How To Present a Logo and Brand Identity System
Join Chris Do from The Futur and Maxwell Billings from EightySeven to talk all things rebranding. Specifically, for The Future Logo Redesign Series, designers are asked to redesign brand logos and present their thinking. If you’ve ever been interested in how logos are designed and presented to people, enjoy!
Video Transcript
Chris Do: I'm glad I'm here. It's Friday, we're doing another episode logo redesign. And in case you're new to the format it's logos you love, or maybe I should say logos. You love to hate. And we're going to be redesigning today with a new, new participant new designer. His name is Maxwell billings, and in case you're unfamiliar with his work, go out and check out madebyeightyseven.com madebyeightyseven.com.
Chris Do: And you can check out his work also on Instagram at made by 87. And this is some of his work it's super impressive. And I like seeing this, and this is probably a little departure for us because usually we talk to people who are really concentrated on logo design, but here in Maxwell, We see lots of things like copywriting signage, menu, design, exhibit design.
Chris Do: There's a lot of stuff that's going on packaging. And I like seeing this, cause I think this is where many designers, if you're, if you have the skill, if you have the aptitude for this, this is where you should be. You should be thinking about the entirety of the brand from every point of consumer interaction.
Chris Do: So I'm really excited to see what Maxwell comes up with. Now, he's chosen to take on United airlines. Now I was unfamiliar with this, but apparently United airlines had redesigned their logo with their acquisition of another airline. And so this is the weird combo mark that they've come up with because if he had to redesign the original Saul bass logo, I might have some, some issues with that, but here we are.
Chris Do: And so we want to see how he went from this to this. And I have to ask you, first of all, Maxwell, why, why did you pick United airlines of all logos to read. Sure.
Maxwell: Well thankfully I have a couple of reasons and that's the first portion of my presentation here. So really the first reason that I have for why United is there's a lot of nostalgia there.
Maxwell: So it's, it's a Chicago company. I'm from Chicago. You know, flying out of O'Hare airport, which is the United hub was always the thing. When you were a kid, the last dance was just on ESPN. Everyone's watching the bowls again. And of course the bulls play at the United center, the house that Jordan built.
Maxwell: And there's just a lot of that you know that, that sort of heritage to travel and, and growing up. The second part, as you mentioned, is design legacy. So you have the original or one of the original redesigns of the logo back in 1974 by Saul bass. And then in 1997, you have the update to the logo from Michael Beirut and pentagram.
Maxwell: This is the infamous tulip logo design that everybody loves. You know, one of the big things, when ever you dive into learning about a brand is doing a little more homework. And in the case of Michael Beirut, I actually flipped open his book and completely forgot that there's an entire section about United airlines in there.
Maxwell: So to all the, all the students who are you know, wondering about, you know, how do you research and learn more? I buy some books there they're good things to have around. But you know, teeing up the, this presentation of the why United you know, even in the last paragraph of this book on the, on the opening page, it even quite honestly says it was not destined to last United merged with a rival and in a series of trade-offs motivated, motivated less by marketing theory than by the logic of the deal memo.
Maxwell: They married their name to their new partner symbol. A new era began without us. It had been an amazing ride. So kind of that admission that United was walking away from. Heritage of design legacy that they had. The third reason is as you mentioned, it is a bit of a horse by design. The current or the the prior mark did feel a little bit you know sort of it felt there was some heritage there.
Maxwell: It felt strong. And then of course, when the merger occurred with continental airlines, it felt a little horse by committee. When both of those were merged together to come into the one new logo of taking Continental's blue, their look and merging it just with the United name feel, and it felt very boardroom designed.
Maxwell: I'll, I'll put it that way. And then finally, the, the general moment we're in a, I know a lot of people are staying home. I know like myself. Love to travel and there's kind of that hunger to get back out there and safely travel again. And, you know, if you're going to work on a project, it might as well be something fun.
Maxwell: You know, with the you know, with the loss of Virgin airlines. Oh, oh God, hang on. My my zoom just restarted on me.
Chris Do: Okay. Okay.
Maxwell: Perfect. So with the, with the loss of Virgin airlines in the United States, it's a real bummer that oh,
Chris Do: something happened. Okay. Now we're back. Yeah. It looks like, yeah.
Chris Do: We're back. Something is happening. Well,
Maxwell: we, all we all went through is we all went through a zoom update at the exact same
Chris Do: we're back. I could see the zoom Jonah, you see us? All right. Joan has got to do something. Hold on, hang tight. Oh, you keep talking. Okay, go ahead.
Maxwell: Yeah, no problem. With with Virgin America sort of gone and acquired by Alaskan airlines, there really isn't a experienced airline anymore.
Maxwell: There it's, it's a lot of fighting on low price. So it felt like this was a good opportunity to rethink who Delta is differentiate on, or sorry, rethink who United is. Differentiate a little more than price. I, I pulled a quote in here from from an article I read when I was doing my homework.
Maxwell: The Delta CEO essentially said that business travel won't come back ever to pre pandemic levels. The idea of that luxury travel first business class is probably going away. So how can we take some of that sort of care and thinking and bring it into the overarching airline experience? Obviously, you know, for something as simple as a logo design, this is definitely overthinking it, but this is sort of, in my opinion, the necessary things you need to go through to gain that perspective.
Maxwell: So it would be before you
Chris Do: continue, I want to hear the rest of what you have to say, but I was just thinking that that is sad if that's true, because when, when we can travel and when we have traveled in the past, I really like traveling because it's like my bridge to a whole nother world, a whole nother culture.
Chris Do: And maybe there are starting to disappear this kind of luxury travels thing, but it would be sad if that were the case. And one airline that I just want to give a shout out to is jet blue. And they have mint and mint doesn't cost a ton more, but they, they do a really good job of putting you that business class seat.
Chris Do: And it's like something that you can lay down in and the quilted blankets. And I was like, this is really nice. And I feel like it's worth whatever money I can pay for it. So I hope this is not.
Maxwell: Yeah, right. It's I mean, me too. I, I, you know, as you just sort of stated, you're willing to pay a little bit more for the sort of comfort of travel and not just feel like a packed bus soaring through the.
Maxwell: All right. So a little bit of brand homework, as we mentioned, you know, this is the mark. They went through their entire recent redesign process where they rolled out the kind of Frankenstein of the continental look and the United look into this very blue playing up the globe. It feels very corporate sort of expected.
Maxwell: There's really not a lot here from. Design visual perspective where it queues into something really of strong interest, right? There's nothing terribly engaging with it. But during my initial research, I started to pull and dive into a couple of different, interesting things that, that queued up my thinking for the logo.
Maxwell: The first was the sub-brand that United has called Polaris, which is their business and first class sort of subcategory of higher luxury, higher touch, more into the hospitality world. Looking into it. They use this star imagery in a, in a very subtle way that I thought was interesting. It cued into some more emotional feelings.
Maxwell: And you could tell a bit more of a story there then just sort of, you know, the globe treatment they had. So I kind of put this on my wall as something to potentially take a look at and come back to. Here's just some examples of how that all looks from the Polaris perspective. You're kind of as, as you'd expect your first-class type experience.
Maxwell: The next thing I looked at in addition to where visually could the logo go from a shape and design perspective, but also too from a color standpoint. So I took a look at all the different airlines that exist out there, the top domestic and the top international, and tried to figure out, is there a gap somewhere in color design that we can expect.
Maxwell: And as I sort of sorted things out, kind of discovered it very quickly. You have your spikes in the reds and you have your spikes in the blues, but there were two areas that stuck out as opportunity, the sort of blue, green, Aqua area, and then the purple indigo, all the way to the right now, one of the nice things is that with the United pallet, the way that they have it currently set up, they obviously favored the dark blues and leaning into that very corporate blue world, which, you know, can be a tough thing to own generally.
Maxwell: But given the observation that I made just before about the greens and purples, we could simply flip the hierarchy around, still use the United brand colors, but just do a little bit of a tweak as far as what's primary and secondary. So onto the. So bubble design requires strategy, obviously, as you were saying, so start with why this is just sort of a immediate brain dump of, you know, in my journal, I, for as much as I love my iPads and computers and iPhones, and I'm the total apple guy, sometimes just a pencil and a mole skin notebook is the way to go just for getting ideas out there.
Maxwell: So I just started going into writing down all the things that I think about travel. What does it mean to me? What is the actual sort of magic behind it? Because it is an emotional thing you're going to another place you are meeting other people you're, you know, anchoring an experience that you wouldn't have otherwise.
Maxwell: So, you know, how does United fit into that? The larger elements that I pulled out were to aspire to a higher purpose, connect people with their destination, not just say, oh, you know, we're, we're here to fight people. No, you're, you're kind of a temporary hotel that people stay in while they get to that cool place that they want to go.
Maxwell: No, one's really excited to hop on an airplane these days. We want to make travel, feel special again, and then provide design as an experience, not necessarily a just promotional tool. So one of the quotes that I like to pull out and, you know, I like to pull inspiration from everywhere is this great Anthony Bordain quote, that travel is about that gorgeous feeling of teetering into the unknown.
Maxwell: And that sounds great.
Chris Do: Anthony Bourdain right there.
Maxwell: voiceover, as it's just walking down some street somewhere Based on that, that idea of the unknown. I started the think about all right, what is the ultimate unknown? Right. We think about space. We think about the infinite vast of just being able to look up and see the stars.
Maxwell: And it's a very human thing that everyone has done you know, going all the way back through all of humanity, that idea of looking up at the stars and being something a bit more aspirational. And then on top of it, Polaris is the name of the north star. So just started looking at photography and trying to get a feel for how this could all come together.
Maxwell: And then, you know, going back to the color exploration of all right, we have greens and we have purples and blues. All those can work together naturally in a way, when you look at something like the Northern lights, all those colors can weave in and out of each other. Okay. Like Bob Ross says we don't make mistakes.
Maxwell: We make happy accidents. So this is kind of a happy accident that just sort of, I was, as I was going through the process of discovering and thinking of trying to create, all right, how do I want this start to begin to look not only in the sense of the logo, but how do we then expand it to all the different touch points of the brand?
Maxwell: Because a logo doesn't live on its own. It's never just isolated in a field of white space. It lives somewhere so hopped in back to the good old notebook and just started doodling. In portfolio school, our teachers always said, start with a hundred and then throw them out and then do another hundred.
Maxwell: And then you'll start to get somewhere. So lots of little doodles of the you the shape. Just playing with the letter form very simply quick little sketches to. Inform the design process. So here playing around with you know, overlapping G geometry, getting back a little bit to that Saul bass to look you logo that is, you know, sort of heralded is one of the best logo designs of all time by one of the best logo designers of all time going through and, and you know, in sort of my drawing, like on the bottom left, all of a sudden, I thought, all right, what about like a star whooshing?
Maxwell: You know, what, if it just sort of left a trail, like a comment, do we go into this world of celestial a bit more you know, playing around and redrawing the actual tool of logo to learn a little bit more about how is the motion, if it were, you know, extrapolated into a 3d space, how would that end up looking?
Maxwell: And then of course, Stepping away from it completely. And then just going to other stuff and, you know, continuously drawing and doodling, keeping all those mental ideas, you know, keeping those plates spinning, so to speak.
Maxwell: So here kept going, kept taking the the initial ideas that I had, you know, playing up that idea of the, you have the star motion sort of swooping through, playing around with you know, do we flatten it out at the base of the U do we try to build in some type of you know, representation of motion to, to, you know, give that star more of a sense of speed and velocity going even further into all right.
Maxwell: If we took that same motion idea and tried to build into a typeface, how would that look? Just some initial ideas who knows, maybe we'll come back. Treating the, you as a shield, again, just playing around with a lot of different ideas of what's working, what's not working, where does kind of my instinct take me as far as what feels like a right fit, even, you know, quite honestly just writing right next to stuff to be like, eh, that's not really that good going in further you know, stepping away from ideas, but then coming back, there's a couple of different things happening here that we'll go to as far as logos, that didn't necessarily make the cut, but, you know, using that shadow of the U as I started playing around with it, it almost kind of felt like an airplane.
Maxwell: See, on the left and then kind of the window on the right. I thought that was, you know, something interesting that was kind of happening. And then of course always kind of found myself gravitating right back to that idea of space star and that motion of the U and then any airline branding, would it be complete without, you know, quickly thinking about how does it look on the side of a plane?
Maxwell: Because that's probably the biggest printing of the logo and the design that you'll probably interact with and then a cool astronaut. Why not? Yeah. Right. All right. So we'll hop into the work. As as I pointed out before we kind of have this geometric U that has that shadow extrapolated out has a little bit of a feel of a airline seat in a window.
Maxwell: I thought to myself, what if we push that even further? And all of a sudden it got into this very sort of seventies, retro bubbly type vibe that didn't necessarily feel like it was a fit. Yeah, I'm playing with shapes, trying to evoke a little bit of that. Saw bass tulip logo, keeping that in the back of my head.
Maxwell: And then going to that idea of the star from the Polaris logo and trying to come up with a way to develop that and draw that. And how does that integrate in. The you you know, with this one, you almost kind of get like a, it almost evokes a, the shape of an airplane a little bit, you know, heading, heading, you know, downward, but the real sort of aha moment I had was when I took a look at the, you, the two of you and use the the curve of that bottom left corner to create the the different quadrants of the star.
Maxwell: So that was my way of calling back to that error of tradition to pull that out of nowhere, because, or from somewhere, and you know, make sure that whenever I design things, one of the things I was like to do is build a little bit of a story and I have it so that their things are tied to other references within the brand.
Maxwell: So. In this example here, pulling that curve from the old logo to sort of inspire and carry through those little design elements. Just creates little moments of surprise. So now that I did that little exploration, let's go ahead and make a logo, but to play my little time-lapse video here.
Chris Do: Okay.
Chris Do: Before you, before you do that. Oh, are you playing right now? Okay, hold on. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. First of all, I just want to say you're doing an amazing job of talking us through the entire design process. You're thinking super logical, very clear. I love the way that you broke. Even the color palette down to find space where it wasn't too crowded.
Chris Do: Identifying. There are a lot of marks that are in the red space and then blue, but not much in between those two parts and people are commenting on excellent keynote. Great presentations. I can tell you're a well-trained designer and you, you must be used to doing big level presentations because you're very good at it.
Chris Do: So kudos to you. It's one of the strongest keynotes on the logo design series that we've had thus far. So without further ado, go ahead and play the video.
Maxwell: Well, thank you so much.
Maxwell: We need a drum roll
Chris Do: here. Is that here? He goes. Not yet. Here we go. And you're working in illustrator here
Maxwell: working in illustrator just kind of going through and building out the different elements. So there, we just saw pulling the curvature from the, the tulip you to develop the star. And in this part here, referencing back to that, to, up to try to bring through the the sort of curvature at the bottom, because it's not even, it sort of follows a bit more of a natural organic flow.
Maxwell: You know, it's not just sort of a uniform line all the way through which I thought was just sort of a interesting learn from the greats Saul bass himself type of thing. So now we get to the full logo design. Oh, neat. That's pretty awesome.
Chris Do: Are you doing this in keynote?
Maxwell: No. That was a after-effect special.
Chris Do: Oh, you breaking it all out. I look at him, mark
Chris Do: people are commenting. Yeah. But it presents something. Well, let's present it. Let's do it.
Chris Do: Do it.
Maxwell: Yeah. People are wondering how you did it, but I saw that you're doing that in keynote, but there's a lot of this advanced animation. It does look like you're doing something
Chris Do: some more complicated masking.
Chris Do: It reveals their, yeah.
Maxwell: It's a, it's a fun program to know. But don't, don't let anybody know that, you know it, because then they're going to ask you to do all their logo, reveal, videos and editing and stuff like that. So just a pro tip. So now we get to the composed logo here. You know, breaking down just a couple of quick elements of it.
Maxwell: One of the things that I really liked and sort of fell into was the, using that negative space on the right to create kind of the, the whoosh and trail from the star as it takes off upwards and, you know, on sort of more aspirational trajectory up. As I mentioned before, the overlap in that negative space down at the base of the U is following a curve that is a bit more of a natural, you know, doesn't line up in is a mano form line weight around the shape, just because optically sometimes we need to go in there and make a call and adjust things so that it looks right, even though it may be mathematically correct.
Maxwell: And mathematically, even when you look at it, you'll kind of be like something seems wrong. You know, that's why topography the, you know, the vertical strokes in the horizontal strokes are different weights, you know, just so that optically things have a bit more of a battle.
Chris Do: Nice. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, no.
Chris Do: Nice, nice.
Maxwell: Keep going. Thank you. Going into the wordmark here took a took a look at the, the old United really from the, the redesign and the update in the early nineties or sorry, the mid nineties going all the way up until the recent redesign Helvetica was their go-to. Now don't get me wrong.
Maxwell: I love Helvetica. I use it for my agency brand font, but I think there's a stronger, bolder, more contemporary choice. So I went with the, the workhorse that is Gotham and going into the. There we go going in and taking a look at the actual wordmark made some custom tweaks so that it isn't just that standard typeface slapped on there, but let's make some creative choices to give it a little bit of personality.
Maxwell: So the curves that I inserted here, the taking away that sort of top left of the end, and then adding that shadow under the under the horizontal portion of the T those are taken directly from the star in the in the larger logo of the combined wordmark. So using those curves and, and bringing those curves through, in other elements of the type so that when they do sit together, they feel like a designed element, not just a logo with type right next to it.
Maxwell: Okay.
Chris Do: I just want to say for the record too. It is okay to design a beautiful mark and just use a typeface. Just
Maxwell: want to say absolutely when possible.
Chris Do: Yeah. When possible, try to integrate so that it feels like this cohesive hole. Now you can see that the, the, the mark that the Maxwell came up with has a solid shape.
Chris Do: It has a Monell stroke, a trail leading to the star form. And so those are all like a lot of elements. So if you were to just quote unquote, slap on a typeface, it might feel very foreign. So you have to work to try to bring these two things so that they live in the same world.
Maxwell: Yeah. And then on top of that you know, making sure that they can live in the world you know, a logo has to work.
Maxwell: You know, as, as simple as black and white if you noticed with my time-lapse videos, you know, whenever I design logos, I always start in just a white or black shape. I never use color until I get to a place where I say, oh, that mark can be identified and differentiated even when color isn't an option.
Maxwell: So that that's just sort of an early logo design tip that I learned. That's helped me a lot as I've moved forward in my design career. So then in addition to the the mark that we have here, my, you know, branding brain started going a little crazy. And I started thinking, all right, what are some other cool ways that we can up and sort of upgrade the United brand and, and United feel and presentation.
Maxwell: And like I mentioned, whenever I make design choices, if I can root it in something, even if it's super inside baseball deep, I still love doing it because when, once you find out that little secret, it becomes something fun. So I'll, I'll give you a good example. So this is the the opening sort of a handful of notes that lead into George Gershwin's Rhapsody in blue, which is the theme song for United airlines has been for, you know, decades.
Maxwell: So
Maxwell: I'm sure everyone's heard it.
Maxwell: Yes. Should I play it again? W we
Chris Do: can't hear it. So I think it's the way our audio setup. You guys know what it is. You have to, you trust us and then done something like that, right?
Maxwell: Yeah, exactly. Not a problem. So basically I, I took the song and I put it into a wave visualizer. And since the, the, one of the elements that we're carrying through with the new brand is this idea of the sort of Aurora Borealis.
Maxwell: I went in and use that actual, the wave form to create the lines of this Aurora Borealis texture. That's gonna pop up in a couple places throughout the brand exploration here. So things thank you. You know, it's, it's, it's all, it's all about the little things to create those moments of surprise and delight with people.
Maxwell: Just like, you know, the FedEx arrow, it's a little conversation piece. In addition to that created a custom halftone texture that utilize that star shape to give us just another graphical element to play with and to integrate into the brand in a way that felt natural, but also felt artistic and thoughtful.
Maxwell: It wasn't just sort of a, you know, a globe texture just to be a globe texture. There's some room to play with this, especially if you're, you know, coming into the brand as an actual designer. So let's talk about plenty of detail there. Thank you. So for the primary livery of the, of the planes kept the the white, I think it's a, a very clean, pretty look, but use the star gradient to create that natural transition from white into that Aurora going toward the back of the plane, where it gets dark and uses, you know, blues and those blacks from the overarching United brands.
Maxwell: Created a secondary livery that uses a bit more of the photography treatment of the Northern lights can swap those out and create different plane designs and things like that. There was a point in time when, you know airlines would have a bunch of different colored planes and things like that.
Maxwell: And it created this sort of sense of fun of who knows what I'm going to walk into. Oh, and then the, the curve going toward from the, the middle of the fuselage all the way back to the tail again, is carrying through that exact same radius from the star. So the little things of, you know reinforcing your design choices by actually making design choices, you know, based on the overarching system going to the Rhapsody Aurora here, we have it wrapping the entire plane.
Maxwell: So, you know, imagine if you will, you're about to go to the airport, hop on a plane. And all of a sudden this pulls up, you're like, oh, party planes here. I guess we're, we're going somewhere.
Chris Do: That is a party plan right there. I have to say, yes, there's a pole in the middle of the.
Maxwell: Yeah. And then you know, I thought, you know, a lot of airlines are having a bit more fun with the, the underbelly of the plane and going back to those elements of surprise and delight thought it would be really fun if there were cheeky, playful, actually, you know, human one-to-one messages on the bottom of the planes, not just corporate speak, but you know, just saying like, Hey, we're out of here.
Maxwell: As you see it, as the plane takes off
Chris Do: great way of using underutilized space. That's ignored. I think you can have a lot of fun with that. I could even see them saying something like if you could read this you're too close.
Maxwell: Yeah. Right there. Right. You just missed us
Chris Do: C a sucker.
Maxwell: So even applying the, the the logo design further you know, depending on application.
Maxwell: So for example, the, the full color logo is, you know, on the darker background, but Hey, if there's an opportunity where letterpress can be involved, why don't we just use a blind letter press to create that star so that, you know, it's just a, a fun, little design magic that you can sprinkle on there that can add just a little bit more surprise and delight for people.
Maxwell: Going into the seeding and sort of the interior of the plane you know, using the logos you know, in Boston, all the headrests, but going into things like the you know, the stitching pattern on the seats pulling that those same curves and everything from the portion of Rhapsody in blue, the Gershwin song that follows those same lines.
Maxwell: So blew them up a little bit so that they could spread out. And so they weren't as compressed, but you know, the lines on the seats, you could see them as a bit more like a topographical lines or, you know, but the fact that they're taking off of the melody from the theme song,
Maxwell: taking a look at how it comes to life in signage, actually, you know, at an airport where you might be walking by the lounge you know, on a very simple, elegant you know, purple the green frosted glass type situation. And then how it can come to life in print. So for business cards, for example bringing in as I mentioned, that texture of the halftone made from the star element that is carried throughout the brand printed on the backs of the cards here as this sort of the United take on the evening sky.
Maxwell: Going into how it comes to life digitally. It does have sort of that digital contemporary feel to it. And I think that, you know, in general, even though we're talking logos, I think, you know, being thoughtful and saying, Hey, we can add a little more human personality to this to the brand and how we present ourselves.
Maxwell: You know, by saying things like you know, once you tap your destination, a little message pops up that says, Ooh, great choice, Chris. So it's, it's little things like that where we can weave in a bit more personality and be a bit more thoughtful with, with the brand. Going into the check-in process, actually at the airport pulling in that that city Borealis in the background becomes the, the new presentation of the terminal is people approach.
Maxwell: Again, not a lot of people using blue and gray or sorry purple and green, but there's a lot of blues at the airport. This is an easy way to begin to differentiate and say, oh, follow the purple sign you know, follow the green side again, sort of ways to help them stand up. I'm loving the
Chris Do: applications which are coming up with, because you're really designing a system.
Chris Do: And as much as people talk about doing branding, they're not really doing branding until they start to look at the entire system from top to bottom, the way you're able to visualize sound and incorporate that they're thinking of the color palette, integration, really trying to position them so that they're differentiated, very thoughtful stuff here.
Chris Do: Really appreciate what you're doing. I can tell there's a depth of experience that you've had here. You're not some kid who's just fallen off the design wagon and starting a lot of comments online. And I have to address them right now, which is. Where are you getting all these mock-ups from man? Cause I've looked for airport mock-ups and they're not easy to find somebody asked her, do you own your own plane or what's the deal here?
Chris Do: And obviously I know I'm playing,
Maxwell: but I mean the answer's yes, but I'm also a liar. So who knows? Yeah, I mean the a lot of the mock-ups and everything are like use there's plenty of websites like vAuto elements. You pay a monthly being at them, but frankly, I also just sort of learn how to retouch and Photoshop.
Maxwell: So like this image, for example, was just an image of the terminal and I've just through practice, have just gotten good at how do you lay things into an environment and match lighting and shadows so that it feels like, you know, a real thing and not just, oh, you very clearly just Photoshop something in
Chris Do: there.
Chris Do: Right? So on this one, this is at the O'Hare. And then you retire.
Maxwell: Well, here I, this definitely was, so this was the normal United terminal from O'Hare and when in retouch it, so there's a lot of little detail things that I can kind of nerd out about, about when you,
Chris Do: I can't tell you right now. I know I could see it.
Chris Do: So you took a United airlines terminal photograph, which was a nice clean photograph to begin with. Right. Everything looks immaculate and then you went in and cloned everything else out and mastered everything so that then you can begin this whole mock-up process, right? Yep. Yep. I think this is a future product that you could sell here.
Chris Do: The, the, the, the Maxwell billings pro airline mock-up set with airplanes and seating and all this kind of stuff, I suppose.
Maxwell: Yeah. Pal package it up and I'll, I'll give you a cut.
Chris Do: Call me. We can do a deal, right?
Maxwell: But yeah, I mean, like for, for me, but one of the things I look at a lot is you know, especially with photos and mock-ups and things like that or depth.
Maxwell: So a lot of times what you'll see when people mock something up is all your design elements look, crystal sharp and you know, really honed in. But if you look at like the, the turnstiles at the bottom, you know, just apply a Brook, a blur filter to match how blurry the environment is. And now all of a sudden it looks like, oh, it's a real thing.
Maxwell: Oh, it's really there.
Chris Do: Chris Martone, Barcelona is saying, you missed the garbage can, Chris, you're gonna have to get all that stuff. It'll be okay. Is there a garbage can that you miss? I didn't even see
Maxwell: that on the right. I thought I got it. Oh,
Chris Do: good one. Okay. But this one, you, you also then comped out, then you cut everything out and mark. Yep. Wow. Well
Maxwell: done. Even you know, the, the screens in the background, the, the TV screens, I, I updated all of those and, you know, just a quick messaging note had a little fun with it. So that thinking about the person walking through the airport, they see this sign.
Maxwell: And whereas before it said group check-in, it's like, okay, that feels very like Wayfinder, corporate, strict. How about with a group head this way? And then once you get to the group check-in area, it says group check-in, congratulations. Let's get you settled. And it's like, if you're traveling with a group, it's probably a pain in the butt to travel with a big group like that.
Maxwell: Just another example of how it can come to life in an environment, paired with a little bit of messaging aspire to travel better and aspire to better.
Maxwell: Had a little bit fun with the interiors playing with that, a kind of Virgin America, little bit of a party treat it like it's fun. Right. You know, you have thinking about that internal environment. It's, you know, those, those colors can be soothing. It can, it can relax you down and sort of help you just relax in your seat, you know?
Maxwell: And then of course my brain started going to things like, what could you do with aroma therapy? Does United offer little kits that you can put in your mask and it's you know lavender or, you know, sandalwood or stuff like that. So that you're smelling something nice and calming during your flight going to the first aid amenities, you know, what are, you know, obviously on a lot of things, it's okay.
Maxwell: Put the logo on there, keep it simple. But again, how can we bring through the different design elements? Maybe the pillowcase takes that same screen printing of the halftone pattern. And now all of a sudden that becomes a, you know, a texture for linens and things like that for a sleep mask. Again, let's be playful and cheeky with our language.
Maxwell: Why just have it say BRB, right? You'll be right back there and take a nap BRB. I got to say, a lot of people are commenting on how you thought this through from the user experience. And some people are even saying, Hey, I would book a flight to nowhere because they want to fly this plane. Well, guess
Chris Do: what you guys, ladies and gentlemen, this is captain.
Chris Do: Chris does speaking, and we are at a cruising altitude of 30,000 square feet. Today. If you look out your left, you're gonna see Maxwell billings. If you look up to the right, you're going to see his design firm made by 87. I hope you're enjoying this flight. And I know, okay, you are now headed to nowhere.
Maxwell: We're going, gonna do a lap and come right back. And then you know, thinking through you know, if you are going into that, that first class experience, what are the little things that we can leave for you? You know, normally they would just have a bag that says, oh, United airlines again, why not just put a little messaging on there, say welcome aboard something that has a little bit more style and panache to it than just.
Maxwell: Oh, Hey, here's, here's more of our logo. It you're on a United flight. You already know that. So why don't we, you know, treat it as a place to, to message with people.
Chris Do: Sorry. I said it's like a, it's just like a leather bag that you comping over here. It was, yeah. Yeah. Okay. This was a very posh airline guys and a posh.
Maxwell: This is for the super elite.
Chris Do: Yeah. This is like premium first class elite class. I thought there was an opportunity here. Maybe it's just me, but if it, because it's United welcome aboard, what if it says welcomes you aboard? Ooh, United welcomes you aboard. I dunno, link
Maxwell: it right into the headline, right?
Maxwell: Not, well, the I mean, good opportunity here. I was actually playing around with that, but I ended up stepping away from it, but you know, something as simple as the coffee cups that you get at the premium lounge. How do they look again? It can be a little more playful with things, and if you're reaching for a coffee, why not just have it say something like fuel up?
Maxwell: Or if we use Chris's direction, we can just take the U logo and drop it into the up and call it a day done and done.
Maxwell: So that is the presentation. Just want to say thank you. And I can go back to any of the elements that we want to talk about. Answer any questions. Had a lot of fun, doing it, happy to happy to have a little Q and a with.
Chris Do: Excellent. So, first of all, Ronald we're positive everybody. Woo. Nice job. Okay.
Chris Do: So let's have a conversation. There's a lot of respect and love and little ideas here. There's a lot of associations that people are making. So let's address those things. I wasn't able to read all of them. I read a lot of them. Once again, I can't emphasize this enough. The presentation was on point, the reasoning taking us through every little part of the decision making process, the research very well presented.
Chris Do: You had me engaged the entire time. Great job. And for those of you guys that are looking at this Mart right now that you're looking at this marketing, like yeah, I can design that. I can design that. The difference between you and somebody like Maxwell or the big dogs in the space is the amount of thought attention that they put into this because the mark is.
Chris Do: I know it's difficult to design, but it's not what the companies pay for. They pay for the research, the thinking, the analysis, the strategic positioning, and they want to make sure when they give you two, 400, $600,000 for a million to $2 million for this project that you've done the due diligence that you've made sure that you're protecting them against having to change the mark in two months.
Chris Do: Now I do not love the hybrid. Local between United and continental airlines. It looks old already. And a lot of times when these mergers happen, it's nobody's best logo. It's just a compromise. And eventually they'll roll out another logo. I'm almost 100% certain of that, that there's a rollout plan that we're not privy to as the public, but sooner or later, you'll see one thing go away.
Chris Do: Something else becomes more prominent. Like when, when all companies merged, this is what happens. It's because they don't want to alienate or lose anybody from either brand. There's this weird hybrid model. So that's, what's happening. They're just a little business inside stuff there. So when you're able to present and think through the problem as Maxwell has done here, you start to elevate yourself way, way, way above everybody else.
Chris Do: In terms of just mark makers, in terms of people who sell design services on 99 designs on Fiverr and Upwork. So when people say like, I can't compete against those people, if you think like you're competing against them, you've already lost. Now. I'm not judging anybody. That's in that group. If you have to make a buck and that's the only way, you know how to get a client by all means do that.
Chris Do: But then you've got to elevate yourself out of that ASAP and acquire the skills that Maxwell is displaying for you today. A lot of questions in terms of how much time did it take you to do this from start to finish, help us understand? Cause you put a lot of work into this.
Maxwell: Yeah. I mean, I, I will caveat and say I'm, I am kind of notorious for being quick and Photoshop and just I've been doing this for a long time, so don't let my answer intimidate you.
Maxwell: But I would say I had been thinking about this and giving it thought for probably two and a half, three weeks potentially. And then I would say the last week and a half has been a full-blown in the design field building the presentation, crafting the story. So, I mean, you know maybe maybe a month, a total of just sort of start to finish.
Maxwell: Development and everything, because as Chris mentioned, you know, you're telling a story whenever you present, they're build this stuff. So you've got to give some thought about how that unfolds for folks like you to enjoy it. Now,
Chris Do: was this a very organic process for you that you got yourself into the research and the thinking, and then it evolved into this?
Chris Do: Or did you already kind of have an idea as to where you want it to go and filled in the gaps in.
Maxwell: Yeah, the, I would say 85% of it was just sort of organic learning, paying attention. I had an initial thought of where I kind of wanted things to go, but I didn't let that sort of poison the well, so to speak of when I started doing my homework and researching.
Maxwell: So there were a couple of things that fell out that were happy, little surprises and accidents, but I, from the start wanted to do something that was a bit more graphical, aspirational felt a little bit more. You know, modern and elevated. And also I think space in that stuff is pretty cool. So, so
Chris Do: just to confirm, it took you about a month's worth of work almost as much time preparing the presentation is doing the design work and believe it or not.
Chris Do: Once you get into the big league, that's kind of where a lot of the time is spent, because if you don't want this to go back to revision, hell, you have to do, you have to put together a really thoughtful deck that's tells a story, and that makes all the decisions seem very clear and logical that it's not just one designers, emotional whims.
Chris Do: And I woke up this morning. This is what I want it to look like kind of decision. So are you doing work in the meantime between this month or do you take a month off of doing anything and just work on this specific.
Maxwell: Oh, God, I wish. Yeah, no, it's still doing client work still you know, going through the routine and meeting with people and things like that.
Maxwell: So I, I would say the last really the last week is when everything truly came together of having to block things off and move things around. But yeah, I mean, for, for as much as you can plan, and I, I kind of learned this from the ad agency world, for as much as you can plan and do all the upfront work, just know the 48 hours before you present everything, it's all going to go to shit and you're going to have to redo stuff.
Maxwell: And that's really when everything starts to happen. So you could work on it six months. The two days before the presentation is really when things start to pop in the magic starts to happen.
Chris Do: That explains a couple of things because you, you kind of been silent with us, sending us a little bit, and then all of a sudden, I wasn't sure what I was going to walk into to the today's call.
Chris Do: And you're, you're a new logo re redesign experts or local therapists for Sr. I had no idea. All I could do is brace for impact, so to speak and hope that you did your best to present your best. And I think you absolutely did that out of the ballpark. Here's another question coming in and that you mentioned something about it feeling very like space and these colors and aspirational.
Chris Do: And we hear a lot about how space travel is going to be happening in the next couple of years, and I'm excited for that. And so I think using the, tying it into their sub-brand Polaris, is that their sub brand Polaris
Maxwell: It's yeah. It's yeah. It's interesting how they treat it, because it really only comes to light in those.
Maxwell: First and second class second. So it's even like consider it a true sub-brand, but yes, they, they do sort of tip into that space, Polaris north star type of world.
Chris Do: And I, I love that because he like, even in your redesign, you took into consideration all the investments they've made and it's a great jumping off point.
Chris Do: So it's like reverse engineering, the parent brand to make sure it fits together like Lego blocks with the sub brand. And I think that's really smart. And I loved how you took this star and turned it into the dot pattern because there's so many applications of that. And now the three airplane apps that you showed my favorite ones.
Chris Do: The first one I loved how organic was. I loved the white space. The, the full wrap felt the little party bus ish to me, but this is very classy. It feels aspirational. It it's just really nice. It feels fast. Like the colors got pushed into the back of the plane and, and seeing what do they call this?
Chris Do: When, when you dip dye shirts
Maxwell: ah, oh, like the hombre.
Chris Do: All right. Yes. All right, man. And you're on point with the language too. Yes. The umbrella kind of fade. And I like that. And I like having the white, it feels fresh and clean and open. And at first I was a little concerned because the market itself doesn't fit in that triangular wedge as well as it can.
Chris Do: Cause some marks are designed specifically to fill up that triangle. So they almost design within that triangle, but you did a great job of bringing in the secondary or tertiary elements, the colors, the Aurora Borealis, the dot patterns. This is a really rich identity system that you've been able to design some feeling all of that.
Chris Do: Thank you. Appreciate it. Now what one person said that in the airline, in the lounging part or not the lounge, I'm sorry. When you're doing the color treatment, the mood lighting. I think during that part, they're like I could sleep there. And that's the whole point. You don't want to get on a plane and be distracted and wired so that when you land you're jet lagged and fatigued, you, you do want it to feel like the temporary hotel experience between your next destination.
Chris Do: And I think this is exactly the right vibe and the little accoutrements, the little travel bonuses that you get in business. And first class, I thought you did an excellent job there. Some of you guys who haven't traveled business class before every airline gives you a little something socks. I amass a toothbrush.
Chris Do: Some of them give you pajamas to wear especially if you're flying on one of the fancier ones. It's, it's kind of nice. It's nice to be able to like, feel that in, in how you thought through everything and the stitching of the seats. Excellent way of bringing in design. We've seen designers in the past, take the logo and deconstruct the logo and it's repeating the logo in many ways, but I think you found ways to extend it.
Chris Do: So it feels fresh in it and not getting logo fatigue. So Rachel there as well, Okay. The last comment that I saw was, oh, it's very millennial. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, but that sounds good to me.
Maxwell: I mean, there, I, I think it's if they're not already there in the next 18 months, millennials are going to be the primary buying force in, in the world.
Maxwell: So, I mean, yeah. Follow the money,
Chris Do: you know what, they're probably the strongest health wise and they have the strongest immune system. So the reality on the plane. Well, all of us old people are at home worrying about Corona.
Maxwell: Yeah. My moms and dads aren't actively posting the travel photos on Instagram that were all, you know, smashing the light buttons over it's, you know, us millennial travelers who are getting out there on cool purple and green airplanes.
Chris Do: Okay. So there's a technical comment here. Peter Chang is saying, unfortunately, you cannot have multiple clothes with in-flight lighting. Well, maybe at this point in time, maybe they can run two strips of LEDs and then they can cycle through them and have colors blend. We don't know. Let's not get too concerned about that.
Chris Do: I'm sure I
Maxwell: can swap a light bulb. I'm sure something can happen there. No, I got to a comment here from Aetna, and she's asking if you have any specific habits or systems that help to support your creative work. So I think she's trying to get into the mindset and how you actually perform the yeah. The art crafts.
Maxwell: I mean the first thing, no matter what is always thinking about who that end user is going to be, who, who is going to be sort of on the receiving end of what you're creating and then work backwards from that thinking about what their needs are and how they kind of operate and function and how you can create something to help for that.
Maxwell: That's just a very easy way to build something into your process, to where you always have something to like pressure test, you can say, oh, does this really match with who we're trying to talk in position to? And then on the, the other element of it is I kind of treat. Creatively as like rounds. So first round, you know, come up with as much stuff as you can, nothing's off the table, pick out a bunch of different ideas.
Maxwell: And then as you do the process enough, you'll start to figure out like, all right, in round two, which ones are working, which ones aren't and then around three, whittling it down even further. So that eventually you can do that all internally enemy. And I'm I sort of, through my career have built that muscle of being able to design directly within the computer or, you know, being able to just creative direct internally, but really it's just getting into the, the habit of stepping outside yourself and saying, how does, how would somebody else react to this work?
Maxwell: And if you do that, that will give you a fresh new perspective and also improve the the actual effectiveness of what you're trying to make, because you've looked at it through that.
Chris Do: All right. So before, before we take another question, I want to show everybody here. The here's the original logo and the revised logo. There were some comments that people said you shouldn't have showed us the final logo. And if that bothers you, it will never show you guys the final logo ever again.
Chris Do: But here it is. I want you guys to go ahead and drop in your opinion. If you prefer the original, the revise, you can just hit a or B in the comments and let's see where we net out. And I won't judge you too harshly depending on what you vote on, but let's see what happens here. And while we're waiting for that reaction to happen, I want to let everybody know if you're interested in Maxwell's work and his firm it's, it's called made by 87.
Chris Do: And you guys go madebyeightyseven.com to see the rest of his work. It's pretty impressive body of work, and it's very consistent to what you're seeing here today. He's based out of Chicago, Illinois. And if you want to find him on Instagram, it's made by 87 and it's Maxwell building. So let's see how we did in the voting here.
Chris Do: What did they say? A or B the votes are still slow and coming in. So let's see what happens here. Sure. Here we go. Come on guys. There's like 460. Some odd people in this room is the internet a little.
Maxwell: There's well, there's the delay and the live stream, but yeah, I think
Chris Do: everyone's going, yeah, usually it streams in really fast.
Chris Do: So overwhelmingly everybody's saying B, I think it's because you, you have a very strategically and wisely chosen. I think a universally hated logo right now because it's so bad, Rhonda, what are you doing, Rhonda? I said, I wouldn't judge you, but Rhonda, there you are. Okay. Yeah, you guys can have the original logo.
Chris Do: You can keep it for me. I'm going with the revised logo for sure. Okay. So heavy, heavy leaning towards your revised rebrand. And I think that's a good sign for you. You might have Maxwell. I
Maxwell: might be good at this. Who knows?
Chris Do: You know, stick it out. Don't quit just yet. All right. Okay. Now you mentioned something and I think you said it did you go to the portfolio center?
Maxwell: I went to portfolio Chicago portfolio school. I follow you up. Yeah, here, here in Chicago. That's where I sort of learned a bit more of the craft of advertising, how to present, how to think creatively. And then on top of my years of just being in the design and art world leading up to that.
Chris Do: Okay.
Chris Do: So did you study advertising in school?
Maxwell: Yeah. So do you technically marketing communications, parentheses advertising? I know it just rolls right off the tone and advertising. You got it. So graduated in that and then actually worked as a account person for a couple of years, going into the advertising world, which is client relations and things like that.
Maxwell: Zero design realized I hated it was not good at it. And decided to switch to my sort of passion, which is design and creativity and went to portfolio school, did that you know, an evenings intern during the day and now fast forward. Gosh, 11, 12 years later. Now we're here.
Chris Do: Excellent. That does explain a lot of things about you.
Chris Do: I have to say you guys don't know this, but basically you're an account person you're dealing with clients. So you have to have a lot of client human relationship, personal skills. You have to be a really good communicator and you're dealing with crazy stuff because most of the times you're caught between the client and a hard place, which is the other creatives.
Chris Do: And you have to support your client, but you have to sell the creative through. And it's a horrible position to be in. You said, you hated it. You got out of it. And now you're doing design. And it's great to see that you you've are dipping your toes into animation and doing really beautiful presentations.
Chris Do: I still think your, your superpower personally speaking is the person who's going to be talking to the client, presenting, designed to be a champion for the work that is being done by your firm. And I, I love the way that you hold yourself, the way you communicate. I would hire you. There you go. Thank you.
Maxwell: Yeah. Knowing how to pitch is a very valuable skill.
Chris Do: Okay. Okay, mark. Let's take one more question and I have to get out of here. So what's, what's the last question. How do we end this?
Maxwell: Let's see. Nothing too. We've addressed a lot of it. A lot of it was from the project. My best came up with any,
Chris Do: yeah.
Chris Do: As I was reading the comments in real time, I was folding them into the conversation. So there's a lot of love. There's a lot of handclaps for you. I believe you can go and view the live chat after this. So I guess without further ado, I want to say thank you very much for joining us. And I appreciate the work that you put into this.
Chris Do: And I think if you want to be a local therapist, you have to be able to kind of put in this level of work to help, to elevate the game in the conversation so that we're not telling people about bad habits. I'm going to ask everybody for huge big favor right now. If you've enjoyed this episode. Please share it with somebody that is in the space, a designer who uses that word branding and say like, check this out.
Chris Do: This is how you do branding. And I think that's going to help elevate the entire field and industry and the more people that can do that, the more we can be taken seriously by our clients so that we're all holding ourselves to a, quite a high standard. Okay. Now you may not be at this level today and nobody is, it's taken a Maxwell a couple of years to get here.
Chris Do: And if we aspire to do this, we can learn and we can grow together. And then that's it for me. And on behalf of the entire team, Jonah and Mark Maxwell. Thank you very much. I'm going to cut to your slide here, and this is how you guys get in touch with Maxwell. Once again, he's at madebyeightyseven.com. Go check out his work clients.
Chris Do: If you need somebody to do work for you, with you, and you need a partner who can think things through who understands the client relationship, this is your person. And I also found out surprisingly, he's also a pro member. You got. He's a pro member. So fans in the house right now. That's it want to get the music ready?
Chris Do: I think I stalled long enough guys. Don't forget to like comment and subscribe and hit that bell for notifications. Thanks very much for being part of the 1 billion mission. Hashtag one B minus one. If you guys want to support us, you know how to send me money? I take cash, credit gifts, gold bars, anything.
Chris Do: That's it for us. See you guys. Next time. I'm out of here. Have a great weekend, everybody.
