How are your New Year's resolutions going? Do you have room for one more - professional one?
I'd like to encourage you to undertake an effort that, I bet, will bear fruit in the future.

A few days ago, together with Ania Jachimczyk, we worked on an article about how to prepare for a meeting with a graphic designer, designer, or art director when planning an advertising campaign (any campaign, not just outdoor, though we naturally focused on OOH).
Of course, you need to think through actions, goals, develop a strategy, assumptions, and finally fill out a brief.
It will likely include detailed questions about technical issues: communication channels, area, duration, target audience. Also about competition: who they are and why we consider them better than us.
But that's not all.
The brief will include questions about previous projects, past advertisements, slogans, and color schemes.

And here we come to the heart of the matter: at the beginning of the new year, I encourage you to either do some organizing, or work systematically so you won't have to do it next year.
This year, we're organizing and structuring our brand archive.
Ready? Here are some helpful questions.

Does your brand have a visual identity guide?
Do you have specified typefaces?
Do you have a defined color scheme?
Is your brand logo prepared in different variants, and are there specified correct and incorrect variants and uses of the logotype?
Is there an archive containing previous versions of logos, slogans, past advertisements, and communications?

A brand, like a personality, changes over time. An archive of previous designs, visual changes, and logos is important for observing the brand's development and changes. What was there before, what can be referenced, what should definitely / certainly / temporarily be abandoned.
It's a goldmine of knowledge and at the same time - invaluable help for designers we invite to collaborate.
We help designers get to know our brand, and we help ourselves understand it even better.

Good luck organizing your marketing drawers!

PS. The illustration shows the evolution of Jet Line's logo from 1994 to 2015. The slide proved very useful in the presentation in July 2015, when we were preparing for relocation and rebranding.