Why spending and extra $5,000 on your new logo is a great idea
Two decades or so ago, a printer friend of mine brought me a project for a client that included promotional products. This was not his area of expertise so he asked me for my assistance in getting it off the ground. My first question (almost always) was "do you have art?". He did, vector files with text outlines and PMS colors. GREAT! This should be easy, or so I thought. The logo file included 4, yes 4 metallic PMS colors. Being like 2000, there wasn't much "googling" going on but Pantone did have a website (albeit primitive). Three of the 4 were not even listed. Some four digit numbers in the 7000's. Ok I thought, there must me some issue. My printer buddy was ready for me. He had a new PMS color chart, with like 10 pages and they were all metallic! OMG, this is gonna kill me slowly, I can already tell. Then he showed me their presentation folder. A shiny coated 9x12 folder with a logo in the corner. One green foil, one silver foil and one copper foil. Embossed and a metallic PMS color. HOLY CHEESE AND CRACKERS!?!? I asked "Are these people for real?" He calmly responded -yes. OK, did you know about this before hand? Of course he didn't.
Over the next several years, we were challenged time and time again to reproduce this very complex, very tightly registered logo with colors most of the world, let along promotional products had even heard of. What fun it was, delivering a disappointing message, time and time again saying "Sorry, nope and can't do it". In 2000, silver and gold metallic were hard enough to find in promotional products. Even it today's full color world, metallic ink is not possible in most printing processes. This client had painted themselves into a corner, being forced to settle for one color recreations of a logo that was never interned for a 1.25" x .768" imprint window. IF, only IF they would have had some foresight into the reality that was the future. If only they would have had someone to call and as, "What do you think of this?" "Can this work?" "Do you see any issues with this?" THEY DID! Call a printer, call a promotional products professional, call a t-shirt shop, embroidery house, sign vendor, anyone. With a simple phone call to any one of these people would have be able to tell them about the hard road ahead of them trying to reproduce the logo equivalent of cold fusion.
Are you considering a new logo? Or a refresh of your current brand? My amazing and talented (I am biased) graphic artist wife regularly asks me if our clients consult us when doing brand (logo) work. It is somewhat a rhetorical question, she knows the answer but it always sparks a conversation in my head. I have been working in the promotional products industry for 25 years and in that time, never, not one time were we asked to be involved in the creative process when a client does work to their brand. It seems off to me that its never happened. The inquisitive part of me needed to know if it was just us or if application was never considered. I needed to find out if it WAS just us or if it just didn't happen. To start my investigation, I phoned a commercial printer we have a relationship with and ask him. "Do you ever get asked for feedback?" He is response was a very quick no. Never, not once. OK, maybe it is just the two of us. Maybe the rest of the world of print in all facets gets called. I made a hand full of inquiries to printers and another group of promotional products professionals I know. The answer, a resounding no. Now, I understand my network is not all encompassing but I think it's a pretty wide net and for not one of my contacts to have been involved in providing feedback of any kind -seems crazy! The amount of time and energy spent creating your logo is immense. And while the numbers have changes