Now, a mark may be defined as that which distinguishes someone or something from what it is and is not—therefore marks are always excluding something in an attempt to break away from the anomie—an attempt to avoid being lost in the grey mass of the undistinguishable and impersonal multitude. That is because in a grey world, the only way to be granted recognition is through a defining stroke of color.

However, a visual identity is completely relative: it defines what something is by evaluating its features or worth within the established social parameters. Ultimately, something can only be called “cold” or “big” in relation to something. In other words, something can only be cold or big if something other existence is defined as hot or small. As the saying goes: “In the land of the blind, a one-eyed man is king.”

Let’s take the example of handwriting analysis:
In Graphology, comparisons are made by using a valid parameter (like the handwriting taught at school, which happens to belong to the teacher) to analyze someone’s handwriting. Then, the graphologist will compare such handwriting with the analyzed one, and find thus differences, abnormalities, expressions, and mannerisms, which may be used to define the personality or identity of the person being analyzed. Consequently, the person in question will be socially defined by the images (or marks) he created with his handwriting.

Using this example, we can deduce that something similar happen with all visual identities, while they will initially be segmented, classified and ordered by their spectators according to cultural parameters.

© Sebastian Guerrini, 2010

In such moments we become captivated by the image at hand. Whether that image is our reflection in the mirror, born from a memory or left over from a nightmare. Whether it is seen within a painting, a photograph, a place or a situation that we’ve only imaged behind closed eyes—we have all been held captive by the power of an image.

Nevertheless, if we want to, there is a way to free ourselves from the image’s force:
The first step is to stop seeing an image as a living and breathing entity. We must stop taking it for granted that images exist naturally by some act of fate. From there, we are capable of breaking an image’s spell and thus detecting its source of credibility and the reason behind its power over us. This demands that we confront an image via disassociation—looking at it from a distance, analyzing it and breaking it up into its various parts to figure out what it means to us and why.

The next step is to play the image’s game—letting oneself enter the image’s world and see what it is the image wants us to see, hearing the story it wants to tell without believing in it, looking to identify the elements of the story and what allows the image’s story to affect us. We must analyze all the factors that allow this story to materialize in front of our eyes and become part of our reality.

Once we have detected these factors they cease to be protagonists, allowing us to objectively start to disassociate them from the story’s circumstances, messages, objects, landscape, details and situations, which are what sustain them and allow them to be perceived as real.

Also, even though it may be just a mental image, we are trying to disarm the deconstructed image and process all its parts, extracting each reference, significance, association, metaphor and relation, which make up the collection of forms and colors that are the image. In this way, we achieve the sacred act of not falling for the magic of the image’s entire symphony, leaving us with just the notes that make up the piece.

When each significant part of the image is separated out, we will have broken the lines of the alliance and complications that sustain the image’s power. We will also have succeeded in unmasking each one of the resources that give credibility, authority, meaning, history, tradition and coherence to this primordial figure.

Now we will enter the tunnel of intertextuality of the central figure: in the chain of associations with the other images at work within our minds. From there, we can mark and separate each link, each image that surfaces from this enlightened corridor, realizing that each one of these symbols of this central figure are merely pieces without any tangible value once broken from their chains of association. Associations that, without even realizing it, we have brought with us from some other place. But from where did they come? Generally speaking, associations come from our childhood memories, from books we have read, from real life moments and experiences during times of vulnerability or weakness, and from intimate circumstances of our life.

We can also use the same process to extract from these associative chains the remnants of the image that we initially cut and separated out: What makes us remember this color and this space? What does a work written in this style say to us? Where does this landscape take us? Where would we situate ourselves in a place like this?

Let’s take for an example how this mechanism functions: focus on the image of a monarch; now take away his crown, his center, his top, his pants and lastly his elegant clothes. If the monarch in question happened to be Enrique VIII, and we moved his eyebrows, changing the signature characteristic of his look, his chubby face would be brought to light.

Furthermore, let us strip away the oppressive climate and the cemetery that surrounds the monarch and leave him defenseless, without the protection of his context. Then we will see what is left of this powerful image. And what is left of the power of this image without these discourses? In respect to the image itself, nothing, only the cover-up story that we’ve heard in relation to the person in question, something, which exceeds the image itself.

We may also take the analysis to another dimension and look for the answer through social correlation as to why this image impacts us. Here we can ask ourselves: How can an image of some person who died in the 1500 bother us today? What does Enrique VIII symbolize? To some, he was a lucky serial killer of defenseless women, to others an exemplary king, and to others, a cold Statesman.

Thus, this character, not only can he embody memories from books we read during childhood or enigmatic movies about the past, but his impact can be linked to a political vision from a common way of life. In this vision, a monarch shows us the possibility still present today of the State. This State, when represented by a monarch, can at any given moment execute a power as arbitrary as it is terrible.

To take stock, we can think of images as not being powerful in and of themselves, they only are as a means to give form and to naturalize the messages they transmit.
Also, as Lacan suggested, the only way to tackle the realm of the Imaginary and not fall into the illusions, is to process and render them through the realm of the Symbolic (Lacan, 1977). In this fashion, it’s possible to position ourselves in front of the harsh reality of the discourses, rules, histories, and interests that are structured and assembled within each image.

© Sebastian Guerrini, 2010

In this sense, what is defined as normal or logical seems to only function as a bridge, as a mere parameter by which particularities inform and establish meaning through their extremes.
Excess in a nose or eyes, excess in weight or size, even excess in love or in suffering—All seem to take prominence and place in the hierarchy of meaning if they exceed a predetermined expectation within their context. Just look at how we refer to strangers: that one in the red shirt or that one with the long hair.

In this way, we see that excess is the deceptive foundation of visual communication; so deceptive that one extreme has the power to override all other extremes or particularities.
Let us return to the above image, it is most likely that nobody noticed that the person with the big nose and eyes is also the only person smiling. This smile is overshadowed by the more excessive of the two extremes: his nose—something that while visually more significant, holds much less significance emotionally.

Also, we can imagine that for everyone else including ourselves, we represent an extreme of something, whether it is a story, an experience or some other aspect in our lives. What is it that we remember most about our lives? The moments, which exceed the norm; exaggerated moments; or those experiences, which are too intense to forget.

That is why the extreme is also what defines and expresses the particularities of our desires. The extreme is that which makes us unique, articulating and synthesizing for us the most significant experiences and interests of our lives; and thus, making us that which we are. In the end, what are we if not an extreme?

© Sebastian Guerrini, 2010

Almost magically, symbols appear when least expected: painted upon the tiles of a public plaza or tattooed in the most intimate of places—symbols appear in our lives out of nowhere and without cause.

Because of this mythic quality, and beyond all intensions, symbols have power:

In one regard, symbols have the power to deceive, tricking us into believing that which they represent is actually present or real.

They trick us when we believe that whoever wears the symbol embodies that image, that is to say, we believe that the symbol and the person are one in the same.

They trick us when the images present in the symbol transport us to faraway cultures, to special moments or sensations that wouldn’t normally correspond to our lives. What’s more, they trick us when the symbol represented moves us emotionally, bringing us hope or happiness; meanwhile, that which or who displays the symbol is indifferent to the effects the symbol has upon us.

Furthermore, we are tricked when these images make us think about something that never crossed our minds previously, but due to their influence, now enters our present thoughts.

In conclusion, we are tricked by symbols when we believe in them.

Beyond the deception, symbols posses yet another power: they give form to that which has none, making concrete what was once just sensations, ideals, intuitions, beliefs and values. For example: What would the Republic be without the face of youth to represent it, the Olympics without its rings, the Catholic Church without its cross or the Hippie movement without its peace symbol?

Likewise, symbols have the power to help define that which is and is not, from the moment they enter the world, comparisons are instantaneously born. Why we see a specific symbol as big or small, rudimentary or elegant, mystical or earthly has everything to do with its relation to other symbols, other contexts and other emotions.

That said, are symbols bad? Perhaps, or maybe it’s just that our life experiences can only be expressed through symbols, and thus, through these symbols alone can the meaning of life be sought and defined.

© Sebastian Guerrini, 2010

How can it be that design is left so underappreciated? Why doesn’t design get the credit it deserves?
Perhaps it is because the majority of designers don’t know how to talk the talk…
The fact is that most designers are not specialists in written or verbal communication, they are not journalists, or writers—they are individuals who have chosen to express themselves in a visual rather than a written or verbal form. In other words, designers are more often than not mute.

Why have our designers chosen silence over recognition? I don’t really know, but each of us has must have our reasons. That which is clear, however; is that each designer has redefined his or her own anonymity with the capacity to communicate through other resources, such as the images and objects of his or her own creation.

In this fashion, the graphic designer has replaced combining words with constructing images: images that tell a story, reconstruct and synthesize real-life situations.
These images differentiate and integrate visual representations, thus mobilizing the spectator and stimulating them to desire something.

For their part, industrial designers do not vocalize their authorship either, instead they put their energies towards interpreting new social interactions, creating new relations between people and materials, and incorporating these ideas into objects and designs that will become a part of the future users’ lives.

The designer’s labor is certainly praiseworthy. Unfortunately, by definition, designers are anonymous—constantly substituting words with other means of communication, and thus limiting themselves to their principal activity, which is design.

We see the proof of this everyday, for example:
When somebody other than the designer explains the creativity of a visual campaign or product.
When a furniture designer remains anonymous when he or she has created a piece, which affects the daily lives of millions.
When entire generations accept the most established of brands as organically emerging and not the products of talented individuals hard work.
When designers’ salaries remain substantially lower on an international level than many other professions of equal or lesser value.
When who designed something as common as the national currency, flag, or emblem is not public knowledge. When the story of both the designer and the design somehow become a product of everyone and no one.

Let’s look at one case in particular: Can anyone tell me who designed the first coin or emblem of his or her country? The answer to this question tends to be vague theory or a bad guess at best.
Yet the blame lies not with the general public but within the limitations of the designers themselves. Our inability to use the existing means of communication to publicly stake claim to our work.
We sustain from words, when it is words, which fill public space, which define and give meaning to public debate, which interpret and define roles; when it is words, which ultimately define reality.

So what do we as designers loose when we don’t speak up? Sadly, a great deal:
That design is valued; that our discipline is understood; that our sincerity, professional commitment and solutions to social demands are recognized—That is surely worth talking about. Isn’t it?

© Sebastián Guerrini, 2010

The interest and the dedication that the national states have been entrusted with in the design of the message of the banknote would be understood as part of a regimen of knowledge. In this sense, the banknote is working to value and reject some objects to control the parameters of knowledge, fixing the meaning of the experiences of the individual human subject and framing the social reality in a certain way as an ideological activity.

In that way, there is always a story in any national banknote. Printed on a white sheet of paper, there is a tale expressed by images and text, “a rebus or pictorial puzzle” (Freud, 2003: 9), that makes the difference between white paper and paper money. Accordingly, behind the monetary credibility there is a message. However, the prominence of this message, of this kind of tale, would usually be present when a new story would be issued by the printing of another series of banknotes. Thus, the tale could only last a while. The awakened narrative that the bill shows would unavoidably fall into silence from the moment that it could be integrated into the everyday life of the people, as another cultural object of the social group.

Perhaps only the child would pay attention to the meaning of the image because in order to become subjects and to be able to refer to him/herself in the social world, the child should acquire all the pre-existing means of signification (Freud, 1910), and one of these is the institutional one. For him/her, the banknote would be learned as one introductory medium of the national embodiment. Then, for a child a banknote would be part of his/her significant environment, and he/she would be visually in touch with the institutional message of the note, and thus incorporate some discourses into his/her system of meaning.

In fact the message would be kept hidden most of the time, underneath the concrete “exchange value of the token” (Gallie, 1952: 21). Even though the banknote is handed from one hand to another, the exchange value is the reason for its existence, and the reason for its power. These contradictions of the importance and the non-importance of the printed story are where the discourse of paper money is sustained.

But a banknote is not a book, a film or a song but it has a chain of symbols like musical notes, which are written on both sides of the paper. Furthermore, they also compose a kind of symphony on the totality of the picture with content and rhythm. That content often provides crucial information in the message and the rhythm provides a dynamic that visualizes the story.

As has been mentioned, even though the banknote is not exactly a book or a film because the scene on the note is frozen and the character cannot move in space and time, it has the same multiplicity and a similar form of working. In the bank note, there is a static narrative which plays with the before and after of what we know about the symbols. As a transitional door it plays with the projection of what we infer could happen and what actually happened. In the example of the banknotes, the frozen image is always the same, but the movement in time and space, cause and effect, runs in our minds.

In a Lacanian sense, these information, these tale that the banknote is carrying on, these are the key signifiers, which act to seal the meaning to the participant’s sign use. The registers become sealed in a political (and cultural) discourse. 

Being conscious that an image triggers a potentially infinite chain of associations, the rhythm of how the composition is read of any image could constrain the openness of interpretation. In this way, the image of any banknote links one symbol to another, trying to control what could be interpreted as a whole and a definition of a hegemonic situation.

In this way, the image carries a certain myth which is a social constructed one, and places oppositions (like the savage-civilised one) (Hall, 1997) and naturalizes history.  Thus, the myth (like the one printed in a note) also contributes to the forgetting of the defeated party because there is always a mainstream idea in the interpretation of history.

Furthermore, the hegemonic dominant ideology of the dominant social groups is present in the printed myth of a banknote, which would mean that the message would be spread among all the Argentineans, more specifically located in their pockets.

As a balance, a banknote can support the essential myths of a nation. Then, printed on its surface those myths are giving shape to the sentiments that people are depositing in their nation. In this way, it is important to emphasize the following sentiments. First, the banknotes articulate the logic of property, by being the medium from where this logic is expressed. Thus, banknotes are the material token from which the state is translating value of thought.

Second, the banknote supports national myths, and those myths are embodying what joins society together, the will or the joy of being part of that group. In this sense, those myths make people remember the social practices, while the national myths are nothing more than the way in which the subjects of a given community organize themselves.

Third, banknotes also awaken spiritual sentiments, in fact all banknotes’ credibility depend on the belief that this printed piece of paper is what it says it values, and the reason why one can believe that is not only rational but also a question of faith in the state.

Fourth, banknotes are part of the organizational dimension of the national sentiments, because a banknote gives the person something to hold on to, a representation of the national organization. Such a principle of organization underlies social and commercial relations, structuring the social existence possible.

Finally, the visual symbols are the visual actors and background of the national narratives, the local heroes and the muses, the time and the space, all disputing the imagination of the society.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2009

The brand, the image and the label act as a promise, a promise that within the box we will find what we seek. However, one does not seek just one thing: you do not really want to buy a suit, not even a commodity like wheat grains, but the desire to acquire an specific suit and wheat in order to feel satisfied. Here is where the representative of the product, the company, takes form through the brand image, because from here it is embodied and exercises its influence. Do I want any suit or the one that makes me feel good personally and socially? Do I want any wheat or the one that guarantees me quality and gives me confidence in the person who sells it? That is why we do not just look for and buy things. We look for and buy things with stories attached to them.

As such, every brand is an image, and every picture tells a story, one that is only developed in the imagination of those who think and feel the brand. There, the story frames a cause and effect, i.e., exerts a phenomenon of anticipation on the part of who it is representing, where it projects something that they consider will happen when you consume that brand.

For example, an outdated and old fashioned brand of clothing may awaken various emotions in the person who imagines it: some imagine using old and out of fashion clothes, as is the feeling of walking in a modern world wearing clothing from the past and so to be seen and evaluated by the world as one that belongs to the past. Another is the story of someone who buys clothes for its price and that brand could embody a good deal.

In this way, this or any other story will categories the brand starting with existing associations and prejudices. Because from this classification, the person will assess their strengths, differentiate the brand from others and will define it in particular. Also, the person will associate the brand with issues that don’t seem to relate to the company, such as physical sensations and emotions, childhood memories or other bodies. These can also include memories of people who had used similar brands as well as memories of shapes and objects that may belong to other scenarios of life, yet still share with the brand a certain rhythm or shared history.

Moreover, the history of the brand will be categorized by prejudices such as those related to the country of origin of that brand, about the business of the corporation itself, of those working in it, about the social intentions and environmental impact of such enterprises, i.e. about the imagined or real history of the company.

In conclusion, we can think that a corporate brand is a connection point between what a person looks for and what the company can give. Thus the label, the brand image, is the intermediary of the relationship between the consumer and the product because it functions as a door that opens or closes this potential relationship.
Therefore, all this makes us think that what we see through the story of the brand tells us not just the history of the company or product but makes us see ourselves acting in a possible future history.

Finally, we could consider that the trick of branding is not just working on what’s inside the box, but on the label that identifies the box from other boxes.

© Sebastián Guerrini, 2010

Brands act as a kind of mediator between products and consumers. However, for a brand to be an effective intermediary, it must contain certain virtues:

Like a lover, a brand must have the capacity to seduce and the virtue to make itself memorable, distinguishable and classifiable as the ideal, only by establishing itself as such will the indicated consumer commit to his or her brand, returning again and again to the chosen brand, seeking to relive the experiences associated with that particular brand.

Moreover, the brand must have the ability to involve itself directly in the life of its beloved, that is to say, it must play whichever role necessary in order to establish itself within the intimate life of its consumer; how he or she lives, understands and imagines his or her existence. Only in this way can a brand create an authentic relationship.  

Also, a brand must make itself seen and understood; it must be able to express itself well enough to evoke for the consumer that which it promises to be, enveloping the consumer with all the reasons why he or she should select the brand. These reasons should be concrete, drawing on the emotions and rational of the consumer and forming connections between itself and its public´s most intimate desires and fantasies.

For these reasons, if a brand wishes to achieve greatness it must act assertively, employing the following tactics:

. The brand must show and promote that which it has, all of its best virtues, so that these are rightfully valued.

. The brand must insinuate that which it is and that which it could be. The brand must be able to take the consumer to places only dreamed of, such as those places where one finds true love.

. The brands beauty must be verbalized, understood and transmited, in this way, its popularity may reach its full potential

. The brand must be able to sustain the initial magic of the loveaffair, even once the curtain drops and the brand´s once mysterious box is opened to reveal its contents—the consumer must be able to experiment with the brand and find new ways to fall in love with it.

. Lastly, if one day the brand chooses to marry itself to one consumer, it must do so with great caution; the risk runs that such a sense of loyalty to one consumer may cause all the others to distance themselves from the brand.

Nevertheless, in order to achieve such aims, the challenge remains that the brand is limited to express ttsself uniquely through symbols—gestures and images that tell a story—a story that must move and gratify its beloved consumers, taking those to unforgetable places, moments and situations.  The ideal being, that this brand love-potion will make the life of the bewitched consumer all the more beautiful.

© Sebastián Guerrini, 2010

The  visual identity I designed for Livigo consists of the name and a symbol. The name is represented with small caps typeface, which is pleasing to the eye and modern. The symbol speaks of the connection between the parts, reinforcing the articulation of LIVIGO through a soft and warm figure. This is created through a figure that links the two points of the “i”s in “LIVIGO”.

The significance of the figure that unites the points remits an idea which could be that of either an airplane or of a whale leaping from the water. The combination of both ideas provides LIVIGO a relationship with the subject of Air-miles without being associated solely with aircrafts. For this reason the airplane has been distorted to the point of being only be a gesture.

Furthermore, the resemblance to the whale in a state of freedom gives the brand an air of freshness, energy and spontaneity that is considered necessary to motivate the user to make “the leap to participate.”

This image contains the basis of future advertising given that it will be able to distinguish the brand, thus converting it into a message that explains LIVIGO. For example, an animation could be created that reconstructs the journey that LIVIGO makes joining two given points.

The slogan

Given the complexity of the service offered by LIVIGO, it was considered necessary to include in the design of identity a slogan to complement the logo. This slogan helps to delimit and manage the significance of the brand with regard to the specific area of action. Thus, the slogan “Bring your rewards to life” was proposed.

©Sebastian Guerrini, 2009