Branding Cleverness...

Graphic Designer and Art Director Ben Pieratt has created a brand. That alone isn't news, since visually articulating a brand is at the heart of what most designers working in Marketing Communications (or Advertising, or  Brand cultivation, or whatever pseudonym for Advertising you care to use) do regularly.

More interestingly, Pieratt is exploring the concepts and constructs of branding itself. He has taken the  very definition of brand, and flipped it upside-down. He has worked from the visual end, and created the roots for a brand and put it on the free-market auction block.
To me, this is more of an exercise in brand development—the equivalent of taking the design adage of "form follows function" and turning it on its ear...creating the form first and then finding the function for it.

While the pragmatism of creating and cultivating a visual brand beforehand, then later matching it with a product or service is intriguing and an exercise in "purposeful vagary," it can also be viewed as the equivalent of off-the-rack fashion—something unheard of in the early twentieth century, yet the preferred mode by mid-century.

On a personal note, Pieratt's brand reminds me of the bright, geometric design of the mid-eighties (as used by brands like Letraset at the time). I love the retro, yet very hip'n'cool feel.

Check out Pieratt's HESSIAN brand!
(link image below)