Recently in Brandient Category

I find it hard to express how thrilled I am to announce today Brandient's first book: Brandient 101. Here it is:

Brandient 101, limited edition of 101, numbered and signed. Click here or on the image to enlarge.

Brandient 101

Award winning corporate identities, category leading packaging capable of catching both the eye and the heart of the hurried shopper, brand strategy problems solved by design.

• 101 graphic identities created by Brandient between 2002 and 2010;
• Limited edition of 101, numbered and signed by Aneta Bogdan;
• Bilingual edition in English and Romanian;
• 224 pages, hardcover, full color;
• ISBN 978-973-0-07554-0.

Available today, only at Cărturești Verona bookstore, Bucharest.

I find it hard to express how thrilled I am to announce today Brandient's first book: Brandient 101. Here it is:

Brandient 101, limited edition of 101, numbered and signed. Click here or on the image to enlarge.

Brandient 101

Award winning corporate identities, category leading packaging capable of catching both the eye and the heart of the hurried shopper, brand strategy problems solved by design.

• 101 graphic identities created by Brandient between 2002 and 2010;
• Limited edition of 101, numbered and signed by Aneta Bogdan;
• Bilingual edition in English and Romanian;
• 224 pages, hardcover, full color;
• ISBN 978-973-0-07554-0.

Available today, only at Cărturești Verona bookstore, Bucharest.

AdMarket report

According to the 2008 edition of AdMarket report (by UAPR and D&D Research), the answers provided by 247 respondents coming from a pool of 180 largest advertisers to the question “Please name the first three companies you would think of using for branding services” are as follows:

Answers to the question “Please name the first three companies you would think of using for branding services” in 2008 AdMarket report.

I will outline the Top 3:

1. Brandient — 39.7%
2. Grapefruit — 16.2%
3. Leo Burnett — 8.1%

What does this mean?

This means three things:

1. With the an index of 39.7%—that’s more than the rest of the top 5 combined (36.1%)—Brandient scores decisively in the following two dimensions: “brand preference” and “perceived quality”. Six and a half years later, after the consultancy establishment in 2002, Brandient has consolidated its first place in professional branding services as the market favorite provider of this type of services.

Bradient is the branding services’ market leader of reputation.

2. Bradient is the indisputable reputation leader in the branding services market.

3. Three years ago, we decided to restrict our time and energy dedicated to media appearences in favor of our branding projects and advices offered to our clients. The 2008 media monitoring analysis reveals that we are just in the 3th position according to the overall number of mentionning Brandient or Brandient representatives thoughout printed press & media. In other words, in professional services, the media noise is not enough to build a reputation.

What have I learnt from CEC Bank rebranding?

There are many differences between a rebranding that costs a five–six digit figure and one that costs an exceptional 150,000,000 € (over a three years time span)—like CEC Bank rebranding does.

Here are the findings I've learned from this job.

You’re alone (I)

Fore once, there’s not a person in the country that has ever worked on such a massive change (nod to Bruce Mau), so there is nobody acknowledged enough to give an educated advice. When it gets this big, you’re alone.

You’re alone (II)

Rebranding state-owned entities is not a common task. Brandient had before CEC Bank a solid experience in this class of business ownership (TVR, Radiocom) but not at such magnitude (1400 locations, 6700 people) nor in such a competitive category.

Seen from abroad things can be clearer than seen from Bucharest. Tony Spaeth of Identityworks puts it like this:

This is a uniquely 21st Century branding story—the reinvention of a government-owned bureaucracy, to compete in the marketplace with some of the world's sharpest marketers.

When it gets this specialized, you’re alone.

Not design, but design strategy

As the big league guys are very well aware—but I wasn't until now—at this magnitude the designer's job shifts from designing items, to designing examples for those who will design the final items.

This means that a designer has to focus on devising a working design strategy that can deliver down the road consistent brand mechanics.

Decoupling direction from final execution means hard control on the direction but only soft control on the execution of individual items—that’s in the hands of third party designers, architects, advertising agency, web agency, producers, constructors etc. Very frustrating sometimes.

Old words

Patriotism is not a fashionable word these days, I know, but rebranding the oldest Romanian bank implies that, too. And other old words: dignity, honor, pride. There are jobs and then there are jobs that build your character.

Malevolent judgment

High profile rebrandings trigger copious reactions—like full moon does to lunatics on the loose—here and elsewhere. That's normal. But I've read a couple of ill-intended articles in the papers. Not criticism—I’m talking about full-blown mala fide here. There are people out there that might need doing a little soul-searching before going to sleep at night, God bless their mean little hearts.

Legitimate assessment

How do you know that you’re on the right path? Or the wrong one, for that matter. Luckily, there are prominent international figures like Tony Spaeth, who can fully comprehend the intricacies of such a job legitimately assess its resolve.

Quoting from his CEC Bank case review:

It's hard to imagine a "before" brand as trivial, as cartoonish, as the old CEC coin-in-roof symbol. This redesign takes it leap years forward in sophistication, yet at the same time back to its 1864 foundation. Virtually overnight, CEC Bank is credibly a global competitor (at least in image), yet retains the home-field advantage.

This is how I know we’ve done our job right.

Zuzú awarded Bronze Pentaward

Everybody's dear—Zuzú— takes home a prize again: the Bronze Pentaward in the Beverages (RTD) category at 2007 Pentawards.

Pentawards is the first and only worldwide competition exclusively devoted to packaging design in all its forms. It is open to everybody in all countries who are associated with the creation and marketing of packaging.

Presided over by Gérard Caron—founder of Carré Noir in 1973, co-founder and former president of PDA (Pan European Brand Design Association), regarded as the founder of marketing design in France and Europe—the international jury for the Pentawards 2007 enlisted: Michael Aidan – Danone Waters, Philippe Becker – PBD, Luis G. Bartolomei – B+G, Oleg Beriev – Mildberry Brand Building Solutions, Sam Ciulla – Ciulla/MLR, Jonathan Ford – Pearlfisher, Tamara Fynan – J.M. Smucker, Cathy Huang – CBI, William Lunderman – Colgate Palmolive, Fumi Sasada – Bravis, Barrie Tucker – Tucker Design, Lars Wallentin.

Brandient (and myself as well) feels LogoLounge's love for quite a while now. Let me explain:

• 2004 – LogoLounge 2 book features Brandient works;
• 2005 – Bill invites me to be part of LogoLounge 3 international jury;
• 2006 – LogoLounge 3 book features me (the merciless juror, ha!);
• 2006 – Bill likes my Radiocom and Domo identites and my Smartree packaging and writes beautiful words about them in Identity Magazine at Best of the Best 2006 in Moscow;
• 2006 – In his 2006 Trends Report, published in the April issue of Graphic Design USA magazine, Bill features Brandient work: Radiocom and Europharm;
• 2006 – Cathy kindly offers me the opportunity of an interview as featured designer on LL;
• 2007 – Europharm logo on LL's home-page (see the picture above).

What can I say? Thank you, Bill Gardner. Thank you, Cathy Fishel.

Does anyone know this last good samaritan?

What happened

A few days ago I remembered that being part of the European Union now means that we can buy dot-eu domains so I logged into my registrar's web page to buy brandient.eu domain name.

To my surprise, I found that brandient.eu has been taken. Bought on January 5^th, 2007, only a couple of days before, through a French registrar.

Strange — I thought — but maybe somebody in France doesn't mind the number of hits this brand name returns in Google and thinks — Hey, forget those Romanians, we're French!

Somebody in Iasi cares for us

Digging deeper revealed that although the Registrar is French, the guy who bought the name is very, very Romanian. From Iasi, actually.

His name is Dan (Marius) Silian, his email address is silian_dan@yahoo.com and some of the traces he left across the internet imply that he speaks French and may be a weekend student in the first year (Series B - P9B) at The National Institute of Economic Development¹ with a passion for Linux as a hobby. He's not very talkative, though, and he keeps a low profile.

He's obviously an altruistic, decent kind of guy. He bought brandient.eu to protect it from the bad guys, I'm sure.

I mean, there is no way somebody can take out his credit card and buy a name oblivious to the massive number of search engine hits that name generates, isn't it? Moreover, the chances that the person is from the very same country as the de jure owner of the trademark is downright infinitesimal. So he must've been well aware of what he's doing. And I refuse to believe he's the kind of scumbag that we usually see (it happens a lot more often than you believe it) employing this kind of blackmail tactics for a profit. No, not that, nor an idiot that blindly buys random domains off the internet. He must be a charitable soul.

Thank him and keep in touch

So, if you know this generous soul, or if you happen to acquaint with him, please let me know — no matter how long has passed from the day this post was written, days, months or years — I want to know how he's doing, if he's alright and what he's up to lately. I just want to know this guy's life better and keep an eye on him, throughout his life.

Thank you!

Also, send him my best regards and my advice to take good care of this particular acquisition. Even though Brandient will never pay one dollar for his kind services, he won our eternal friendship, which — as I'm sure he will understand — is priceless.

¹ INDE is a post - graduate program of the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest in partnership with the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers - Paris, which kind of explains why he bought the domain through a French registrar.

About this, that and the other

It looks like LogoLounge is everywhere these days.

LogoLounge founder Bill Gardner and editor Cathy Fishel kindly offered me the opportunity of an interview as featured designer. it's about inspiration and masters, gratification in design vs. advertising, trends and the future — in not too many words and a few pictures.

LogoLounge seems to be ubiquitous these days, from US to Russian design magazines, competitions and seminars, while LL books are on the shelves of every decent bookshop and in many, many designer's bookcases. I may be biased by the fact that I was part of the latest LogoLounge book jury (LogoLounge 3), but it seems to me that Bill is on the right track to build a solid global brand targeted towards graphic / identity designers. For us.