Client: We are a group of professors and management and strategy consultants (right now we are working at Moscow State University). We are getting ready to launch a project under the name PDCA. The idea of the project is to help solve business problems through consulting and education. Our range of services includes consultation development support as well as offline and online educational programs. We are using Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge as the basis for development, principles and values. Generally speaking, PDCA is a normative education cycle, development cycle and management cycle for any organization or any activity. We have been running the deming.ru non-profit project for many years and decided to leave it as it is and launch a new project instead.
We have a sketch for a website that includes a basic draft version of the logo whose idea is that any knowledge and practice are consistent and intertwined like fabric. We are planning to launch the project at the pdca.ru domain but so far most of our activity has been offline.
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We can formulate what moves us and how we understand our purpose in the following way: we help businesses that have responsibilities to employees and the government become more effective by providing world-class knowledge and expertise in effective management. Clients of our programs are mostly medium-size companies that have grown out of the entrepreneurship stage and need professional management. Our clients are mostly heads of companies, mostly manufacturing though lately also service and financial, aged 30–50, the median age is 38.
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At the same time, the task we are trying to solve is not informing or educating, but rather creating a certain mindset for managers. A system-oriented mindset, a mindset of intolerance to business inefficiencies, to inadequate relationships in an organization, to manipulation and fear as management techniques.
Increasing effectiveness is a continuous, cyclical process that follows a spiral model. There are for stages: planning (plan), organizing (do), monitoring (check) and improvement (act). The PDCA cycle is the basis for improving efficiency. It is important for the logo to have our name, Production Systems, in text. Of course, we would also like to have a symbol, a visual image. We like colorful styles similar to https://www.artlebedev.ru/school1794/process/. It would be great if the logo could show the PDCA spiral with the text Production Systems. Although it’s probably unprofessional to talk to designers this way :) Please forgive me.
Since our main tools for creating value are our educational programs and their key part are educational materials in digital and analog form—articles, booklets, exercises, electronic courses—we think we should be able to design the website based on our identity (it’s all right to do so, right?).
Designer 1:
Designer 2:
Designer 3:
Art director: Boring. Banal. All crap.
Designer 4:
Art director: Number 9 slanted up could be OK.
Designer 4: Still, maybe?
Art director: You were still wearing short pants when I was drawing shit like that: https://www.artlebedev.ru/russianoffice/
All right, all right, developing number 9.
Art director: Here is a good direction. We’ll take it. In number 29 try to make the D in the shape of a triangle or a semicircle, right now it reads like an O.
Thinking about the style and additional elements.
Making adjustments to the shape of the symbol.
Art director: OK.
Asking the type designer to help with the text and preparing the announcement.
