Why we still start every identity with a pencil
Every identity we shipped this year began as a page of thumbnails no wider than a thumb. It is not nostalgia, and it is not a rule we enforce on new hires with any ceremony. A pencil is simply the fastest way to find out whether an idea survives being drawn badly. Most of them do not, and the ones that do tend to survive everything else too: the wrong typeface, a bad print, a client’s nephew’s opinion.
If a mark only works when it is drawn well, it does not work.
So the first week of a brand project happens on paper. Two people, one room, a stack of tracing sheets and a rule that nothing gets erased. By Friday there are perhaps two hundred marks on the wall and three worth keeping. The laptop stays shut until then, because a vector is far too easy to fall in love with and far too hard to throw away.
The other thing the pencil does is keep the client honest. Show someone a rendered logo and they will judge the rendering. Show them a thumbnail and they can only judge the idea, which is the only thing that matters in week one. We have lost work by insisting on this. We have never regretted it.