Years ago, I was at an event production company’s studio. I watched an operator drop a sponsor’s logo onto an artwork — drag, drop, scale. Without realizing it, he used the RGB version for a CMYK print. He wasn’t holding the Shift key to maintain proportions. And the logo was too small, with none of the required white space around it.
The best part? This was all done on a cracked version of CorelDRAW.
Colors. Proportions. Minimum size. White space. All clearly documented in the brand identity guidelines that had been handed to the production company. Completely ignored by the operator.
That was almost 20 years ago. Technology has evolved. The people in the business haven’t changed much.
Think about it: the people responsible for producing and delivering design are often not designers. The operators at printing and signage companies. The contractors, carpenters, and painters. The coders at digital solutions firms. The LED technicians setting up displays. The tech guys sitting behind consoles.
Shouldn’t that be a major consideration for designers when proposing design solutions?
As a younger designer, I thought the grand finale of brand design was delivering the brand identity manual. I started working in an era when brand manuals came in huge binders.
Logos were deconstructed. Proportions documented. White space defined. Endless lists of dos and don’ts.
Then came the meticulous details — font sizes, baseline grids for letterheads and business cards. The name of the game was, I suspect, about how much one could document. How much one could prescribe. Confession: I was guilty of this. I thought it made me look more professional, more sophisticated — maybe even justified adding another zero to the invoice.
I am very sure the following three examples would leave many designers stumped.
I can’t speak for Western markets. But I’ve seen the gap between design idealism and on-the-ground reality up close. What’s logical and feasible in London or Amsterdam can become a completely different problem in Bhubaneswar or Ho Chi Minh.
Part of that is cultural. Many of us in Asia were raised in structured, step-by-step learning environments — rewarded for following instructions closely, for diligence, for ticking the right boxes. Rote memorisation over critical thinking. Execution over interpretation. Just follow what the teacher says, and you’ll be fine.
That’s not a criticism. It’s context. And it’s context that foreign consultancies often leave behind when they hand over brand guidelines written for a different kind of operator entirely.
“Shaded areas may be infringed upon by imagery if necessary, but it is preferable to give the Speedmarque prominence through clear surrounding space.”
Try explaining the concept of clear space to people raised in maximalism.
“We use inclusive language to make our writing feel relatable, relevant and authentic.”
Try explaining tone-of-voice in cultures where English isn’t the first language and academic excellence is measured by vocabulary mastery rather than effective communication.
What’s more troubling is when local designers create brand standards that are completely unrealistic. For example:
- Gradient backgrounds for mass-market brand identities — when we all know most print shops don’t have calibrated machines.
- Complex grid systems for publishing — when we know operators (not designers) will be the ones inserting text and images.
- Setting up type hierarchies based on principles of contrast and proportions — when we know in the coders’ world, everything has to be prescribed in absolute pixels.
Design that can’t survive its own implementation isn’t good design. It’s just good intentions.
If design is to scale and be implemented effectively, it has to be simple — because the people executing a designer’s vision may not have the same design sensibilities. Having total control over a client’s visual output is vastly different from designing for a network of partners and vendors.
One of my favorite clients always says, “Make it idiot-proof.” It wasn’t meant to be insulting. It was a guiding principle. If something is meant to be rolled out at scale, the system has to be simple, and the guidelines have to be simple too. Open-ended decisions that rely on a designer’s interpretation are risky propositions. Over-prescribing is just as bad. Remember: designers don’t read. Operators don’t read.
Recently, an outsider — a 70-something ex-pilot — asked me, “In your line of work, I assume creativity is the most important thing. How do you protect your ideas and work?”
I had never really given much thought to intellectual property. My answer surprised even me.
“I’d be happier if people could take my design and quickly make many, many good versions of it. I’m not an artist. I’m a designer. And I’m only a good designer if my ideas can scale — fast and effectively.”
Design isn’t about artistic control. It’s about impact. If a design system can’t survive beyond the designer’s hands, then it’s not a good system. The real measure of success isn’t how perfectly something follows the manual — it’s how well it works in the messy, imperfect real world.
Because in the real world, designers don’t always get the final say. But at least designers can try to make sure what they create is built to last.
