In TheStar.com’s 2010 article “CEOs Must Be Artists?”, McGill University Professor and artist Nancy Adler spoke of “a tradition of hostility between the arts and commerce,” in which “artists, too often, think of businesspeople as Philistines, and [businesspeople], in turn, think of artists as a bit flaky.”

Last Friday at the monthly breakfast lecture series “Creative Mornings,” guest speaker and current President of RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), John Maeda, endeavored to explain to his audience that, not only can artists and designers make great leaders/CEOs, but that the business world in general could benefit immensely from using the same techniques and mindset with which artists and designers approach their work.

Maeda described one of these approaches as “taking leaps.” Employing a pyramid visual taken from Dr. Patricia Brennan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s work, Maeda argued that your archetypal businessperson in a role of leadership is stuck on the lower two rungs of the pyramid, where all decision-making is constrained by reality. Artists and designers, he argues, move beyond that realm into higher plane of problem solving which involves creativity, and finally “boundless creativity,” or, imagination. As artists and designers, we are constantly striving to create a solution that is unique to the world. As Adler puts it: “You’d be hard pressed to find a painter who didn’t approach a blank canvas wanting to produce something of high quality, but all too often people in the commercial world end up settling for the just-good-enough.”

Maeda’s bottom line? It is time that art and design stopped being thought of as “optional” but as a viable and essential part of the future of American education and business.

Susannah Hainley is a graphic designer for Red Rooster Group, a New York based graphic design firm that creates effective brands, websites and marketing campaigns for nonprofits to increase their visibility, fundraising and communications effectiveness. Contact us at info@redroostergroup.com.

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The logo is caught in a strange land, somewhere between the mark of a proud craftsman, and our post-modern notion of the brand as the fulfillment of a promise. Like a poem, that can encapsulate an amalgam of image, emotion and metaphor, the logo embodies a dream-like notion between what is and what can be.

In our visually-oriented and increasingly sophisticated world in which the concept of branding itself is ever evolving, the logo remains the easiest way to identity an organization. From timeless symbols like the cross, to modern abstract mark like the Nike swoosh, these icons have permeated our consciousness. It takes dozens, hundreds, even thousands of exposures of an abstract mark for our brains to register the connection with an organization independently.

But as Paul Rand, the father of modern corporate identity, wrote, it is not the logo that brings meaning to the organization, but the organization that brings meaning to the logo. A poorly designed logo, like the overlapping Rs in the Rolls-Royce symbol, are imbued with the prestige of the automobiles, not the other way around.

Milton Glaser called the logo, the launching point for the brand – the springboard from which all marketing activity emanates. That’s a lot of pressure for a little mark, and today’s brand-oriented world, the logo is the outcome of strategic objectives, organizational personality and consumer concerns.

From the organization’s perspective, the logo is the easiest way to summarize its vision, promise and personality. Logo must do much in a small space — communicate a notion of what the organization does, distinguish it from competitors, and suggest a promise of a betterment.

The designer is concerned with formal properties — how to use line, image, tone, contrast, type and color in the most expedient of ways. Like an ant, each element must pull ten times its weight if the ensemble is carry its effect and be aesthetically pleasing — with all parts working in harmony.

On top of that, it must be memorable — perhaps through a clever subversion of the familiar, unexpected juxtaposition of elements or dash of wit. Perhaps that is why they are so appealing.

Are we logoed out? Hardly. The logo is still the most useful tool for communicating and consumers for identifying. And designers — we are endlessly fascinated with discovering new twists on old notions, and novel ways of communicating more with less. Long live the logo!

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However, this interpretation deserves another look. In fact, it requires one. Upon close inspection, the work of art is comprised of thousands of spools of colored thread carefully arranged to form the image. But to fully appreciate this piece, you need to view it through the glass globe stationed 10 feet in front of the work. Viewed through the sphere, the upside-down the work is both righted and sharpened into focus.

As if that weren’t clever enough, the artist portrays the image with a tourist’s hand holding a camera obscuring Mona Lisa’s face to show how most viewers would actually experience the world’s most famous work of art in person.

WAKE UP CALL: This piece holds lessons for us in giving new perspective and context in which to re-examine the familiar, subverting cultural clichés, and in the repurposing of materials in imaginative ways.

SOURCE: This piece is part of the exhibit titled Second Lives, on display at the Museum of Art and Design in Manhattan, running through April 19, 2009. The exhibit showcases artists who have breathed new life into mundane items such as buttons, beer bottle caps, plastic spoons, and discarded magazines – turning these utilitarian objects into works of great beauty or contemplation.

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This laudable goal was supported by a coalition of community organizers and $25,000 in funding to pay for professional organizers, printing, and other support. While a decent amount of planning had gone into the project, as a marketing expert, I thought that they faced some huge challenges and a solid marketing plan was needed. As the nonprofit acknowledged, they needed strategic help in planning the campaign and in developing creative materials that could captivate potential participants. And yet, they allocated money for printing, but not the strategic thinking or creative design portion of this project.

With funds allocated toward certain aspects of the initiative, this organization’s lack of priorities was not unique, and I suspect fueled by the following factors:

1. A culture that values doing rather than thinking. Given limited budgets, the cultures of many nonprofits are organized around delivering services, not addressing core problems.

2. Not understanding the value that specialized consultants can bring to help achieve their mission (in this case, not seeing how the message and design of the marketing materials would be essential to the success of the initiative).

3. A lack of understanding about what goes into the creative process and a perception that certain things (such as printing) are a cost since they yield a tangible deliverable, but that consulting services, being someone’s time, can be donated for free.

4. Being accustomed to expecting certain services for free due to their nonprofit status.

WAKE UP CALL: What can you do to ensure that your organization values and funds high-value ideas that can make a difference to its mission? Here are some considerations for addressing these issues:

1. Planning for the long-term: Given constrained budgets and a natural penchant for serving, it is not surprising that nonprofit organizations face pressure to act and get things done expediently. Funding directives or organizational structures may not be conducive to allowing time to think through the challenges inherent in dealing with a specific issue. Knowing this, nonprofits would be wise to create the space to address the logistical and political issues they are likely to face in executing their plan.

2. Investing in intellectual capital: Successful companies know that they need to invest in marketing and promotion to break through the clutter, demonstrate their value, and engage their customers. Business are not afraid to invest in the tools and intelligence that allow them to achieve these objectives. Nonprofits can learn from this model. Granted, they face inherent inertia against such investments, but viewing the results of the forward-thinking nonprofits that leverage external intellectual capital to their cause can help demonstrate the efficacy of that strategy.

3. Learning about the benefits of intellectual capital: Small and mid-sized nonprofit agencies are not accustomed to working with consultants and may not understand the differences in quality brought by various experts. For example, in this case, the difference between a freelance designer who will create a poster that looks good and a marketing expert who will uncover the motivations of potential participants to drive those people to action. The latter draws upon years of experience, as well as the knowledge about how to conduct research, develop a message, and craft appropriate materials. This takes time, and a consultant’s time and expertise is the basis for their income. So when a consultant is asked to donate their services, they are not only donating that time, but they are also missing out on income they needed to make up that billable time (referred to as opportunity cost), which puts them in a worse situation to help the next worthy group. Additionally, whereas printing results in a deliverable product, it can be donated and declared as a tax deduction; services are not tax deductible.

4. Valuing intellectual capital: The mindset of getting something for nothing must change. As nonprofits handle more of the services that were once provided by government, it is not in anyone’s best interest to leave the nonprofit sector to the whims of market giving. To be around for the long-term, nonprofits must attract funding for  sustainable, capacity-building activities that will allow for proper planning and implementation of their services for years to come. Relying on donated services perpetuates the concept that nonprofits should pay for services essential to their mission. This applies to in-house expertise as well – nonprofits need to start treating their employees as their most valuable asset.

Conclusion

Nonprofits, like the one in this case, would be better served by using their scarce resources to purchase the high-value services that will make a critical difference in their work, rather than in the lowest-value, commodity-oriented services that can usually be donated. In the long-term, nonprofits need to demonstrate to funders that they require funds for operating their organizations with a long-term mentality so that they can continue to provide needed services for years to come.

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