Courtesy of a post on FastCo today, the world has discovered Hessian.
Hessian is a pre-packaged brand, with all the design done up front including twitter logos, facebook, fonts, merchandise, web screens, corporate identity, app logo, stationery, etc. It’s available to buy for your new product / service which may or may not exist yet either.
Hats off to designer Ben Pieratt, for having the balls to charge $18,000 for something that has no real existence yet. Ben is attempting to turn the traditional method of brand identity around:
From business starting -> business makes product / service -> business needs identity to promote itself so hires designer,
to
business buys identity then calls its product that identity.
I admire his bravery. And I imagine it won’t be the first off the shelf brand, because as with all these things it just requires someone to leap first and then others will follow.
By taking the client out of the initial design process, Ben has essentially made a design identity he likes and hopefully the would be buyer will like too. He’s essentially sifting the clients in the world to find one that likes his work without having to go through the pain of getting to that process of knowing how to work together. It’s an interesting idea.
Let’s see where it goes.