What Paul Rand says goes

I regularly dip into John Gruber’s excellent blog Daring Fireball which often offers tasty nuggets to line my creative stomach, as well as technical wizzardry that confuses the pants off me. This one was a goodie, and I quote:

“The odd saga of Microsoft’s nascent $300 million rebranding campaign brings to mind this nugget of genius from Paul Rand:

“A logo is less important than the product it signifies; what it represents is more important than what it looks like.”

This holds true not just for logo marks specifically, but also in the broader, more abstract sense of brands in general. No brand is better or stronger than the products and experiences it represents. A good brand is strong because it is true, not because it is clever.

I realise I’ve quoted Rand before, but he is that good.