Branding brief

My friend Niclas Ljungberg overheard me complain about how discombobulated and disconnected the MetaBrainz branding currently is. There is some cohesion between MusicBrainz and MetaBrainz, but almost none to the newer projects like CritiqueBrainz and AcousticBrainz. And very few people are fond of the current logos (plus, they haven’t aged very well). When Niclas heard this, he said: “I can help you!”.

Getting help in the area of marketing and business is rare, so I jumped at the chance. Niclas and I sat down where Niclas interviewed me about how all the pieces currently fit together and how I  think they should fit together. The deliverable from this conversation is a “Branding brief” (PDF). It talks about the current state of things, the goals and then gives context and some suggestions that a graphic designer can use to start designing cohesive logos and cohesive site designs that we can use for our sites. It does not propose any concrete actions — please keep that in mind when you read the brief.

The next step is to work with a designer to turn Niclas’ branding brief into some logo concepts that meet the outlined goals. At this point, we’re not exactly ready to take any concrete feedback from the community — I’m mostly sharing this to show that I’ve started a process to fix our current branding situation.

I’m very happy with how far things have come in this process and I wanted to give a heartfelt thanks to Nicals for donating his time to help us improve our overall presence on the net.

Thank you Niclas!