First of all—it has nothing to do with color.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a tendency to think (and express myself) in metaphors. This habit can alternately entertain and frustrate my family, friends, coworkers and random people I might talk to. But, I enjoy finding connections between topics that interest me and sometime draw valuable insights through them.

One thought that relates to my job as a creative manager and a guitar player is that sometimes a design problem is like a blues number. Hear me out: conventional wisdom holds that blues music is a very simple and relatively fixed genre. It follows a rigid format and commonly relies on a streamlined scale. Most people recognize the blues when they hear it—but still musicians are creating new blues tunes every day. I compare this with identity design.

In the case of a business system, the format has—over time—been pretty well determined. Typically a client needs a card, letterhead, envelope and a few collateral elements to communicate their brand (reason for being, values and so forth). More often than not, cost concerns come into play and limit the number of colors, paper choices and printing effects. If the brand has been around for a while, some elements like the color palette and fonts are already determined. Lastly, the resulting design has to be recognized for what it is—professional business paper. The idea of ‘reinventing’ the identity system (augmented-reality-laser etched-beer coaster-business cards anyone?) is as strange to me as a Phillip Glass sound composition on a Stevie Ray Vaughan album.

I have heard designers complain about constraints. But I have never heard modern blues players like Keb Mo’ fret about the pentatonic scale, or worry that Robert Johnson wrote a similar chord change in 1936. Maybe that’s modern players know that the tiny choices he or she makes can provide endless nuance and result in something entirely unique. The same is 100% is surely true for visual designers. Check out one of my favorite sites for identity design—lovelystationery.com for some stunning examples of well crafted business systems and brand collateral.