The only disadvantage of the small studio is that most very, very large branding projects tend to go to very large international firms. From my point of view, this is entirely misbegotten. If you look at the successful brands worldwide, almost all of the successful identities have been designed by single entities, from Nike to Apple to IBM . It’s partly because they come from a time when Paul Rand or Saul Bass designed them.

I’m very, very well aware that branding is much more than logo design. At the same time, what international consultancies do now is primarily centered on consulting and not design, though they pretend otherwise. These consultancies would much rather be out of the design business. However, when you sit down with the owners or with the founders of these consultancies at a bar after a con- ference, it’s apparent what they do. And everything else that they claim they are doing is certainly not at the core of what they are doing. If you look at a brand holistically, the consultancies do not do what is probably the most important thing that a brand really does.

Stefan Sagmeister.