Rules exist for a reason. Whether you agree with them or not. Whether you like them, or not – they arose for a reason. Whilst Health & Safety and Political Correctness are easy targets for those seeking popular fervour, even those have arisen out of certain and definable need. And sure, rules are there to be broken, but only if you know them in the first place.

When I was studying creative writing back in 19(cough cough) we were introduced to a whole dictionary of new words, scansion, metre, caesura, conceit… the list went on. Poetry relied upon them to help the writer shape intention into meaning and the only reason we have writing workshops in the first place is because there are recognisable rules for writing detective, horror, “literary” and other genres of fiction. Language itself, is one big set of rules. Melvyn Bragg in his book The Adventure of English, talks about how Carribean English is a complex adaptation of English, not a misuse of it.

And so we come to design. For the past few hours I’ve been trying to fit a number of logos into a design and it got me thinking about those rules. In most of the logos I was using there was precious little evidence that the designer knew the rules to begin with. The logo looked very slick with a 3D finish to it. It followed the style of so many logos out there that, at best, look bright and sparkly on a website at a certain size but which loses all definition when reduced. And that’s just on a practical level. Design ability, trained designed ability, has to force us to consider every place a logo will be used. But of course there is so much more. A logo is a design problem. It needs to convey a strategy and be understood by the public. Some sites enjoy poking fun at companies who swallow eighteen pages of explanation to support a dumb logo design and right they are too.

Recently, on Twitter, someone asked if we knew of places to see “great” corporate logos. The person had looked but it appeared to be the case that most corporate logos were “just” type styles. That sums it up really. If that attitude is common in design thinking then we really have entered a time when usage of the tools outweighs understanding of strategy and design. Just because I can make a copy of 3D Studio push out photo-real objects doesn’t make me an artist and just because someone can use Illustrator doesn’t make them a logo designer. After all, communication is more complex than the ability to speak.

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