Trail maintenance

There are loads of books about what it takes to craft a great brand identity. Start with Marty Neuemeier or Ries and Trout and go from there.

Those works will get you started and give you something to aspire to, but they will not get you through the day-to-day of working on a brand. Indeed, there isn’t much in my experience that’s geared toward the more practical drudgery. So, if you’re like me, you end up finding inspiration in odd corners.

For example, you might be listening to a design podcast about trails - as in trails through nature - and hear something that tracks closely with the life of a brand person.

“I think that the key aspect of a trail is that a trail is a line that evolves. It’s something that we follow–where each time you walk, you’re leaving a slight bit of yourself behind. And the next person who comes picks up on those signals that you’re leaving, and they leave their own signals. And over time, it keeps changing subtly. So, let’s say there’s a big curve in the trail, we’ll take the inside of that curve, and we’ll shave it down and shave it down until it’s a straight line. In a curious way, a trail is something that’s both terrestrial and liquid–and that’s what I find beautiful about them. Unlike roads, you know, or especially railways, which are so fixed–they’re laid down in an almost authoritarian way–a trail is very collaborative and organic.”

That’s author Robert Moore on the podcast 99 Percent Invisible. And over here is me - a dyed-in-the-wool, experienced brand person - trying to think of a better metaphor for what it is to work on a brand every day, and coming up with blanks.

We talk a lot about guidelines in the brand world, but the reality is that most people hear the word guidelines and interpret it as rules. Rules, in turn, mean rigidity - things you can’t do without getting your hand slapped. And sure, that is a component of establishing brand guidelines. There have to be red lines, otherwise you have no brand identity at all.

But I’d encourage my colleagues across the broader enterprise to think of brand identity and the guidelines underpinning them as akin to a trail through the wilderness.

As a mental model, it might help you think a bit differently about what brand teams are trying to achieve and how to anticipate where their work will go next.

A trail, after all, is a path through the wilderness. It shuttles you toward a destination. There are sights you’ll want to stop and see along the way, and it’s almost never a good idea to stray from the path. But there’s also no one dictating every step you take. You might even be able to go off the trail and still get to where you are meant to go. And, as Moore says about trails, they “keep changing subtly.” A brand is never in stasis.

A brand is ever-changing, and it is so because of all of the people who interact with it, and in so doing shape and reshape it ad infinitum. Neuemeier is famous for saying that “a brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s what they think it is.” That sentiment captures the way that a brand can’t really be “owned” by a person or team. There are mindful, deliberate stewards to be sure, but there are hundreds or thousands of people changing its contours on a minute-by-minute basis.

One other metaphor I’ve used with my team comes from my avid tennis playing, and is usually brought up in moments of exasperation. When people cross one of those red lines of ours, I’ll compare it to someone changing the dimensions of a tennis court.

The thing about tennis - and most of our favorite sports - is that there aren’t actually as many rules as you think that pertain to what happens in between the lines. Sure, there’s a ton when it comes to scoring. There are even rules around what happens outside the lines - for example the amount of time you can sit down during a changeover. The actual gameplay, though, is quite simple.

The server has two chances to get the ball within the opponent’s service box. If successful, the opposing players hit the ball back and forth over a net and inside the lines, allowing for one bounce of the ball before it is returned. The person who fails first in their assignment loses the point.

The magic in tennis is in how the players accomplish their task. The constraints of the are few in number but critical to there being any magic at all. If you suddenly change the dimensions of the court or let people hit the ball after two bounces, you’re conjuring a different kind of magic and one that can no longer be described as “tennis.”

So it is with the brand guidelines you should probably go and reread now in a slightly different light. As you’re re-acquainting yourself with them, think of bucolic paths through the forest, waterfalls and vistas dotting the way to your final destination.