Despite my wife being one, I’ve given designers get a lot of stick over the years.
To be honest, they have brought it on themselves with shit like this or this.
Of course not all designers are pretentious tossers who make planners look down-to-earth, there are those who are brilliant problem solvers … like the guys [whoever they are] behind the new SONOS corporate identity.
On first glance, it’s nothing special … but the moment you scroll the logo up or down, it suddenly looks like sound is pulsating out of it.
Go on, try it.
How brilliant is that eh?
I’ll tell you how brilliant it is … it’s sheer, utter, simple brilliance.
Of course there are many audio companies who have incorporated music/sound cues within their corporate identity – lets face it, it’s a pretty obvious thing to do – but as far as I know, none have done it in such a clever way.
Whoever was behind this really thought about the challenge.
You can tell they really sweated over the solution as opposed to just heading towards the obvious or the easy.
Maybe their starting point was reframing the challenge.
Maybe it was something like this: how do we make a static logo produce sound?
The reason I say that is because when you phrase objectives that way, it forces you to be creative in your response.
And when I say that, what I really mean is it forces you to be creative in your thinking.
I’ve always been a big believer that obstacles make you more creative.
Maybe that’s why I love working in China, because apart from the cultural barriers, there’s the fact the government are very strict on what can/can’t be said so you always have to try and think one step ahead.
Barriers liberate creativity. Too few people understand that … but they do.
The bigger the barrier, the bigger the potential for glory.
The fact is problems make you smarter … they improve your skills and hone your talent and if you don’t believe me, take another look at that SONOS identity because the people behind it managed to overcome the rather major obstacle of turning a static, silent medium into one that produces sound.