Adventures in logo development (3 of 3)

The end result of the logo development was determined and fine-tuned with the President of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, through the Corporate Communication office. My next step, coordinated with other Design Directors and Designers at HMH, was to develop usage guidelines.

At the time I started this project, I thought existing usage guidelines would be provided for me to work with, redesign, or update as necessary, with the new logo suites. To my surprise, however, discovered that no such usage guidelines existed. This was reflected in the previously disparate Houghton logos that existed across the various business units at the time, as outlined below:

The goal was to start with a clean slate, to develop a clean suite of logos across all the business units, and then provide the usage guidelines for implementation. Because this seemed too possible a task, a time element was added—the usage document and the cohesive logo suites had to be created over the course of four days, in order to be ready for the upcoming Education conference season. Keep in mind, design studios typically have months to prepare a usage document, with multiple versions and revisions as every particular usage is considered, dozens of people are consulted and have input, and the document is fine tuned. I had four days between go-ahead and final delivery of both the usage document and all the final files. And two of those days were around my regular day job as the Design Director for Great Source. The Corporate Communications department was garnering heat from al the divisions, which needed to have the usage guidelines, and more importantly the logos themselves, in time to get large convention-sized banners created. And, fool that I am, I hesitate to say “die”, even when the bullet’s gone clean through the cerebellum.

So, I pulled all my experience in corporate usage documentation, which had for previous years been on the user-end, rather than the provider end. Corporate entities from United Healthcare to Prevent Child Abuse America (PCAA), among others, had provided me with extensive usage guidelines for products I’ve produced for previous employers. And, for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on at the time, I‘d collected and filed them all. Now I pulled them all out and spread them out in my Boston home office to try and determine what would be needed for the HMH Usage Guideline document.

I fully expected that the simple, rough document I put together would be heavily edited and reworked, But I was pleasantly surprised when it came back with minor structural edits—the content that I had written outlining usage was virtually unchanged. With great attention to detail, but also under intense time constraints, I worked personally with Corporate Communications to fine tune the final documentation.

See, in working through this process and needing to turn on a dime, I had taken on the project myself. In fact, I had all the files on my personal laptop, ad only there (though backed up on a backup drive) ready at any and every point to turn them over to another design house of Corporate Communications choosing. But that call never came.

I worked on them over a final weekend, after which I was to attend one of the first conferences of the season, in Florida. So it was that I found myself making the final changes to the Usage document at Logan Airport at 5am, paying for WiFi internet access to upload the final files to the corporate server for distribution to all the business units. I was literally the last one to board the plane, as it required me to close my laptop and break the WiFi connection, and I wanted all the files uploaded to the server for use.

It was an exercise in dedication. Later, the corporate communications director I’d been working with promised to bring me out for a drink in Boston, which never materialized in the days before I left HMH. But all significant exercises require breaking at least a little sweat.

All told, I developed and prepared multiple files (for usages from everything from conference banners to book spines)for multiple business units, including Corporate, School division, Religion division, Trade and Reference division, Learning Technology, International, Supplemental division (of which Great Source was a part), Holt McDougal, and Riverside. These had to be created in the three standard PMS colors, Black, white and PMS 293, and had to be provide in .ai (illustrator) .pdf (Acrobat) and .eps formats. Later, corporate asked me to take away all the editable .ai versions.

Below are a very few sample pages.









Afterword: These are indeed pages from the corporate usage guidelines for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, used through 2008. However, I recently learned that this document was revised and replaced with one that was (as anticipated) outsourced to an external design house, which was paid a number with several more zeroes than I recieved to produce it. It's a pretty thing, with additional an PMS color palette, developed to complement the corporate approved colors.

But I'll bet they didn't do it in four days, in their pajamas. So there.

Then again, I'll bet they got their beer.

Logo production under the gun ain't for pansies.

Adventures in logo development (2 of 3)

So, though we explored many examples of blending the two logos, we had to be aware of the actual existing colophons, and ensuring that we maintained that resonant identity into the new Below are some early studies of the logo development.

For giggles, here is one of the sheets With some very early sketches, with some of the notes I got from phone conference critiques from the head of Corporate Communciations. Such scattershot approach is essential early on when you;re working on tight deadline and in multiple directions at once. You need to see what they like about A and B and C, when all three choices are radically different, so that you can see which of the three directions you should move forward into. More often than not, it will merely be an elimination of one of the several directions (which still means a ton of work in different directions. But sometimes its about getting to what you want, by crossing out other directions.





















This series was built off the existing colopon, the dolphin. There is a story behind the boy riding the dolphin with the flute, but the fact is that 99% of the public out there does not know it. The dolphin colophon IS recognizable though, and so it was important early on to explore how much it could change, and yet remain. The foal with this series was also to play with bits of the Harcourt logo that could be incorporated into the dolphin colophon. Could talk for hours about the intent of each of the following, but the reality of logo communication is how you react to it in the first few seconds. How you react to it the next day is also important (that is, which logos stayed in your mind) but the truth is that neither instance requires a long monologue accompanyment. I will say, I especially liked the simplicity of the bottom three.

This group tried to bridge the strength of the Harcourt logo with the light elegance of the identity of the existing Houghton Mifflin logo. The direction is decidedly different from either pre-existing logo, and for that reason these were the least likely to be considered. Nevertheless, I do see some strengths in the identity and direction.














In the end, where we ended up was not so very different from where we started, which is often the case with corporate development. Here is the final logo, from the usage document I created:






































This logo, arguably, is merely an extrapolation of the existing Houghton Mifflin logo, with the addition of the Harcourt name. The decision was made at the top corporate level—though I never was part of the discussion, I had the feedback funneled back to me from the head of the company himself. My own choice, had I been able to express an opinion at that level, would have been different. But then, I rooted for the Red Sox for a lot of years that they lost, too.

Adventures in corporate logo development (1 of 3)

Houghton Mifflin merged with Harcourt in January of 2008. Of course, it was in the works for months before this. In fact, it was in the works, unbeknownst to me, before I was even hired. But that’s a story for another day.

For the months before the merger, Corporate Communications had been doing prep work with several design firms and focus testing groups to determine what the new identity for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt should be. They’d collected a wealth of information, but hadn’t yet seen anything they liked. That wealth of discussion and information was the pile that was dropped on my desk in November, when Steve Tapp, then President of Great Source, tapped me as new Design Director of Great Source, a division of Houghton Mifflin, if I and my group would take a stab at it. Of course, we did.

At Great Source, I managed a staff of Senior Designers, spread over a volume of five disciplines; Math, Science, Social Studies, Reading and Language Arts. Given this workload, and the fact that this logo work was spread on top of it, I didn’t feel comfortable assigning the work of logo research, development and sketching, so I presented it to them as an opportunity that they could participate in, but not a requirement. One Senior Designer stepped up to the idea, and delivered some solid sketches. In addition, I dug into this myself.

As food for this, we studied the results of several focus group reports, as well some competitors logo suites (examples below).



We also did research into corporate branding in general. There are many areas to balance in logo branding; history of the corporation, symbolism inherent in the logo, and what the logo is intended to evoke or communicate. We studied a wealth of great texts, such as Fresh Ideas in Corporate Identity, by Mary Cooper and Lynn Haller. But at the end of the day, we weren’t starting with a blank slate-—we were working on blending two well established and vested corporate identities, into a new form of life.

Part of the issue was that combining the Harcourt logo (below)

with the Houghton Mifflin logo (below).

was too deceptively simple. The Harcourt logo symbolized ripples on water, the ripples reflecting the effect of education, literature, et al. The Houghton logo was a boy on a dolphin, which is a mythological reference that’s a mystery to 8 out of 10 people. But the colophon was nonetheless memorable and easily identifiable to many customers. Therefore it might seem combining a boy on a dolphin with rippling water would be a no-brainer…except for the fact that the resultant logos were reminiscent of Sea World.

Next: Some of the final sketches

An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth (reprinted)

I found this on another blog, and traced it back to its origin here.

I think there are some great insights here, which is why I'm reprinting it. But I plan to post my own Creative Roadmap sometime soon.

Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Written in 1998, the Incomplete Manifesto is an articulation of statements exemplifying Bruce Mau’s beliefs, strategies and motivations. Collectively, they are how we approach every project.

1. Allow events to change you.You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome.When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep.The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents.The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader.Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools.Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software. The problem with software is that everyone has it.


25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions. Just don’t. It’s not good for you.


27. Read only left-hand pages. Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."

28. Make new words. Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.


29. Think with your mind. Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty. Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'

31. Don’t borrow money. Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips. The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster. This isn’t my idea -- I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate.Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat.When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge. Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms. Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces -- what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference -- the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields.Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh.People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember.Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people.Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.

PowerPoint Training (5 of 5): 10 Steps to Presentations without Hesitation

Presenting can be difficult. Any PowerPoint product is made stronger through the addition of tips to the presenter, to help him or her feel more comfortable in presenting. Here are some highlighting some tips and techniques I recommend for the new presenter to help him or her present more effectively.

1. Stay mobile. Moving around helps keep people attention focussed, and actively participating. This is especially important for
younger audiences

2. Make eye contact. This is the best tool for maintaining a personal connection with each participant.

3. Be enthusiastic. Show your interest in the subject and passion for the communication and the energy will communicate.

4. Connect conversationally with your audience. The presentation is just like a conversation, not a speech. Encourage the presenter to talk using the points in the slide, but not just reading the points in the slide. Don’t use a script, as much as a rough outline from which you can extrapolate conversationally.

5. Rehearse. Once the presenter knows what she wants to say, she should practice in real time, out loud, not just in her head. This helps you to be aware of the time, and avoid elements that can trip you up.

6. Know the material. This should be encouragement to read through the TE and become familiar with the specific topic.

7. Encourage response. Allowing for times when the presentation can become a conversation can loosen everyone up.
Get equipment early and set up early.

8. Make sure everyone can see the screen, and that the presenter can see everyone.

9. Make it real. Relate the topic to specifics will make it more interesting for Participant and Presenter.

10. Be flexible. Once you;ve rehearsed and rehearsed and got the presentation down, be ready with a couple of planned “stalls.” These will help you in case of the presentation being delayed, or equipment failure in mid-stream, or the presentation going much shorter than you anticipated. Small canned jokes about the subject matter, which presenters will typically start a presentation with, can also be useful in pocket to pull out at these awkward junctures.

PowerPoint Training (4 of 5): Seven goals in creating an effective presentation.

1. Make it readable
Point size must be readable for the proposed space. If an individual is to view the presentation on a computer screen in front of him, it need not be as large as a show intended to be viewed from the back row of an auditorium. If delivery can’t be determined, there are some good middle-ground standards.

2. Use visuals to focus attention
Images can be distracting, but also work to focus attention. Individuals (who read) will read the content in the first second or two. The presenter must then be relied on to hold the viewers attention on the screen, and on the content, while the extrapolation and detailed content delivery occurs. The right images can help keep the participant focussed on the screen, and thereby on the presentation.

3. Deliver content simply
Know the audience, and a delivery system that is best for them. While animations might be distracting for an older audience, for a younger audience it can be a tool to hold attention. Therefore it’s essential to know who the presentation is designed to reach.

4. Deliver content consistently
As mentioned, templates not only help with ease of building PowerPoint shows, but consistent delivery also helps with messaging.

5. Keep it simple
If the content starts building on a particular slide, question if it should be two slides. Remember that the attention given to an individual slide will wane. The longer that slide is up on the screen, the more participants will look away, and become distracted. But put a new slide on the screen, and the attention of the participants can be likewise refreshed. Avoid having to linger for too long on any individual point on any individual slide, unless there are some elements that move on the screen, and thereby “refresh” the audiences attention.

6. Make it memorable
There are 3 keys to making a compelling, memorable slide:
• Use only 3-7 words
• Use active verbs (ideally start with an active verb)
• Keep the slide focused.

7. Keep the show short
The flip side to breaking out slides is to not have too many slides. One way to help with this is to compartmentalize a large presentation into sections, and provide an agenda at the start. One really great graphic method of helping viewers determine where they are in the paradigm of the presentation is to provide a little navigation bar, at the bottom or the side of the slide, providing wayfinding orientation, much like a website. But as important as it is to let the participant know where he/she is in the presentation, it's also important that they not get lost along the way, in too many slides.

PowerPoint Training (3 of 5): Six Reasons to use a PowerPoint Template and a Slide Library

1. Consistent delivery. PowerPoint is all about consistency, and tools to help enforce consistency, as a tool for focusing content. This allows for delivery of information, within definable and organized parameters.

2. Templates allow you to take advantage of a Pre-Built Slide Library.
A library of slides is an invaluable creation tool. The more Slide Types that can be identified up front, the more streamlined the creation process can become.

3. Templates with a Slide library add Drag and drop slide functionality.
With templates built to the same design allows simple drag-and-drop functionality within the formatted slides that would not be available for slides pulled from templates outside of the RHB template.

4. Easy production of a lesson from scratch.
All of these elements combine to create a workflow that makes it easy to set up a consistent lesson. This is especially true if you are creating a product with multiple PowerPoint presentations, or developing a sales force who need to deliver multiple different presentations on different aspects of a large product line.

5. Slides can be created with Pre-built functionality.
The animations and functionality can be built right in. Complicated animations and reveals can be built once, then repurposed. This amortizes the cost of creating complex (and often very interesting) slides,which makes for better presentations.

6. Creates, over time, a reduction of work.
Again, the more slides you make from scratch, the more you can add to your library. The bigger your library, the fewer slides you need to create from scratch later on. Again to use the example of a sales force, if a salesman builds a new slide for a new product, (or more likely has a staff designer with PowerPoint savvy do so) then that slide can be easily added to a library that can be distributed to all of the sales force. Such a library is easily updated, small and therefore easily (digitally) portable, and distributable.