What we talked about
Welcome back to The PreVetted Podcast, where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world.
Show notes
Kevin Dyck joins the PreVetted Podcast for episode 6.
Full transcript
[00:00:00:01 - 00:00:03:54] (Upbeat Music)
[00:00:07:21 - 00:00:13:17] Federico Ramallo Welcome to Preveted AI Podcast, where we gather and share wisdom from technology leaders.
[00:00:14:30 - 00:00:23:39] Federico Ramallo Today, we’re going to talk about Logos. And today is joining us, Lino. How are you doing, Lino? I’m doing well on you. I am doing great.
[00:00:25:33 - 00:00:32:00] Federico Ramallo So we’re going to talk about Logos. And in particular, the Preveted Logo, right?
[00:00:34:04 - 00:00:37:50] Federico Ramallo So tell us a little bit about yourself
[00:00:38:57 - 00:00:42:09] Federico Ramallo and what is your experience as a designer?
[00:00:43:53 - 00:01:27:04] Lino So I’ve been a practicing graphic designer since 2009. I graduated with a bachelor’s in graphic design. And so I studied a lot of, you know, basics from typography, color theory, all of the basics, all sorts of things regarding digital design eventually is where I was drawn to because I did everything. I did print, I did serigraphy. Like I did a lot of, like when you do t-shirts, you know, like doing prints on shirts, all those kinds of things. Like I did all sorts of graphic design things, photography, like I did my toes and everything. But little by little, I started to figure out, you know, what I like to do is more on the digital side because you have more control over how to do things. Because a lot of times, like, for example, on print,
[00:01:28:16 - 00:02:09:40] Lino you sometimes have limitations on, you know, color use or the physical medium, what you can do, costs, et cetera. And then a lot of little nitty gritty things that you don’t have when you go digital. And that’s what set me on the course to eventually start doing a lot of like website design and then just doing a lot of digital things. And little by little is how I ended up working where I am now and just working on all sorts of things and at this point now, more than doing the day-to-day things, sometimes I do a lot more managing teams and, you know, mentoring other people so that they can grow in their design path. But I still love to get my hands dirty once in a while with actual design work, which is what I got to do with Preventive. So it was fun to get to work on that logo.
[00:02:11:18 - 00:02:16:03] Federico Ramallo Right, right. It’s more of your passion, right? Your technical passion.
[00:02:16:03 - 00:02:30:25] Lino Yeah, yeah. Every time I get to do the nitty gritty, like little things, even like in, for example, I work in Figma a lot, working with components and just like making the thing just perfect and work in an elegant way. That’s always more fun to me than, you know, the,
[00:02:31:34 - 00:02:34:14] Lino I guess, yeah, that getting my hands dirty is like, it’s fun.
[00:02:35:29 - 00:02:40:52] Federico Ramallo Right, right. They get it. So why should people listen to you about logos?
[00:02:42:19 - 00:02:46:09] Lino Well, you could be a skeptic and say, you don’t have to listen to anyone, but in my particular case,
[00:02:47:18 - 00:04:10:54] Lino the reason why, well, like I said, I do have like a classic design training. So I do, I think I know a lot of what I’m talking about because I was working on it for years at this point. I’ve worked on a lot of logos for different companies, but I’ve also just been observant. And even if you don’t want to take my word for it, I’ll hopefully back up a lot of what I say, because in the end, a lot of design, you can, it’s not like a scientific method of you just follow A, B, and C, and you’re going to end up at some great logo. There’s a lot of different things that go into it. Your life experience, your tastes, the things that you’ve seen, things that influence you, trends, all sorts of things come together to form what may or may not be a good logo. And I don’t want to jump the gun because I know you wanted to discuss this later, but there’s a lot of things that you can talk about what makes a logo good or what doesn’t. And so hopefully I think within the limitations, which is something that you have to do with design, a lot of times people tell you think outside the box, but design really is like, this is the box and you have to do something that fits in there because you can’t just go crazy and do whatever you feel like it’s sometimes you have limitations. You know, we have certain colors where we have X or Y specs that you need to meet. So you technically have to like think what’s inside of the box and the interesting part is being creative on what fits in there, what makes it the best that you could do within those limitations. So why you should listen to me when talk about logos, hopefully you’ll see that I am not just making things up. I’m actually backing it up with reasons.
[00:04:12:49 - 00:04:45:21] Federico Ramallo I learned a lot about graphic design from you throughout the years. And one of the things that I admire the most about your work philosophy is the level of precision that you put on everything that you do. So I admire that and I think that’s one of the things that makes me pay more attention when you talk about,
[00:04:48:24 - 00:04:51:35] Federico Ramallo anything related to design and so, yeah.
[00:04:52:40 - 00:04:53:05] Lino Thank you.
[00:04:53:05 - 00:04:57:21] Federico Ramallo So let’s start with a more generic, oh, sorry, go ahead.
[00:04:57:21 - 00:05:01:39] Lino I was just gonna say it’s a blessing and a curse because you share this as well.
[00:05:02:52 - 00:05:06:41] Lino Perfectionism is something that you wanna get the best thing done, you wanna work,
[00:05:07:46 - 00:05:32:24] Lino get the best thing possible, but especially with design, there just has to be a point where you just have to give up in a sense and just be like, if I don’t stop here, I’m gonna go for another month and just keep going at it until I end up with something completely different and you’re never gonna be happy. So yeah, and that’s actually part of the story we’ll talk about with ProveEdit, but there’s a point where you just have to say that this has to be it or we’re just gonna keep going and it’s not gonna end.
[00:05:32:24 - 00:05:37:01] Federico Ramallo It’s a blessing and a curse, right?
[00:05:39:01 - 00:05:47:03] Federico Ramallo Yeah, and you need to know when you’re going too deep in the rabbit hole and saying, okay, I have to stop here.
[00:05:48:25 - 00:05:49:30] Federico Ramallo This is good enough, right?
[00:05:49:30 - 00:05:51:40] Lino Yes, my people need me, I can’t go down that rabbit hole.
[00:05:51:40 - 00:05:54:14] Federico Ramallo My people need me, right.
[00:05:55:57 - 00:06:03:39] Federico Ramallo So we can start with a more basic question is, why do you think a logo is important?
[00:06:05:32 - 00:07:35:54] Lino It’s very important, especially for recognition, especially these days, because we’re such a visual culture, like everything’s in your face and everything just takes like seconds for you to register. This is well known for website design, for example. As soon as you enter a website, you make up your mind in the first three seconds or less about whether you even wanna care to look at that website or not. If you see something that overwhelms you, your brain’s like, no, don’t feel like it, don’t wanna, and then you just wanna close the website. So especially now that we live in a culture that’s so about the visuals and about catching your eye, it’s really hard to stand out. And that’s why a good logo is interesting and good to have well-developed because a bad logo, some companies get lucky and they can get by just fine with a bad logo. But if you have a good logo, it’s something that’s gonna be memorable, it’s gonna give you recognition. And then especially nowadays that people love merch so much, like it’s just something that even in that superficial sense, like just the fact that people like your logo is like, yes, I wanna have this as part of like my identity as a marker, like shoes, for example, right? Like Nike became so important. And it’s just like, to some people it’s like, oh, it’s just like a swoosh, it’s just a check, it’s just whatever. But even in that logo, there’s like good elements about it that it just is something pleasing. It’s not just some ugly thing that you’re like, you know, oh, forget it. There’s a lot of logos that you could mention and you’re like, I don’t know what their logo looks like, but there’s other logos that you could say are classic and people haven’t touched like, for example, IBM,
[00:07:37:04 - 00:08:16:57] Lino I think it’s one of those few companies that still hasn’t really messed with their logo, like for ages. And that’s because it was a logo that was designed classically and well-made. So it endures despite all these years, unlike Pepsi, for example, how many logos, especially you know this for the like growing up, like I think now they finally went back, but how many times have they not changed their logo? It almost looked like every year they had a different Pepsi logo and they just kept changing and changing and changing. Well, where the competition Coca-Cola, for example, just was stable and they just have that brand. And I really, the day they changed their logo is the day Coca-Cola probably dies because that’ll just be admitting that, you know, they lost their ground and that they need to try to change.
[00:08:18:15 - 00:08:21:39] Lino So there’s like a lot you could say, but logo says a lot about your company.
[00:08:23:26 - 00:08:32:25] Federico Ramallo Right, right. Yeah, I remember like at least four or five logos from Pepsi that they changed throughout the years.
[00:08:32:25 - 00:08:35:44] Lino And I’m sure you forgot most because they’re just like, nay.
[00:08:37:13 - 00:08:39:07] Lino And that’s why they changed them because they just weren’t memorable.
[00:08:40:43 - 00:08:42:58] Federico Ramallo Right, right. It becomes this, you know,
[00:08:44:10 - 00:09:28:28] Federico Ramallo you know, invisible servant that you don’t pay attention until something is off and it’s like, whoa, something is off here, right? So I recently I was purchasing chips at the super bucket and they changed the design of all the fronts of the bags. Right? So, you know, I was overwhelmed by that, you know, again, it happened very quickly. So, you know, I realized that now that we’re talking about this and I eventually didn’t buy any because I hesitated about, you know, is this the exact product that I’m looking for? Right? And that’s because they changed the branding and the design of all the, you know, bags, right?
[00:09:28:28 - 00:09:29:53] Lino So they make them worse maybe.
[00:09:31:53 - 00:09:46:03] Federico Ramallo Right, right. So, you know, I’m very particular and eventually, you know, once I find particular flavor, a particular product, I keep buying them, right? So, you know, that hesitation, you know, made me not buy it, right?
[00:09:46:03 - 00:11:10:13] Lino It’s actually a good point though. It’s part of user psychology, which is something that drew me to design is I wanted, I always wanted to learn psychology. I always wanted to understand how people’s brains work and how my own brain works. But when I started learning about design, there’s a lot of psychology in there because you have to understand how people perceive things. And you actually just reminded me, speaking of Coke, it was a little blip because they try to erase it so fast, but you might remember the fiasco of New Coke and actually just looked it up real quick. And they did, they changed the font, like when they did the new bottles for New Coke back in the day, in the nineties, I believe, they changed the font. It went from like this nice sushi font to like a slab, like a serif font, like very chunky and stiff looking. And it was like Coke. And that’s how they changed it. Instead of Coca-Cola, it just said Coke on the bottle. And there was like New Coke and they tested it. And they said, people love the flavor better when we compare, blah, blah, blah. But they forgot one thing about human psychology is people hate change. And so you change the formula that people have loved for years. You change the brand, like you said with the chips, it just, it’s like, there was nothing attractive about it. And that’s a good example of like your brand can hurt you if you have a bad brand, or if you try to change something that already works, which is like Coke had that just one time of being like, okay, we’re not doing that again. Because if you look throughout the years, Coke has not tried that experiment ever again. They do other things, but they don’t mess with their logo anymore like they did that one time.
[00:11:11:35 - 00:11:14:35] Federico Ramallo Right, right. Yeah, I understand.
[00:11:16:15 - 00:11:35:30] Federico Ramallo So that’s why the logo is very important because it’s attached to the brand and it’s attached to the, you know, and the brand is basically attached to people, you know, in their mind, right? People think about the brands, they think about the logo, they think about the designs and the styling and everything related to that brand, right?
[00:11:35:30 - 00:12:06:17] Lino Yeah, and we’ll talk about it later. I don’t wanna skip ahead, but it can already think of some examples of logos that people just, you know, they have a good experience about it. I actually just saw a truck driving by that says Prime. And you know how they have like that little arrow, but with the, looks like a smiley face. So what were they trying to do with that branding for Prime is, you know, they try to make it something pleasing, something that you like, something nice that gives you good feelings, right? So whenever you see the Amazon boxes like, yay, I got my package, you know, it’s not like,
[00:12:08:15 - 00:12:26:47] Lino it makes it stand out. It’s not just the boxes like, oh yes, I got my Amazon thing, right? It’s like, yay, I got my things, that toy, that game, that whatever it is that you wanted to get, it relates it to a happy feeling, right? Like I got the thing I wanted. So those are good examples of like, you know, branding can be very powerful if done right.
[00:12:28:35 - 00:12:34:41] Federico Ramallo Right, right. The smiley face, the smile is, you know, associated with happy days.
[00:12:35:43 - 00:12:38:10] Federico Ramallo So yeah, I understand, yeah.
[00:12:39:16 - 00:12:42:50] Federico Ramallo Brings you back to your childhood of, you know, opening up presents during Christmas.
[00:12:42:50 - 00:12:47:13] Lino Except now they come every once in a while, every, a lot more often than Christmas.
[00:12:49:16 - 00:12:50:20] Federico Ramallo Right, right, yeah.
[00:12:52:10 - 00:12:58:36] Federico Ramallo What logos do you think work and why? We’re kind of talking about this, right? But, um.
[00:12:58:36 - 00:14:57:06] Lino So it depends on what you mean of why they work. Because for example, another famous logo that’s really well made is the FedEx logo, which if you think about it real quick, you’re like, if you see it, you might recognize it. Maybe you don’t immediately remember what the FedEx logo looks like, because it’s just like text. But if you pay attention to it, it’s an example of something that’s well made, because if you look between the X of FedEx, it’s actually an arrow that’s pointing to the right, which gives that sense of motion. But most people don’t notice that. Like they think that’s an accident. But like I said, classically designed logos, there are no accidents. Like everything that needs to be there is there, and there’s no extras, there’s no accidents. So that arrow didn’t just happen by coincidence that it’s there, it was put there because they’re like, okay, even if it’s subconscious, even if it’s not really like something that you might notice, once you see it, you’re like, oh, that’s cool. And so there’s a little extra depth to it. It’s just like works of art. Bad works of art, you can take them in in a few seconds and that’s all you need. Like whenever you’ve seen those paintings of like splotches of paint, you take it in very quick. There’s no depth to it. Like it might be interesting, it might be pleasing, you might even like it. I’m not saying it’s bad that you like those kinds of things, but there’s no depth most of the time to those kinds of art. Why? Because it’s just someone expressing things with colors or maybe someone got mad or an elephant, for example, that’s famous. There’s elephants that do paintings and all they do is just a bunch of lines and splotches with paint. And you might like it. You might think, oh, it’s cool that an elephant painted it, but is there depth? Is there more meaning behind it? Usually not. Whereas you look at the classical paintings and there’s all these things and then you look at it again and again, and someone explains to you an extra thing and you’re like, oh, I didn’t notice that thing. Like I’m trying to remember a certain painting by Caravaggio and he inserted himself into the painting. But if you don’t know, you just think there’s extra characters in a scene until you realize, oh, he’s putting himself there and there’s a reason why he put himself there. And it’s not for ego. It’s like he’s trying to bring you in to say like,
[00:14:58:07 - 00:15:37:52] Lino this is me, but also this is you. Like this is you within this painting that’s happening, like all these different things. It’s like, put yourself in my shoes kind of thing. So those are the interesting works of art that have like a lot of depth. And same thing with logos. There’s logos that have interesting depth. Like I said, FedEx, it might seem a little bit trivial, but it’s interesting when you actually notice what’s there, it tells you that there was care, that it was well-crafted, that it’s something that had thought put into it. And that’s another example of a logo that hasn’t changed, even though you can look at like older versions of it. There’s other logos, for example, that I don’t think work as well. For example, just speaking strictly about shipping, right? Cause FedEx is about shipping.
[00:15:40:07 - 00:15:48:31] Lino Well, actually it may or may not. DHL, for example, you think DHL, and I think immediately like to most people that are familiar with the brand, they can see red and yellow or like in their head
[00:15:49:35 - 00:16:31:41] Lino because that’s associated with the brand. So like, and when you see the store, what do you usually see when you go to DHL to drop off a package? You see like yellow everywhere, right? Like that’s the thing that draws your eyes. So all those little details of like the color, the branding, like when you see a DHL truck or a plane, like you see the yellow and you see like the red. So like that strong branding, like it can give you a sense, just like we were talking about Amazon, right? They can give you a sense of like, oh cool, my package is here. Or yay, I like them because they deliver packages and they’re like, oh, I’m gonna get passed in on time and things don’t get lost or whatever. All those things, they start forming those associations. So I think the successful logos are the ones that do that. Like they have a logo that’s good, that is related to what they do. I think those are the most successful ones, the ones that actually tell you something about them.
[00:16:32:49 - 00:16:38:25] Lino A lot of them are more subtle because for example, just out of blush, if you think of like Starbucks,
[00:16:40:07 - 00:17:35:12] Lino recognizable logo, recognizable colors, but does the image of that mermaid really tell you something about the brand itself? If you looked at that, would that tell you coffee? Probably not. So it’s something that you just relate eventually, right? So for example, well, I don’t think it’s a bad logo because it’s iconic in a sense. It’s not something that if you just see the mermaid, it’s not gonna tell you coffee. So there’s other logos that may give you a hint of what’s there. Like for example, going back to IBM, you see the little scan lines and before with the older monitors that we had, that kind of digital scan line design gave you a little bit more of a feeling of, yeah, that’s digital computers, technology, et cetera. So even though nowadays it may be a little bit lost, at some point it demands something. And like I said, now it’s just become iconic. Like now you look at IBM and whenever you see the IBM, with those lines going through it, even if you don’t memorize how the logo looks like, once you see those lines, you’re like, yeah, that’s IBM. Like it just immediately pops.
[00:17:35:12 - 00:17:37:20] Federico Ramallo You identify what they’re talking about.
[00:17:37:20 - 00:17:38:13] Lino Exactly.
[00:17:39:43 - 00:18:40:51] Lino I don’t wanna throw any brands under the bus too hard, but like in general, I just think, there’s a lot of good brands out there, especially like the more recognizable brands. Sometimes they just by force of like just being there around for the longest time, like General Electric, that one doesn’t really tell you anything. But when you see that logo with like all the curly letters and things, even if you don’t remember what it is, like once you see it, you’re like General Electric and your brain just knows it. Just like the cars, for example, that’s a very important one where it’s important to distinguish yourself enough because from really far away, for example, if you just see like a little oval, it could be Subaru, it could be Land Rover, it could be a lot of things, right? But when you see like the Nissan, the circle going through it or the Toyota, which are relatively simple lines, but that one, those are like super easy to spot from far away and there’s other logos where you’re kind of like, is it or is it not? Like car buffs, you can tell all the cars apart just by looking at the car, right? But if you’re just looking at the little emblems, sometimes it’s not as easy to tell, you know, what is this car?
[00:18:42:26 - 00:18:43:34] Lino So that’s a good example.
[00:18:44:53 - 00:18:45:05] Federico Ramallo Right,
[00:18:46:18 - 00:18:52:37] Federico Ramallo interesting, yeah. There is a complexity within the simplicity of logo, basically, right?
[00:18:52:37 - 00:19:54:45] Lino Yeah, and that’s usually like a design rule that they say is like design is trying to take away as much as you can until you can’t take anything more out. So a lot of times like that, that’s what they say is good design is like, you strip the thing down until it’s just what needs to be there, no extras. Sometimes I fight that, sometimes I think you do need a little bit of extra, but obviously you can go too far on either extreme. You can go too far on like two details and it’s just not gonna work. And you can go like so simple, like an example I mentioned earlier, maybe in post you can put up a picture, but like PayPal, for example, went to the extreme of like so simple that it just lost all flavor, all personality. And I think that’s a current plague right now in design trends. Everyone’s just making their logo so bland and similar that it’s just like, I just wrote something, found the font, print, done, that’s it. And I think that’s sad because you’re stripping things of their personality. Like now it’s just like, they’re all homogeneous, they’re all just like the same thing. It’s like, where’s your soul basically? Like the companies are losing their soul.
[00:19:56:06 - 00:20:08:46] Lino And maybe that’s a deeper reflection if you wanna go into that. But it maybe is the truth. Maybe these companies have lost their soul and that’s why their logo reflects exactly that. We don’t really have a soul anymore. We’re just trying to make all this money and we don’t really care about much else.
[00:20:10:36 - 00:20:28:47] Federico Ramallo I find interesting that sometimes, there are like fashions within design that people go one direction, then they go in another direction. And then in logos that have been there for many years, eventually they circle back to the original logo.
[00:20:29:51 - 00:20:37:24] Federico Ramallo So that’s very interesting to see. Like I remember when they redo the,
[00:20:38:42 - 00:20:59:07] Federico Ramallo this is not logos, these are icons for the Google interface, for the Android interface, where they tried to simplify it so much that eventually they became blurred between each other because they were difficult to see. And then eventually they circled back to a new design that it was more closer to the original design.
[00:21:01:15 - 00:21:04:42] Federico Ramallo And everybody was, okay, that makes sense. They were happier.
[00:21:04:42 - 00:21:05:48] (Laughs)
[00:21:05:48 - 00:21:23:13] Lino You just reminded me, for example, when you mentioned Google, someone was making fun of all the new colorful logos that, I guess now they’re called Alphabet technically. All the Alphabet logos now look very samey. So you look at like Maps, Gmail, and all the other apps that they have.
[00:21:24:35 - 00:21:39:42] Lino Because of the same color scheme that they have, and because they’re all using very basic shapes, someone put them all side by side, and it’s like, it started to be like, I can’t tell them apart. Like there’s a point where it just becomes like, are they even that different? Like are they not all just the same thing because they started to take away,
[00:21:40:44 - 00:22:15:33] Lino and sometimes that’s a conflict, honestly. I understand that from the design side. Sometimes you wanna unify things so that they look like related, like they come from the same family, so you want all these logos to look like siblings. But sometimes you go so far that they look like twins, and you can’t tell them apart. So you can go both ways. You can change things, like you said, go back to what used to have personality. I hope a lot of brands do that. Like they recover that essence that they used to have, because I think, like we mentioned Pepsi, for example, if you look at Pepsi’s latest logo, they basically kind of admitted that fact. They almost looked like the older logos. They just said, you know what?
[00:22:16:48 - 00:22:33:57] Lino Pepsi is, people know Pepsi, and they know it because of these things. So let’s just go back to the classic instead of trying to make like all these weird sushi shapes and things that aren’t really Pepsi anymore. So they’re just like, okay, let’s just go back to basics. And I think that’s getting on the right track versus trying to be crazy for the sake of being crazy.
[00:22:35:23 - 00:22:37:43] Federico Ramallo And what I find interesting is that,
[00:22:39:00 - 00:22:53:56] Federico Ramallo as a software engineer, when I build software, it’s deterministic. It works. It perpetuates time, in a way.
[00:22:55:52 - 00:23:00:52] Federico Ramallo But one plus one stays still two, right?
[00:23:01:55 - 00:23:05:26] Federico Ramallo And that’s true throughout generations, right?
[00:23:06:33 - 00:23:14:19] Federico Ramallo So that’s the determination I’m talking about, right? The deterministic nature of software engineering, right?
[00:23:15:20 - 00:24:18:03] Federico Ramallo But what I find interesting about the design is that there is this interaction with people, right? So it’s like culture, they shift. But then also it has a lot of technical roots and the reasons of a lot of whys. And we talk about this a lot on the technical aspect of everything, right? Like accessibility, how colors impact accessibility, right? And there’s a lot of technical aspects associated to that, right? So I find that very interesting that it has a social component but also technical component, right? So, and there is not an absolute truth on this logo is the best one and it’s perfect. It’s more of a interaction of those, right? Of those components, right?
[00:24:18:03 - 00:24:18:57] (Laughing)
[00:24:18:57 - 00:24:47:42] Lino Yeah, that’s true. And that’s the problem with design. I wish it were an exact science and it’d be super easy to come up with logos, but it’s not. And you see a lot of evolution on those kinds of things. Like you were talking about web development in that I was thinking of Firefox, for example, like that logo has gone through a lot of iterations. Like it started more like an illustration, which I liked a lot, it was pretty cool looking. And then little by little, they start to simplify and stylize it and it becomes simpler and simpler and simpler. But at least for the most part, they still keep the essence. You still have the Fox like going around
[00:24:49:15 - 00:25:11:35] Lino what used to be the world. Now it’s like a globe, but it’s still, you can understand that it’s still the same thing in essence. So that’s a good example of something that just evolves with the time. It follows the trends a little bit but it hasn’t lost its essence versus, right now, a lot of other logos that like I said, they just devolved to the point where you’re like, do you even know who you are anymore? Like what is this?
[00:25:13:21 - 00:25:16:20] Federico Ramallo Right, right. And because this is a, you know,
[00:25:18:32 - 00:25:34:17] Federico Ramallo you’re connecting with people, people’s opinion changed throughout time, right? So, you know, what now can be rejected, you know, further down the road is something accepted, right? So it’s, you know, so I,
[00:25:35:54 - 00:25:38:27] Federico Ramallo I have a lot of respect for, you know,
[00:25:39:33 - 00:25:45:34] Federico Ramallo for what, when a designer takes a chance to make something different, right? And, you know,
[00:25:47:24 - 00:25:54:39] Federico Ramallo maybe, maybe I rejected that first but I, I, I respect that they, they’re taking that risk, right? So,
[00:25:56:23 - 00:25:56:46] Federico Ramallo so yeah.
[00:25:59:10 - 00:26:06:26] Federico Ramallo So what are the things that you think should not be done with logos? Do you have examples of what we should not do?
[00:26:08:29 - 00:26:21:38] Lino Like I said, I think I jumped the gun a little bit but the biggest one I would say is changing too drastically is the biggest mistake you can make because then that can destroy your brand. And there are some reason examples like
[00:26:23:26 - 00:27:44:14] Lino General Mills syrup, I think is what they call it. I can’t remember the name anymore. They basically took away, you know, an iconic image and they changed it to something completely different. And now if you just see it, you’re like, okay, there’s a new brand around, not realizing that that’s the same syrup you’ve been buying for like maybe decades or your parents have been buying it but they just destroyed the brand to the point of like you have to start fresh in a sense. And sometimes they even have to put formerly blah, blah, blah like we used to be this brand but unless you’re up close and reading all that you’re not gonna realize it. Like you’re just gonna think it’s, you know, like a Walmart brand or something. There’s just another face there and it’s different. So I think that’s the biggest one you can do is like destroy the essence of your brand. I was bringing you an example earlier of PayPal, for example which like it took away the P’s that I had in the solo and it literally is just the letters PayPal and that and that’s it. And there’s a lot of other brands that are doing that recently where they’re just getting rid of everything symbolic anything iconic, like not even nothing merchandiseable let’s call it. It’s just like who would, I don’t know. Maybe if you see like the, there’s certain logos that people just like, right? Like they, for example, Spotify, you can just you see the green circle with the little lines and you know that Spotify that’s music. And I’m sure a lot of people would have those stickers put them on their laptops or on their bottles or you know, whatever,
[00:27:45:40 - 00:27:55:50] Lino because they like the brand because they have something that they like about it. But then if your brand just becomes a word and there’s a really not much personality they’re realistically how many people are just gonna be
[00:27:56:52 - 00:29:09:13] Lino putting that everywhere, like probably not, you know. So I think that’s the biggest mistake you can do is just suck the soul out of your own brand just because you’re following design trends. And like I mentioned, IBM is a really good example of what of not following those trends is like just being solid in your image. But I understand that sometimes there is need for refresh especially if maybe things don’t go so well. And like what happened years ago I don’t know you remember feather with Firestone tires. They had, you know, a big bunch of accidents a bunch of bad stuff happened around the brand. And so they basically had to change to Bridgestone and other things and be like, okay, let’s use other things and let’s talk about the bad one. So people kind of forget that, you know, bad things happened because, you know, sometimes that can happen. Even if it’s out of your control your brand can become a pariah in a sense. And you kind of have to be like, okay, under new management, but in terms of a logo you can’t just put logo under new management. People are still just gonna associate it with the bad things. Sometimes you do need to start a fresh but aside from those example, you know, exceptions I think in general, just you can evolve. Like I mentioned with Firefox but don’t go so far that you’re just irreconcizable like PayPal.
[00:29:11:13 - 00:29:12:02] Federico Ramallo Right, right.
[00:29:13:24 - 00:29:35:51] Federico Ramallo Yeah, I’ve seen people using a lot of the, you know like the Apple logo, you know, people put it everywhere you know, in their cars and things like that, right. And that’s because they feel that association with the brand, right. And what is the name of the entire company, you know remember the Ghostbusters, they had this huge the mushroom.
[00:29:37:21 - 00:29:38:43] Lino Oh, Stapoff, the marshmallow man?
[00:29:38:43 - 00:29:40:55] Federico Ramallo The marshmallow, yeah, the marshmallow man.
[00:29:40:55 - 00:29:41:46] Lino Yeah, Stapoff, yeah.
[00:29:42:48 - 00:30:03:48] Federico Ramallo And, you know, and that was very iconic, right. Or I think you mentioned another one maybe I got it wrong, but you know, I remember Gerber the kid, the baby face, right. And those are very iconic and they are
[00:30:05:24 - 00:30:11:42] Federico Ramallo and if you take the baby away from the logo then it’s not Gerber anymore, right. It’s not.
[00:30:11:42 - 00:30:55:06] Lino Right, yeah. I was actually looking at some examples real quick and I just remember like GoDaddy for example that’s one that like did a rebrand. And I don’t know if you remember the old one that it was very 90s website, you know, like with the little dude in the glasses and the crazy hair and the GoDaddy was kind of like written weird but at least it had some personality. Now it’s like very solid and stiff and honestly boring. I even saw, I didn’t know that Petco was rebranding recently and Petco you always remember like it has it says Petco in two colors and you also have a cat and a dog next to the logo, like kind of playful together. And it’s kind of like a cute image. And now just a font that says Petco. It’s like, you know,
[00:30:56:21 - 00:31:05:00] Lino people that have pets usually have an emotional connection to their animals. So you want the logo to reflect that emotional connection. And now that you suck that all out of your logo, it’s like,
[00:31:06:10 - 00:31:18:20] Lino I’m not sure I want to go to your store. You know, it’s like, are you just gonna sell me like boring dog toys? Like, is it all just gonna be just as boring as your logo? Like maybe I don’t want to go there anymore. So it’s things that can hurt perception.
[00:31:19:21 - 00:31:37:24] Federico Ramallo Right, or you know, the 90s McDonald’s versus the current McDonald’s, you know, now it’s corporate, they have blend colors, they have the arches, they don’t have the clown anymore. Right? Right. I remember as a kid, you know, going there and it was, you know,
[00:31:38:38 - 00:31:43:07] Federico Ramallo the floor was sticky but everything was fun, you know, everything was bright.
[00:31:43:07 - 00:31:58:24] Lino That’s true. They had a lot of games, a lot of fun nowadays and you go to McDonald’s and at least in the US, you don’t, you rarely see those that I remember as a kid, they used to be around everywhere and now they’re not anymore. Playgrounds and all these things and now it’s like, you just go there, eat and get out.
[00:31:59:52 - 00:32:10:02] Federico Ramallo Right, right, yeah. And something that, you know, people in the US may not know is that in Latin America,
[00:32:11:40 - 00:32:20:33] Federico Ramallo McDonald’s, Burger and you know, the main change, American change are upscale restaurants, right?
[00:32:21:51 - 00:32:27:29] Federico Ramallo Where right now in the US is mostly, you know, associated with cheap food, right?
[00:32:28:54 - 00:32:37:37] Federico Ramallo So in Latin America, they, you know, they have higher standards than, you know, than most restaurants.
[00:32:39:06 - 00:32:51:10] Federico Ramallo So, you know, families go there and, you know, and they enjoy, it’s either that or you can go to an up-up scale restaurant, you know, but you’re spending much more money, you know.
[00:32:52:40 - 00:32:56:50] Federico Ramallo So, you know, people do, they still do the,
[00:32:58:01 - 00:33:01:16] Federico Ramallo you know, kids parties in McDonald’s, right?
[00:33:03:05 - 00:33:06:54] Federico Ramallo Because it’s a very nice experience compared to the US, right?
[00:33:08:27 - 00:33:15:44] Lino Right, and you actually just reminded me when you set up scale, you reminded me of Denny’s, which in the US is like, you know,
[00:33:17:38 - 00:33:40:11] Lino doesn’t have the best reputation, let’s say. So it’s not like people don’t go, you don’t take your date out to Denny’s usually, unless you wants to. So it’s not like this fancy thing, but in Mexico, for example, it’s the opposite, like rich people go to Denny’s, like, you know, the common people that you can’t afford going to Denny’s because that’s expensive to go there. And so like I said, Denny’s becomes a more upscale thing over there, whereas in the US, it’s more like, you know,
[00:33:41:16 - 00:33:50:11] Lino the bottom rung of restaurants, so to speak, you know, you don’t go there for top quality food, you go there because it’s cheap and because it’s open at night, et cetera.
[00:33:50:11 - 00:33:53:56] Federico Ramallo I’ve had business meetings in Denny’s.
[00:33:55:13 - 00:34:08:37] Lino I like it, but I know some people don’t have very good opinions of it, but at least that Denny’s is another good example of like, they still keep their personality, like their logo still looks like Denny’s. It’s not like some flat, boring corporate thing, you know.
[00:34:09:37 - 00:34:11:05] Federico Ramallo Right, right.
[00:34:14:20 - 00:34:18:56] Federico Ramallo So we kind of talk about the dos and the don’ts.
[00:34:19:57 - 00:34:26:28] Federico Ramallo The other question that I have for you is, what if, in your opinion, defines a successful logo?
[00:34:28:16 - 00:34:55:48] Lino I think in general, if you can get some of the essence of what the company is, I think your logo is successful, whether it’s personality, whether it’s what it does, because a logo can’t do everything, right? Or rarely can do everything. There is rarely a time when you have this confluence of like the name plus the logo, plus all, you know, what it does, like they can all just come together in this perfect package of like, you see the logo and it just tells you everything you need to know about the company, like that’s super rare. But you can get hints of it, right?
[00:34:57:42 - 00:35:04:03] Lino Because of the use of color, and here you can enter into color psychology, which has to do with cultural things as well, because,
[00:35:05:06 - 00:35:24:57] Lino for example, on our side of the world, on the Americas, like black means death, right? But in Asia, white is what the color you associate with death, so depending on where you are, color use can change a lot. So even color theory is something that’s relative, like it’s, again, not an exact science because it has to do with perception, but perception can also be colored,
[00:35:26:20 - 00:35:46:22] Lino pardon the pun, it can be colored by your culture. So certain colors can mean certain things. I remember this from Korean friends that like the number four for them is something that you wanna avoid because it’s associated to death. So just like on Christian cultures, a lot of them avoid the sixes because of the Antichrist or whatever,
[00:35:47:42 - 00:36:21:35] Lino bad number, so a lot of them avoid it, or 13, unlucky number. So there’s different cultures that have different numbers that they try to avoid, like hotel elevators, they never have the 13th floor because people are superstitious. So it’s like, you go from 12 to 14, and 14 is technically the 13th floor, but we’re gonna label it 14. So there’s a lot of those kinds of things. So going back to the whole logo, what makes it successful is, as long as it tells something about the company, like I mentioned earlier, as long as it has like the essence, the soul of what you do or what you are, I think it’s successful. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be super fancy, it doesn’t have to be, you know,
[00:36:23:32 - 00:36:29:17] Lino highfalutin’ like the new PayPal and all those that are just like, we’re just a font, and that’s our logo, bam, we’re fancy.
[00:36:30:19 - 00:37:28:43] Lino It doesn’t matter. I think it just depends, and that’s actually like the answer that every designer always gives, like that’s the golden answer to everything, it depends. So it really depends on what you’re trying to achieve. So I would say as long as you’re meeting the criteria for what the logo’s supposed to be, then it’s successful. Because if I, just to throw out an example for pre-vetted, the logo that we made, if I had done just one of those lazy just font logo things, maybe it could have been okay. If I had made you like this crazy logo that looked like it was drawn by a kid, that would be a total failure. Why? Because that has, that childish attitude has nothing to do with what the company does. So that would be something that there’s no relation and it even clashes with what you’re supposed to be. It gives, tells you one story when it actually is trying to tell a different one. That’s when you get a failure. So as long as you’re not clashing, I think you’re in the clear, because like we said earlier, it’s not an exact science. There’s always gonna be people that don’t like it, but there’s also gonna be people that like it.
[00:37:29:59 - 00:37:32:06] Lino So as long as you’re not,
[00:37:34:22 - 00:37:39:55] Lino clashing, I would say that would be the key takeaway. Don’t clash with what you’re supposed to be and you’re good.
[00:37:41:08 - 00:37:50:46] Federico Ramallo Right, right. And the less explanation you have to give, the less context you have to give for people to understand the logo, then that makes it a successful logo, right?
[00:37:50:46 - 00:38:17:49] Lino Exactly, because if you have to explain, but well, here’s an interesting part though. Like I mentioned with FedEx, you can explain details that people don’t get and it makes it richer. But the fact that you didn’t see the arrow in the FedEx logo, as long as that doesn’t hurt it, you’re in the clear. But if you have to explain a logo, oh, actually you see that thing that looks obscene, actually, let me explain it to you. It’s not what you think it is. If you have to do that every time, then yes, it’s totally a failure. That’s not something you should have to be worrying about.
[00:38:19:09 - 00:38:22:59] Federico Ramallo So tell me about your process to create the Prevented logo.
[00:38:24:24 - 00:39:12:40] Lino Well, in general, it starts like almost every other logo that I’ve made. I still like the traditional method of pen and paper. In my case, I like pen over pencil because pencil, you can start to erase a lot. The problem is that then you’re tempted to erase and lose work that you had. And that’s something that I’ve inculcated on my team is like never delete anything, especially with the clients nowadays, because sometimes they take you along on many iterations only to say like, you know that thing you did the first time? I actually liked it the best now that I’ve seen all these other things. So let’s go back to that. And if you deleted it, now you have to try to remember what you did or do it all over again. So I like to do the same thing with logos. I do it with pen because it forces me to be like, okay, that’s there, that stays in the paper. Now try again and try again and try again. So as an example, I was doing that with my–
[00:39:12:40 - 00:39:15:30] Federico Ramallo With pen, you’re committed, right?
[00:39:15:30 - 00:39:33:14] Lino Exactly. So here’s what I was trying to do with like, I started with Prevented and then I had the name and then I just started playing around with weird ideas like the AI. And then I just started to doodle a lot of things. I went for looking for inspiration, like what can I do with the P and the V? Eventually we landed on, you know,
[00:39:34:29 - 00:39:49:51] Lino what does vetting someone mean? That means that you’re approving them. So I was thinking, okay, I see the check in my head. So I’m like, I like that idea. And then Prevented, this is like when I said, this is when things start to meet, right? So I was like, okay, so we have the P and the V for Prevented.
[00:39:51:10 - 00:40:59:48] Lino Then I saw the V and then in my head, I’m like, oh, that V, you can make a check with the V. And then so I’m like, okay, let’s focus on that idea. So usually that’s what I start to do is like, once you start to get a direction that makes sense, like I said, you know, it’s not clashing with what it is and it actually explains a little bit of what you do, then I started to go more in that direction, but there’s still a lot to explore. So I was like, okay, I like the P, I like the V as a check, how can I fuse them together? And so I just started going through iterations, doing a lot of sketching, talking to my team about it, then presenting some of it to you and the internal team. And then eventually I was like, okay, I’m happier with this direction, but before I showed you guys anything, I tried to get to like three to four versions that I liked the best and then start to explore those. Because if you show too many options, the problem is that if you show it to five different people, they’re gonna pick five different things and then you’re never gonna have a winner. So if you can narrow it down to less versions, then you can start having people be like, I like this one for this reason, or I like this one for this reason. And then sometimes you can find a way to merge ideas. Sometimes they’re exclusionary, so you have to be like, okay, well, this one works for these reasons, this one doesn’t for these reasons. And you’ve seen that in my process is something I like to do.
[00:41:01:34 - 00:41:31:31] Lino I like to call it like the, sort of like the Dr. House method, if you’ve ever seen the show, Dr. House, where he just likes to bounce ideas off people. And sometimes just explaining it out loud, you start to hear yourself and then things start to click and you automatically start to be like, okay, I’m gonna reject this idea, I’m not even gonna like tell you more detail, I already rejected it. Like, I’m not even gonna get USA, I know why it’s bad, it’s gone. And then this other one I started to like, but now this other one that maybe I didn’t like originally, now it’s starting to make sense, because that’s something that happens a lot too.
[00:41:32:48 - 00:42:00:09] Lino The sometimes things that you rejected, you rejected it because you had a certain idea in your head. But once you start to talk about it, for example, you and I were talking about like, what is the brand trying to do? What is it that we want to achieve, et cetera? I started to get that extra information that maybe I forgot or I didn’t have, or that started coming up as we were discussing these things. It’s like, hey, you know what? Okay, let’s bring this other one back in. And then now we have two, and now we have like a fair fight. And now let’s start to polish them and see which one will work.
[00:42:01:09 - 00:42:13:37] Lino So I started to do that with the logos, eventually I landed on that idea that I liked with the P and the V, and then little by little I just started to polish. The hardest part though, is always going from the physical to the digital. Because in pen,
[00:42:14:56 - 00:42:21:15] Lino I kind of relate it to, if y’all remember like the older video games, like the Nintendo games, or even the Super Nintendo games,
[00:42:22:27 - 00:43:32:23] Lino you saw really blocky characters, but your brain filled in the blanks and made them like, if you saw the game art or something, like your brain just filled in the blanks and like the game was a lot more colorful and detailed and interesting than it really was what you were looking at. So I think the same thing happens when you go from physical to digital, because in physical with the pen, a small sketch, you see fuzzy details and it could go either way. It could be thicker lines, thinner lines, they could be a certain color or not, et cetera. But once you start to commit to digital, it needs to be precise and that’s where it gets scary because then you start to lose those things that give it personality. And sometimes you start to have to commit and be like, okay, well, it could go this way or that way. Which one do I wanna pick? Is it gonna be like thick lines, thin lines? Is it gonna be this color, that color? Is it gonna be even thickness? Is it gonna look more like it was drawn with a pen with like different strokes and that kind of thing? So you have to tone it all down. And if you want, I can share, but I just went through like so many iterations in digital that eventually it was just like, I drove myself crazy, but thankfully my team kind of kept giving me a little direction and little by little, I was like, okay, I think I know where I’m going. And then I kept going and then eventually I landed somewhere where I’m like, okay, I’m happy with where this is.
[00:43:33:50 - 00:43:40:02] Federico Ramallo Yeah, I remember when we had this initial conversations and you kind of asked me, like,
[00:43:41:02 - 00:43:51:32] Federico Ramallo what do you want in the logo? And I was blank, I didn’t know what to tell you. So I can tell you, you show me options and I can say, okay, I like this one better than this other one.
[00:43:52:44 - 00:44:02:20] Federico Ramallo But going from blank to the first step, for me, that was very difficult. So I was unable to give you any answers.
[00:44:04:11 - 00:44:09:04] Federico Ramallo And once you started like showing us different options
[00:44:10:22 - 00:44:19:46] Federico Ramallo and we were able to go through feedback with you and the team and discussing different ideas, then it was like a Christmas tree.
[00:44:22:02 - 00:44:24:14] Federico Ramallo Everybody was pitching in different ideas.
[00:44:26:16 - 00:44:34:24] Federico Ramallo It was very interesting to see, like, hey, we have these ideas and then you were like, oh, I like this, I like that. And then based on what we were saying,
[00:44:35:30 - 00:44:55:03] Federico Ramallo we were opening different path for you to follow. And then you would explore them and come back and say, hey, I did these explorations and I didn’t like this, I like this. And that dynamic kind of helped us, you know, find the right direction of the final log, right?
[00:44:56:24 - 00:44:58:08] Lino Yeah, so do you want me to run through it real quick?
[00:44:59:10 - 00:44:59:42] Lino Sure, yes.
[00:45:00:41 - 00:45:03:57] Lino Okay, so let me just get my screen.
[00:45:04:57 - 00:45:14:48] Lino So this is sort of the process I was mentioning. So this is a scan of what I was showing in the notebook. And so I was playing with a lot of different ideas. Eventually, even though the whole name is Prevetted AI,
[00:45:15:50 - 00:47:36:05] Lino something that I noticed early on was like, when I was trying to force the A and the I into it, I realized that that wasn’t the critical part yet in the logo, like I wanted to focus on the P and the V because that’s, you know, when you see Prevetted or Prevetted AI, like the first thing you think is PV because AI is a term that’s being used so much today, that it’s, I was thinking it’s not gonna be as impactful to make it like stand out as much in the brand. So if you see in my first line I was drawing, I was like, let’s just get rid of the AI and I’ll figure out a way to bring it back in later because it was causing too much noise. And it started to look like something else. Like it almost looked like maybe it’s a whole word. So I was like, no, let’s focus on the main symbol part of the PV and that’ll be like my guiding light. So early on, that’s what I decided. Like I’m just gonna focus on P and the V and I’ll worry about AI a little later because like you see here, like it looks like provide, pry, pry, some other thing. Like your brain’s trying to fill in the blanks because that’s something our brains like to do. They like to find patterns, fill it in. And I was like, no, that’s just causing noise and it’s not gonna let me focus. So then I started playing with the check. So I was like, okay, how about a font with more rounded things? But I’m like, it looks a little lopsided. It doesn’t look as balanced. I tried a whole bunch of different things but eventually we landed on this one which follows like a triangle shape which follows the line of the V. So I liked that shape. It was an interesting idea. And so I started focusing on that because you notice here, like I have a similar P and a V but only the P is straight and the V or the check is slanted. So it felt off balance. And I kept trying to explore those ideas but I was like, no, it’s like, I’d like that idea of symmetry. And so when I focused on this, I was like, okay, let me polish and pass it onto digital. And then these were my first digital passes when I was just doing with like the pen. And so I was trying the P and the V and then I was playing around with different ways of like, where do I do the P? Do I do it more rigid and straight? Do I did it a little more curly? But then it started to look so almost like a spiral. And this is what I was mentioning earlier. You start to add so much detail that you start to get lost. And it’s like, okay, now I’m just adding noise. So let’s cut back on the noise. So then I was decided, okay, somewhere between this and this, I’ll try these out. So I was trying again more iterations. I was trying color and thickness just to see how it would play, how it would look as a real logo. And I was trying to decide, do I want different thickness? Do I want more emphasis on the check on the V? But then at one point I was like, this one makes the, you lose the V. You just see like a check because of the way that it’s playing together.
[00:47:37:09 - 00:47:57:49] Lino And so little by little, I started to play on these. And then when I got to this one, I was like, okay, I like this one because you still see the P. And then you see like a little bit of a connection between where the P and the V kind of, if you were drawing it in cursive, it’s kind of like almost as if it was just one complete stroke. So this is the idea that I started to attach to, but I was like, I still need to define, refine it and make it a little better.
[00:47:58:58 - 00:48:37:02] Lino And so I started to play around. And this is where I started to add the AI back. And so because I had the triangle idea, I was like, how about let’s do an inverse triangle for the AI part. So that’s when I started to play with the AI here. I started to put it on the side, inside of the P, a little bit off the side again, but a little bit different treatment, et cetera. And then eventually I was like, okay, let’s make the polished P and the V. And so all these things that you’re seeing here are basically like grid lines to define where the P, the V, all those things go inside of this triangle. And so basically what I was doing was just, I filled them out and that’s how you end up with a shape like this. So you notice this one, it has a little bit more of a, oh, is that sorry?
[00:48:38:04 - 00:48:39:53] Federico Ramallo Oh, no, no, no, go ahead. I said, I see.
[00:48:40:57 - 00:49:15:32] Lino So for example, this was like one of my first iterations and I really liked the way that it all flows together. Like you can see that if you were to connect these with us, like if this kept going straight up, it would just connect. So I liked the way that it connected, but it was still a little too curvy. I tried to exaggerate the curve a little more even. And I was like, no, this is, again, an example of like going too far. So I was like, okay, let’s tone it down a little. And eventually I settled on this one. So you have like straight lines on the outside, but once you get to the inside, you get like these nice little curves. And so I felt like, okay, that’s very interesting. So this is where you’re, the straight lines,
[00:49:16:33 - 00:50:57:52] Lino and again, I don’t wanna get too far off on the psychological part, but playing with the straight lines, like you’re giving it a bit of a solid ground. So you’re grounding the logo, you’re making it solid, you’re making it rigid, but because of the curves, it’s not too rigid. So it still has a little bit of life, a little bit of flow, a little bit of personality, if you will. So I was really liking the way that the check works, because when you make a check, especially by hand, like, you know, it’s not like a, you don’t do it with a ruler, you know, your hand doesn’t always do like a perfect B, that kind of thing. So I felt like it had enough motion to it. It had enough detail and let’s call it personality in it that I thought it was interesting. And these are the green blocks that I was putting there, which is to confirm that when I built it, I was doing it right, that I was keeping the same gap between these lines, as I was keeping between these lines to keep the, because I’m a super fan of symmetry. So I always like to have things be symmetrical, be just aligned, nothing by accident, you know, because it always bugs me and I’ve seen it in some logos where they don’t take this kind of care. And you can tell that, you know, this one, if they only had tilted it a little bit this way or that way, it would have been aligned perfectly and it would have seemed more done on purpose, but because it’s not, it seems like it’s sloppy and it just happened by accident almost. So I’m like, no, you know, this is what you were talking about, for that like that attention to detail, that is the kind of thing I like to look at. It drove me crazy for a while. This probably took a lot longer than I should have, but once I landed on that, I was a lot happier. And then the other part that I was looking at is, okay, now let’s settle down on how I’m gonna do the AI part. So I was putting it inside, I was putting it on the bottom, but it was very tiny. This was when we were still discussing just how important the AI component of pre-vetted AI was gonna be.
[00:50:59:00 - 00:53:10:50] Lino And so we were talking about this. This one I didn’t like. It’s nice that it kept the arrow shape, but it started to look like it says AL instead of AI. And it kind of disappears. It kind of reminds me of like the old American airlines where it’s just like two ways next to each other. So I was like, no. And my team was helping me see like, no, try something with the AI. So I was trying different fonts. I was trying different things. Eventually I found the font that I like and the thing that I did at the end was once I settled on the AI being a little bigger, and then I started looking at the font, that’s when I started to do the integration. So I tried it, you know, skinny, et cetera. And here for the, you can see again, those squares. So I was doing those spaces to make sure like, okay, how about the spacing, not just between this, the check and the P, but between the check and the AI that’s next to it. So I was like, okay, this spacing is the same. And now I have smaller squares here between the A and the I because that’s a slightly smaller component. So I was also trying to make sure I kept the spacings between those. And once I had that, I was like, again, probably a little overkill, maybe, maybe not, depends on who you ask, but I was like, okay, now I’m happy with it. Now it feels more complete. And I landed on this font, which was Montserrat, which you’ll appreciate for that because it’s actually based on Argentinian fonts from, you know, someone that visited Argentina from ongoing and all these signs used to have something that looked like this font. So the inspiration came from Argentina and I thought, well, you know, Federico’s from Argentina. So to continue doing an homage, like we’ve done with other brands that we have, I like that font. I made some modifications by hand, like the R, for example, the original R, if you look over here, like this is the original R from the Montserrat font, but I like the curviness because this was from a different font I was working at some point. Oh, this font up up here, actually, it was this curvy P. So then eventually I modified it so it looks similar. And eventually I landed on this, which I really liked. So you have the pre in a medium thickness font, you have vetted in a nice thick font so that it really stands out and it puts the emphasis on the check. And then the AI goes back to a medium font. So vetted in a sense of sandwiched in between pre vetted AI, vetted is like standing out.
[00:53:11:53 - 00:53:36:40] Lino And I exaggerated the, this is just using the V shape. I didn’t make like a manual check. I just changed the levels of where the V starts and ends so that it looks more like a V and kind of matches the one in the symbol. And so once I had all that, I did all the alignment. And that’s another thing that I did is like, how do you decide on, on Word O line, all these different elements? So I was like, okay, the, for example, you’ll notice the end of the V is aligned to the D or where does the,
[00:53:37:45 - 00:53:41:29] Lino well, right now it’s got snapping. So it’s a little bit curly. It’s difficult to do.
[00:53:41:29 - 00:53:49:55] Federico Ramallo Yeah, but- So the left side of the V aligns with the check mark or the left side of the V on the logo, right?
[00:53:49:55 - 00:54:14:12] Lino Yeah, so this one actually aligns, if I snap it here, it aligns to where the T ends. So where this, the V and the T, they’re aligned. And then the V and the D they’re aligned. So like I said, it’s those little details. That’s like, if you get it wrong, it just seems like, why didn’t you, and then I remember this from my teachers in design long ago, they were like, why don’t you just bring it down a little and align it to this element? Or why don’t you do align it to this thing and the other thing?
[00:54:15:31 - 00:54:30:46] Lino So every time I’m working on a logo, I’m looking for those little alignments that give it that extra level of polish that even though it’s maybe is not super necessary, when it’s missing, you can kind of, it seems amateurish. And when you have it there, it’s like, okay, this person has attention and detail, which is,
[00:54:31:56 - 00:54:54:03] Lino and again, this is something that not just reflects on you, the designer, it reflects on the brand itself, because if the brand looks sloppy, then that’s gonna tell something about the brand. Maybe they don’t care as much, or they didn’t really try that hard or it’s just someone that’s like, oh, you know, they kept all the details in check, they did all these things right. That tells me their work ethic in a sense. So your logo reflects you.
[00:54:54:03 - 00:54:59:16] Federico Ramallo So the logo reflects you, reflects your values, right? And your ethos.
[00:55:00:22 - 00:55:59:45] Lino Exactly. And as we were talking about AI, because AI is increasingly becoming a more important component, I did want it to have its place, but you notice that this way, it looks a lot more balanced because AI isn’t eating into the PV so that it doesn’t look like a word. So you can see the parts for the P, the V, and the A and the I. So when you see it all together, you’re like, okay, I get it, you know, PV for the pre-vetted, because you’re seeing the reflection between the P and the V in this logo, and then you see the AI part. So you notice in the text part, I kept the AI rigid because the rest of the font is all straight. Let’s call it all vertically aligned. But here, the AI, I did keep the triangle because you have one triangle, so another triangle. So keeping that motion together there, it made sense to keep the incline. So I was really happy with the way that it turned out. And then the hard part was colors. We had this whole discussion about colors. And this is the last part I wanted to cover about the design process is first I started with, and you can see like a lot of the different colors I was trying out.
[00:56:00:58 - 00:57:01:33] Lino Because pre-vetted is born from Density Labs, I wanted to keep a relationship to them. So I was playing with the same black and red palette that Density Labs have. But then at some point I was like, well, it doesn’t have to be the exact same thing, right? Like I said, they’re more like cousins, they’re not twins. So I was thinking like, let’s lighten up a little bit and give it a little bit more life. So I was playing, if you notice on the right side, I lightened up the colors a little bit to instead of going pure black, I was playing with a lighter bluish gray so that it would not be so harsh. But I was still playing with the red. Then I was playing with green because you see the check emoji is always like, green, green is positive, green is success. So initially I really liked this idea. Yes, and I was trying to make it work. Like this is one of those things where you start to get tunnel vision. And initially I was like, green the blue, I’m gonna make the green work. I’m gonna do something and it’s gonna be green in the end. But the more I tried it and I talked to my team, I was like, I’m just trying to force it, but it’s not really working. And I was trying other color combinations and other things. But eventually I was like,
[00:57:02:52 - 00:57:17:58] Lino let’s let go of that idea of the check. Like it doesn’t have to be green. Even though it’s a nice idea, once you put it all together, I wasn’t liking it as much. And something else that I do with logos, especially once you’re working on them, I like to zoom out and see them when they’re small. So for example, you can see this one,
[00:57:19:06 - 00:57:31:36] Lino the blue and the green pre-vetted. They start to get very light and it’s a little harder to read versus the original, actually, let me hide the rulers, but the original pre-vetted pieces,
[00:57:32:40 - 00:57:42:07] Lino it was just so harsh that it just, well, not so harsh. Rather it had enough contrast that you can just keep reading it. So this is just something that I thought was interesting.
[00:57:43:14 - 00:57:57:44] Lino So again, I kept playing with colors, trying other things. I also tried it separately, which is another thing that was asked by our marketing lead. He said, I need a version that works in a square because with density, we have the same problem. The logo is all horizontal,
[00:57:58:56 - 00:59:06:36] Lino but you don’t always have the space to put a horizontal logo or it ends up very tiny. So you have to find a way to make it work within a square, like for social media or other places. So this is also what helped me decide on the color because once I was looking at it like this and I zoomed out and I would see pre-vetted, I was like, yeah, this one gets really lost. It doesn’t really pop. It doesn’t have that strength that the logo originally had. Like it kind of loses it with those light colors. So then eventually I started bringing down to these finalists with the red. We had a version that we all really liked, which was like golden and black because it looked really classy, it looked really cool. But in the end, we also had practical limitations, which is why I mentioned at the beginning that you have a box and you have to work within it. Sometimes you wish you didn’t have those limitations and you could do whatever you wanted. But in our case, the limitation was one, we had a time constraint. This all had to come together very fast. But two, we already had so much pre-work done that was using a previous branding that looked very similar with the red and the black that we just decided it was not gonna be worth the effort of redoing all that work, recoloring all those things, just for something that worked just as well with this.
[00:59:07:43 - 00:59:22:07] Lino And that’s why we decided in the end to keep like that red and dark black slash gray color scheme to tie it into Density Labs so there would be that relationship. But also as a method of like, we need to get this project out the door and we have that limitation.
[00:59:24:02 - 00:59:25:48] Lino Like I mentioned earlier,
[00:59:26:55 - 01:00:13:10] Lino either of these works, like you’re not gonna lose personality or some other problem because you slightly tweak the color. And in the end, we were all happy with this one. And so that’s what we decided on. So we worked on Prevetted. I made a version with a little bit of a gradient. And that’s something that you had asked me about once, Fede, was I had long ago mentioned that, especially in classically trained people, they tell you don’t use gradients on logos. And the reason back then was because it was very hard on physical print to get logos to work right. Especially like for t-shirts, it’s really hard to make a gradient work. Nowadays, there’s more tricks to do it, but before it was super hard to make that possible. So you asked me about this and I told you that you can do it in digital, it’s just fine. As long as the logo still works in one or two colors,
[01:00:14:09 - 01:00:46:45] Lino which is what I’m showing on the bottom, like just seeing it all in black, you can see that the logo works perfectly without color. So there’s nothing lost. So you could even, like the shirt that I have, that’s just white ink, you could do the exact same thing with the Prevetted logo. So the gradient is just a nice extra that makes it pop when you have it in digital, which is our main medium. But if you ever need to go to physical, for example, for that you have a laser engraver, which is really cool. And so in that one, you usually wanna do something that’s solid, you can do some gradients, but usually one solid because that’s the one that’s most noticeable and it works the best.
[01:00:46:45 - 01:00:48:18] Federico Ramallo Yeah, you have one color, maybe two at most.
[01:00:49:36 - 01:01:47:39] Lino Exactly, and so I kept that in mind as I was working on the logos, like does this work in a single color iteration, which it did. And then the gradient that I added in the end was just an extra, so to speak, it makes it nicer, it makes it, like they like to say, it makes it pop more, but it still works. And if you needed it in a simple way, it still works. We were working on the colors that we’re gonna use, like the scheme in general for the main logo, the fonts that we have and all that. And then the last thing that I was working on was just the, and this is the part that sometimes people forget, you have to put this logo on all sorts of things. So you have to make sure does it work on a white background, does it work on a dark background? Are you gonna need a protection area because if you have a color version or if there’s gonna be noise behind the logo, how are you gonna protect it? Keep it from just fading into the background. So all these different things, also for example, when you put it in a square, it’s not the same as when you put it inside of a circle avatar, because when you put it inside of a circle, you need to make sure that this still works.
[01:01:49:05 - 01:02:43:38] Lino So on a square, you could say like, oh, I could still make it a little bit bigger, for example, right? But once you make it bigger, the problem is you go back to a circle, which happens like an Instagram, for example, one of our commonly used social media, and now the logo just gets cut, right? So it’s something else that you have to keep in mind, like what are the proportions, et cetera. And so that’s what I came up with, and we were really happy with the design in the end. And just for those asking, the reason why the P and not the check mark, the V is red, was because red is generally a color of error sometimes. And so we didn’t wanna have that cognitive dissonance of the check being red instead of green, which might seem like an error instead of something successful. So that’s what we want with the dark color being part of the check. So again, those are like little details that it might just seem like, ah, whatever. But when you start to think about it, it made sense, because I did try it inverted, but we had that connotation that it was like, let’s avoid it.
[01:02:43:38 - 01:02:51:55] Federico Ramallo But then it didn’t work, right? Because you’re associating the check with the red, which means stop, right? Or don’t go.
[01:02:51:55 - 01:03:29:36] Lino Exactly. And so that’s what we ended up with, and this is our logo. And this is, like you were saying, Felly, like the two-color version, because there was a question on does it work? Works perfectly fine, no problems. But the final one is indeed the one with the gradient. If anyone’s asking why I have these two, even though they seem perfectly identical, it’s because one of them has that protection area I was talking about. So if I put a block here behind it, you can see what happens when you start to put it, like the color version, for example, you put it over a background or a color background or something, like it starts to get lost versus this one that’s protected. It doesn’t matter what color you put behind it, it’ll just survive because it’s protected.
[01:03:30:59 - 01:03:32:17] Lino So that’s what I did there.
[01:03:32:17 - 01:03:34:00] Federico Ramallo Right, amazing.
[01:03:36:05 - 01:03:42:28] Federico Ramallo Yeah, my first question when you showed me the gradient, I was like, well, you showed me many years ago that we shouldn’t use gradients.
[01:03:42:28 - 01:03:42:57] Lino Don’t do it.
[01:03:42:57 - 01:03:43:21] (Laughing)
[01:03:43:21 - 01:03:50:06] Federico Ramallo Don’t do it, right? It’s a cardinal scene, you know? And you explained me, well, it’s not that bad, you know?
[01:03:50:06 - 01:03:52:08] Lino If you know what you’re doing, it’s not bad, yes.
[01:03:52:08 - 01:04:00:21] Federico Ramallo But it’s stuck in my mind, you know? So every time I talk about logos, I always talk about, do not use gradients, no matter what.
[01:04:00:21 - 01:04:07:28] Lino Well, nowadays they not only say, don’t use gradients, they say, don’t use anything, just text. Your logo should just be text.
[01:04:09:33 - 01:04:11:41] Federico Ramallo So the next logo is going to be a dot.
[01:04:13:33 - 01:04:17:43] Lino It’s so minimalist, it’s just gonna be the first letter. PayPal is just gonna be a P.
[01:04:17:43 - 01:04:20:25] Federico Ramallo Yeah, well, you have,
[01:04:21:46 - 01:04:33:43] Federico Ramallo when we were talking about that, I was thinking about Twitter, right? They have the X as the logo, but it’s an X with personality. So it’s one letter, but it still has a lot of personality in it, right?
[01:04:34:48 - 01:04:48:01] Lino Right, and that’s something that, you know, I know a lot of people hate the name change. Again, psychology, people hate change. But most people embrace it, and it’s fine. And you see it, and you recognize it. You know, this is not just any X, this is the logo for what used to be Twitter.
[01:04:49:16 - 01:04:51:16] Lino Again, it’s recognizable, it’s simple, but it’s recognizable.
[01:04:52:43 - 01:04:54:31] Federico Ramallo Right, right, I see.
[01:04:56:09 - 01:04:59:15] Federico Ramallo Awesome, so it was great to talk about this.
[01:05:00:21 - 01:05:03:03] Federico Ramallo I appreciate having you here, Lino.
[01:05:04:12 - 01:05:21:47] Federico Ramallo I’m sure people are going to have a lot of questions, so we’ll put the info to reach us, and we can answer any questions people have. And I’m looking forward to have another conversation with you, Lino. We’ll love to, it was just fun. Thank you for joining.
[01:05:21:47 - 01:05:23:23] Lino Thank you so much.