clients and how it looks like in real life?
Michael Johnson:
Well, um, yeah, the, the, the reason why I put this half step in was because to your point, um, often branding projects, people want a brand project to be linear. Yeah. And most projects are linear, but then there are somewhere that the end of the, the verbal stage in the beginning of the video, we'll get a little bit blood. Um, now for a while, that kind of annoyed me. And I thought, no, no, no, we finished that stage. Starting this stage. You can't, you can't mess with a bit. We just agree. But actually the more we did, the more we got into it, we realized that actually, if you let one side inform the other, it's quite useful, if you let the two blur into each other, that can be quite helpful. So we have many, many examples where we've nearly finished the brown statute strategy and we start the design.
Michael Johnson:
That is something that happens in the design stage that makes us think, well, perhaps we could slightly amend the words, the verbal brand, if you like to reflect it. So we did a, um, a big teaching brand over here in the UK called teach first. And we had an idea in the design phase about building, building a better education, um, that we then went back to the narrative and just added some of that into the narrative. So kind of loops if you like, that's a really good, and also this, this, this blur between the verbal and the visual is especially prevalent when you get to something like either dark architecture, when you're trying to work out where everything goes together, and that's sometimes difficult for a strategist to work out, but designers seem to be good at that. So designers are useful for that process.
Michael Johnson:
Um, and the other part, of course, it's the naming because naming and branding are umbilically intertwined, really. You, can't very, very hard to do a great piece of branding. If the name is dreadful very well. I mean, it's not impossible, but it's pretty hard. So naming itself is a creative process. So that's why I took those kinds of things in this chapter, but really the chapter is there to encourage people to think about the definition side and the creation side and how the two kind of blur together now increasingly, well, no, every now and again, we do a series of, we put two and three on my stage two and three together. So, uh, uh, narrative and design and put them together in projects. And maybe over time we'll do more of that is possible. But anyway, that's the point of this foster system to encourage people to kind of blur the lines a little bit. Yeah.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right. So, uh, so this is two and a half. And then, so the step one and two is about, you know, verbal branding and strategy defining the brand investigating, researching, and then the, uh, the other two steps or three steps would be about, you know, design and implementation. So now the step number three is about design. So once we researched the market, we worked out the strategy and then we decided on the name. Now we want to jump into the design phase. So we would preferably we would want to start with a design brief, right. To just summarize everything on, you know, either on one page or so. So we can have some keywords. We have some, so we can start for example, because this is how design and how designers work. I've worked with time guys[inaudible] and then you also described this process in your book. And some designers will use some keywords from the brief as a variable verbal prompts. And other designers may just jump into searching for imagery or start creating mood boards. The design based should inform our design exploration. Right? So can you just walk us through these designs that, and perhaps give us some useful tips or examples?
Michael Johnson:
Well, interestingly, because our big brand, when we do these very big burning projects now, because we've investigated the market, we just worked out where our organization is going, and then we define them. We find that quite often, we don't need to write a, a particularly perfect design brief because we've already know what the phone is [inaudible] and really we can, we can deal with the briefing of the design team here. We can just have a discussion, you know, they'll, there'll be a report that'd be audit. So there'll be kind of stuff written down about what the client wants to be and what would they want to do. And it's interesting that we assigned ourselves, not writing design brief quite often, because it's clear, it's obvious what the problem is. And then really the job really is on the way we approach it is that we cast the net very wide.
Michael Johnson:
We look at multiple ways to attack a problem. Um, we will use metaphors, we might use words. We might use imagery. Um, my office discovered in magnetic walls and we put all of this workup on all of these references and all of these ideas up on a wall. And we have this kind of rolling credits on the wall. So everything's done in the open here. There's none of that, hiding your ideas away and then presenting them to the credits director on Friday morning, you know, which creates a weird kind of barrier. I think. So everything is in the open. Everything's rolling. So now we're working obviously digitally, but it's still, we have these massive Google slide decks with, with hundreds and hundreds of pages where people are just throwing their, their ideas. And so, um, we let other all one person's ideas knock on to another person's ideas and that's intentional.
Michael Johnson:
It's like a hive mind way of working. And I found this to be a really good way of working. I mean, it's, it's quite pressurizing for some, some designers sometimes because your, your, your ideas are in public. And if you're having a hard time at home, or you split up with your girlfriend or your boyfriend or whatever, you know, you know, then it's, it's obvious that you're not producing anything, but by and large, it seems to work pretty well. And that, and that, and then we funnel it down with kind of edits 30 ideas down to 10, and then we decide which three or four we should share with the client. Um, we would very rarely share just one idea. That would be really unusual for us. How many?
Arek Dvornechuck:
Ideas you present.
Michael Johnson:
Clients? Um, it depends, but we're trying to limit our selves. We're trying to cut down. We're in the past. We've made me share with you men. We're trying to get down to, I don't know, three to five ways todo it. The reason why we still have options, incidentally is because I think it's a bit arrogant to say here is the solution. Yeah. I think that that's not very strategic either for all sorts of reasons. A we would often say here's a solution that will take you in this direction. This solution will take you in this direction, this solution, that interaction. So we would use the design phase as another strategic phase, really be nearly all of our work now has to be trademark checked. It has to pass through legal checks. It has to be, it has to go through massive database searches and checks.
Michael Johnson:
And so to just have one idea, you have to be a, an utterly sure that no one ever, ever, ever has done this before and utterly sure that it doesn't exist on a trademark database. Now that's very hard, even for the best designers in the world. That's really hard to know if something's unique or it hasn't been done before. So we would often slightly, um, cover ourselves by looking at it two or three different ways, because often, uh, off the final one or two choices do go into, uh, trademark checks. I don't know if you know, the American shape art check database has got 34 million trademarks on it. Well, that's a lot. Now, a lot of them are doing do this a lot. Maybe if they're working at a lower level, they don't think about trademark checking. They don't think about the legal implications of the work that we do, but we think about it all the time because we're naming people and we're branding people everyday. There's the implications of us getting this wrong or giving someone a brand that already exists or is registered in the same classification. Implications are very bad for us and for the client. So that's why we, we take this pretty seriously. So, I mean, that's a serious point. I don't mean to sound heavy about that, but we actually enjoy this kind of wide approach and then funnel downwards.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Right? So widen that, as you said, many, many different, many different options and different designs, but you just not hold them down to select few. You screen them, you do some preliminary Jane Marks screening. You, you check, you know, the same industry, same field for similar, you know, symbols or visual marks or naming the naming. So, you know, so as you said, I think it's a common practice to present clients with three to five concepts, very strong concepts.
Michael Johnson:
well, actually, I think it's worth saying that the, that isn't strictly true for some companies. What can companies do is the classic, here's the safe route. Here's the interesting route. Here's the wild route. Yeah. I like points on a lot of line and we don't do that. We don't, we just, we, we don't present a safe route because clients always pick the safer it actually, if there's, someone's gone to the trouble of finding Johnson banks and asking them to do a long and often quite expensive process, what's the point of just taking the logo and go, you know, there is no point. So we very, very rarely would do that unless it's just a phenomenally good reason just todo nothing. Um, nearly always we're looking at ways to make the brand stand out and make it more clearer, more definable.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Yes. It's a, it's a branding is all about standing out as you've talked about this quite a lot in your book, and as we can see through your work, you know, okay. So, uh, some of my takeaways also from this part, the design part, um, we don't, we, as you said, wide net. So we think broadly about, you know, many different things. We test those designs on different applications. We select some of the applications, you know, preferably in the previous stages with the client, what's important to them, you know, because we need to understand the context and design develop designs for that context. And we also, you talk about thinking toolkit, think toolkit, thinking, you know, imagery, photography, typography, colors, not just logo, but how this logo will look like on different and behave on different applications. Right. Uh, so, so yeah, so, uh, you, so select three to five designs to share with the client, but you must be clear about what's appropriate and what's most differentiating at this stage, and it should be clear based on your strategy.
Arek Dvornechuck:
If you've gone through that. That's why you talk about quite a lot. And you make a point in your book that why strategy is so important. And we shouldn't just jump straight into designers, you know, many, uh, this beginners do. So the next step would be to implement now. So now since, you know, we present a client with some options and, uh, perhaps we a client, you know, we will decide on a winner with the client together with the client, and then we need to ensure good implementation, right? Maybe we go to another step of revision, some polishing, and then we would have to sit down and prepare all those different applications, properly long article, or the full list of publications that perhaps develop like a design manual, or just a style guide that describes how to use different band assets. Like, like I just mentioned all going to be a photography, call it us and so on and just prepare for the implementation with rollout. So can you just walk us through this step, how it looks like when working with big brands?
Michael Johnson:
Yeah, well we, um, yeah, once, uh, once the route has been chosen, sometimes it's been search whatever, um, once it's been chosen, yeah. We need to get it ready to roll out. And, um, that can that on a simple level, that can be just the, the drawing of a logo, the drawing of a symbol, the picking of the colors and the, and the design and writing of a short manual more and more where developing type faces, doing bespoke type, uh, the be spoke topography, uh, photo shoots, illustration styles. And I think as people more and more clients and brands now realize that it's the toolkit. You use your word, um, a brand talk. It is very important and very useful. And so we'll be working on that. We're often returning to the words in this stage, thinking about tone of voice, thinking about messages or messaging.
Arek Dvornechuck:
And so all of the elements are coming together to provide a kind of guideline for the client. And we're often designing certain key elements as well, depends on a bit on the client, but we might be doing two or three key key bits of work to show a kind of exemplars. If you like to show how it might work, or we, in our case, we might be working with a web agency. Who's doing a key bit of work or we're working with animators or coders. So we then become this kind of linchpin in the rollout process. Sometimes we're doing advertising campaigns or helping an ad agency get to grips with the brand because they've been brought in to do something specific. So lots and lots of different channels of work at this stage. And we're kind of the key to it, the core, the Keystone, if you'd like to all of this bits of work and then the fifth stage after this is whether we're deciding sometimes we're coming back to it and we're reengaging with the brand years later, we'll be asked to revive it and that's possible.
Michael Johnson:
And so that's a, there could also in the fifth stage that I talk about in the book, there might even be a decision whether to just kill the brand a brand might have reached to the end of it, or they call in marketing a product lifecycle. The brand is over it's it's it's time to let it go. More likely though, I think is that people might look at something six or seven years in or 10 years in or 15 years maybe, and think, okay, it needs are fresh, and now we need to start over again, you know, and we're doing that on a couple of brands at the moment. So that's how the purpose.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Perfect. So, yeah, so that will be the first and the last step to engage and revive. So as, as you just walk us through, you know, sometimes we need to refresh the brand. Um, okay. So that's, that's about it. This, this is all about, you know, um, we've just, uh, summarized basically, you know, actually, you know, I really recommend you guys to check out this book. It's good weather for creative professionals or, or, or, uh, business leaders is really, really comprehensive. So this was just like a high level overview. So as we are approaching the end of our interview, please let us knowhow we can get in touch with you, whether it is for clients who want to work with you, or for designers who just want to let what's the best way to get.
Michael Johnson:
At the best way is via our website, Johnson, banks.co.uk, there, you can see either the 50 or 60 case studies, and you can just email us through the info, ask John Black Stoker UK, or you can even apply for jobs at work at Johnson banks, UK. We're often looking for designers and because of lock down where we have designers all over the world now, so we're, we're open and we're interested. And Johnson based is relatively small. So we're always looking for new people and new ideas and new collaborators. So please get in touch. Awesome.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Michael, thank you so much for taking time to join us on our show.
Michael Johnson:
It's my pleasure. Thanks very much for inviting me. I'm sorry. I'm a little short of time today, but we just kept this to a nice short and sweet 35 minutes. Fantastic. And I, if people are interested in this book, then that's great. It's also out in Mandarin now it's come out, just come out and shine.
Arek Dvornechuck:
So yeah, that's awesome. Yes. I'm going to, of course, I'm going to link to this book in the description box so you guys can check it out. So you said there's many different languages available, right?
Michael Johnson:
No only English and Chinese so far on a chain. Okay. Chinese. Yeah. Yeah, but it, um, it it's been solidly selling for four or five years. So it seems to be very popular and useful book, which is great because that was what it was. The baby was written to be an open source resource for everyone who was interested in all aspects of branding. And it's done the job.
Arek Dvornechuck:
What's interesting is I've taken out the many books and, and I've seen many designers recommend this book. So I decided to check it out and you know, I wasn't disappointed, definitely is one of the most comprehensive books.
Michael Johnson:
It's not, it's not a book. It's got some of my projects in it, but it's not a project about me on my projects. It's a project about the branding. There's a book about the brand person. That's all. Anyway, I've got to go. Um, but lovely for me. Um, maybe sometime that we could do a boarding podcast about.
Arek Dvornechuck:
This was great. We've covered everything that they wanted.
Arek Dvornechuck:
Thank you so much. All right, bye.
