Brand Design Renegades
Finally, I’ve found a client interested in the prospect of a ‘logo noir’ - ok, that isn’t a real term (I don’t believe), I just made it up a split second ago. But I mean a logo design that is simply just black/charcoal.
For a while now I’ve been thinking that aside from fashion retailers I haven’t seen a service based industry with a purely black logo design and when the objective of branding in many ways is to ‘differentiate’ one self from ones competitors, surely this is a gap in the brand image market?
So when The Mezzanine Man came to me with their ideas for branding I was excited to hear them say they were seriously considering a logo sans colour; i.e. just black. I expressed this excitement and got to work.
My brief was to create a mascot - The Mezzanine Man himself. The company is currently called ‘espace’ and thats because they create space for their clients in the form of mezzanines, however noted that they would frequently hear as they arrived on premises “Oh, it’s the mezzanine man”….so they decided to more literally state their business purpose and make a brand out of this Mezzanine Man.
One important aspect of this brand was to appear to be a consultancy service rather than just your average ‘builder/labourer’ type service. Hence the tie, and I think the sans colour effect contributes to a professional feel for the brand.
Now I like the design above, however it wasn’t quite to the clients liking, and other designs are ‘in progress’ at the moment, but I like it so much I want to talk about it 
What I like about this design (aside from the fact I feel that it is a strong image) is it’s potential for marketing. This concept reminds me of a film title and I suggested to the client that they could even play on that initially if they wanted to for a relaunch marketing campaign ….
The Mezzanine Man
coming to your business soon….
The Mezzanine Man
Book your special preview! (ie free initial consultancy meeting)
They could even use this marketing/PR angle to launch the new brand, make a big deal of it and in turn win media attention from the relaunch….by teasing new customers with ‘who is the Mezzanine Man?’ …..’Book your special preview’…..etc etc…
This would of course require the use of a good public relations company to plan and execute it all.
UPDATE 15.12.07
Ta dah! The final chosen design is shown below. I like it a lot, and do feel it’s just as strong a brand as the design I like and have discussed above. Indeed the exact same marketing methods would work just as well.
You may note that unfortunately red has crept into the design - as the project progressed the client felt that an injection of some sort of colour was required, so yes, I still haven’t quite found my renegade!
We have retained the tie …I was quite fixated with keeping a tie on the character to ensure a consultancy image that the client was keen to achieve, and it does look good in red.
Red is of course the colour the eye perceives the fastest, and so for their target market to have their eyes drawn to the tie is not a bad thing…it implies professionalism.
Although the overall image of the design itself is quite serious and professional, the playful name ‘The Mezzanine Man’ goes a long way towards ensuring the brand is also seen as ‘friendly’ and ‘approachable’ - this as we all know is vital service based industries.
However ultimately it is how The Mezzanine Man employees communicate to their customer base over time of course that will dictate how the brand image develops from this point…..it is customer experience that influences how customers perceive a brand.
Logo designs are not ‘brands’ they are visual representations of brands for customers to associate their brand perception with and remember that perception every single time they see the image.
Further Reading
All About Company Mascots
Avoid Competing On Price
5 Very Important Things - Logo
