Logosbrands
Toronto, ON

Since 1979, Logosbrands has been an interdisciplinary branding and design firm with both North American and global experience. The firm is completely independent and privately owned, and among its clients are the Hershey, Carlsberg, and Novartis brands.

The staff of about 25 contains experts in understanding consumer behavior, category, and competitive dynamics. The firm is about integrating rather than segmenting, so 17 of the staff are senior designers who can handle many different tasks.

John Miziolek, president and CEO of Logosbrands, stresses that the firm hires for creative brilliance first because they can always teach production and technical expertise later. And they practice what they preach. Most Logosbrands employees have experience in both design and production, and can take any job from start to finish.

The Logosbrands team (left to right): Anna Volpentesta, senior designer; Sunny Chan, senior creative director; Franca DiNardo, vice president and chief creative officer; Adam Firestone, assistant production director; John Miziolek, president and CEO; Ryan Spencer, senior designer.

In a way, this arrangement doubles the capable staff for any project. It also encourages collaboration and sharing of ideas in many ways, whether the ideas come from their frequent team meetings or from peeking over someone's shoulder. "Anything that comes out of the studio is not an individual effort," says Miziolek. "We force a large number of ideas through a funnel."

The Logosbrands philosophy is that packages and brands must hit on two levels—emotionally and rationally—and the best designs are a strong mix of both. Miziolek sees the firm's strengths as strategic insight into the fashions of the day and awareness of what the competition is doing. "Brands don't exist in a vacuum," says Miziolek.

The company developed its HiQ Innovation System to respond to how consumer behaviors are changing today, and to spur new ideas on any project. HiQ is a design development process that includes research, strategy, brainstorming, and teamwork.

Miziolek uses an interesting analogy to explain how great designs can be born, or discovered, as the right combination of many ideas. He says that the firm likes to get a bunch of their best ideas together and drop a grenade on them—figuratively. Then they pick up the pieces and reassemble the ideas, so that in the end they wind up with something completely different. Miziolek believes this process leads to some powerful concepts that may never have been discovered otherwise.

Logosbrands brings a broad range of experience to the table, including brand design experience in food, beverage, pharmaceutical, pet food, house and home, automotive, and health and beauty. They are frequent entrants and winners in Canadian and international design competitions.

Miziolek likes to convey to their clients that their relationship is really a partnership in design development. The client brings many things to the table, but they may be too close to their product or package to have a strong sense of direction. "It's up to us to bring an objective perspective to the project," Miziolek says.