Designers Aren’t Monkeys with Cool Software!

As a business owner and especially as a designer, I’m always on the look out for new ideas, and seeing how other business owners build their brands. I also love watching some of the reality shows that are entrepreneurial in nature, such as Celebrity Apprentice on NBC, and Shark Tank on ABC (new season starting next week!). Of course we all have to watch these shows with a grain of salt, but there are still some great lessons to be learned.

With my passion for business, branding, and food, I was excited to watch the new NBC reality show, America’s Next Great Restaurant. The premiss is 10 entrepreneurs are pitching their “fast-casual” restaurant to 4 investors. They compete on a weekly basis in different business, marketing, and cooking challenges. The show started two weeks ago and the winner will be announced in May with three restaurants opening in three cities across America.

I was thrilled when I found out that this week’s episode was going to include a branding component — so important in the process of building a strong business. Each contestant was paired with a designer to create their restaurant’s logo. I initially thought, “this is awesome they are bring in designers to create a professional brand identity to start these restaurants off on the right foot.”

Then I watched the episode and I was extremely disappointed in how the show portrayed the design and branding process — the “wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am” model. Most of the logos were little more than clip-art added to the company name.

The designers had less than a day to create the logo, and many of the designers were just told what to do by their “client” rather than guiding them through the process and using their expertise to create a unique logo. Professional designers are experts in our field. We ARE NOT monkeys with cool computer software.

Rome was not built in a day, and a unique, memorable, and effective brand can not be either. It takes in-depth research on the market, the competitors, and having a solid understanding of who the company is, and who the ideal clients are.

This episode was a total disservice to the success of the brands of these businesses and to the design industry. I hope that over the next few weeks they redeem themselves and they spend more time using the professionals to create a memorable brand for this new restaurant chain.

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