Building digital identities that stand the test

What dates an identity

• A logo built for one aspect ratio, discovered the day it has to be an app icon.
• A palette with no accessible pairing in it, discovered the day somebody runs a contrast check.
• A typeface licensed for print and not for the web, discovered at the worst possible moment.

Design the smallest case first

Draw the mark at 16 pixels before you draw it at 500. Set the type at 14px on a phone before you set the 86px headline. Almost every identity that fails in use fails at the small end, because the small end was treated as a reduction of the large one rather than as its own problem.

Systems age better than artefacts

A logo is an artefact and will eventually look like the year it was drawn. A system -- a ramp, a grid, a colour rule, a motion vocabulary -- can absorb a new logo without needing to be rebuilt around it.

Draw the mark at 16 pixels before you draw it at 500.

Brandora

Conclusion

Longevity is not conservatism. It is making the decisions that are expensive to reverse -- the grid, the ramp, the contrast, the licence -- with more care than the ones that are cheap to change, which is the opposite of how most identity projects allocate their attention.