The logo is the most important part of brand development because most of your collateral material and marketing strategy will be based around your logo. The first thing we always tell our clients is that you should have a logo that speaks exactly what you do or in some way shape or form represent your company. A gold flashy logo would not be comfort zone for me if I was designing a logo for a real estate agency, but neither would a house. The obvious is not always the best step to the right logo, its the elements of building that logo which we call “Brand Psychology” at MediumFour.

The main thing to make a logo memorable or relevant is for the logo to be easily remembered and translate the personality of the business.

Always view your competition, your favorite logo and think of something that is timeless. A lot of companies got caught in the “half circle swoosh” phase 4-6 years ago and every time I see a logo like that I cringe. I can tell exactly when it was made and normally the client was overcharged for it. The obvious is to understand a trend, but to capture your own translation of that trend, then to make it trendless and classic. It sounds very confusing, but if you could see inside the mind of the artist that is always a beautiful piece of chaos.

A great logo should work like clothing. Actually we always tell our clients if your logo isn’t cool enough to put on a shirt you probably wont enjoy it too long. Avoid anything that relates directly to holidays; red & green – Christmas, black & orange – Halloween. Its just if you are going to do so, pick a variation of that color scheme and make it softer colors and more memorable. We always advise our clients to have a 2-3 color logo. It should be able to work with spot colors, you are imaging your logo being printed on an old school letterpress. Timeless. Classy. Elegant.

You always want to consider if your logo was viewed 10 years later would it be enjoyed and would it be dated. If you don’t love it, its not worth it.

Michael Hall
Ideation Master / Managing Partner

The answer, unfortunately, is usually the less creative candidate. This fact may or may not surprise you – you yourself may have been the creative candidate who got the shaft. But what you’re probably wondering is, why?

After all, it’s quite clear who should be getting the job. Studies show that leaders who are more creative are in fact better able to effect positive change in their organizations, and are better at inspiring others to follow their lead.

And yet, according to recent research there is good reason to believe that the people with the most creativity aren’t given the opportunity to lead, because of a process that occurs (on a completely unconscious level) in the mind of everyone who has ever evaluated an applicant for a leadership position.

The problem, put simply, is this: our idea of what a prototypical “creative person” is like is completely at odds with our idea of a prototypical “effective leader.”

Creativity is associated with nonconformity, unorthodoxy, and unconventionality. It conjures visions of the artist, the musician, the misunderstood poet. In other words, not the sort of people you usually put in charge of large organizations. Effective leaders, it would seem, should provide order, rather than tossing it out the window.

Our idea of a prototypical creative person is completely at odds with our idea of a prototypical effective leader.

Unconsciously, we assume that someone who is creative can’t be a good leader, and as a result, any evidence of creativity can diminish a candidate’s perceived leadership potential.

In one study conducted by organizational psychologists Jennifer Mueller, Jack Goncalo, and Dishan Kamdar, employees rated the responses of nearly 300 of their (unidentified) coworkers to a problem-solving task for both creativity (the extent to which their ideas were novel and useful) and as evidence of leadership potential. They found that creativity and leadership potential were strongly negatively correlated – the more creative the response, the less effective a leader the responder appeared.

The good news is, the bias can be wiped out – in fact, reversed – if evaluators have a charismatic leader (i.e., someone known for their uniqueness and individualism, like a Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, or Carly Fiorina) rather than an effective but non-charismatic leader in mind.

The good news is, the bias can be wiped out – in fact, reversed.

So what can you do in an interview to fight the creativity bias? You have some options:

1. Be armed with evidence of your leadership abilities. Bias is most powerful when there is nothing else concrete to go on – that’s when our brains (unconsciously) fill in the blanks.
2. Don’t just focus on your past experience. Talk about what you see as your leadership potential – the kind of leader you see yourself becoming. Studies show that interviewers are drawn to candidates described as having potential (often more than actual achievement.) They’ll spend more time thinking about you, and that extra thinking results in more accuracy and less bias.
3. Try to counteract the bias subtly by talking about the charismatic, creative leaders who have been role models for you in the past.
4. Tackle the bias head on. Acknowledge that creative types aren’t often chosen for leadership positions, while arguing (nicely) that your ability to offer fresh and innovative solutions to problems is essential to effective leadership, rather than at odds with it.

Source
by Heidi Grant Halvorson