History isn’t just words on a page, dates, or events of the past. History tells us where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and how we’ve gotten where we are. It provides context, connects us to the past, and weaves onward to the future. Show me a person who doesn’t care about history, whether it’s personal, societal, or organizational — and I’ll show you a person who doesn’t truly grasp the world. Those who seek to understand history are the ones who know the world, and long to find their place in it. History matters to us all.

No matter how much Design and our industry changes, at Hexanine, we never feel far from our roots. It’s not hard to remember where we started — as young, hungry students. We like to stoke our creative fires and also remember those foundational days by working with the next generation of talent out there. Teaching is one avenue for that.

From time to time, we like to showcase the work of our students like those below. It’s the impressive output of Tim’s students from Chicago Portfolio School, as part of their strategic identity redesigns in Brand Standards class.

In no particular order:

Jennie Li has redesigned the HBO mark to better reflect the cable channel’s great film and event programming.

Liz Cook has taken Pandora where no Internet radio brand has gone before, by focusing on its musical roots.

Jordan Johnson tackled a Nikon redesign by bringing the brand back to a technical place, with a lightwave and shutter style approach.

Carrie Richardson simplified and updated the Netflix logo by modernizing the typography and carrying across the important element of “pressing play.”

Lindsay Lewis sought to parallel JC Penney’s new brand direction, but instead came up with a clever, cute, and sophisticated hand-drawn type treatment that targets the young, hip, female demographics the company covets.

At Hexanine, we are passionate about design and communicating. So, mixing the two makes a lot of sense. We’ll be speaking at this year’s HOW Design Live and are continuing an ongoing discussion about issues around the work we do as designers. We talk at more length about this and other sundry in an interview “workshop” that has just been posted at HOW Design TV. Check the link for a short excerpt, and make sure you join us this summer in Boston!

I haven’t been in a comic book store in at least seven months. I get pubs electronically on my iPad now. I just happened by a comic book store last week, in Chicago’s Loop, and was drawn in. It’s a different experience.

Electronic everything is turning whole industries and business models on their heads. It happened to music. Publishing is the latest. But just because songs, stories and images can be served up on a screen and delivered much like their printed or published counterparts doesn’t mean that the entire experience is duplicated.

Browsing is different than searching. Searching is “need it today,” task oriented, goal-focused — all on the act of getting or acquiring, comparing or contrasting.

Browsing is different. It’s the longer, meandering road to the same destination. But along the way it introduces nuance, context, and the serendipity of discovery. Things look different when categorized in ways the don’t bend to the whim of user-generated search results or keyword association.

Magazine racks have context. Book stores have ambiance. Clothing displays create connection in ways that disassociated products do not. A thin layer of rich, nuanced, personal experience can often get stripped away if a brand isn’t careful. It takes smart people to understand the value of that experience and know when it can’t be replicated.

Yes, both of the partners of Hexanine will be speaking together at this year’s HOW Design Live. We’re super excited and ready to deliver the goods at our talk, and it’d be fun if you come too. We’ve always left the HOW Design events re-energized, inspired, and with tired arms from carrying cool swag. This year it’ll be in Boston from June 22-25 — clam chowder, that other historic ballpark, and that New England charm. What else do you need to know?

As speakers, we’re authorized to give you a super-secret promo code that will get you a $100 discount. Just enter HSPKR in the discount code box during the registration process, and HOW will deduct $100 from your total registration. Combine that with the March 30th Early Bird rate, it’s $170 off — that will buy a lot of Sam Adams beer! Can’t wait to see you there.

Most of us are awed by the marathon runners who push past their physical and mental limits (sometimes frighteningly so!) and move on to do something impressive. But it’s much harder (and less socially acceptable) to do that kind of scratching and clawing within an organization. Great brands, excellent products, impressive results — all of these things are done by people without excuses, individuals who have ignored the limits inside themselves, or those imposed by others. Why not bring a little of that limitless thinking to our everyday work?

When you talk to startups, CEOs, and others, it seems like everyone wants to be the “next Apple,” “just like Nike,” or to do things “the way Starbucks does.” Admittedly, these companies are icons and have surpassed the competition to become larger-than-life brands, symbols that stand for things both larger and more sweeping than the commerce they generate. But it’s not like any of them pushed a magic icon button to make it all happen. There’s no road map to guaranteed iconic status, or our world would be vastly different, to say the least. But if we dissect these kinds of rockstar brands, and remove the lucky breaks, the passion, sweat equity, and visionary leaders, what is left? We believe there are some fundamental activities remaining that help illuminate the roads a brand must take to becoming an icon.

Here are a few of them:

Ubiquity
You need to be everywhere your audience is. That doesn’t necessarily mean event-driven Super Bowl commercials or plastering your brand messages on every free inch of real estate. But it does require an intimate knowledge and understanding of the people you’re trying to reach, and then unobtrusively inserting your brand into their lives in useful and meaningful ways. This is less the persistent stalker syndrome and more the reliable, friendly presence. And it requires more than holding a sign that says “Remember, we’re here!” Today’s audiences want more from your brand than just a pathetic “Call me…?” Give them the means and a reason to follow you and follow up when their need arrives.

Repetition
To remain in that elusive “top-of-mind” position, it requires some sort of regular and consistent presence in the lives of your target audience. It’s up to you to determine the how and who, and which messages and means are crucial elements in your brand strategy. Repeat these in a way that doesn’t feel monotonous or self-absorbed (no one likes the people who only talk about themselves!), but slowly unfolds what you’re doing, what you’re about, and why it matters. This means that your brand’s messaging, look, feel, style, voice — all need to be consistent, working in concert to provide synergy that makes it sound like your organization speaks with one voice.

Emotional Connection
This might seem silly to a company that sells toilet brushes or distributes freight containers, but the honest truth is that nearly every purchase or product decision carries some sort of emotional weight to it, however slight. The hard part is finding out what that bit of caring is, and when it’s liable to happen to your audience. Someone might care very much about getting their morning coffee quickly, so the brand touchpoint of a fast line is crucial to evoking satisfaction. Simple, bold nutritional graphics might make a harried parent’s shopping a bit easier at the point of purchase. Audience empathy will lead to the discovery of these moments of emotional connection, allowing you to use your service, product, or offering to make a positive difference to them.

Spark
This is one of the least quantifiable aspects, but no less important in stepping up the ladder to brand stardom. What is a spark? It’s that “new and different” aspect that sets your brand apart from others. It could mean providing something that’s never been seen before (a Segway?), revamping an existing category (the iPad), or just offering a completely fresh point of view on familiar products (like Method did with cleaning supplies). The commonality in all of these is some type of “unique selling proposition” in marketing parlance, but we prefer to think of it as a brand’s soul, it’s spark, or reason for being. (And making money doesn’t count as a “reason for being.”)

Something Worth Sharing
Finally, you know you’ll have an iconic brand in-the-making when you have something people want to share with others. Sharing is a highly-overused term in our sphere of retweets, Likes, and thumbs up , but this principle has been around a lot longer than social media. In fact, it’s centuries old and very simple. Your brand needs to contain something that people want to tell others about. Other than the occasional brand train wreck, what brands are truly worth discussing? You need fans and people who want to selflessly evangelize about what you do, because they love it and want to tell others. The motivation might come from wanting to be the first kid on the block with the new toy, a desire to be the resident expert on something, or just an overflow of genuine delight.

These five aspects are no magic recipe, but instead, we hope that they’re a handful of crucial steps on the painstaking road towards brand greatness. Now get going.

With apologies and a tip of the hat to Kevin Costner for his wonderful Crash Davis speech in “Bull Durham”:

“Well, I believe in the Big Idea, the pitch, the hands, the power of a well-crafted phrase, the value of sketching, exquisite craft, late nights, that the work of David Carson belongs in the 1990s. I believe Paul Rand acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing advertising as branding and horizontal scaling of typography. I believe in the group critique, eyeball-searing visuals, under-promising and over-delivering, and I believe in long-term, ambitious, deep, professional dreams that will last the next three decades.”