Branding Lessons from Middle School Girls

Thursday, November 18, 2010

“It’s a very ancient saying,
But a true and honest thought,
That if you become a teacher,
By your pupils you’ll be taught.”
- “Getting to Know You” from The King and I

All right. I’m probably slow on the uptake here, but a concept finally hit home while I was trying to explain it to a group of eighteen 6th, 7th and 8th graders.

The lesson plan was, over the course of five weeks, to get them comfortable with graphics editing using the most advanced program they had on their school’s computers: Macromedia Fireworks (It’s a public school. You have a problem with the outdated software, make a donation).

In previous years, I had them edit a photo of themselves and install it on a faked cover of one of their favorite magazines. (Taught the concept of layers, transparency, removal, and how bogus the imagery in their favorite magazines was.) The more advanced ones put in their own article titles and everything. They did a good job.

This year, I tried to tie the lesson in with another project run by the same non-profit. On Thursdays, GRRL Tech is run by the Ghandi Brigade where they’re making a movie about themselves and their cultures. My spin on this: heraldry. The girls would design and create their own personal coats of arms or heraldic badges–presumably drawing upon the things they learned about themselves, their families, and their culture from the Thursday class. I made them write two blog posts about themselves first just to make sure they had an idea of where this was going.

As I gave them a 2 1/2 minute talk on where heraldry came from, I realized that for these girls (95% of whom were not of Anglo-Saxon origin) heraldry had no personal relevance. They weren’t descended from Europeans–their ancestors weren’t even attacked by Medieval European knights. Heraldry, chivalry, knights = fantasy.

While racking my brain to find a practical application of this lesson that they could take home…apart from the graphical fun…it hit home exactly how closely related heraldry is to modern logos and branding.

Coats of arms and crests were designed to have specific relevance to the wealthy families who commissioned them. They were comprised of symbols intended to generate a specific emotional response in the people looking on them. Tincture, rules of color use in heraldry, was meant to make sure that the designs were easy to distinguish from great distances. These rules were intentionally broken on occasion (armes fausses).

Logos–good ones anyway–follow similar rules, though they’re kept simpler because we have the need to scale them down much further than a Medieval noble. High-contrast color use. Stylized, unique, designs. Symbols specific to a company and intended to evoke a specific emotional response in those looking at them. All the essential elements of heraldry are vibrantly alive today.

More importantly for me, logos make practical sense to teenagers.