I understood that, I suppose I really mean “why are there logos?”, in the sense that the whole branding exercise seems very insular.

I count 37 funders/sponsors on that banner. How much money has been diverted from the arts into public servants administrating these 30 odd relationships relationships?

I was making the point that the auditor doesn’t care about seeing it on a big banner so as funders we shouldn’t ask to see it on a big banner and having it tucked away on a leaflet or a website page is enough.

Dave

Interesting, they wouldn’t believe your accounts and other documentation?

Do the auditors care about building these funding ‘brands’ in the same way that, say, Becks use arts funding? It just seems a waste of energy for all concerned, when they could be getting on with – what they want to do – helping artists.

What might make more sense is splitting events etc into smaller, more specific sponsorship domains. “The Razzle Dazzle Cocktail Bar, sponsored by Martini”, “The New Bands Stage, sponsored by 4Talent”, “The Festival Newsletter, sponsored by Rymans”, at least where possible. This would be win-win, aesthetically and also in terms of the public actually coming to positively associate a brand with something that actually has something to do with the brand’s function.

Of course, the convoluted nature of much arts funding (insider brands etc) makes this impossible in some cases, but where possible, it should be the default, rather than the muddy “if we throw our logo at people enough, eventually it’ll stick” approach. Far from the sponsors being annoyed that their logo is used less, I’d have thought they’d be pleased to see it used in an appropriate targeted way that associates them and them alone with a facet of an event linked to their business.

Cath

Firstly, I agree with your comments about the design of the banner. As a funder we do request that our support is publicly acknowledged but we don’t really specify that it has to be on everything. I have an auditor to keep happy once a year and they want to see what our money has been spent on. So showing them something with our logo on is useful but I can’t fit this banner in my evidence folder so having the logo on a leaflet or a print-out of the website would do for us.

My mistake is not to make this clear. I should really give better advice to the organisers of events we support. I think it would go something like this:
“Digital Central (and its funder, Advantage West Midlands) have a requirement to see our support acknowledged. You can indicate our support through displaying our logo on your website or on printed materials. You do not need to display it on all items related to the event. In particular, if you feel that the inclusion of our logo will unnecessarily interfere with the design of your publicity material then let us know and we can agree an alternative form of acknowledgement.”

I think I’ll add that text to the ‘Logos and Branding’ guidelines on our website (just have in fact!). As long as I can keep the auditor happy then I’m happy basically.

One final point though. There may be a political reason to show this many logos. It may influence those wavering about funding this event in future years to be convinced that it is something that lots of key people are buying into so they should to.

Dave

I wrote about this last year in an article for Ten4 magazine.

http://alt.3form.net/?p=75

I always push for not including logos in excessive numbers in print work. On the web it’s easy to have a “Sponsors” page, or to be creative and have each sponsor taking ownership of a particular section of a site, with associated _content_.

In print it usually comes down to one sponsor (or usually funding provider) saying “it’s a requirement of our funding that our logo is included in x,y and z at such-and-such a size.”

When you get to the level of an international event like Rhubarb you attract more and more sponsors, collaborators, funders and supporters. When one of the funding providers gets to have their logo on something, then the argument is obvious. “If X gets their logo included in x,y and z then we have to include everyone”.

The result is logo-itis.

Possible solutions:

1. Say no to excessive logo inclusion.
2. Use the Web for sponsorship information.
3. Find more interesting (and embedded) ways for brands to gain exposure.
4. Don’t promise “your logo included in all of our print” as part of the sponsorship deal.
5. Attach sponsorship to specific elements – eg. The opening party sponsored by X, the champagne, sponsored by Y, the keynote address sponsored by Z, etc.

This isn’t an isolated case, but in the process of organising a major event like Rhubarb I don’t think that this would have been a major consideration! I’m sure they have a load of other things to be dealing with…

I look forward to trying to balance the requirements of sponsors and funders (without who’s help there would probably be no project at all)) with the dedication to the purity of creativity expression which caused the project to exist in the first place.

Rich
Xx

To be completely honest, I’d doubt the value of the design even if the sponsor logos were removed. The picture is wrong for the banner location, and I’d argue that a wordcentric solution would communicate better.

The ‘insider brands’ (good choice of words btw) frighten me and make me worry about the ‘cartel’ aspect of a lot of arts funding – and you’re right serve no purpose to those outside the establishment.

It’s advertsing in a way, and great advertising can be art – but logos aren’t great advertising.