Designing our desires

'Paradigms power perception and perceptions power emotions. Most emotions are responses to perception — what you think is true about a given situation. If your perception is false, then your emotional response to it will be false too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that check the truthfulness of your paradigms — what you believe. Just because you believe something firmly doesn't make it true. Be willing to reexamine what you believe' WM PAUL YOUNG

Successful business owners get what they want. They have learned to finetune and manage an ancient process of design and communication that has helped them realise their dreams. This process is called branding, and the logo is the beating heart of all branding.

The power of logos, as with other symbols, is their ability to straddle the conscious and unconscious as a physical representation of an abstract concept. Artists, shamans and designers trawl the dream world for inspiration, to connect with the soul of an animal, an object or a business, and often the experience is expressed as art.

A logo created authentically with heart and feeling, backed by a clear intention, can inspire us to create better lives for ourselves, our business and our communities.

According to Rita Clifton, the CEO of Interbrand, a brand is: 'a mixture of tangible and intangible attributes, symbolised in a trademark, which, if properly managed, creates influence and generates value. Brands are the ultimate accountable institution. If people fall out of love with your brand, you go out of business.' This result seems perfectly understandable, so it's essential that people continue to desire or feel affection for your brand.

A logo does far more than simply identify a business or crown a brand, it identifies a host of values that have been selected to resonate with our desires. It expresses the heart of the brand, the bit we love, that we want to be seen with. A great part of the success of a brand is around a good feeling, or range of feelings. And when we glimpse the logo, we will experience an emotional tug if the brand marketers have done their job. When, over a long period, a logo triggers feelings of familiarity and wellbeing we choose it quickly over a competitor's product. Most of us don't have the time or inclination to review the pros and cons of everything we buy, and a logo triggers information that we respond to in an instant.

Our world is inundated with competitive products. Some, such as food, clothing and shelter, we need for our survival; some, such as technology and transport, make our lives easier, and some we just desire. But if our stomachs, closets and houses are full, then how do producers encourage us to buy more? They bypass our needs and appeal to our feelings. Sometimes they are even able to persuade us that we desire things we had never imagined we did. A fear of poverty, lack of friends, grey sheets or smelly breath can be banished if we try that new brand. It's an interesting fact that most people don't need deodorants, but the fear of a potentially embarrassing situation is instilled in us as teenagers, which we carry throughout our lives, to the joy and profit of the pharmaceutical companies.

Brands appeal to our egos, our fears and desires. Our clothes and our teeth can be whiter, our bodies slimmer and browner and our cars sleeker and faster, or rugged and chunky, depending on what we want. Because, after all, 'we are worth it'.

The dream of all brands is to control our perception. Physically there is little difference between various soft drinks, cereals or cars and few of us are skilled in interpreting scientifically sounding ingredients or complex specifications. One brand succeeds above another by aggressively exploiting our human emotions - fear, greed, envy and ambition. We want to feel good right now and part of that is in the promise delivered via brands. But how can a particular brand of chocolate or ice cream make us sexier over and above its competitors? How can a different brand of alcohol promise romance over party fever? How can pens, shoes, handbags, cars and a multitude of other things make such different promises of fulfilment? We now buy products for promises of happiness, beauty, friendship and acceptance. Coca-Cola's purpose, for example, is not about selling the best or tastiest drink, but to create significant positive change in the world to make it a better place. Their mission statement includes the lines: 'to refresh the world ... to inspire moments of optimism ... to create value and make a difference everywhere we engage.' They are appealing to what we really want, not simply quenching our thirst, they know we want to imagine a better place where we can be happy.

Even when the ingredients are identical we pay much more for a brand. We pay up to 15 times more for Nurofen rather than generic ibuprofen. Both contain the same drug yet the former appeals to our needs more, and those needs are not simply to heal a headache, backache or cramps, we want to feel better and cared for too.

It is our attached emotions that make one brand feel different from a similar one. Is it a prestigious brand or one that's warm and comfortable? Does it deliver a single solution or invite participation? If we get these 'feelings' right we have a better chance of matching a logo.

'Even as they evolved, symbols never stopped being tools. The suggestion of a human hand on a cave wall, a nation's flag, even a Rothko — each is a powerful mental heuristic designed to conjure a particular emotion, a memory, an idea. Rather than directly changing the world around us, symbols change the way we perceive it. They extend not our bodies, but our minds. ' FERRIS JABR, 'HUNTING FOR THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN THOUGHT,' NEW YORK TIMES,

Even the copy within advertisements, including the way in which a product is described, will be carefully chosen to appeal to our emotions. Before it was available in the shops, the Apple iPhone was described not as rectangular, or pocket-sized, but as the same size as a bar of chocolate much more delicious and desirable. A UK brand face cream is labelled as 'hydro quench, day sorbet'. Luxury skin care brand La Mer uses 'miracle broth' and 'liquid energy'.

Big businesses spend millions so that their logo will make people feel good and want to be associated with it. This holds the brand to a certain level of accountability, the logo is a signature of authenticity reminding us of, and guaranteeing, the brand promise. But if this promise is broken, the response to the logo becomes negative. David Ogilvy (1911-99), the American advertising master, understood the importance of this close relationship based on trust and got it right early on: 'You would not want to tell lies to your wife, don't tell them to mine.'

In the international bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell draws on the revitalisation of Hush Puppy footwear. Sales were down to 30,000 pairs a year until they made a comeback. Unusually this was not prompted by an extensive advertising and marketing campaign but because some kids took to wearing them precisely because they were not fashionable. 'Those first kids, whoever they were, weren't deliberately trying to promote Hush Puppies. They were wearing them precisely because no one else would wear them. Then the fad spread to two fashion designers who used the shoes to peddle something else - haute couture.' The popularity spread by 'total word of mouth' via trusted networks.

Word of mouth is a powerful motivator for choice but successful brands cannot depend on this alone and are heavily reliant on advertising and marketing to help instil this trust. In early 2015 I discovered three distinct instances of this occurring, the brands were all banks, a business sector needing to regain our trust. A Bank of Singapore advertisement showed a businessman helping his chauffeur change a tyre. Standard Chartered (a UK bank) had a mature, chairman-like figure chasing away eager executives so that he could enter a large, traditionally furnished room with his waiting daughter and granddaughter and dance with the latter as the daughter smiled on lovingly. Finally, UOB (United Overseas Bank) showed a young man and his son walking to a showground where they purchased two tickets for the merry-go-round. The ticket seller said that if the man had lied about the age of the son he would have got a free ticket as he would never have known the son's true age. But the father knowingly looked at the man and said that his son would have known. Each ad was supported by a strapline: 'building on your values', 'here for good' and 'our principles define us' respectively. Each was finally signed off and authenticated by its logo. None of these told me anything about the bank's products and viability. Was it reassuring? Probably.

For brands to secure their profitable futures they need careful, good quality design to ensure they identify, express, share and build their dreams. The logo authenticates the brand in much the same way a signature authenticates works of art. A simple line drawn by Picasso and signed is worth millions. One abstract painting might be worth a fortune while another, looking just as good to an untrained observer, will not even sell. When a piece of art, or an artist, is authenticated or endorsed by an expert then we trust the quality. Similarly brand managers carefully choose characters, often celebrities, to add value to their products. David Beckham and Steven Fry bring very different qualities to the brands they help promote as do the invented Michelin man and Kellogg's Tony the Tiger. Celebrities can be specially chosen to add their unique values. Charlize Theron is firmly linked with J'Adore perfume; we remember her shape, reflecting the design of the bottle, in the iconic advertisement as she saunters seductively away from the camera. But we would not immediately associate Charlize with sports and Nike have enrolled, amongst others, Andre Agassi, Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan as their brand ambassadors. L'Oreal has engaged a plethora of beautiful spokespersons including Naomi Watts, Julianne Moore, Diane Keaton, Eva Longoria and Jennifer Lopez. They must be worth it. Companies pay them millions so that they can help us make up our minds.

We have come a long way since the first logos which were merely an effective way of physically identifying the maker, or owner of the product. Literally like the brands on cattle: 'This is mine!' Later they guaranteed a certain quality. The Industrial Revolution spurred mass production and subsequent marketing of goods. Brands jostled for consumers realising the value in differentiating themselves from their competitors with unique claims about their product. Eventually sophisticated design programmes gave the brands a personality, something we could relate to and identify with. Logos including Coca-Cola, Kellogg's and Campbell's remind us of values instilled over many years of marketing and advertising.

Visual identification has always played an important part in the success of securing a loyal customer base and the importance of the logo was soon realised with laws evolving to protect its usage.

And despite the complexities of modern branding, the logo design remains relatively simple. Comprising a special name and colour, sometimes accompanied by a symbol, it identifies a vision for a brand to be delivered to the world through any number of media platforms and packaging.

Negotiating the quantum world

'Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate. '

CARL JUNG

We exist in a conscious world where we consciously create our lives and our businesses. The more we understand about this evolving understanding the more we benefit from the potential that exists within each of us to be able to create change at its source.

Everything we see, feel, smell, touch or sense has its beginnings as pure energy. When we look deep to our world construct, to the quantum world, we see a world that is one, indivisible, interconnected whole with various densities or fluctuations within it. We are part of this intimate connectivity and it appears our thoughts create changes in this quantum sea and vice versa. Minute differences in the fluctuating sea of energy create our ever-changing reality. When that energy becomes organised into patterns of perceived reality we are able to see and feel objects that we recognise. We create our familiar world through our attention and our thoughts and we only limit the probabilities through our expectations and beliefs. If we change our thoughts, if we are brave enough to consider previously unimaginable possibilities, then we can create a different reality. This principle is at the heart of quantum field theory. This new physics is becoming increasingly attractive to many people, not only as a science but also as a philosophy that believes all energies, thoughts, knowledge, belief systems and histories as well as the present lie in the quanta. Everything we know, and everything we don't know has a source of energy there.

Our futures are not set in stone and changing cause and effect might be as simple as changing our mindset. Quantum physicists have found that the tiny particles that make up the world we live in are not actually particles but are packets of energy that can behave like particles and waves. And this behaviour is determined by our thoughts and observation. Scientists in Australia explored this theory and found that an atom can behave like a wave or a particle depending on whether it is being measured or not, but it only decides which one it will be after it is measured. So it seems as if it is able to reach into the future and glean information that enables it to decide what its current state will be; it is responding in the present to what is expected of it in the future. 'At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,' said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.

"... everything in the future already exists at some bottomrung level in the field of pure potential, and that in seeing into the future, or the past, we are helping to shape it and bring it into being' LYNNE MCTAGGART, THE FIELD

Physicist and astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington believed that 'the universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind ... the stuff of the world is mind-stuff.' Sir James Jeans, mathematician, physicist and astronomer, stated: 'The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail mind as the creator and governor of the realm of matter - not of course our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown, exist as thoughts.'

It is difficult to understand such a different view of the construction of our world using logic. So it comes as some consolation to know that even the great Albert Einstein said: 'The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe.'

Man-made fluctuations

Most of our thinking is based on previous thinking. We build on what we know. We have learned what the colour red is, we remember what we were taught at school or by our parents and we make choices based on our previous experiences. These memories are what guide us forward and the quantum field has its set of memories, which we all contribute to and can tap into. Unless we are colour blind we all agree what the colour red is, we agree on what a giraffe looks like or the formula for calculating the circumference of a circle and we have memories of toys, discipline and reward. Memories in the quantum field remain for all to tap into and build on as we evolve and co-create the future. As I understand, this field is like a matrix or web that holds the imprint of our world construct as we have created it and when one or more people break through an existing belief, for example by running faster than anyone thought humanly possible, creating a new substance in the laboratory or discovering a new way of seeing something in the world, then the matrix registers this and thereafter the potential exists for us all to step into and so this field of belief grows. Controversial science writer Rupert Sheldrake calls these different fields of memory 'morphic fields'.