Logo – that little spot of ink (or cluster of pixels) that communicates the persona of a company. We’re all familiar with the logos of major brands: Target’s red and white bull’s eye, Starbuck’s mermaid, the Nike swoosh, and You-Know-Who’s golden arches. These marks seem so simple, don’t they? And if you’ve spent any time looking for logo design services, you’d think it’s a simple process too. With online companies offering $50 logo design “packages” (including unlimited revisions), and sites where you can build your own logo, developing a logo can seem like a commodity similar to buying your company’s office supplies.

So why do discerning companies pay substantial amounts of green to hire a firm to custom design their logos? Perhaps the answer is that to really capture the essence of a brand, it takes a lot of thought, creativity, experience and trial and error. Ask any designer and they’ll tell you that designing a logo can be one of the most challenging projects they’ll tackle, because a successful logo says so much with so little. And regarding the cost? Well, a logo, like a company’s website is one of it’s most important brand assets. So the question really is, what’s the value of a corporate brand?

At Hile, we tell our clients that their logo is the clothes their company wears in public – a visual synonym for their business, and much more than a pretty graphic/type design – their logo should reflect the core of who they are.

We recently developed a brand identity for Go Docs Go, a medical start-up providing home medical care (read house calls) for homebound and geriatric patients. After going through the logo design process with our client, we thought we would provide a picture into how we do it.

Our first step was sitting down and talking with our client to discover who they were as a business, and how they could differentiate themselves from other competing firms. We needed to understand their core purpose, their customer promises and how they planned to prove those promises. We needed this information in order for the logo to have “authenticity.” While their competitors had typical corporate medical logos, Go Docs Go expressed a desire to have a friendly, contemporary logo that presented a sense of accessibility to their patients and their families, while still representing a professional organization that participating health care providers could align themselves with. These attributes were right on the mark with the way we experienced our client.

Next, we pass the torch to our designers and they develop an assortment of logo concepts. Then, internally we select the designs (sometimes as many as twenty) down to a few options to show our client. For Go Docs Go we also developed a tag line to communicate the company’s purpose: “Go Docs Go – The Doctor’s Office at your Door.”

Below are the designs we presented along with the reasoning behind each option. Our designer, Charlie Szczygiel, provides our narrative:

“The main thing we needed to communicate was ‘doctors (and other health care providers) coming to your home’ and we wanted to be clear about that message, so it shouldn’t be too abstract. There were some common medical images such as a stethoscope that we needed to avoid since our client’s competitors were already using them. Despite the ‘speedy’ reference in the Go Docs Go name, we realized early on that we should avoid visual references like the image below, as it might communicate speed at the expense of thorough patient care.”

The logos below are those we presented to our client. See if you can guess which one was selected, and click on the link at the bottom of this post to see if your selection matched the client’s final pick!

“This one was a softer option, but we still needed it to stand out. We wanted to try blue in order to give the logo more of a soothing feeling than the more typical medical red. This was a design where the messaging was incorporated in the typography.”

“This idea was the same concept as our first design, only in icon form. Initially, I was just playing with the icons and needed a way to contain them, so I ended up trying a pill image since that is a simple, medically recognizable shape. Then, we decided that if we put a slant instead of a straight line in the middle of the pill, it would communicate the travel aspect. The logo is saying three things (literally representing the tag line), but it is contained in a way that all the messaging works within a single icon.”

“This design communicates “medical” and “homes” in the simplest icon I could think of – the medical cross. The neighborhood graphic makes it a friendlier logo. The only downside of this might be that some people wouldn’t see a red cross right away, but it still works aesthetically and conceptually so I didn’t see a problem with the design.”

“This was a little abstract. ‘A little too feminine’ according to Dave (Hile). He felt this might be more applicable for, say, hospice care. But several designers argued it should be included and Dave gave in.”

“This one is pretty self explanatory. We wanted to present an option without a medical cross. The heart rate monitor delineates the shape of a house.”

“This design highlights a doctor or healthcare provider (developed from universal walking man) entering a home. It’s a literal and straightforward treatment. But that was okay since it was our goal to provide the client with a range of options.”

Click the link to find out which logo was chosen: The Winning Go Docs Go Logo.

How did you do? Leave a comment!

While most people at Hile Design were just starting to fulfill New Year’s resolutions and sincerely regretting that extra slice of pie over Christmas, I was boarding a plane, on my way to a land of Bollywood, chicken masala and blue skinned gods. As part of a Spring Arbor University requirement, I needed to spend a month in another country in order to graduate. So, I chose India.

I spent three weeks bouncing from city to city, tasting food far too spicy for my American tongue and keeping a look out for elephants (alas, I saw none). Starting in Mumbai, my group traveled to Hyderabad, Calcutta and ended our stay in Delhi.

We were required to keep a journal to record our experience, and in the first page, I described India in one word: Thick.  India is thick with people, thick with smells and noise and pollution, thick with poverty and thick with luxury, thick with tradition and color and religious deities; India is thick with markets and vendors and food and traffic and non-profits trying to make a dent in the thickness, but, most of all, India is thick with media and advertising.

The minute I stepped out of the airport into the humid Mumbai streets, I was struck by how much print advertising dominated the aesthetic culture. If there was wall space, whether domestic residencies, retail stores, corporate offices or broken down structures (of which there was a lot), there was a poster or banner advertising some brand of food or technology. Typically in America, a sign advertising something like Coca-Cola on a building is usually a signifier that whatever business occupies the space probably sells the product. But, in India that wasn’t the case. It seemed that as long as the public could see the building, it was free for the advertising taking.

Amid all the mangoes, saris and bangles, I expected to see a reflection of the society I was in when I looked at the posters and billboards. Unfortunately, just about every ad I saw had a very pale looking model dressed in western clothes and selling either a western product or its Indian equivalent. Nowhere in the television commercials did I see a dark-skinned woman in her sari holding up a packet of curry spices to the tune of a Bollywood song. Nowhere in the print promotions did I see a man in his kurta sitting down for a meal in his brightly colored apartment and eat with his hands and some chapatti bread. As far as marketing goes, India may be stationed in the East but certainly has its eyes to the West.

This Eastern idolization of the West isn’t anything new; skin lightening and eyelid lifting has been a trend in Asia for some time. However, I find it fascinating that it has gone beyond personal appearance to entire cultures embodying this movement to become “more American” through its media and advertising. That raises the question of the power of marketing and if it really is the global identifier for a society. I wonder how many cultures outside of the US associate Americans with the golden arches of McDonalds or the seductive women of Victoria’s Secret.  I also wonder how many Americans look at the ads and have the same feeling I got in India, where what they see around them and what they see on the billboards don’t match up.

So, as I sit at my desk in my kurta and crave a mango lassi, I’ll leave you all with the question that has been on my mind of late: is media and advertising a reflection of the culture, maybe the best parts of the culture, or is it creating some sort of ideal that the culture is trying to achieve? Does it matter?

I’m going to ask you to humor me for a moment. If I say the word “writer,” what picture pops into your head? My bet is that your imagination immediately conjured up an image of a bespectacled man or woman sitting in the lone corner of a coffee shop with a Moleskine and a pen. Of course, your imagined writer is not conversing with the other customers or being engaged with the world because the best writing comes from the inner-depths of a writer’s mind and soul … right? Well, yes and no.

Poetry and fiction may be more personal works, thus requiring seclusion from the distraction of others. But agency copywriting is a different ball game altogether.

Marketing writing is a form of communication that is constantly evolving, and to be successful copywriters need to be actively involved with others. I have learned a few things from my experience in writing copy for Hile: Read the rest of this entry »

“Is that Greek?”

Imagine you’re a client eagerly about to review Hile’s proposed design for a new website. You click on the link we’ve given you and there on your screen you see a mocked-up web page featuring clean, stylish design, a just-right photo for your banner image and … wait a minute. What the heck? In place of where the copy should go you see this:

Where you thought you’d see words somehow related to your company’s industry or purpose, there in its place is what appears to be a long, lost Romance language. You rack your brain trying to decipher what is now taking the place of the expected text. Of course, the words (if you can call them that) are there to show you how the page will look with copy and, unfortunately, hold as much meaning as a baby’s babble.

What Lorem Ipsum basically comes down to is designing and organizing a website, brochure, etc. that visually looks like the finished product. It doesn’t distract the viewer with actual copy, and the letters are spaced out well enough so that it appears on the page just as intelligible English would.  Read the rest of this entry »

Twenty years ago after my doctor recommended I get more exercise, I, like 40 million other Americans, went out and bought a treadmill. I knew that the odds of exercising long-term in our unfinished basement were against me (only 3 in 10 Americans exercise regularly) but I was going to beat the odds. I swore that I wouldn’t become a statistic by letting my treadmill turn into a back-of-the-basement, spider web covered, clothes hanger.

My 3-day a week treadmill regimen lasted 2 years.

Yup! I was a statistic. (Lest you think I’m a total slackard, I was exercising sporadically, but not on our expensive treadmill.)

Two and a half years ago when I decided to launch our company blog I had the same noble intentions as my early exercise aspirations. I promised myself I’d write two fresh posts a week, including compelling interviews with industry leaders, and that my entries would be GOOD. By my fifteenth post I realized that all those great ideas I’d had when I decided to become Mr. Social Media had run out. Read the rest of this entry »

This summer I said farewell to my friends at Hile Design and hopped on a plane to spend a 5-week stint in England, where I studied literature at Oxford University and learned the correct way to drink tea and play croquet. I did fairly well academically, but how does an A in English translate to quality work in the office?

I’d like to think that the expenses of this trip paid for more than college credit and that what I learned while across the pond may be applied to the work I’m doing here at Hile.

So, besides finally being able to define a “crumpet,” what have I learned? My literature courses revolved around legendary writers such as Jane Austen, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll. But, at Hile I’m not writing about ill-fated courtships or magical rings. Now that I’m out of the classroom and back in the office I feel like I’ve taken a tumble through a rabbit hole to land on my head in the world of advertising.

However, my job here can really be boiled down to one thing: words. Constructing, organizing, manipulating, sometimes even creating words is really what my job as an assistant copywriter comes down to. And what were Tolkien and Austen really doing but stringing together words to fashion a plot and characters? Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been interning at Hile Design for about four months now and I’d like to think I’ve lasted due to my writing skills and charming personality. However, as daughter of Julie Tibus (Creative Director at Hile) I can’t help but wonder if my being able to say “hi mom” when I walk through the door has anything to do with my current position.

I assist Monica Getz in researching, editing and, in those occasional, blissful moments, writing copy. I move in a nomadic fashion around the office as I hop from desk to desk depending on who happens to be absent the day I’m working. I’m usually stationed at Mary Cooper’s desk, but currently I’m sitting at a table in my mom’s office. Note to Dave: these chairs look very modern and stylish but they do nothing for the posture.

Now, I’m certainly not pampered at Hile because of my last name. Most of these people have known me since I was in middle school and have, through phone calls to my mother and the annual holiday parties, witnessed my maturation. Apparently they liked how I turned out since I am now employed, but just how much of an influence did mommy dearest have in this decision?

If I weren’t her kid, Julie Tibus would surely intimidate me. She knows what she’s doing, how to get it done and has the confidence to help lead this company wherever it needs to go.  Lucky for me, when she’s giving me an assignment in what I like to refer to as her “business mode,” I can think back to all the days I’ve seen her in a raggedy t-shirt vacuuming the living room and belting out a Michael Jackson song.

I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but working for my mother isn’t half bad.  And, if anyone says I’m only here because I’m a Tibus I will stamp my feet and call for mommy. She will fly over in her blazer and heels, lift that ferocious one eyebrow, and the perpetrator will be put in his place.  Or, I suppose I could just keep proving myself worthy of my position and see where that gets me.

Hile Design copywriting intern John Farris reflects on his experience:

My time has come. We all knew it was going to happen, but we tried to forget. And upon the final hour I eat bagel after bagel at my desk and contemplate how to sign off wittily before they come and take me away.

Well I guess I’ll actually be walking out, hopefully without an escort (sorry about the stapler, Dave), and hopefully with my dignity intact. I am sad to see my end here—it’s really a fun place to be. And I wasn’t kidding about the bagels; I’m eating them right now, a bit of a going-away treat.

It’s hard to get too upset about leaving when I think of how much better off I am since starting in February. I now have something more to say than “I watch TV” to a potential employer when he asks me about my experience with advertising. A while back I looked at my resume and thought about what skills I could add to it since working at Hile, and I was quite pleased. I owe it all to the people at Hile for taking a chance on me and seeing what I can do. Unfortunately, nothing I did was that impressive (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this), and I’m going to work minimum wage for the rest of my life. Just kidding—I’m excited to see what opportunities await me after the experience of working here.

I could go on and list the technical skills I’ve acquired, but that would be awfully boring. I’ll just keep it brief and simple and give the best advice I can think of for anyone in my position: Don’t be shy about approaching a company and relentlessly pursuing them until they submit to your requests. Well, not exactly, but bring some confidence to the table (especially when you don’t have much else to prove yourself with) and let them know how much you want to work with them. What have you got to lose anyway?

Editor’s note: John’s right. While we didn’t exactly “submit to [his] requests,” John’s polite perseverance—via emails, not phone calls—kept reminding us of his availability so that when we did need someone to help with a pro bono project, he was the one we thought of. Thanks, John, for all your hard work and witty writing—and when you’re famous, don’t forget your first advertising job!