A contractor in Tulsa made me rethink my whole logo approach

I was talking to a commercial painter last week at a job site in Tulsa. He said my brand colors looked nice but meant nothing to his crew on the ground, they just saw the same gray primer under everything. That hit different because I've spent 8 years obsessing over Pantone swatches and font pairings. He told me the only thing that mattered to his guys was whether the logo was readable from 50 feet away on a muddy truck. So I pulled up my old field manual from 2012, the one with the giant block lettering and high contrast stripes, and compared it to my current sleek redesign. Honestly, the old one won for real world use. Has anyone else had a non-marketing person point out that their brand works better simple and ugly?

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1 Comment

elizabethwhite1mo ago

Nothing like a painter in Tulsa to undo eight years of design school in one sentence. Guess my whole brand strategy is just "loud enough to see through mud.