Interview with Branding Guru David Brier

David Brier: We're all consumers of one thing or another, meaning that, whether we're shopping for something for our business or shopping something for personal usage or whatever, we have lots and lots and lots of choices. Branding is the tool. It is the thing that helps you and I differentiate and distinguish one product from another. That's the importance of branding.

If there was no branding, basically everything would be like, "Okay, here's 75 brands of water. Pick the one you want." And then I, as the consumer, now have to spend the time looking and researching and doing all that kind of stuff. That's the job of branding, is to make it easy for me to establish what is the right car for me, the right water for me, the right running sneakers, the right computer, the right smart phone, etc.

Ian Paget: Okay, so when a client comes to you, could you talk through the steps that you take to actually create or transform a brand identity for them?

David Brier: Yes. There's two basic phases, and there are parts within each phase. The first phase is to conduct what I call a messaging audit. In other words, I look at my client's brand, their brand story, their message, their distinguishing features and benefits, and then I, at the same time, I look at all of the others that are out there in that space, because every brand will have competitors. So, that's a messaging audit.

The object of that is to walk away with an outcome where it's very clear what is unique about my client's product, and that's the important thing, what is distinct. What really can we become the hero of? What can we become unique in how we do it and the way we do it and why we do it, etc.?

That forms the foundation for the next part, which is basically doing what I call a visual audit, and again, that's looking at my client's brand and looking at the competitors of my client's brand, and really seeing what are the common things. Because in each of these exercises, we're looking at one thing, which is what are the common cliches that are found in any industry? And I've yet to find any industry that does not have an enormous amount of cliches, meaning common things that the companies in that space are saying, are doing, the images that they're choosing, the colours that they're choosing, the type of graphic styles, the design styles.

So, I'm looking for the commonalities because by isolating those commonalities, first in message, and then in visual presentation, I'm then able to find and navigate the way to come up with a unique story and then also a unique visual representation, so they really stand apart. Because branding, as you and I know from previous discussions, branding comes down to a four word definition that I've basically brought it down to. It is the art of differentiation.

Ian Paget: Say you've created an identity for the client. Do you have any clever process for actually testing that, so that you know that it's going to work?

David Brier: It depends on how complicated. Sometimes it's really obvious and sometimes it's what I was able to extrapolate. But there are times when it's a little complicated. It's a very specialised audience. Recently, just as an example, a client in an industry that I never would have sought out was in the industry where they create dental crowns made out of zirconia.

Now, I would never have thought that out as an industry. I don't wake up in the morning, or at the beginning of my career, I didn't say, "You know, one day, I am going to land a zirconia crown company. I really want to have that as part of my portfolio and repertoire of work that I've done." It just wasn't there. But they sought me out and it was very interesting. It was very unique, but it was also problematic because as I looked at it, they were like, "What we really do is a commodity."

And now, the commodity is the antithesis of creating a brand, because creating a brand, we're in the business of creating brands. As a result, we're in the business of creating and defining differences, visually, thematically, et cetera. And in this particular space, I found, instead of us talking about creating zirconia crowns, I found the actually unique story was that we engineer predictability.

Now, that changes their entire story, because they're providing predictability for the places that manufacture those crowns and the dentists. That's a very different story than saying, "We manufacture zirconia crowns." Because that's a commodity. So, it's just an example of that kind of approach and what one needs to walk away with. And from there, everything else starts to unfold very organically.

Ian Paget: Now, I know that you've got over 30 years of experience. You've had quite a career, and you've basically become the expert in branding. I'm really curious. Where did you start out? Where did it all begin?

David Brier: Well, I'm a native New Yorker, and even though, now I'm from the Midwest, I still think of myself as a native New Yorker. Born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, then a little on Long Island, and then I moved to Manhattan. The thing there was that I basically went because I was taking some additional classes at School of Visual Arts, and I would go to the placement office and I would look at freelance jobs. I wasn't interested in working at a particular agency or design firm because I didn't really find... Nothing that inspired me or really got me to go, "Wow."

Until there's only the one person, which you and I have talked about, Herb Lubalin, because there was literally, in the last semester of college, that a magazine that he had put out for a type foundry, I had seen, and it was actually on newspaper. It wasn't very high production value, but it was stunningly designed. No detail was left to chance. No column, no headline, nothing. Everything was nuanced stunningly, gorgeously. And I was shocked. I had never seen design like that.

So, my goal was to actually, if there was going to be any one place that was going to work, it was going to be at his studio. I did actually manage to get an interview in his studio, and I almost got a position, but unfortunately, just right after that interview where he was looking at actually having me come on, his health had gone south. The timing was unfortunate because he was such a genius, and he tended to bring out the genius in others.

So, I really went out on my own from the beginning, and that was the foundation. I did some different freelance jobs and gigs for everything from Estee Lauder to Revlon, to Jim Henson to New York Times Magazine to Rolling Stone Magazine, all these various, different types of things, as well as some little startups. I started to refine and hone my skills. A lot of it, even though I did take some classes at school of visual arts, from some of the masters. Ed Benguiat, who's a legendary type designer, we became friends. And also Roger Ferriter, who was an earlier partner of Herb Lubalin, he had provided some classes, and I did a class with him and I really enjoyed that. So, that was basically how I got into the industry.

Ian Paget: That's amazing. So, when you first started out, you were able to get some really big clients. Are you able to talk through how you were able to land those so early on?

David Brier: Well, it was probably a combination of blind ambition and having no idea of how high I was reaching. I think I was comfortably numb, to be honest with you. And so, I had even, and I have copies of these still in my office, and very few people know this. Some people who have been in the industry as long as myself, but I even had a publication called Graphic Relief that I did as a collaborative thing, and it came out quarterly. We came out with four of them and they won awards, and they were amazing. They were large. They were about 12x18, beautifully designed, very witty. That helped get me into certain circles, so I think that I was hungry enough and oblivious enough. I think it was a combination of hunger and obliviousness.

Ian Paget: So, did those names contact you, or did you reach out to them?

David Brier: I would reach out to them, and I would say, "I'd love to come in and show you my portfolio." That was a time, again, cultures have changed. This is pre-internet, so when you wanted to introduce yourself to somebody, you would call them up, you would give it your best pitch on the phone and as much charisma, engagement and enthusiasm as you could muster to get in and get an appointment.

That was what you had to do. Unless you had an agent or an artists' rep firm, and I didn't like the artists rep firms because their percentages were way out of line. They would get their percentages, so as a result, it didn't make economic sense for me, so it was me.

I would call up and I'd get an appointment. I never recorded them, but I would have loved to have recorded and listened back to some of those earlier conversations. I probably would cringe if I listened to them today. I have no idea how or what I did, other than the factor that I felt that I was really good and that I wanted to work with them. So, I would arrange an appointment, they liked what they would see, and I landed projects.

Ian Paget: That's amazing. So, I'm just really curious. You know how technology's changed a lot since those times. How would you approach that now? Who would you approach that differently for people that are the age you was at that time? How would they go about landing clients like that? Is it possible now?

David Brier: Well, I think that the bar is sufficiently raised. In other words, for example, anybody and everybody can have a page on Bay Huts. Anybody can have online portfolios. Anybody can have a YouTube channel, this that and the other. Okay, well, since everybody can have that, how does one do it so that one actually gets noticed? That's the trick.

And so, that's what I would do, is I would say, basically, figure out how to provide more value. And the way that I've done it, because I've obviously navigated from how I used to do it in the beginning of my career to today, and what I do is I'll write articles. I will create videos.

For example, one of the ways that I've gotten a fair amount of recognition, I would write a script about a video about something I was personally passionate about. That's what inspired the What is Branding? Video, which now has 352000 views on YouTube. I have another one I wrote when I was writing posts for Fast Company Magazine. I decided, "You know, there's something about innovation that I don't think has ever been talked about." And so I took a different approach on innovation.

I wrote the script, and I collaborated with an animator, and that got, between Vimeo and my own YouTube channel, probably got about 150000 views. And so, the thing is, do I get money for that? No. I do those as a gesture of giving back. So, I'm giving back by providing things, and I've had companies from DOW Chemical to large corporations around the world, who've said, "Hey, we have an upcoming convention. May we please show this?"

And so, it's interesting to see, just doing those things, in terms of what can I provide that's not being provided, and that's what I do with regards to the YouTube videos. When it comes to articles, I write articles in a way that I see some design firms, a lot of them, actually, they just show pictures of work recently done. That, to me, is very self serving and very useless.

I am definitely of the philosophy that whatever I write and share has to be from the viewpoint of the reader, the viewer, and really appeal to their sensibilities and their values. So, I write those things based on what's the valuable takeaway that somebody reading this could have. If someone owns the brand or has a company where they're managing a brand or many brands, what are the takeaways? What are the insights?

And I've always had a good ability in that area to break things down, so I leverage that because I always look at this. Here's the one other thing, and this is, I think, very important that anybody who's in the design field or is a brander of any sort can use. I realised, if I write a blog, I have one more blog. So, I ask myself, "What can I do that is different?"

There are people that I like. There are authors that I like, that I find inspiring. Business leaders, thought leaders. Now, I could either try and be, also, a thought leader, but you know what? I also, at the same time, cannot forget, and I would not let myself ever forget, I can do things that they can't. Many of these thought leaders, they might be able to say some great, inspiring things, and I could also say some great, inspiring things, but they can't sit down and design anything. They wouldn't know a Serif font from a Sans Serif font. They wouldn't know what colours work well together. They wouldn't know about geometry. They wouldn't know about shapes and form and rhythm, and all the things that go into design.

So, my goal was making sure that I always incorporated my unique talents into the pieces, so that not only was it good content, but that, visually, I was also providing more than any of these other thought leaders would be able to provide, because you know what? They actually don't have that talent and I do, so I need to own that talent, I need to be responsible for that talent, and I am the only one who's going to take responsibility for exporting that talent to the world. People are not going to get it by telepathy or by calling up a palm reader and saying, "Hey, where should I look for graphic inspiration?"

Ian Paget: I want to expand on from that, because I know that you've been featured on sites like Forbes and New York Times. On your website, you have all these brands across the top of your website, and it obviously, immediately, makes you look very authoritative, just having the association with that.

So, I'm curious to know from you, firstly, has that been intentional, and secondly, if it has been, do you have any advice for people out there who would like to get their content featured on sites like that, so that they can also try and make themselves look like they're very authoritative to clients that might find them?

David Brier: Absolutely. So, yes. Is it intentional? Absolutely. There is something called social proof. Are you familiar with the term social proof?

Ian Paget: Yeah. Yeah, I am.

David Brier: So, just in case any of your listeners aren't, social proof is literally anything from, if you go to Amazon.com and you see something has five stars, that's social proof. If Oprah Winfrey says, "This book is amazing," that's social proof. If you have any sort of third party endorsement to provide social proof.

So, again, I never, ever, ever, and I would never suggest anybody do this, I never suggest that anyone ever take anything for granted. Do no assume that, because you were once in a publication that others will know, because that publication has amazing distribution, so therefore, everyone will know. Guaranteed, very few will know because there's such noise out there today.

There's a gazillion... I forget the numbers. The numbers are astronomical as far as how many tweets are done daily. There was even something I recently saw, in one minute on the internet, the amount of how many blog posts are posted, how many tweets are tweeted, how many Instagram posts are uploaded, how many YouTube videos are viewed or watched or uploaded. The numbers are astronomical.

So, one has to really own their own reputation. So, yes, it's very deliberate. I would not expect everyone to know that I had written for Fast Company, so I'm going to own that. I wouldn't expect everyone to know that I have been featured in Ad Week, so I'm going to own that. So, with all of those things, between Ad Week and Fast Company and Forbes and Ink and Huffington Post and all the various publications, it's like...

There's a way to do it. I think there's an obnoxious way to do it. I think that there are more tasteful ways to do it. I try to do it in a way that was somewhat tasteful, and sometimes, I think that one can err on the side of being so tasteful that one actually loses their effectiveness, meaning that they don't want to be overly obvious. Well, sometimes, you might have to just lean a little bit on that obvious side, a little bit. You kind of have to experiment and find your sweet spot.

So, that's one factor, one part of the answer to your question. The other part to the question is, I've approached these publications. I remember I initially approached Fast Company. I've read some of the articles in Fast Company. Some of them I found interesting, others I've found really lacking, and I knew that I could absolutely deliver a better product.

So, part of it is that confidence of, if you know that you can offer something better, it's part of ones responsibility to own that and say, "Hey, you know what? I know that I can actually provide something better for your readers. I can actually provide better insights, I can provide something that will provide more usefulness." And really, then, go in with that, sort of like what I talked about early in my career, that somewhere between obliviousness and naïve confidence, and just go with it.

Ian Paget: So, I'm curious to know more about how you're approaching the publications. Are you really just simply sending an email of some kind, to say that you can do better? Or is there more to it than that?

David Brier: Well, there's an art. You don't want to say, "I know I can do better." Because that's obviously going to be humiliating. So, the thing you would want to say is along the lines of, "Hey, I recently read this article, and I found some of the points very interesting. Well, what was interesting to me was that this particular point wasn't raised, which was one of the first questions I had had. I would love to provide your readers with some other insights to this kind of thing. Is that something of interest to you?"

So, there's an art to how you present it. You want to be inclusive, not exclusive. Because if you're being exclusive, then you will alienate. It's kind of like reaching and reaching out and touching base, and finding people with common goals. If you find a writer or a publication that shares a standard with you, such as they don't like to settle for the norm, they don't like to compromise, this, that, the other? Say, "Hey, I'm all about that. That's where I life." That would be a thing I would say.

Ian Paget: That's really good advice. Now, I know that you're quite excited to speak about this, but you have a new book, Brand Intervention, which I understand has hit number one on Amazon's hot new release list. I've read articles that this is unlike any other branding book, so can you tell us a little more about that?

David Brier: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's very true. I do have a certain degree of excitement with regard to this. The basic thing was this: there were a few different categories of books that I saw out there. There were ones that I called coffee table books that really provided visual stuff without much substance. So, I was like, "Okay, if you're visually inspired by this, great." And it didn't provide much content.

Then there was the other extreme, where there were some books that were what I called highly academic, meaning that they were written by someone who was a theorist, but you could tell that they really didn't have the practical, everyday knowledge, or they loved to use marketing and business jargon to sound important and authoritative, but it really wasn't practical.

And then the last point was that I saw that books tended to have, let's say you had a 300 page book, I normally found that there was about eight pages that actually had the real, real, real valuable stuff, and the other 292 pages were kind of like filler or expounding upon those eight pages of really good stuff. So, that's 292 pages.

Now, if I wanted to go on a treasure hunt, tell me I'm going on a treasure hunt, and then I'll consider it an adventure. But if you're telling me that you have a valuable book and you're giving me 300 pages to read, and I only get value out of about eight pages, realistically, that, to me, was not a good model for a book.

So, I wanted to write a book that literally trimmed all the fat. It was the leanest book in terms of no fluff, because I found, having done this for over three decades, there were the same points that I would go over and hammer home with every client. And it did not matter if the client was a national or global brand, whether they had $100 million, $500 million in sales, or if they were a startup that had only whatever, a couple hundred thousand dollars to start their entire business from scratch, and X amount of money was going to the offices, and X amount was going to payroll, and X amount of money. So, you had a very small budget to start with.

It didn't seem to matter, which was shocking to me. So, I started to write down what are the things that I always go over? Always. Because I've been fortunate enough to have some incredible success with my clients. I had one client, chocolatier, one of the finest in America. I did a rebrand of their package, and when their package came out, in their one boutique store, at the end of that first month, their sales literally tripled. 300% increase from the same people.

I took a city that I had branded, and I rebranded the whole city, and in 12 months, they saw a 500% increase in the number of tourists that actually went to the city. I took another skincare company out of New York City, one of the premier skincare companies, and within three months, we saw an 800% increase in new clients.

And so, I saw the results of these things. Those are just a few. There's quite a handful. I even took one of my clients that I've had for about 25 years, six years ago, he had sold the company, did very, very well selling the company, started a new company. And in fact, after five days of retirement, he said, "I can't stand retirement." He started a new company.

So, brand new startup, no sales, and in the last six years, he's gone from zero to, now, a $250 million business with the new brand that I helped him create. So, I looked at this, and I wanted to have a book where there was no fluff. It was almost like having a conversation with me, where I'm giving you the straight stuff. I am not wasting your time. And as a result, I even designed it so that it looked like that.

So, instead of having normal 12 point type, my type is 36 point type. It's large, and, at the same time, I also was fortunate enough, because of my writing for Fast Company, Damon John and I got to know each other. He actually had retweeted one of my articles and said it was the finest article on Shark Tank that had ever been written. I was blown away, and of course, I retweeted it. Reached out to him, we became buddies, and he's written the foreword to my book, which really excited me.

So, the book, I'm super, super excited. The responses off of the reviews, off of Amazon, are amazing, and even Huffington Post said that it's a must read book. So, yeah, the response so far has been off the charts amazing, and that's the value of it, is really giving back and knowing that I can guarantee anybody reading this book, they will get the equivalent of a minimum of two years worth of college. They will learn more from them than two years worth of college.

Ian Paget: Sounds amazing. I've seen it. So listeners are aware, in the Facebook community, we actually got David in to show us and I know that, from a marketing perspective, you've also got coffee and chocolate, and all these other bits and pieces, which I can't believe you actually made the coffee for real. So, I think that's amazing.

David Brier: Yeah, well, I'm known for saying that meeting expectations is a death sentence. In other words, if you and I went into a restaurant, and we expected the food to be okay, and the food was okay, that would be pretty forgettable. We may never go there again.

Ian Paget: Very true.

David Brier: Right? But if we went in there and we were like, "You know, we expect the food to be okay." And not only was the food okay, but the hostess was really friendly, really nice, really engaging, the courses were well timed, whenever the water got low, they always filled up the water quickly, dessert was great and if something arrived that wasn't particularly hot, they replaced it immediately? I would be inclined to go back there because they didn't just meet the expectations.

So, I really have this philosophy that what most people consider the finishing line, I actually consider it the starting line. It's kind of like taking your next breath is not a big goal, not like, "Wow! I took my next breath!" No, you better take your next breath. So, meeting expectations is not anything that I celebrate, so I always look at how do I raise the bar, and I demand that of my clients, and I demand that of myself. So, that's what I had to look at with regards to the book. It's like, "Okay, well, if I'm going to generate excitement, what can I do that's not been done before?"

Ian Paget: Yeah, you've certainly done that. I'm thinking of steering the conversation a little bit around logos now, because we've spoken primarily around branding so far. So, in your opinion, what makes a great logo?

David Brier: Well, obviously, something that helps really give a unique voice to that company, where that is unmistakably them. Like, for example, anybody that's a follower of mine, they know that I'm an Apple fan, that I loved Apple's branding, especially under Steve Jobs.

Well, I find it interesting, when I look at Apple, and again, this is a little branding related, but it still touches upon the logo aspect. Apple created a certain aesthetic that was uniquely Apple. Now, you have Microsoft following that same thing. You have Google following that same aesthetic, that clean, seraphim, white space stuff.

That's more about brand vocabulary, but still, even the cleanliness and the orderliness, all of that stuff, Apple raised the bar and others followed suit. So, to me, a great logo is one that transcends time, is meaningful.

The other day, when you asked me my favourite logos. One of them is Mother and Child from Herb Lubalin. Which, it doesn't matter what language you speak, and I was fortunate enough early in my career, I did a logo for the New York City Ballet, and people have loved it, and they keep continuing to love it because it has legs in it, and it has a cityscape, and it uniquely creates and conveys that culture. But what's interesting is that people have said to me it doesn't matter whether you speak English or not, you would know what that was.

And to me, the point to the logo is great, and it gives you a sense of that particular company, what its culture is about, what its personality is about, and obviously, the criteria today has changed a bit, where a logo has to work 64 pixels square. It has to now work on social media as well as working in larger applications. But to me, that's part of it, is what works. What gives me a sense of the uniqueness of that company? That's when a logo is successful in my book.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I totally agree. So, in terms of your process to create a logo or an identity, if you want to expand further into that, what process do you take in order to actually create a logo? Where do you start and then what are the steps that you take, yourself?

David Brier: Well, for example, I definitely do my first homework of looking at the competitive landscape, because if my job is to give my client the unique voice, I have to be aware of what are the other brands and their logos that are competing for that same bit of business? So, that's the first thing because I really want to know. Because if everyone, for example, is using Serif fonts and everybody's using blues and greens, and this and that and the other, and blah de blah de blah, well then that's definitely going to have an impact on what I choose.

I might say, "You know what? I might opt for an orange, and I might do something that might be more of a mark than a word mark. I might do a mark if nobody else is doing a mark." So, it's not reactionary, but it's strategic. In other words, I am aware that this is going to be seen against many other choices. How am I going to do the greatest job for me?

So, part of it is stripping away what are not the candidates that I'm going to be looking at. Well, if I already know I'm going to be looking at something maybe a little more modern, or a little more minimalistic, that's going to help narrow the field, so I can really focus on where I need to focus.

Stylistically, I'm always keeping myself fresh. I'm always looking at what's being done. There are certain styles that are more ornate or more intricate, that might work in certain applications. There are ones that are more simplified. To me, there's one very well known, multidisciplinary, international firm that I used to love, and now, I find I actually yawn when I look at their work. Because their work is predictably boring.

You can always tell when a firm is relying on their past achievements, because their new and future work, there's nothing fresh. There's nothing dynamic, there's nothing alive. I always want to challenge myself and my clients to have something dynamic, alive, and that pushes into the future. It's got to push into the future. It's got to welcome the future.

That's one of the things I say in my book. It's one of the little inspirations in the book because I have these pages that are these big posters within the Brand Intervention book, and one of them is a little bit like Magritte almost, and it says, "Your brand is the door to the future, a glimpse of tomorrow."

And that's what I like brands to be. That's what I like a logo to be. Is this giving me a sense of what's possible? Is it giving me an aspiration? And so I use all the design bits and pieces to get there.

Ian Paget: That's a really inspiring way to look at it.

Have you ever had the situation where a client's not liked your work?

David Brier: Yes.

Ian Paget: So, how did you go about handling that situation?

David Brier: Well, good. The first thing is that, that's why, from your earlier question, when you said what's my sequence, and I said, "Well, first I do a message audit and then I develop a message and develop the brand story, and then I do the design or visual audit, and then develop that."

I share those discoveries in sequence with my client. The reason is because, that way, I'm building something with them. So, if we look at the sequence of that, and this reduces that, "Well, I don't like it." I mean, you'll occasionally get that, but if you omit these steps that I've just outlined, you're going to get into the land of, "I like this. I don't like this. Let me show my wife. Let me show my cousin. Let me show my dog. Oh, hold on, I have a neighbour who works in a big corporation. Let me see what they think."

That's a nightmare of a relationship. So, it's one's job when doing this, is to say, "Hey, here's what your competitors are doing. Here's what your competitors are saying. Here's how we can sound different in terms of our story." And if the client is along with you on that journey, they will then see, "Ah, I now understand the journey." Otherwise, they have nothing to gauge it against, other than what they like, what they didn't like, maybe what they saw that morning, maybe a new podcast that they listened to last night. Now, they have a new idea.

Literally, you're leaving it up to chance, and so one's job in doing this, one, is helping to navigate and educate through this entire process, and when you do that, you will lessen the, "Well, I don't like that." You'll get more, "Yes, that makes sense." Because there will be an actual logic. "Because everyone else is talking about X, we are talking about Y, and here's why we're talking about Y. This is the logic, this is our passion, this is our philosophy, this is the reason that we came into existence, this is the problem that we're solving in the world."

Now, to get that message out there, here's what we need to do visually, so that others will be able to see that our brand now aligns with that brand story. Without that, you're literally coming in, saying, "Hey, I like this. Don't you?" And that's not a great foundation for a presentation.

Ian Paget: Yeah, I think, like you and quite a few people that I've spoken to in the previous season, has this same funnel process, where they are taking their client through a funnel, essentially, and taken them on that pathway, so when they do get to that funnel thing, it's quite likely to actually be agreed. And I guess, in the situation where they don't like what you've done, it's probably just a minor tweak. It's not going to take that much work to actually get to the point where all will be right for that story. So, I think that's really good advice.

David Brier: Yeah, and the one other thing I will say, I am known for saying that committees are a death sentence. So, do not get engaged in scenarios where, basically, you have a committee of eight or 15 people. That's not realistic. It needs to be down to one or two people that you are serving, who actually are, ideally, the owners of the company.

Because then you're serving people who actually are interested in what you're interested in, from the standpoint of the goals, if you're serving those goals. Otherwise, you have someone that is likely making decisions based on possibly career objectives, possibly other opportunities, where might be political, or maybe they're even second guessing and hoping that they really understand what their boss really wants. They hope. Cross their fingers. And that's not a good way to go about either.

Ian Paget: So, in the situations where you have got to that point, where there has been a committee involved, have you bypassed the committee, and spoken to the owners of the company to avoid that? Or have you fired off the client, essentially?

David Brier: I'm very straight forward about this point on committees, and I've only, basically, run into one sort of committee situation in about the last 25 years. It was literally, there were 40 stakeholders. 40. That's a nightmare. I pulled the executive director aside and I said, "There will be no committee on this project."

She looked at me like I had three eyeballs. I said, "What we're going to do, I know there's four areas that are of interest. I'm going to do my due diligence. I'm going to do my work. I will present it to you, and then you and I will present it to these four people, and we're not going to ask them what do they think. That's the other thing that I never will ever tell anybody. I say, if you ask what do you think, then you're just opening up the gates to hell, because that can be anything.

I say, if you're going to ask somebody a question, you can ask them, "Is there anything we missed? Will this communicate to our audience? Does this properly represent our whatever to prospects?" Noting what's the specific thing. If this is a face cream, would this appeal to stated target audience? Is this going to stand out amongst these others? These are legitimate questions. To say what do you think is stupid, it is ill informed, it is useless, and also, in case I haven't made my point, dumb.

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah. Well, it comes down to subjective opinions.

David Brier: Everybody's got one.

Ian Paget: When you ask what do you think, and everyone's got an opinion, so it's a silly question, and we need to basically never ask, "What do you think?" Right, well, we're close to the end of the time. I'm going to ask you one more question.

David Brier: Sure.

Ian Paget: Could you share your best logo design tip with us?

David Brier: I would say, with whatever design one is working on, provided that one has applied the various things that we've talked about in this podcast, my question would be, is the design that one is working on a design that they would be proud to be the last and final work that they have done? If they happen to leave the office and they were run over by a truck, and this was known as the last. "What was the last thing he was working on?" "It was this."

Ian Paget: No pressure.

David Brier: No pressure! Well, the thing is, why not do greatness? So, that's the thing I look at. It's, "Okay, let's go for it." It's like, is this great? Is this inspired? Is there a bit of a legacy with this, that will lead others to go, "Wow!"

If others see this and don't think I wasn't reaching high enough, in other words, it's inspired them to reach higher and a little bit further, to me, then, one has left some of their brilliance on the floor, and that's not the right place for it to be.

Ian Paget: Yeah, it's certainly a good way to elevate your skill. So, it's good advice. Well, David, thank you so much for being on the podcast with us. Really appreciate, and doing the live feed, as well as being fantastic to spend so much time with you. Thank you very much, David.

David Brier: Oh, absolutely. Well, thank you. I think you're doing a great job building the community and really sharing all this information out with people, so you're sharing this with the community and helping to keep others inspired and informed is certainly commendable. So, that's really well done, to you.

Ian Paget: Thank you very much.