As an experiment or an art project, I'm intrigued. It's gorgeous work and a really great set of visual elements.

Practically, however, I don't see this being a thing that makes any sense. A brand is far more than a collection of logos, t-shirt designs and app icons. This is like the epitome of design as decoration. Art for art's sake. I feel like you could almost go as far as defining this more as 'art' than as 'design,' if one would allow the distinction.

That said, some desperate startup could get a great set of icons and buttons for a pretty good price, I wouldn't be surprised if he sells it.

(I posted this on the other thread about Hessian, but figured I'd repost here since that thread should probably be killed since this one came first)

FWIW I put up some thoughts about Hessian on my blog:

http://blog.pieratt.com/post/42024943625/some-reasoning-behind-hessian

Tailored Suits vs. Old Navy 11 Madison Park vs. McDonalds JaZz vs. Pop

What is a brand? What is a logo? What is design? What is art?

I'm pretty confident this will sell. And when it does, I'm pretty confident it will work well for whoever buys it. Why? Well, a few reasons: 1. At the moment, Hessian is pretty much a stand-alone brand; there isn't much room for real brand personality from an actual product to have any influence. However, Ben does state that "30 hours custom design time" will be spent to help transition the brand to suit the client's needs. 30 hours is a lot of time. I have a feeling that next time we see Hessian, it will feel quite different, even if the big picture personality stays the same. 2. Hessian requires a very specific kind of buyer, and I have a feeling Ben will be somewhat picky with the kind of person he wants to sell it to. Whoever ends up going for it will probably bring something to the table that pushes the Hessian brand far beyond t shirts and wallpapers. 3. Companies (and the people who run those companies) often don't know what they want until they see it, and if they've seen it, its because someone else has already done it. Usually, this results in people ripping each other off and muddling each other's brands. Instead, Hessian is a unique, cool, and untaken. For the company that falls in love with it, this is a dream come true.

Sooner or later, someone was gonna have this bright idea. Designers are gonna get pissed off because it's beaten into us that we must consider the problem before working out the design. On the other hand, if there is a designer here that hasn't created something that looked cool and then backwards justified it, then you are our new king. Pieratt has just created something cool and skipped any illusion of justification of purpose.

If someone buys this, and it suits their company for a few years, good for them. If the time ever comes where the brand breaks under the needs and demands of the company, then the design world can really cluck their tongues at it and say they were right. Either way, they will get what they pay for.

Doing this shows a serious bit of honest awareness about what design consumers want and a designer's role is in it. I do respect that.

I like this a lot. I'm not sure what kind of company could pick this up and run with it, but taking ideas here and there would work.

It's an interesting experiment. I'd personally find it hard to align a company to a brand instead of a brand to a company. You'd have to compromise on too many things.

Its interesting my gut reaction is to hate it because it goes against everything we think about how to build a brand, but I will spend some time with it before drawing a conclusion.

I think this thesis is worth testing. Could the design process be disentangled from the from the business process and sold as a package. You have to ask if the current popular process actually limits the potential of the work since it (as Ben mentions in his blog post) requires the designer to get involved in "launching, leading, growing and managing a product". If the creative process can happen independently, it just might be able to get farther than it would have otherwise. I suspect that if someone ends up buying this brand, they are going to have to "rise to the occasion" — go beyond where they might have been comfortable had they ben more involved in the process all along.

I've found that designer's lack of business acumen has more do with interest than ability. If your creative and have a vision for a business or product that you think needs to be in the world, should you also have to learn how to incorporate a business, set up payroll, seek out and sell to investors, etc?

The fundamental question here is whether this can be sold in the market as a new kind of design service product. It's worth testing and if Ben proves it out, he has a lot to gain. I appreciate this not just for the cool design of Hessian (still admiring the colors!), but for the proof of concept that he's put out to test a radical thesis.

I think this is a great idea. Well done Ben! I think there's many brands this would be a good fit for. Essentially it's similar to a designer showing a concept to a client, and the client deciding if it fits their needs well, except this time it's being shown to many clients, and they all get the chance to buy.

A brand is useless without a designer to implement and extend it.

A brand is also a lot more than a collection of visual elements and implementations.

There's something extremely dangerous for the design community if we begin to make it okay to sell our ideas wholesale to the highest bidder, who in all likelihood will not be able to do them justice without the creator's guidance.

That about sums up my thoughts on it without turning this into a long diatribe.

I wish I had $18,000.

Interesting. Very interesting. What should doing this be called? Unspec work?