Podcast

Industrial brands often treat design as an afterthought, then wonder why prospects hesitate.

In this episode, Solspace founder Mitchell Kimbrough sits down with Paul Kiesche, President of Aviate Creative, to break down branding for manufacturers and tech firms.

Paul explains:

• Why branding is far more than a logo and how it shapes first impressions, employee pride, and sales momentum.
• How Norwalt used a rebrand to break into pharmaceutical and medical device space and triple its facility footprint.
• The sweet-spot rule for “cohesive but not carbon-copy” visuals.
• Practical ways to spot brand blindness before it dents your pipeline.

If your website and collateral feel stuck in the 2010s, hit play and learn how a focused rebrand can pull real dollars through the door.

Listen now and see if your own brand needs a tune-up.

Full Transcript

[Music] Welcome to the Solspace Podcast. Thanks for listening.

Mitchell: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to The Solspace Podcast. This is your host, Mitchell Kimbrough, founder, owner of Solspace, web development company working in a number of vertical markets, the industrial manufacturing space being one of those.

And that's what brings us to today's guest, Paul Kiesche from Aviate Creative. Paul, you and I met in February in Austin at the Industrial Marketing Summit. It's a conference that's, I don't know, it's starting to kind of growing in size.

This was the second year that they held it. And you gave a presentation about the work you do, the expertise that you've cultivated over, I mean, at least 19 years that you've been in business, branding. And you presented a number of slides in your presentation that really caught my attention because you were able to attach to branding efforts, not only by your own company, but by other firms who have done branding work for brands that we would probably recognize.

Attach numbers, like you were able to attach growth numbers, revenue, acquisition, all sorts of success, like metrics for businesses to branding. And it was eye-opening. I believe in branding and design, but it didn't necessarily make the connection between what branding can do and how it can affect business outcomes.

So I invited you on the podcast to get a conversation going about that. So welcome, Paul.

Paul: Thank you so much.

Yeah, this is going to be fun. I've been looking forward to this ever since we met at IMS, I've been thinking about this. So I'm excited to get into it.

Mitchell: Great. Thanks for joining. Can you take a minute to introduce Aviate?

I mean, the whole point of a podcast is to help people promote the good work that they do. So let's talk about your company.

Paul: Sure. So Aviate Creatives, we're a branding company, also a creative agency. So we do mostly graphic design, branding, web design, writing, that kind of stuff.

And we focus primarily on two industries, manufacturing and technology. You're right, we've been in business for 19 years, it'll be 20 years in May. And we've done a lot over the years, so we have a lot of stuff to show as examples.

Mitchell: What is branding? What's within that scope? What's under the umbrella of branding?

Paul: So a lot of people just automatically assume that branding is just the logo, which I was one of those people for many years. So I think you learn over the years that it's much, much bigger than that. So branding is everything that you kind of see, hear, read about a brand and how it's perceived.

So basically that can go into things like how your company is positioned within the marketplace. It could be your voice, your tone, your messaging, it could be any kind of visual identity. So that's like the logos, the color, the fonts, lots of stuff there.

And then it also translates into the actual stuff. So the product design, the packaging design, the website, the collateral, all that stuff. So it's very broad.

It's what influences somebody's perception of your company outside of the actual service or product that you produce.

Mitchell: It sounds like consistency is a big, important part of branding. Can you talk about the relevance of consistency in your efforts?

Paul: Yeah, I mean, consistency helps to create confidence in the buyer. It helps to create like a unified brand. So that way everything kind of looks like it's part of the same family.

So consistency is absolutely imperative. However, some people go too far with it, which is interesting. So you want to be consistent, but you don't want to make everything look exactly, exactly the same.

Because then when somebody sees, say you make like, for an example, you show somebody your brochure, and then you send them your sell sheets or your case studies, and you send them your website. If everything looks literally exactly the same, they won't absorb the second or third thing because they're like, your brain says, I've already seen this. So it's consistent and it has to be within the same family of brand.

But you want to have some differentiation between your branding because that'll keep people alert and interested. It's just kind of, it's cohesive rather than just perfectly consistent, if that makes sense.

Mitchell: Yeah. I didn't, I didn't ever know that you actually wanted to intentionally vary the brand across the different sort of media, the different touch points in order to maintain interest.

Paul: So the logo would stay consistent, but like different collateral or different pieces like that would be varied in its approach because of what you emphasize and what you kind of show and so forth.

Mitchell: That's cool. What problems does branding solve? I know in my company what we fix, like we fix friction, we create reliability in the sales flow for companies, and we do that digitally.

We do that on the web. What does branding fix? What problem is being solved?

Paul: Quite a few, actually. I mentioned it already, but let's start with perception. So if you want your company perceived in a certain way, branding can help solve that problem.

Now that can go varied directions. Do you want to look small or large? Do you want to look expensive or affordable?

Do you want to look, you know, like you can go through so much perception. Do you want to look fun? Do you want to look serious?

All that stuff. The other big thing could be if your company looks outdated, you can have a brand new company and you could still look outdated because of your branding. So you want your branding to look current and fresh.

You want to make sure your branding is sending the right message. You want to make sure it's consistent, as we've talked about already. Branding can also help attract employees and retain employees because of the way that your company is perceived.

And it can also help evolve your company into a next level and graduate to a higher level.

Mitchell: How often does a company need to review and revise branding?

Paul: I don't know if I've ever given an exact amount because it varies so much based on the company. So I work with two sides of the spectrum, which is I work with manufacturers who are sometimes 30, 50, 100, 200 years old. And then I work with technology companies, which can be old, but some of them are startups that literally started last week or whatever else.

And a startup sometimes has to rebrand very often because of the fact that they're changing so much. A startup might be one thing and then they get acquired or they change their services and they have to readapt and they have to do something else. Some of those companies might be three, five years, whatever, which is very, very short.

And then you have manufacturing companies, which some of them take a hundred years before they rebrand. But I don't recommend that. I would say after 10 years, it's very established and it starts to decline as far as being top of the mind and fresh.

So I would say if you're at 20 or 30 years, you definitely need to consider rebranding to some degree. It could be just like a facelift rather than a full rebrand. So there's different levels of rebranding that you can do.

But it definitely varies per company because you can have a very new company that just has a poor brand that isn't being perceived right that needs to be rebranded. You can have a company that just got acquired that needs to be rebranded, all sorts of examples like that.

Mitchell: Are there any pain points? Are there junctures that companies reach where they're feeling some kind of pain and they can tell? Like you mentioned, for example, employee retention, employee acquisition, branding can help with that.

The perception of the place where you go to work matters and branding can affect that. Are there sort of signals, indicators that a company should go back and review branding and consider engaging a rebrand or redesign of that sort of conceptual work?

Paul: Yes. So the short answer is yes, but it's more complicated, of course. So there are some very obvious reasons that come out, but most of the time it's much more subtle and the subtle ones are really hard for companies to identify and to realize in time type of thing.

So the obvious ones, I kind of hinted on some of them, but say you acquire a few different companies or even one company and your brand has to change because the names of the companies are merging or whatever. Those are like really easy, obvious reasons to rebrand. Maybe your service changed completely, right?

So like I have a client who sold both strut metal and they sold baseboard heating. And when they brought me in, they were like, we are removing baseboard heating or we don't really want to promote that. We want to focus on strut metal.

So they needed to rebrand to focus on a certain service. So things like that, those are pretty obvious. Those companies know they need to rebrand.

Some of them still don't do it, but for the most part, those are the ones that have to do it. The more difficult ones are the ones that are really subtle and they wait too long. So I think I mentioned this in my speech at the event actually, is there's a thing we call brand blindness, where basically companies will kind of go blind to their own brand because you know, when you look at something so long, you don't think about it anymore.

It's not top of mind. And reality is, is that branding is a first impression type of thing. Even your customers and buyers don't overthink your brand after they've seen it a couple of times.

So it's really for that first impression mindset. So if you've been in business a long time, you might be like, oh, our brand's fine. But over time, let's say you start losing employees, you start losing customer, your sales start dropping and you start looking into everything.

Well branding is one of those things that's impacting that. And if your branding looks old or your branding looks low quality, that is the same perception of your stuff. So say you make products or you do services, whatever your branding is perceived as makes your product and services look that way.

So if your branding looks outdated, it makes your products look outdated. If your branding is amateurish, it makes your products and services look amateurish. And all of a sudden they start seeing a decline.

I'm sure you see it too with websites is people's sales start going down if they don't stay on top of that. They're outdated. They're not functioning as well.

And next thing you know, once they finally rebrand, they're like, wow, we're totally rejuvenated. We have excitement. We have momentum because that was holding them back for quite a while.

That's a really hard thing to recognize. So the way we encourage people to do it is to really search outside perspectives, not biased perspectives, right? You don't want to just ask your spouse or something like that.

That's not going to really have an honest response. You're going to want to reach out to like honest prospects, honest clients and get outside perspectives because they're going to be the ones that are going to be the most honest about it and the most directly impacted by it. And that might give you a sense of it.

And you have to be honest with yourself and look at it and say, is this what it should be? And is this at the level that it needs to be at?

Mitchell: I wonder if you could give some examples of your clients. And one of the things that I wanted to bring us back to that was, that really kind of hooked me when you gave your presentation was you were doing some before and after slides. A number of the examples you gave were from other companies that were not necessarily your clients, but they were conspicuous in the sense that you showed the before brand and I was like, I've never seen that.

I don't know what that is. And you'd show the after. And I recognize that as the tortilla company in my grocery store.

All the way out here in California and they, they went national, right? And they did a rebrand and it really helped them drive growth. In the industrial space, we're talking about companies that are largely sort of, the culture is engineering, the culture is numbers, the culture is what can I measure and change and measure and do again?

What kind of examples do you have of work that you've done for your clients where there was something measurable, like either there was something that they were measuring that was not working that they want to fix or something that may be at the level of objective measurements they were surprised by when they did engage in rebranding. I just see these worlds as so different from each other. The branding design universe, it feels like it's so subjective.

Whereas the people that we're working with, these industrial manufacturers, they're so objectively driven. They're so data driven. How do you get those two worlds to fit together?

Paul: That's a loaded question. And you're talking on all sides of that, which is smart. Ultimately, branding, which we're talking about today, is extremely hard to measure.

In fact, it's almost impossible to measure, right? So like a lot of the examples that you were talking about that I gave in that presentation were broad measurements. You want to attribute to something like branding or packaging or something like that.

And we can talk about those examples, but you don't really know all the different things that kind of go into it, right? You're in the digital space, right? You're making websites.

That's a lot easier to come up with like super crisp data where you're like, okay, they clicked this ad, they went to our website, they filled out a form, boom, there's the data, right? You can't really get that finite with branding. It's more of, okay, we had this problem to solve.

That problem was solved. Now we see an increase in sales. We see an increase in growth.

We see employees coming in and being attracted to work there. And it's less like data-driven and it's more results-driven in terms of actual phone calls, actual people showing up kind of thing. And it's a tough, tough thing to show.

So I can give you some examples of that. So one of our clients, Norwalt Design, they manufacture large machines. They were primarily known, almost exclusively known for manufacturing deodorant containers.

And they were very good at it. And they did a lot of it. But the problem is, is that it had a ceiling, a very low ceiling.

So they really couldn't go anywhere with it. And they were kind of maxed out there. And they really weren't able to get a lot of business outside that industry.

They wanted to get into the medical device and pharmaceutical industries because they knew that they could make a difference. They knew that their machines could produce things faster than what that industry was seeing. But they didn't really know how to do that.

So we were brought in to help rebrand them, to change the perception of this small company to a larger company. And we were brought in to kind of change the perception that they also do pharmaceuticals and medical device. So in addition to a logo, we did tagline, we did website, all that stuff.

But some of the things that we did specifically for medical device and pharma is create case studies, sell sheets, materials, specifically with example and data that would attract those industries. Well, in a very short period of time, Norwalt saw a significant increase in those industries. They basically outgrew their space very fast and now have added a facility, which I don't know how big it is, but it looks three times the size of their current facility.

So they went from just having a small place in New Jersey to now having this gigantic place also in Tampa. So they have two facilities. So there's no like number data to that, but it's clear and obvious that they've had massive growth in the industry that they couldn't get working because of the efforts that were done.

I'm not going to take credit for everything because clearly there was a lot of things at play, a great sales team and all sorts of stuff. But I don't think that they would have been able to infiltrate that industry without a major brand shift and upgrading of their branding. So it's not as black and white as some data-driven people like to see, but we have a lot of great examples like that.

Mitchell: You're killing me with the curiosity about what you changed. Like once you knew that they had a new go-to-market concept or strategy and your agency was going to dovetail into that effort, how did you guys figure out what you wanted to change to get them to be perceived as legitimate or viable in that new space? What did you do?

Paul: That's interesting. I don't know if we think about it as crisp as that. I think we have a lot of experience in a lot of areas and one of our areas is in the medical device and pharma industry.

So we know what they like and we know what they do. So when we brainstormed the logo, sketched the logo, we had to think about the goals of everything while we were doing that. One of the main things that Norwalt was bringing to that industry.

So we didn't want it to just look like pharma and medical because pharma and medicals is loaded with pharma and medical looking stuff. We wanted to make sure that they knew what differentiated Norwalt in that industry. So one of the main things was their efficiency and speed.

So here you have pharmaceuticals and medical. I don't remember the numbers, I'm just going to make it up for a second. So they were some crazy low number of we produce 40 parts per minute type of thing in pharma and medical.

And Norwalt was coming in saying some crazy high amount where they were like, no, we produce 144 parts per minute or something. Some major shift in numbers. So we really had to emphasize that.

So that started all the way back in the logo where the logo has features an N that is made of a conveyor belt moving in a forward direction using an arrow, which just looks a lot better than that sounds, but it shows momentum. It shows speed and it shows automation, which is what they were going for. Then that translates into their website, which the messaging had to change.

We put data points right up front with the messaging. So that way it creates eye candy and quick glance results for people. So on the website, on the sell sheets, on the case studies, all these things that we drove home, these differentiators, so that way they really couldn't be ignored.

And it was the exact answer to the problems that the customer had. So that's what we want to do is we want to find out what the customer's pain points are and issues are. And then we want to be the solution and the result that they're looking for and be the answer to their problem.

So I think, I don't know, that's a long answer to that simple question probably.

Mitchell: Well, a long answer, big problem. I mean, this is a big challenge to make. I thought you were going to answer the question of, well, Mitchell process.

We'll go through the process. I mean, you do have a process. You've been in business nearly 20 years.

So what does the process look like when a company like Norwalt comes to you and says, all right, we're doing a big move here. And part of the move is we want to rebrand. And that's going to fit into some other stuff.

How do you begin? Is there something consistently that you do the same for everybody or does it vary a lot?

Paul: Well, no, absolutely. I mean, I think I didn't answer what process, because to me, everybody's got a process. And well, most people have process.

Anybody that's professional has a process. And our process is pretty traditional. We do some extra that a lot of people don't do.

In fact, we do a few things that are completely proprietary to us. But it is being thorough, and it's being investigative, and it's being, you know, we don't stop until we get to great, I always say. So let's walk through for one second.

So we start with a questionnaire that's super detailed and asks a ton of questions to really understand that customer well beyond what is probably normal, trying to really get to what's the difference, what they do, what their goals are, who their customers are, et cetera. You know, we have a kickoff meeting. We get in.

Then after that, internally, we get into brainstorming. And even in brainstorming, we're doing techniques in brainstorming that just no one does, which, you know, try to dive well beyond the obvious and spark ideas that have never been thought of before. After that, you know, we get into sketches.

We might do 50, 80, 100 sketches for one logo. And then we narrow those down. We might do 10, 20, 50 designs for a logo.

We narrow those down, and then we present the best of those to the client, which might be three, five, eight type of thing. So I think one of the big things is we don't stop until we get to great ideas where, I think a lot of people are like, OK, we did three.

Let's show them three. We won't stop until we get the three that are, you know, the answer, the perfect resolution for that. And then if the client comes back and for some reason says we're slightly off, we don't stop until we answer that issue.

You know, so there's probably more to the process than that, but ultimately the process is what's going to drive those results. But it's also the way you approach the challenge and understand what the problem is. So I think a lot of logo designers specifically, they look at it and they go, oh, I designed a cool logo.

But I look at it and go, but did you solve the problem? What was the challenge? What are the issues that the client has?

What is the issues that their buyers have? What are we trying to do? Or is it different?

Is it drawing attention? So it's well beyond aesthetic, and it's well beyond just your average kind of approach. It has to be the answer to these issues, and it has to be different, and it has to be attention grabbing, all of these things in one.

So it's loaded, you know.

Mitchell: I'm trying to imagine on presentation day, when you're going to show your client the first batch of logos. Just, I mean, there's a lot that you present. There's a lot of work that you do, but just focus on the logo part.

What's that like? How do you present your concepts? Do you try to have those things speak for themselves?

Or do you explain the rationale?

Paul: Yeah, it's both, I would say. The logo has to speak for itself, because ultimately, once we leave the conversation and someone has a logo, it has to speak for itself, because it's going to be in the marketplace. I'm not going to be able to talk for it.

So it has to be that way. However, when we present it, what I usually do is I start by reminding the client what the challenge was, why we had to do it, what are the problems that we're solving. So that way they remember what the slogan needs to be, because sometimes they'll be like, well, I just want it to look this way.

And I'm like, I appreciate that you want it to look that way, but that does not necessarily solve the problem that you're actually having. So part of it's educating them and recapping on that stuff. And then when we present it, we need to draw attention to certain things, because some things might be more subtle than others.

Even something like as simple as a color choice has a psychology behind it. Or maybe there's a really subtle thing in there. For example, we did a rebrand for a company that we renamed, or was renamed Agility, Agility Retail Group.

And then when we designed the logo, we had to pay tribute to the old brand and their equity that they had in their old brand. So it had to have a similar shaping to it. But what they didn't see immediately was that out of that new shaping, we were able to make an invisible A out of it.

And at first, you don't see it. But as soon as we said it, that's all you see, right? It's like the FedEx logos like that.

A lot of people don't know there's an arrow in there. And as soon as you see it, that's all you see is the arrow, right? So sometimes we want to draw attention to it, because we don't want them to miss it.

But it's also, if it's an invisible element, if it's a subtle element, it better not be the most important element. It's kind of a nice to have. It's an extra bonus.

But if it's that hidden, and it's important, that's a problem too. So that has to be kind of a bonus rather than anything else, you know? So yeah, we definitely present them with it.

We walk them through it. We educate them on why it's going to be effective, etc. And then ultimately, it's their choice.

We want to educate them on how to make that choice, not what choice to do, but what mistakes to avoid. So not involving too many people. Sometimes clients overanalyze and overthink it.

So you'll get on the call, and they might be like, oh my God, that's amazing. That's the one. But let me think about it over the weekend.

I'm like, okay, please don't overanalyze it, because sometimes it's the perfect logo, and then they've thought about it for 48 hours or whatever. And next thing you know, they come back and they're like, well, we really don't know if we like this anymore. And I'm like, that's only because you like obsessed over it for 48 hours.

But the reality is that your first impression was perfect. And if you show this to customers, they're only going to care about their first impression. So there's some really odd, dangerous things.

I like talking to web developers because web development generally is a black and white type of situation where our situation in design is so relative and opinion-based. So it's just like a complete opposite where you have to constantly deal with people and their emotions and their past histories and stuff like that. So I was just explaining this one example to somebody is that we renamed a company and we had 30 people on the call.

Everybody loved this name we came up with. It was perfect. And we get off the call, we're like, oh, that was awesome.

You know, they loved it. And we get back on another call with them like a week later, and the owner's like, we can't call it this because my wife's company is called something similar. And I'm like, what?

How do you predict these things? How do you avoid that? There was nothing we could have done with that.

And yet we had 30 people in agreement that this was the perfect name. And just because the owner's wife had a similar sounding business, we had to scrap the whole thing and start over. And I was like, this is killing me.

So you just never know what's going to be the answer regardless of how good you come out of the gate. It's an interesting game.

Mitchell: Who had to pay for that?

Paul: You know, we include revision to some degree. So that one we ended up reworking and so forth. But, you know, when we came out of that gate, that was our favorite choice.

Everybody loved it. But we had 10 other choices that were really great at that time too. So it wasn't like we were completely out of ideas.

It was just, it was a shame that that got nixed.

Mitchell: Yeah. You touched on this. Yes.

Web developers tend to gravitate to the things that are like it either works or it doesn't. That integration with this other system, the data is either flowing or it's not. I love branding.

I love design. That's one of the reasons I got into doing this at all. Because I was really drawn to that, but I was totally turned off by how subjective it can be and how challenging it can be to work in that space.

When the reason why they hate it is nothing tangible about it. You can't put your finger on why. So yeah, I veered away from it.

But I still love it. I love really good branding when I see it. Years ago, I feel like someone told me that there are rules for logos, like a professional logo, a real logo is not real until you can represent it in perfect fidelity by drawing it in the sand.

Like, do you have in mind any rules that you feel like you follow? If you spot a bad logo on a billboard or on a side of a truck or something, you're like, I hate it. And here's why I hate it.

This is for sure one of the rules that we don't break at Aviate.

Paul: That's interesting. So I'm probably not going to give you the answer that you want, but it is an interesting answer. So I teach branding, right?

In addition to having a branding agency. And I had a lot of rules for a long time that I was very strict about. And as I matured in business and in life, I realized that there are different situations and different rules for everything.

So it's dangerous to impose branding rules because some rules completely vary per company. And I'll give you some examples of that. So one of the things that you always hear in branding is a logo needs to be timeless.

And I lived by that for many years. And then I realized one year, I was like, wait a minute, that software, that video game that I did a logo for or whatever, that only needs to be relevant for like three to five years. That doesn't need to be timeless.

Why would that need to be timeless or whatever? I mean, like there are trends out there that don't need to be timeless. So there are exceptions to every rule kind of thing, right?

There used to be a rule that we used to go by, which is a logo had to look great in simple and black and white. And part of that was, and is now outdated because of the fact that you would say, okay, if you can fax the logo, you know it's a good logo because it's simple and black and white. Well, no one faxes logos anymore.

So it almost became irrelevant because you don't really have that need anymore. And when you talk about drawing a logo in the sand, if you're talking about making some global logo that's going to be like on everything, like a Nike or a CBS or whatever, anything else, yeah, you probably should be living by that rule. But there's plenty of brands that not in that category that could be, you know, super detailed and super whatever because they're catering to a different market.

So like I said, my answer is going to be a little bit more messy. But in general, we do have rules about making sure it's clean, consistent, making sure that there's a good alignment, different things like that. But a lot of the old school rules, whatever, we still look at it and maybe we apply it per case scenario, but I don't look at them as globally applicable anymore.

You know, does that make sense?

Mitchell: Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at your portfolio on aviatecreative.com and I'm scrolling through the Our Work page. In all of the representations of your work, you've rendered the client's logo in white on a dark background.

And it just feels like there's obvious rules baked into this because they all look so professional and consistent. Nice symmetry. You know, it's not anything weird

coloring that is essential to make the logo work. It's not three dimensional. It was like, these are brands.

These look like brands legitimately. It's either coming natural to you after all these years.

Paul: No, there's more to it. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I guess I probably haven't had to verbalize this as much.

Some of this is instinct, but I do teach this. So I do have some rules that we go through and stuff like that. I'm actually going to pull out.

I have like this shortcut list, which is what I give my students that are simple things that you can apply to make any design more professional. So, and I started getting on some of those earlier, but I should mention that on the page that you're talking about, not all those logos are ours. So that's a sample of our work, but it goes into websites and brochures and stuff like that.

If you go to our website, there's a section on just logos. Those are all the logos that we do and stuff like that. But same concept applies.

So the short list of making your stuff more professional, and I would say these are kind of more rules, is we already talked about it quite a bit, is consistency, alignment, making sure it's legible, making sure it's clean, having good spacing and consistent spacing, making sure it's balanced and even, having good contrast. So all of that applies. As far as logo goes, we always do a white version.

We always do a black version. We always do RGB and CMYK and all that stuff. So we know from experience, like what's not going to work with just a white version or anything like that.

So we stay away from certain issues. So I think I'm also just used to talking to people that know a lot of these things already. So I forget that there's a lot of basic stuff that I have to kind of cover as well.

So it's interesting. I'm sure there's a lot more rules that I'm just forgetting to even mention.

Mitchell: There's some, I'm looking at some of these logos specifically on the logo page that you pointed me to. And there's a few of these in here. They're dimensional.

They're like, all right, well, that's like a transparency. I'm looking at leadership development program here. And it's a pyramid that's opening.

And if you pull back and analyze it like an AI, you're like, all right, well, that's just a darker triangle. And that's yet another darker triangle. But the sum effect is this really inspiring looking pyramid that's opening.

And a number of your other logos are doing those types of effects. I love that stuff where it's just a use of color creatively with like a special kind of geometry that creates an optical illusion that leaves an impact. This is like I was saying a minute ago about how much I love design and logo work and how much I run away from it with my own company because it's so difficult to kind of pin this sort of stuff down for a given client.

I remember I had a client years ago who, and I lost them because they get pissed off. They wanted Solspace to do a logo and a website for them. And they handed me the thing that they wanted the logo to be based on.

It was basically a watercolor portrait of somebody and said let this inspire your logo work. This is not anything like a logo.

You guys understand what branding is, right? So I came back to them with basically a logo type brand and they were really grumpy about it because I didn't use their watercolor and turn it into a logo. To what extent, you're a teacher, so you're teaching students, but to what extent do you have to teach your clients what branding is?

Hopefully you're dealing with people further down the sophistication road than that, but how much education do you have to do?

Paul: Yeah, I would say a lot of education. And I think that's also what came with experiencing maturity too, is that I think for many years, I would get upset and frustrated. And now I more approach it with an educational mindset of these people just don't know any better.

And they need to be educated on what's effective, why it's effective, how it's going to work and so forth. But you can do all the education in the world and you can be as very convincing as you want. There's no doubt that branding and logos is opinionated and some people might just pick something that is not your choice.

But it's also way more specific and intense than a lot of people realize. Like you pointed out that pyramid logo and there's this pyramid that's kind of pinching at the top, kind of opening up and letting light in and it's translucent. What a lot of people don't realize is that if you moved any of those pieces of that pyramid, even the slightest tiny pixel over, it would not work.

Like when we work on these logos, everything has to be just so pixel perfect and you obsess over every single little position of everything, the space between your letters, the space between everything. And if it's not perfect, like you could be working on a logo for six hours straight and be frustrated with it and it could be junk. And then you make one tiny tweak and you're like, that's it, that's the one.

It can drive you insane, but it could also be the thrill of the day. There's like graphics out there that are kind of funny, which they show like the life of a designer and it's basically like, I hate myself, I'm the worst, I'm the worst, I'm the worst. And then all of a sudden you hit the right thing and you're like, oh, I'm the smartest person in the world.

It's like a daily routine of going through confidence changes. So it's fun and miserable all at the same time.

Mitchell: Well, earlier in the podcast episode here, you mentioned a phrase brand blindness. As you guys are working, like moving from pixel to pixel, like making slight changes, don't these things get invisible after six or seven or eight hours? Like, how can you even see the logo anymore?

How do you handle that?

Paul: Well, I wouldn't say we work on one logo for six to seven hours. You know, it's like working on the brand and you're changing from thing to thing, but there is no doubt that that still happens. So what I teach my students is, and my designers is, you know, you have to walk away from it every once in a while.

I try not to work on something and immediately send it. I try to work on something. If I can, I'll even go to bed and wake up and look at it with fresh eyes because so often you come back to it and you're like something, this isn't quite right.

So fresh eyes is absolutely imperative. Having a, you know, fresh head and it, you know, I used to work like endless hours and I would end up redoing everything. And I realized that, you know, sleep and getting breaks in between things were imperative to having success with this.

So you have to kind of reawaken it all the time. And the other thing, you know, we talked about the clients that overanalyze things. We could do that as well.

So we have to be careful with overthinking it and getting too deep into it. Where you, sometimes you go so far with a concept that you look at it and you're like, no one's going to get this because you're so deep into the concept that it's not for a first impression. So you have to kind of back out and be like, okay, let's go a little less sophisticated kind of thing.

So there's no doubt that that's all part of the process.

Mitchell: The garbage can is a really powerful tool in my work. You know, so I write, I write code. I solve problems on the web by building stuff.

And I do that with code and I do it with PHP. I do it with JavaScript. I do it with Node.js. I throw a lot of stuff in the garbage. And it's really powerful tool for me because after a number of years of doing this, being comfortable taking a block of code and throwing it out and knowing that when I start over, I'm going to extract the best parts of the thing I just threw in the garbage and make it better. Do you find that you do that in your work? Like, do you take some concepts and you work on them for a long time?

And you're like, all right, that went too far. That's going in the garbage. And I trust the garbage and I trust me and I can come back and do something better.

Paul: Yeah, I would say we don't use those words, but it's the same concept. It's the same thing you hear in music too. It's for writing.

It's all about the editing. So I think a big mistake a lot of amateur artists do is they go with the first thing that comes out. And it's really the strength is in the editing.

Editing down and simplifying. So often you make something too complex and then you have to simplify, simplify, simplify. So that's a big part of it.

I wouldn't throw it out. We tend to just kind of create new versions, new duplications of files and stuff like that because often we end up going back to those and seeing something that we liked. So one of my favorite things that I do, and I'm not sure if my designers like it or not, but my designers will show me these beautiful finished logos and I'll say, show me your sketches.

And some of them would be like, what? Like, I don't want to show you my sketches. Here's my beautiful logos.

And I'm like, no, show me your sketches. Like, show me everything. I want to see every chicken scratch in your notebook that you worked on.

Because so often I find this raw early sketch that they threw out, you know, let's call it the garbage or whatever, right? They threw it out. And I look at them going, that's, we need to explore that further, you know?

And they're like, what? I did all of this like final design stuff. And you're like, yeah, but that's where the, that's where the actual problem was solved.

So, and I'm not saying their final ones are garbage. Like those will usually be used as well. But so often we go back into earlier things and say, I want to use an element of this and then we repurpose it.

So same concept, but I wouldn't throw it out. We would save it in case kind of thing. Yeah.

Mitchell: After we record this, I'm going to spend the rest of the day going into the trash can, pulling something out that I realized this morning, just like you said, I got good night's sleep, got a fresh mind and kind of relaxed mind. I'm like, all right, that thing that I threw out, there's a piece of it that I think needs to come back in. It actually makes a lot of intuitive sense in the user interaction with this tool I'm building.

I'm going to bring that back and combine it with the new thing I wrote yesterday. And those two things are going to fit together really nicely. So that's really interesting.

I go back and I call it garbage bin. Maybe it's a recycling bin.

Paul: Sure, sure. Yeah, absolutely. I like that.

No doubt about that. Editing down. And like, it's almost embarrassing how many renditions we do of something like a logo.

Like I think a lot of designers and agencies want to give off this superhero presence of, well, I came up with the perfect logo, the first shot out, you know? And when you talk to the designers that are actually doing it, that are actually really at the top of the game, they make so many more versions than anybody else. My students might make six versions of something.

And I'm like, you're a student amateur that's just starting and you're only making six. My senior designer that's been in this for 30 years just made 80. It's like, don't be embarrassed to keep working on it, you know?

And like I said, it's almost embarrassing because I'm like, you know, you want to give off this perception that you came off of this perfect, but I actually rather give off the perception that we don't stop until we get to something great. You know, we're not going to just settle for six. We're going to do it until we get to something that's great. You know, that kind of thing.

Mitchell: I love it. Paul, it's been great having you.

This is a really good conversation.

Paul: It's, I mean- Yeah, it's been fun.

Mitchell: Who knew that we needed to think this seriously about branding? And who knew that it could —

Paul: I did.

Mitchell: Yeah, you did. You did, you teach it. But there's a lot of people out there who don't.

They don't know that you can move the needle the way you can with branding. It's not necessarily as measurable as we would like it to be. But the outcomes and the case studies really make the point.

So people can find you at aviatecreative.com. That's A-V-I-A-T-E creative.com. Where do you teach?

What's the school?

Paul: Oh, it's a county college near me. I started there originally and then went to a four-year school. So I've been teaching there for 20 years.

Yeah, it's a great group of people there and they compete with the top schools with design. So we're very proud of them.

Mitchell: That's awesome. How'd you get that job? Because I want to do that in my local community college.

I want to go back to the place that did so much for me, you know?

Paul: Yeah, yeah. I, so it's a very interesting story, but it's not like some, a lot of people ask me that question and I can't give them a great answer to that because I was invited to come back. So the professor that I had invited me in and said, I want you to talk to my students.

And then at the end of that lecture, she passed me a paper and said, if you sign this, you can teach any class you want. Well, I was 27 at the time and I was like, I'm not ready to teach. This is crazy.

You know, these are like kids that are practically my age. And then I didn't do it. And then I called her that summer and was like, oh, I'd love to teach.

And she's like, well, I moved to Canada. So that's not going to happen. And then the next semester, another professor called me and did the same thing.

And I accepted the job at that time. So I've been teaching there since I was 27 and it's been very rewarding. It's been a lot of fun.

So not something I can say would be easy to do, but maybe just call the department head and talk to them about your experience because then they value working professionals tremendously usually.

Mitchell: Yeah, I'll check in with them. Paul, thank you. This is awesome.

Paul: Thank you.

No, this was a lot of fun. I appreciate it. It's a really great opportunity.

Mitchell: Well, we'll talk again soon. Thank you, sir.

Paul: Yes, thank you.

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