As he was starting a new detailing business, my brother-in-law needed some brand essentials. Motorists near his shop needed to instantly grasp his service offering and I needed to maintain a sense of decency, being a designer stuck on originality. Would any one of us be smiling at the unveiling?
Standing out vs. welcome in
Some businesses are brands in and of themselves, while true for others, their brand is largely an extension of the industry they belong to. While one business gets ahead through favorable differentiation from its competitors, another business is simply trying to get customers through the door. From the handyman to the dentist, the main brand priority is largely a name that ties them to their industry and a logo that reaffirms it to any needful customer in their vicinity.
Detailing shops are no different in this regard. They’re not pushing to lay claim to a cause that can boost their recruiting, to come up with a product nobody has ever seen before, or to synthesize a brand fantasy that makes affinity bias work to their advantage. The only storytelling their customers need to hear is that their shop is the one to go to, especially if they prefer a detailer who cares as much for their car as they do themselves.
That is the basic message. Of course, you can always opt for the extras, but as far as clients are concerned, most are happy with a car that looks tip top, a swift and professional service and a price they think is fair. The personal aspect in this type of business can’t be overlooked, though. Getting along well can turn a random shopper into a repeat customer, so naturally, owners tend to work their own name into that of their shop. This type of no-nonsense branding approach has proved itself to leave no room for misinterpretation, it can, however, leave a little to be desired in the looks department.
Thinking inside the outline
You devote your personal attention to the things you care the most about. Or, if in a pinch, you at least assign someone to devote theirs. When something is of the utmost importance to you, nothing else will do other than the same level of care and attention that you yourself would give it. And when we sense this threshold is being passed, we recognize it as exclusivity. Whether we’re talking haute cuisine or any high-end product or service, attention to detail is the secret ingredient. It just makes you feel special; you want it for yourself and for everything you love, including your ride. Consequently, when the stop-and-go car wash has left it dry in the wet places and wet in the dry places one too many times, you start acting like a man and switch up that drive-through for some fine wiping.
On the road to exclusive car care, if you scan the landscape you will see a common consensus taking shape before your eyes. It’s clear that the majority of detailing shops believe that the best possible choice of brand mark is the outline of an exotic car. And even though roughly half of them manage to butcher the execution completely, they all shamelessly stand together in their conviction, setting up storefronts for everyone to see. I thought to myself that if this single logo idea is powerful enough to run virtually a whole industry, the only right thing to do would be to turbo charge it, aesthetically speaking.
Now that I had copped out of uncovering a groundbreaking logo idea, I was duty-bound to make up for it in the execution. I wanted the logo to reflect the personal attention and tailor-made qualities that EC Estética Auto provides for their customers; it simply could not look like a vector straight from the stock bank. The big question was how to work something as generic as a car outline into something deserving of a double take. And after a bit of pondering, I thought I had found the edge I had been searching for: Elton Carvalho, the founder of EC Estética Auto, had been holding the keys to this mystery the whole time — his own initials. With an ‘e’ and a ‘c’ in lowercase, I could produce a perfect set of custom wheels to set off this brand identity with maximum traction.
When you get an idea that makes you go “Whoa! Why haven’t anyone thought of this before?”, it is best to proceed with caution.
Short-of-perfect wheelbase
When you get an idea that makes you go “Whoa! Why haven’t anyone thought of this before?”, it is best to proceed with caution. While you can be virtually certain that any good idea you get has already been gotten, bad ideas have a way of leading you on as if you were the only one. And as inviting as they may seem at first, you will be shaking your head in disbelief once you watch them play out. Although some people have made it their career to produce ideas that tickle the mind and selling them off just before they start to cause trouble, a designer has to bring ideas to fruition before they can get adopted. And this is where my wheels got stuck in the mud.
A well-designed logo cannot have its key feature in minuscule proportion to its entirety. And if you take any exotic car silhouette and size it down to that of a typical logo placement, the wheels simply turn to pinheads. Furthermore, the ‘e’ and the ‘c’ would be so far apart that the idea of initials would be lost to anyone. For this to work, I would have to reinvent the profile of a car without anyone noticing anything different; people should recognize it as a profile of an exotic car but stay blind to the fact that its wheelbase and wheel size are closer to that of a monster truck. I could picture it in my mind, but the sketches just didn’t turn out right. Until finally, after doodling a lot of duds, lightning struck right where I needed to look for inspiration.
Micro Machines, a once popular line of toys, were the fingerboards of model cars. And although each model was almost square in profile, they all somehow seemed to possess the proper proportions of the original cars they were modeled after. It was precisely that impossible blend between exact and exaggerated I had been trying to strike. I still needed the wheels to be even bigger, but now I had a proportional baseline to draw from that was much closer to the target than I was before. From then on out, it was pencil to the paper all the way to the finish line.
Wax on, veil off
EC Estética Auto is now up and running, and their new logo is up on the storefront. Since its ‘unveiling’, it has already topped everything from flyers to posters to banners to business cards to SoMe content. I’ve even been told that on a couple of occasions it had been the deciding factor in winning over a couple of new clients who had been looking at the competition. Of course, logo or no logo, there would be no victory without the amazing job Mr. Carvalho is doing on the cars, and I’ll be happy if just a few more people decide to stop by for a pit stop after seeing the red banner. How to tell if the logo is having any influence on that decision? I can’t say, but I do believe it will edge EC Estética Auto ahead of the competition, should it come down to a photo finish.