Design as an all encompassing approach has been exhausted. Design is a commodity bought and traded at fairly set prices.

What keeps design in demand is branding. Design is in service of strategy, hence the birth of the brand consultancy in the last two decades. Design without strategy only has value for personal reasons, hence all the back patting amongst logo designers.

Logos are from the days of above and below the line design.

Brand consultancies led by strategists have the greatest influence over the reason brands exist. And the language has changed accordingly. Your brand is not your logo, it is the brand experience of which the brandmark is an important element but never the brand in total. Brand marks cue brand experiences.

If your identity design is only about the brandmark the brand experience is very limited and is likely to be of limited commercial significance.

Designers in brand consultancies can never claim authorship of brand identities. In the same way that Wally Olins can never claim to have designed the Orange or Beeline brandmarks. But he can claim creative authorship for the brand identity. Wally is a veteran brand identity creative who influences the outcome of the creative work of teams of people who are led by strategic thinkers. The last thing Wally is is a logo designer.

Times have changed. Logos are a thing of history to be consigned to outdated design consultancy speak. There are no great logo designers but there are great crafters of brand identities who give form to great brandmarks in the context of great strategic thinking.

Brands are business strategies made experiential. Logos are something else.