I watched a good CreativeMornings video where Tom Foulkes and Michael Johnson talk process. Michael included this flowchart overview of his brand identity design process.

“Meet, talk a lot, summary, talk a lot more, verbal brand, then write up a brief, do quite a lot of work, then present.”

During his (nearly) 20 years in business Michael has very rarely been in the situation where he presented just one idea and it was signed off by the client. This is one of those few designs where it did happen.

“Sitting in the presentation I had the board one way round, turned it over as said, ‘What do you think?’ and they all said, ‘Yeah, it's great.’”

Here's a much more common presentation approach.

The best three options are presented (one safe, one adventurous, one scary — from a client perspective), a direction is chosen, developed, then signed off.

One of the best pieces of advice Michael has been given, before he started his own business, was to take the scary option and make it even scarier. That way, the original scary option suddenly seems safer, and more likely to be chosen. It's those riskier, more polarising options that are often the most successful.

I've embedded the presentation below. Or you can watch it on Vimeo.

Worth your time.

Filmed and edited by Nick Culley.

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Update:
A more in-depth writeup is on the johnson banks thought for the week.