What’s Wrong with This Picture?

Agreed, but that’s beside the point here. The issue is not that Brandiose’s work all looks like it was done on computer rather than with a freehand pencil on paper. All design work today is ultimately rendered digitally. The issue is that Brandiose’s work increasingly looks like itself from project to project. The Ems have a clever idea here, but it’s poorly executed because rather than looking like work done for Eugene, it looks like work done by Brandiose that just happens to have been purchased by Eugene. Wacky mascot plus unusual colors plus a cartoon style that’s as varied and distinctive as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck plus mid-2000s lettering. This isn’t design, it’s a Choose Your Own Adventure book adapted to sports branding.

I hear you, but I don’t think my criticism is “vitriol.” It’s criticism. And it’s properly addressed to Brandiose, not the clients. Why? Because Brandiose has become bigger than its clients. We’ve seen time and again with Nike, with UA, and with a few others, that when the “design” company becomes bigger than its clients, it stops doing “design” and starts engaging in self-branding projects at the expense of its clients. (Same thing in architecture, too: Frank Gehry does not design buildings for his clients, and hasn’t since at least 1989. He designs Frank Gehry buildings, and woe to the client who hires his firm expecting to have an architect give one damn about the client’s needs.)

Brandiose has clearly crossed the line past which the “design” firm has more power in the relationship. Yes, surely most MiLB teams come to Brandiose specifically saying, “We want you do to for us what you did for the Threshers.” But delivering self-copycat design work to a client who makes that request is a failure of design. It’s not the client’s fault if the “designer” delivers cookie-cutter work when the client is a local small business with a tiny budget and no internal brand-management expertise to speak of (which is to say, every MiLB team in the nation) and the “designer” is an industry-dominant national branding powerhouse.

If the failures of design in Brandiose projects were wildly different from project to project in the last year or so, we could fairly say that Brandiose was doing its best with incompetent clients. But instead, we see Brandiose delivering products with the same flaws again and again and again. That’s on them, not their clients.

I don’t mean to hate on Brandiose here. I like the company, and I think they’ve done some of the best work in baseball design of the last decade. Of late, though, their work with minor-league teams has been a consistent discredit to the company’s past work. Six years ago, if I owned a team at any level, I’d have wanted either Radom or Brandiose (nee Plan B) to handle my redesign. Today, with my local minor league team about to rebrand, my single greatest hope is that someone – anyone! – other than Brandiose gets the contract.