Victor Fatanmi speaks on Branding, Remote work and Productivity.
Victor is the Co-Founder / Managing Partner at Fourth Canvas, a design agency behind some stellar brand identities on the African scene. We spoke with him about his journey to brand design, challenges he faces as a founder in Africa, and his predictions for the future.
1.How did you get started as a Brand Designer?
I started out as a graphic designer, that’s how the progression begins. When I heard about graphic design in 2010, I didn’t know anything about brand design. Then, when you’d hear ‘branding’, it meant stickers, painting school buses, souvenirs, literally branding an item with a company’s name.
My journey to graphic design, which led to brand design, began when I was a kid. I was always curious about art in general as a kid. It was a hobby I sustained at the time. Whenever I was asked what I wanted to become, I said many things, but never a ‘designer’, but this was because I didn’t think there was anything professional about it. Design felt more like a hobby than an actual career path.
It was when I got into university that I realized people were actually making money from creating useful designs. This bred my curiosity, leading to me asking questions and dropping my suggestions whenever I saw a design.
Now, many years later, I lead a brand design team.
2.What are some of the challenges you face running a design agency in Africa?
A key challenge is the low market maturity of the industry. The market just isn’t mature enough to fully understand the importance of design as a critical part of an organization’s presence. In the most competitive economies, everyone takes branding as both important and urgent. Here, it’s important, but it’s not classified as urgent. As a result, selling a branding service in Nigeria often has to include first, educating and creating awareness, before any work can be done.
When companies are analyzing their priorities, it’s easy for branding to be at the bottom of that list because product and service come first, but I guess that’s because we still haven’t attained the state where a lot of companies provide consistently good products and services. However, in the tech space, that’s changing. The bar is higher, as a result, brands are delivering good products, then everyone runs to the next differentiator, which is the storytelling, everything is good, so what else, why are we choosing you?
Another major challenge is finding good talent. Finding new talent to join our team is important as we expand to meet our increasing client needs and higher volume of work. But you often have to go the long and extremely difficult route of first training the people you employ. Then as you succeed as an agency and you start to get more demand, there’s a lot more pressure, you start to wish you could groom this talent faster, but it’s not exactly something you can rush. As an agency, a lot of the work we do is wholly dependent on the quality of talent we have implementing and interpreting this work, both on our end, and in client companies.
I also think that while there’s a lot of good design talent in Nigeria, there isn’t so much brand design talent. There’s a difference between making something beautiful and making something beautiful and unique consistently.
3.Tell us what branding isn’t?
Branding isn’t marketing. Branding is the foundation upon which marketing is built.
The first part of branding is discovering exactly what the brand is. That’s followed by determining how a brand is represented and determining how the brand will be perceived. With this information, you then seek to align how the brand looks, sounds, who it hires, what it does, what it calls itself, to the image the brand wants to have.
Branding is at the core of everything. It’s at the center.
4.Ever seen a brand identity you felt wasn’t right but said otherwise?
Yes, years back, there were so many of them. Over time I matured in my own thinking. I realized sometimes I jumped to those conclusions, I didn’t get as much context, didn’t try to understand how they got there.
Today, even when I have that immediate reaction, I don’t run with that conclusion, I leave an open mind.
The most recent was Total energies, but a number of people close to me like it and I respect their opinions. So I started to really look at it, and it’s growing on me. I like it more now, especially the typography.
Controversially, I love the MTN re-brand, I’ve always felt the logo was busy. Felt it had a lot going on. The text alone could have been the logo.
The new logo is simpler, strips it down, especially with the direction they’re going, Tech. Tech companies use simpler elements because simplicity is a big factor. If I was in the room and had to make a contribution, I would keep the slanted feel. It was an asset from the previous identity that worked great.
5.What font do you absolutely detest?
None. I don’t detest any font. Futura gives me PTSD because of how much I overused it in the first years of my career. I know there’s a general dislike for comic sans but that’s because it’s been overused, and like anything that’s been overused, it loses its appeal. There’s a project we did with comic sans and we explained how we intentionally used comic sans for that project, because of how despised comic sans is.
But generally, while I don’t have a favorite, it is logical to stay away from a font that’s overused because branding is often about differentiation and distinction. You can’t build something unique around a font that’s been overused.
6.How many hours of work do you think we should be putting in daily?
4 hours of deep work. I think everyone should strive for 4 hours of deep work daily, no distractions. Doesn’t have to be at a stretch. You can take breaks in between, but aim for those four solid hours. These 4 hours shouldn’t include checking slack messages, and responding to emails.
In the creative/ tech space, deep work can include writing code, writing copies, building a system, designing a product or a project. The best way to ensure you’re doing deep work is working without distractions.
If we can find a meter where we scan through our past days, you’d find that on some days, we’re doing zero hours of deep work. Meetings, emails, calls, but nothing productive that only you can create.
7.Tell us 2 things a brand designer shouldn’t do when starting out.
You should be representing, not communicating.
Brand design has aspects of direct communication, but it’s largely indirect; inferences, look and feel, suggestions. Less conclusions and more representations. Think about it this way: on first glance at the apple logo, you’d think it’s a food company, but it’s not. It’s abstract.
Design, then allow people interpret it themselves. The best way for a brand designer to build expertise is to start from the abstract, then work your way to direct communication.
The second is to get the depth then get the business. Gain deep knowledge of the service first. You’ll be able to sell it so well when you know it so well.
8.What’s the project you’re most proud of?
Ah, that’s a secret for now, it’s coming in a month. But I’m proud of a lot of projects we’ve done; PiggyVest, Youverify, Titan Trust bank. But the project I’m most proud of is something you should watch out for.
9.Do you favour remote work?
Yes, but not 100% From the context of a creative business, you can not completely replace physical work. There should be a mix of both, doesn’t have to be structured, other than when there are meetings. It can be 80% remote, 20 % physical. It can be 50:50, but there should be some in-person activity. Creative collaboration is also greatly favoured by in-person activity. It’s achieved with human beings sitting together, working, sketching etc.
I don’t think we should take that away completely.
10.What do you think the tech scene in Africa will look like in 5 years?
I definitely foresee it being way more competitive. I also think it’ll be closer to the realities of the world economy and more mature, with people and brands at the center. I say this because currently, tech is out of touch with our normal realities.
In 5 years, the brands who are more centered and connected will outperform the others and that will become the new competitive advantage.
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