Brand identity and the death of a thousand cuts.

Lingchi or ‘the death of a thousand cuts’ was a historic form of capital punishment in China used up until the early 20th Century. Lingchi was a slow and agonising form of torture and ultimately death caused by, as the name suggests, a lot of very small cuts applied to the body over a sustained period of time.

The slightly morbid part of my imagination has always thought this was a good analogy of how branded collateral (and by consequence the overall brand identity of a business) can degrade over time.

The truth is, a nicely designed brochure or website looks good because someone, usually a designer, has spent a sustained period time crafting it. And although the ‘wow’ effect is instantaneous, the process to achieve it is often somewhat protracted and perhaps a little mysterious to those outside the creative industries.

All the constituent visual parts play a role in making something look ‘professional’ or trustworthy: colour, contrast, concept, hierarchy, typography, use of space, art direction and visual balance will all be working in concert on the layout to achieve the desired effect.

However, that effect can be quickly lost through just a few small ‘cuts’. This is something that can happen easily as a piece of collateral passes through the corporate world, with multiple departments and people adding input after input. That’s not to say that some of those inputs aren’t correct in their own right, it’s just that it can be very difficult for an attractive aesthetic to survive the process. It’s a little bit like a handful of people trying to paint a masterpiece by all grasping the paintbrush at once.

It only takes a logo to be set too large, the introduction of a rogue colour, the use of a poorly lit photograph or compressing too much copy into a layout for the work to lose that sense of confidence and beauty. Each of these cuts, while seemingly small issues on the face of it, has a cumulative effect that will ultimately kill the beauty of a brand, reducing the perceived value in one fell swoop. Its an often overlooked truth that every element of a layout is interconnected. Its why the phrase ‘make the logo bigger’ often sends a chill down the art department’s collective spine.

That’s not to say you can’t operate a very successful business without worrying about the way things look. But I would suggest it’s always beneficial to match your business’ perceived value to its real value. In other words it should look like its worth what it’s worth.

So sweat the small stuff, because in design terms everything on the page plays a part, and it won’t take long before those few cuts end up killing the identity outright.

Do you have a brand that suffering from an acute case of ‘Lingchi’? Tell me what your business is, who’s involved, and how you want it to grow. It’ll be a pleasure to hear from you.