A cow, a cat, and a mouse walk into a marketing company

“She’s wearing such a cute flower crown and has the prettiest eyes. Are we sure about retouching her?” I asked myself with a Photoshop window open on my screen. A hand-drawn illustration of a cow stared back at me.

Before becoming Kahawai's Creative Director, I freelanced for different design and marketing studios on branding refreshes across many companies and industries. Throughout my time I began to notice that sometimes design projects ended up reflecting–or deflecting– the clients' business inner operations. Whether as an attempt to appeal to investors, mark an acquisition, or even mask bad press, I would witness logo redesigns morph into a corporate scapegoat that was then solely blamed for overarching problems like dwindling sales. Other times, packaging revamps acted like a canary in a cold mine, signaling to the team that the business was about to be sold so it was time to go job hunting.

I remember sitting in the conference room at one of my former jobs, gathered around a large glass table with my coworkers. The client we were meeting with that day was with the new CEO of an independent family farm from Wisconsin specializing in small-batch dairy products. They brought in herbed cheeses that were quaintly packaged in simple glass jars, wooden lids, and topped off with printed logo stickers. Over bites of delicious ricotta spread over break room crackers, I listened to the client recall how the logo and packaging design came to be. The story goes that the company's original founder reconnected with a childhood friend after moving back to her hometown. As luck would have it, she was in search of a logo for her family dairy farm and the friend coincidentally had just quit their 9-5 to pursue a career in illustration. After a great coffee date, the two met up at the founder's small dairy barn for more brainstorming. When they walked around to visit the cattle in the pasture, one sweet little brown and white Guernsey cow proved to be the illustrator’s true muse. So that's how a smiling, pen and ink cow illustration came to be the logo for the company.

As the cheese ran out and the meeting ended, we listened to the CEO state his goals for the company going forward. He dreamed of transforming the small, local business into a much bigger food and beverage brand, pointing out Starbucks as an example. What started out as a single local coffee shop in Seattle with a DIY logo is now a behemoth brand with an iconic green siren design recognized worldwide. My Creative Director and this client's CEO agreed on a brand strategy that essentially boiled down to “looking big” in order to “become big” by courting investor funding. 

As we regrouped internally on the brand strategy, it seemed there were two paths ahead of us – embrace Millie, or fire her from her position of company mootriarch. I allot myself only one pun per article which I am cashing in now. Luckily Millie was saved, or so I thought. We were directed to not to remove the illustrated cow logo from the brand but rather to just give her a makeover. The creative brief sent over to us even included the hard-to-avoid lipstick on a pig joke.

Like in every industry, we creative department folks have shorthand. We talk about the phenomenon of “doing the design agency thing” where a logomark is redesigned to be as flat as possible and paired with a clean, san-serif font. This is often seen as the ultimate big business move to modernity that a company needs and is usually celebrated by some team members and detested by others.

So when it came to Millie’s refresh, even if we had thought it was best to change little to nothing about the original logo, it quickly became apparent that we had to “do something”. What started out as a detailed drawing handmade by an artist with a unique point of view, eventually became less and less iconic with each rough edge that was cleaned up, line that was made more even, curve smoothed out, proportion made more balanced. We even went after her flower crown, taking a few blossoms off. 

On the surface, it seemed like this was the right direction to move the company forward but still keep its history. Millie was the cliche of a rom-com rebel gone right, trading messy hair and paint-splattered overalls for a respectable updo and serious business suit. But Millie’s makeover never quite worked for the brand, the company, or its customers. The cracks started out small, but ultimately broke through. Some of the internal team, including the founder, kept using the original logo on marketing material they created on their own. Some customers gave passing comments at farmer’s markets about how they missed the old logo, reminiscing over it's previous cuteness and lamenting how the new look felt inauthentic. Industry partners mentioned mixed feelings – some were compelled to see the new big business direction, and others were less enthusiastic for the same reasons, claiming it a misstep to be so corporate.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone told me that even Millie said herself that she didn’t like the new logo.

“Can’t please everyone” is the knee-jerk reaction to these takes. Other adages like “you don’t want to be stuck in the past” or “this is what you have to do to be taken seriously as a business” are all too temping. Now as a Creative Director myself, I could respond with another cliché – it’s not so simple.

We’ve often seen, especially during certain eras of design trends, where a whimsical, intricate illustration is turned into an oversimplified, flat, one-dimensional icon. Even if it's popular, this is not always the best design or business move. Read more about how taking a minimalistic viewpoint to everything can remove more than just clutter.  Eventually we saw the CEO and founder part ways after an unsuccessful partnership and failure to agree on the direction to take the company, marked visually a return to the original illustrated logo.

Recently Kahawai has taken on more rebranding projects that include illustrated logos, with animals even, so I think back to Millie the cow often. I can’t help but think the grass is greener on the other side. I daydream about walking her down a different design path, towards a much more thoughtful pasture.

Is there a way to approach a brand project like this with a better result? Here are few ways that our creative team at Kahawai works to keep integrity in illustration during a refresh involving original artwork, niche products, or unique brand elements that ultimately finds more marketing success and business growth for our clients. 

• Consulting and working directly with the original artist on the logo refresh. This one is pretty self-explanatory but is the sign of a company who has your business's best interests in mind. Fight the urge to go straight to the default approach of taking a clean/minimalistic view point. Illustration as a medium is timeless and simplification is not always the best strategy to position your company or stand out amongst competitors. Your customers will notice, and will change their behavior. Especially visible in certain industries, customers do make decisions based on looks alone.
• Refreshing other brand elements besides the logo. It’s easy to forget that a brand isn’t just a logo. Especially with a character driven logo, there is an entire visual world to be created. A robust, well-designed ecosystem is how a big brand separates itself from the small fish. There are companies like Hermes or Stella Artois that we see successfully keep their historical illustrated logos and then build up their surround visual library with a more modern approach. Illustration is complementary, not exclusionary to modern design elements and mediums. 
• Going all in on illustration. Custom illustration makes a brand bespoke and is a signifier in itself. When you see really intricate illustrations everywhere from a brand’s logo, package, website, collateral, storefront, you subconsciously think of it as being more luxurious, special, and deserving of attention.

So if a cow, a cat, and a mouse were to walk into this marketing company today, they’d have a much happier ending.