Make Even Your Logo Sing

by Lawrence Strauss

Logos began before people could read. “If you saw a tiger on a bottle of beer, you knew it was Tiger Beer,” wrote ad man David Ogilvy.

And our world became literate and logos became unnecessary, and, soon every business had to have one. But only about 10% of musical acts followed the business model and have logos to speak of. Now the times they are a-changin’ again. Our culture is frenetically paced and visually-oriented. We’ve chucked long prose for action-packed novels. Ad and web texts are built for a quick scan. The number and speed of the images flashed at us on TV, movies, computer games and the Web, all makes for a healthy argument that logos - a way to communicate fast - are needed at least as much now as in the days of Tiger Beer.

Ideally, a logo is a unique, instant visual summary. It holds the sound, look, attitude, packaging, personality and stage show all boiled down to one small mark (a picture, a name or both). A logo sets an expectation about what a listener will be hearing when they hear you. This is important. Music is about resonance. Some people resonate with your sounds. Some find it noise. Same goes in the visual experience - a logo should be thought of as a strong, clear note sent out into the world. When it’s the right note it will resonate with your best audience and draw them to you.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR, YOU JUST MAY GET IT

One reason there may not be a lot of musical performer logos is that artists often think of themselves as pushing boundaries, always changing. Many do not want to be stereotyped or categorized so easily. This is a real issue. Guitarist Punky Meadows said, “be careful what you wish for, you just may get it.” His Washington DC-area band Angel was made up of five guys who agreed on this idea of making a band that was angel-like. They would dress in white spandex and grow and maintain long, gorgeous hair. They created a stage show in which they seemed to levitate in cloud-like smoke billows. They used exploding pyrotechnics, and they eventually got the coolest logo I‘d ever seen as a kid.

At www.angelrocks.com you can read the site owner’s personal Angel story and it was remarkably like mine: each of us was going through a record store as a kid and saw this logo for this band we’d never heard of, and it was the coolest thing. And he (and I) plunked down the money for it never having heard of the band before. A logo, an image, can have that kind of affecting power.

By their fifth year, Angel was sick of their own pristine hairdos and white spandex and coolest of all logos. On their last album they tried to rebel against their image, but their record company nixed the rebellion after having invested millions to build their image. So the band fell apart. They couldn’t sustain the image; it was an artificial burden to bear. Performers should be wary of adopting anything - including a logo - that will constrict their artistic growth.

GO DEEP

Angel’s desire was to be way different, but it was a superficial kind of different. Interestingly, though Angel’s version was imaginative I think their impulse was the same one that leads to the copycat bands that tag behind successful bands. The impulse is greed. Try to get to the fame and fortune fast.

How to be way different and stay way different? Discover your distinct voice. For most of us the only way to success is coming to terms with our contribution; and this takes time - an observant player will usually have to have at least a couple of years playing seriously to know what he or she is adding to the musical vocabulary. Being observant of your act as you play will enable you to strengthen those areas that are, in fact, your contribution and minimize the effort you waste in areas you don’t belong. And this observation and refinement process should be allowed to impact everything your act does: what music you play, where, when and to whom you play, how you dress, do you have a logo and if so what does it look like, etc. Everything. Do this and your act will be transformed into a powerhouse of pure, distinct energy - an irresistible force that impacts your best audience. Play, observe and refine.

A LOGO THAT EMERGES FROM THE INSIDE OUT

My training was in painting from life. Not superficial characteristics, but interpreting what I see at deeper, intuited levels such as place in history, personality, ideas, emotions, anatomy and so on. In creating logos and CD covers I had to find a way for me to see what could not be seen. And so my studio developed a process to capture everything from sounds to smells to musical influences. For logo development my studio leads musicians through a three-hour, in-depth inquiry, which I adapted from the novelist’s practice, in which to be able to write a believably rich character, the author thoroughly describes every detail of that character. Think of the inquiry time like searching your radio dial. The questions may feel small and insignificant, but the number of frequencies we tune into will mean we find new and surprisingly interesting ones. And unexpected connections are often discovered that help reveal your act’s true identity which can then be visually interpreted in the form of a logo.

I will ask you to be clear where you’re hazy. If there are collaborators in a project they should all be present to arrive at answers that represent the totality. Some of the questions are: What does this project’s success look like? What color is the project? How does it smell? What era in history would the project happen comfortably in? How did the name come about? What are the ages of the players? Is this important and why? What is the geography served by the project? How do the players dress? Describe the equipment used? How do the players feel about the equipment? What does the audience say about the project? What are the sources of revenue?

After the inquiry, I allow two weeks for the answers to sink in.

Then I reflect back to you in writing what I see. For logos it’s especially important that you describe as clearly as possible what the project is today and exactly how you envision its future. The logo should be able to bridge this distance. If you are already living your ideal of success in the music business your project’s identity and vision are one. Sometimes the reflection will literally give visual cues. As an example Linking-Point’s music may be described as high energy, tribal and rhythmic to get people dancing and celebrating. In Linking-Point’s inquiry and reflection, the idea of breathing was surprisingly recurrent - the music originally struck me as happening as easily and naturally as taking air in and out, Rick and his wife and musical collaborator, Svjetlana, participate in breathing sessions, and Rick’s broad vision of Linking-Point had a description of giving and receiving in which Rick used the analogy of breathing. So we were led to consider the mouth, nose or lungs when we began our visual interpretation.

We take the raw data of the inquiry process and the refined reflection and create a visual interpretation: your logo. My studio gives one interpretation. Many designers will give you a choice of solutions, I would say that that probably means you’ve not found a sure enough voice. You want a confident visual voice, as confident and distinct as your refined identity.

This symbol needs to have been believed in. You want a logo about which the artist has thought, or better yet, cried out, ‘yes, yes, yes’ when he or she’s seeing the symbol develop on their easel or computer, the same feeling like when you’ve written a line or played a riff or sang a phrase that’s absolutely right. You need this same kind of definite visual voice.

When you’ve found your artist don’t second guess the interpretation. Be prepared to not like it at first. When I had the heart idea for my own studio’s logo, it was practically dismissed by one of our designers, but I knew the idea was right - it was a matter of finding the right medium of expression - and now neither of us can imagine a more fitting symbol.

Or be prepared to love it. I had a meeting recently in which a musician and I wept over the solution because it was utterly right (first time that ever happened). Brian Eno said you know art is good when it either seems really right or really wrong (he gave the example of feeling the Beatles had lost it when he first heard “Strawberry Fields”). So shop first for the artist you know is for you and then trust in his work when he delivers it.

I recommend two criteria for assessing logos. First is that the symbol be unique. If you follow a refinement and inquiry process, such as described, above, there is no way that someone else will end up with the same logo - you will be distinct. Second is a sense of rightness. Like there really could be no other solution for your logo. The artist has understood deeply and has created that visual note to sing out into the world today.

Lastly, stick utterly, artfully and intentionally true to your identity. Refine you and your project to be its best - learn your musical contribution and live it out. Take the time to observe and record your project’s distinctives and choose a visual artist to interpret what you’ve discovered. You’ll get a logo that will be the note - clear and true - that you send out into the world to draw your best and ever-expanding audience to you.

Lawrence Strauss began the art and design studio, Strauss and Strauss in Worcester, MA in 1991. Strauss and Strauss is nationally recognized for helping musicians differentiate themselves in the music market. Contact him at lawrence@straussandstrauss.com, (800) 757-9949, or visit www.straussandstrauss.com.

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all photos should be in the focus folder (3 in all)

NOTE: Ken, some of these captions are pretty lengthy. don’t know if you want to cut some down for space. use your best judgement. - Alan

The Angel logo, I wish I could credit the designer. I am awed that he or she dreamed the possibility of making the word Angel read the same rightside-up or upside-down when the letter shapes are so vastly different.

The Linking-Point logo. Rick Nichols, founding member of Linking-Point, said he “moved to New York to make it in the music business, but I heard people’s response to what we were doing both live and on disc and it was inescapable - the music was much bigger than my ambitions, it was really about connecting people, to each other, to nature and to themselves.” Rick described the types of connections they are hoping to foster through Linking-Point as being fractal-like, wherein communities are nested within each other - it’s an expansive, warm and organic vision. Strauss and Strauss depicted this with a single, simple, painted half-sphere which was copied and reduced by computer an infinite number of times.

(The photo of Lawrence Strauss should be credited with copyright symbol to Suzanne Larocque.)