Transcription
You can spend weeks and weeks designing a really solid logo and then completely kill its chances of being signed off if you present it like this. And I see this all the time. I used to do it myself when I was earlier in my career. You know, we obsess over the design. We perfect each rounded corner. Every angle matches up and then we slap it in the middle of a white slide and call it a day. Or worse, we just attach it to an email and ask the client what they think.
Now, before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to improve our chances of getting our work signed off, a quick heads up that this video includes a paid partnership with Stills, my favorite photo licensing agency. So, I'm really pumped to work with them, but there's more on that later on.
So, when a client pushes back on a logo, the assumption is always something like they just have bad taste or they just don't get design. But a lot of the time, it's not the logo that's the problem. It's the presentation. Presenting work, like I showed you before, doesn't work for a few reasons. First, there's no context. There's nothing to help the client imagine this work in the real world. Second, there's no criteria. So, all your client can do is respond with their gut reaction. And third, there's no story or rationale, which makes the logo feel random, even if there's some really solid strategy and thinking behind it.
From the client side, getting a presentation like this just feels like here's the thing you asked me to do. What do you think? And if that's the setup, you're going to get feedback just as empty as the presentation itself.
Now, I haven't been a designer for my whole life. I used to work in marketing for a few years. And it was there that I found the true value of a good presentation because it's not just about, you know, showing the work off. It's about guiding the client through making a decision and then prompting really useful, constructive feedback so we can get to the best solution possible. So, when clients struggle to sign things off, it's usually because they're being asked to make a decision without enough information or support. So, if you take nothing else away from this video, at least walk away with the knowledge that great work isn't enough to get a project signed off.
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The most effective presentations that I've done all follow a really simple structure and there's three things that need to be made abundantly clear. The first one is the problem. What we trying to solve? What issues are our clients facing? Going through this properly, backed up with research, makes clients so much more receptive to new ideas because you're presenting their problems to them and naturally they're going to start looking for new solutions.
So, let's show you how this works on a real project. So, this is a visual identity that I designed for a brand called MountainBorn, which I worked on towards the end of last year. And although it's a visual identity, so it's a bit more comprehensive than just a logo presentation, it still follows the same structure that I would use to present logos. So all of this stuff is still really applicable. And I know I know I'm the cardinal sin presenting in Illustrator, but this was back end of last year and I'm transitioning to Figma at the moment. So uh forgive me, but uh let's just go through some bits here.
Mountain is a carry goods brand from Japan. And so they focus on things like rucks sacks, satchels, hyperformative products, right? To kind of elevate the everyday and they follow this ethos, this philosophy that form always follows function. It's got to be functional first and then that will dictate what it looks like towards the end. The rest of the carry goods industry is saturated with hyperminimalist monochromatic branding and that really struggles to connect with their audiences on like a deeper emotional level because it's so stark and mountain followed this trend pretty closely which meant it was harder for them to stand out and therefore be remembered.
Another issue that mountain were facing was limited flexibility and adaptability of their brand design system. Now they relied very heavily on just one logo variation. Occasionally they would use the brand mark but they had some minimalist typography and a very stark color palette. And this limited how the brand could flex between different applications and different mediums. None of this information is new to my client. I would have taken them through all of this during our strategy and design direction stage, but it's really helpful to remind them of all of this information to prime them for what they're about to see.
And once all of this context is clear, we can move on to how we're actually going to solve it. For this project, the first challenge was differentiation. Trying to get Mountain to stand out in this sea of sameness. So, they needed a distinct visual language whilst being connected to their roots of functionality. The second challenge of flexibility required a system rather than one single solution. We needed to make this identity flexible and adaptable to different environments, mediums, formats. So flexibility was front of mind. Trying to think about badges, color variations and combinations, typography pairings, all of this stuff would ladder up to make sure that this brand is super flexible. Like most brands I work on, designing a brand that is purpose-built for growth is really important. We don't want to pigeon hole this brand in based on their very specific offering right now because if they diversify their product range, they may need to rebrand. So, we need to make sure that we have an eye on the future so that the brand can live and evolve over time.
Again, none of this is new to my client. We would have gone through this previously, but we're reminding them of their own mood boards, the vibes that we're trying to achieve, going through competitors, some brands that resonate with them, color analysis of the competition, looking at the typography that's used amongst these brands, and then overall kind of summarizing this with a key takeaway slide on all the core competitors. Word mapping really important for me to start piecing together some ideas, some concepts, words that resonate that maybe act as a springboard for some ideas later down the line. But the last thing that I take them through before we start getting into some proper design work is the chosen design direction. Now, reminding our clients of the visual world that we agree to create for them is crucial for how they're going to receive the new work. So for this example with mountain ball, we've got some beautiful earthy colors to really connect back to nature where these bags are often used. We've got some really quirky kind of techy typography here which contrast really nicely against these sort of fluid rounded shapes in this brand mark and this handmade mark here. We've got some deliberate negative space usage which kind of really adds some level of transparency and aireriness to a layout. Some more kind of uh utilitarian composition here uh again which kind of ladders up and speaks to the ethos of the brand about functionality. So this is really important to show our client ahead of seeing the new work.
Along with this, I also show them this assessment framework because design is so subjective naturally that it can be quite hard to kind of detach our own personal opinions and gut reactions when we start to review it. But we need to be looking at it from a lens of the audience that we're speaking to. So creating this assessment framework and getting it signed off is crucial as part of that design direction meeting so that we can compare the actual work which we get into soon after this section against this. So our client has a place to start when providing feedback. And in this case for mountain born we had the idea of organic, simple, engineered, quirky, durable, adventurous, freespirited, textured and traveled. And then we also had some areas to explore here, which is again gave me some sort of uh leaping off point to start with sketches.
At this point, we're about 20 pages into the presentation and I've still not shown them anything new. I'm just reminding them of everything we've agreed to, everything we've signed off, where the thinking came from, the research, all of that stuff really helps the client get primed and ready for new design work. Because without the right setup, design work can be really easily misinterpreted or just flat out rejected. So all of this setup is so important. And only now do I start to show new work.
So firstly, I introduce the brand mark by itself in isolation in black and white. And this is very deliberate because color and typography are are really influential on the way that we see design. it can really influence the way that shapes interact with each other, scales and whole host of other things. So by keeping it like this, I'm getting my client to just think about the shapes, the form of the mark. So once they've seen that, I then move on to explicitly explaining my rationale and my design thinking. So for this example for Mountain Born, the mark itself can be broken down into three elements and that's how the brand the brand mark was actually built. So the first one being mountains. It's obviously the namesake mountain born but also an environment that their bags will be seen in a lot. Then we had uh a hidden bird in the negative space here. They're born in the m well they're not born in the mountains. I know that they're hatched but they live in the mountains. They also express this idea of freedom and travel which really aligns to the brand ethos. And then we have this sort of abstractish to a degree uh M letter form which again connects to the brand name. I also add a little tiny blur here so that when they are reviewing the presentation after I've actually taken them through it, they're able to remind themselves of all of the meaning and design thinking as well as uh a little summation of the tone of the mark here as well.
So this section was more about the concept of the mark itself and then I break down a bit more about the execution and how this starts to distinguish mountain from the other competition. So lading it up referring back to the goals that we tried to achieve with the project and subtly incorporating that into my commentary.
So from there I'll park the brand mark for a second to speak about typography and I'll initially start with the word mark. I'll talk about what's there, what isn't there, and most importantly, why I've made all of those decisions. Then I will introduce the two back together. So the brand mark and the word mark, how do they perform? What's the orientation? The different lockups, what's the relationship between the two? How does that ultimately work for the entire logo suite? And at this point, I'm speaking about flexibility. One of those goals that we needed to try and achieve from the start of the presentation. So this again we're starting to address each of the challenges that the brand is facing as we progress through the presentation and then from there I'll move on to the actual brand typography system. So I'll speak about each type face, the personality traits, how does it communicate, the actual brand essence, the relationships between them, the hierarchy, why each are there. So much detail spent on this slide just speaking about each type face. And at this stage, the work might feel quite flat and that's absolutely fine because we're only focusing on form and how the form alone is already addressing some of the client's challenges. So now that we start speaking about color, we aren't like muddying the waters, making it confusing. We're amplifying all the successful work we've done so far. Same approach as the previous slides. When we're going through color, we're talking about why it's there, what it communicates, like what's its role, hierarchy between them all, showing them how they work in different combinations with the brand mark, and then ultimately how does it work across the actual logo suite and the relationships between background assets as well.
Now, this part is arguably the most important section of the entire presentation. Earlier I said that one of the biggest issues with poor presentations is a lack of context and most of our clients won't have the same ability that we do to imagine this work in the real world. So this section is our opportunity to give them that clarity. Now you could rely on standard mockups for this section. Things like tote bags, business cards, letterheads, those types of things, and they're fine. But if you really want to blow your client's socks off, you've got to show applications that are specific to their brand. I used to spend hours and hours trolling the internet trying to find the right stock imagery for these brand application section. And no matter how much I would edit them, they always felt just like too stock until a few years ago when I found today's sponsor, Stills completely changed the game. The imagery genuinely feels like I've hired a photographer to shoot for whatever brand I'm designing. And the way you can search for images is so helpful cuz you can search by color codes like hex codes. You can search by uh lighting, composition, layout, loads of other stuff. Uh which makes finding on brand imagery so easy. But the thing that's been really helpful for me recently has been this their design trend report for 2026. It's not just about what looks good at the moment. It digs into how you can use photography to communicate personality, vibe, and feeling. All of the things that you need to in order to stand out in this stupid AI clanker robot world. But there are also some really insightful takes from some of my design heroes in here like Jesse Nyberg and Joe Diver on how you can use photography to do a lot of that heavy lifting for storytelling and world building in these brand design projects. So, when clients see your proposed design work presented with custom mock-ups and tailored imagery, it stops it feeling like a wishy-washy passion project and more like a real brand in the real world. So, this report is completely free and I've put a link to it in the description if you want to go and check it out.
So, now the work has been presented with the various mockups, imagery, applications. The final step is closing the loop. With the work fresh in their minds, we go through the brand goals one by one. We also refresh on the assessment framework as well to make sure that the world we built aligns with the direction we had signed off. And I also like to touch on the core competitors, seeing how we stack up visually to make sure that we are being distinctive. Throughout these slides, I'm not asking questions like, "What do you think? Did you like it?" because they're too personal. They're too open-ended. So, I ask more specific targeted questions like, "Do you feel that we have addressed the goals we set out to achieve? Have we created a world that aligns with the direction that we signed off?" Questions like that really encourage more constructive, thoughtful feedback and questions rather than turning it into an immediately subjective personal opinion.
Now after this section I go into next steps which covers uh the feedback and amends process and also the schedule as you can see here. But on this section I always make crystal clear that no feedback given on this call is final. They have to sleep on it in order to consolidate their feedback. And you'd be surprised at how wildly different someone's gut reaction can be once they've had some sleep. Then after this section, I just finish with a sort of title slide type thing. And then I tell them that I'm going to package this up, send this over to them as soon as we finish the meeting for them to review with other partners, friends, family to then provide their consolidated feedback within a couple of days.
So when you present like this, you're not asking your client for a gut reaction or a personal opinion. You're guiding them through the process of making a decision and prompting useful feedback.
Now, if there's a topic you'd like me to cover, drop it in the comments. I'm going to be making a bunch more YouTube videos this year on brand design, process, tips and tricks, things I've learned from someone actually doing this work day in day out. Catch you in the next one.