Branding success

My first experience of running a branding project happened in my teens, before I was even aware of branding as a thing and a long time before I considered a career in design. What's more, it was a measurably successful project in its own right – though not in any way I could have expected.

I've drawn and scribbled for as long as I can remember. Filling sketchbooks with notes and ideas is so much a part of my practice that I only really notice it when I finish one book and have to go get another. I studied art at school and college, losing myself in the work but coming up short when I had to sign it. My signature has long been pretty awful – and not awful in a "doctor's signature" scrawl sense, awful in the sense that it still looks pretty much like it did when I was a dyslexic twelve year old. I've never managed to progress past this stage despite years of trying. To get around this I developed a simple mark – a logo, though I didn't think of it in those terms then. I realised that my initials, AM, could be simplified to a triangle and a square. I then realised that they could be nested, triangle within square, and drawn rapidly with one single line. This, along with the date, was how I signed any artworks from somewhere around thirteen or fourteen onwards.

Alongside art, music has always been a part of my life. I've played various instruments, but I got more pleasure from listening – and from collecting a sizeable CD collection. I spent many happy hours scouring the local second hand music shop for rare Bowie singles, or just looking for bands with cool names or interesting album art. I don't know exactly why I did it – perhaps to clearly set my CD collection apart from that of my brother – but I spent hours scribbling my mark on tiny sticky labels and then sticking them onto the plastic CD cases (over the barcode so as not to spoil the artwork). Then I went off to university. I took the crucial albums I could carry, leaving the rest with my family. University was busy enough that I though nothing more of it. Until the family home was burgled.

Having things stolen from you is a painful experience. Not least because the police note, sadly but matter-of-factly, that there is little chance of seeing your possessions again. For things like CDs that's doubly true. They are small, easily re-sold and vanish into the second-hand market without even a ripple. Magical though the music on it might be, one person's Bowie single is the same as another's. That is, they are unless every single one of them has a tiny sticker on it. One with a little triangle in a little square.

In the end, I didn't get the entire collection back, but I did get all the bits I really cared about – and all within a matter of months. What's more, my first branding project was a huge success – and I didn't even realise it was a branding project.