Elegance and Helmut Krone and the Banishment of Logos 

Like many good books of its type—Gladwell’s deftly researched best-sellers come to mind–Matthew E. May’s In Pursuit of Elegance is as useful for what it suggests as what it says.

May’s idea that we think about what we can subtract reminded me of the great 1960s art director Helmut Krone who tried to eliminate logos from ads. Yes, logos. 

I think I’m paraphrasing Krone’s thinking accurately: if you need a logo to recognize the brand, the art director has failed. 

If you don’t have a logo, the art director has to work harder to infuse the identity of the brand into the ad itself.

(A useful alternative formulation came from Gene Frederico, who also managed to create some elegant solutions: put your finger over the logo. You should still be able to identify the company.)    

What suggested this?  May’s discussion of traffic management engineers who reduce accident levels by removing traffic signs. By doing this, they force the overall design of the roadway to help signal to drivers and pedestrians what they should do.

And removing traffic signs forces people to think for themselves and take responsibility for finding their own signs.  Similarly, good advertising engages the reader and invites them to do some of the work of “getting” the message. And that ultimately makes the ad more effective. It also provides an answer to the objection “someone might not get it.”

“Yes, but the vast majority of people will, and those people will have a much more satisfying and memorable experience of the ad than they would have otherwise.”  

Elegance transforms the intelligence of your customers into a business asset.

Source for visual: Sell Sell: Advertising Greatness #2: Avis Click for an interesting discussion of the campaign and its lame competition from Hertz.