You might have read my recent post about a podcast Chris Gee has done with me about the state of the design management profession. Chris is a very passionate blogger (“thepreparedmind.com”) and the principal of CUBEinteractive/NY. Chris set up his blog to seek for arguments and credibility in order “to gain more respect from the business world”.
Last week Chris has written an open letter to the Wall Street Journal regarding an article entitled ““Firm Offers Design Talent For Logos at Bargain Prices” which dealt about LogoWorks. For a while there have been rumours that LogoWorks might have sold logos which they’ve copied from already existing sketches and designs. Not only Chris, but also other graphic designers are trying to create a public awareness of this kind of breaching the copyrights of others. (You’ll find an engaging discussion on Chris’ blog)
While this is already a juicy story tonight Michael Wagner directed me to the blog of Laura Ries, the daughter of the quite well known “Marketing Positioning” Guru Al Ries (together with Jack Trout). Recently Laura has been a member of a price jury called “Entrepreneur’s Ugliest Logo Contest” and in her blog posting (which Laura deleted some minutes ago!) she is praising LogoWorks in a fashion which demonstrates a quite limited (but as I suspect quite common marketing viewpoint) understanding of the design discipline.
On the other hand making mistakes is part of human nature and for me it would be only natural to correct a previously false judgement. In particular one would guess that marketing professionals like Laura Ries know how to deal with such situations especially when you’ve used your blog to spread the news. – Nil Return!
Interestingly while writing this posting the according entry from Laura’s blog has been removed without any further notice ;-) Fortunately I’ve made a screen capture of the posting and parts of the comments which you can download here (approx. 285 KB).
Well, this is not the first case where bloggers underrated the power of weblogs in terms of opportunities and threats they offer: Last Fall Kryptonite has been the “victim” of consumer blogging power as well. Read the full story at Wired News.
Finally, I hope Laura will consider re-thinking her perspective on the “value destruction” LogoWorks and similar companies are causing. After all Kryptonite learned their lesson and Chris: May the force be with you!
Steve Portigal Says:
August 24th, 2005 at 3:22Visit Steve Portigal
I can not believe she pulled the whole post! She was losing credibility pretty bad with that posting to begin with, and then the unfortunate absence as the negative comments piled up, and then a rather lame “hey everyone I had car trouble and I will answer your comments eventually” which was too little too late.
But to delete the post without responding? I guess she hasn’t read The Cluetrain Manifesto, because, markets are conversations.
Given her supposed expertise, she’s behaving exactly in the opposite manner one would expect. It’s more disappointing than disturbing. Ah well.
Arturo Says:
August 24th, 2005 at 5:08Visit Arturo
Ralf I discover your site a few days back and is a great resource, great work.
Now… Your screencapture is scary, why? because is simple incredible that the daughter of Al Ries, and a big time consultant & errr guru… has such a lack of understanding of design.
Agree with Steve´s comment she is not interested in replying, she never made a single attempt in confronting, just take the whole thing off, ironic I recently read a quote from Ries something like -the main problem with ad agencies is that they not use their own advice on them, soooo I guess not only advertising agencies has this problem ;)
“It’s more disappointing than disturbing” actually Steve I think both
jens Says:
August 24th, 2005 at 22:00Visit jens
let’s be honest.
there is nothing bad about a service like logoworks.
if you know how to use it… you can get quite some results that are actually not too bad at all.
tried a similar service on behalf of a client and had it run parallel to the design studio that worked for us.
we were all - the design studio too - quite impressed.
there is nothing bad about a service like this. it’s the real world. the real market.
if you fear that logoworks is better than you, then you are simply not good enough.
and i can tell you - of course they have got their weak points. they were just not as outstandingly bad as we had all thought.
jens Says:
August 24th, 2005 at 22:11Visit jens
READING AFTER WRITING….
just read the open letter to wsj. - ok. now the whole thing is a slightly different story…
good to know.
Ralf Beuker Says:
August 24th, 2005 at 22:34Visit Ralf Beuker
Hi Steve, Arturo and Jens,
thanks for your comments!
Jens: yes, you’re mainly right with your first posting: In the end it’s the customer who decides. However (and this is how I understand Chris Gee’s initiative) it’s also a question to compete on a fair basis. You as a german fellow will definitively know where this “Geiz ist geil” mentality has lead us to. Once the customer isn’t aware of the “Value Chain” of a product or service any longer, price is the only transparent criterion which remains.
Steve and Arturo: Well said ;-) Interestingly this story (at least from my very marginal perspective) now turns away from the initial issue of LogoWorks business to net rules and I love to watch this. Not because I see the failure of an “expert” but rather because there’s much to learn from this case. Being able to admit that you’ve been wrong and correct this opinion is something which still seems hard to be accepted by the management/business side. Seeing it from a “Design Thinking” perspective it’s far easier to tackle: prototyping, testing, iterating …
Cheers, Ralf.
Michael Says:
August 24th, 2005 at 23:30Visit Michael
I have heard it said that “ideas are like children, they’re special when they are your own.” Maybe blog posts are like children too?
I agree this has become a much more interesting story about how blogs work and the nature of this medium and the humility required to be part of networked conversations. . . and what it means to be “expert”.
I wonder if we will begin to see that “expertise” does not reside within one individual (only) but within the community holding the conversation?
Just thinking out loud. Keep creating, Mike
Ralf Beuker Says:
August 25th, 2005 at 0:16Visit Ralf Beuker
Hi Mike,
well commented ;-) This blog and the interaction with people like You, Steve, Arturo & Jens and their different viewpoints gives me so much back from what I try to give. And this also includes to withstand the pressure of conflicting views.
Keep commenting ;-)
Ralf.
Steve Portigal Says:
August 25th, 2005 at 4:59Visit Steve Portigal
Well, Laura has finally resurfaced. You can read her blog entry here to see how she is dealing with the LogoWorks controversy but more interesting to me is the sneaky non-acknowledgement of the other post that she took down. She reposted it in the body of this one, but of course the comments are gone. Here’s what she says
Oh puhleeze! She clearly will only be involved in a dialogue that she entirely controls and can’t deal with the responses she got. To bring up the spam issue - and every blog owner deals with comment spam - as a way to justify silencing a powerful conversation - is just absolutely abhorrent.
I still think she’s worse than the LogoWorks people. They are interesting with Christopher Gee, with Laura Ries, with others to address this issue. Laura is shutting it down where she can’t keep utter control over it, and it’s too late - we all see her for what she is; for what she’s doing.
jens Says:
August 25th, 2005 at 9:55Visit jens
ja, ralf. right.
still personally i have always been shopping at a) discounters b) farmers markets and c) high street boutiques… i love this variety… and i think it is cool that it has come to the craphics design market
…
so what will happen? the fact that you can buy a cashmere sweater at aldi or at any discounter does not bring the prices down from the wonderful ones you can buy at dior (unfortunately..:)
what will happen is that people will get a clearer sense for quality and for what they realy want. they will also find that just having a logo means nothing - it’s how it is used, that makes the difference…
people will learn that.
honestly, when today people pass me their cards… often it makes me smile because you can see it has been done by a service like logoworks. ok it is a little annoying, because i more or less get the same sensation when seeing these *hot design furniture* that you can buy in the everadge warehouse proudly presented in a privat home i visit. … die welt war schoener ohne den glasfacettenschrank …und wurde aber deutlich besser durch ikea…
but also with discount design at ikea… that can be an incredibly great thing. and no house is harmed when you buy a couple of pieces… only as soon, as you start to buy all your stuff at ikea, you have kind of lost it…
same with logoworks - if they get a grip on their qualitiy problems - the obvious plagiarism - why should they not be the new logo-ikea?
i doubt that they will actually harm anybody. they will steer up the market a bit… but hey, look what the china challenge does to the us currently. america has discovered design management as secret weapon against the chinese manufacturing power.
would not think you consider that a bad thing, ralf….
jens Says:
August 25th, 2005 at 11:05Visit jens
….
can’t believe it….
how did i write graphics…????!!!!
…:) learn to live with your mistakes… i guess that is what you just wrote here ralf.
so blogging teaches me some designers’ thinking… pffft… good thing.