The 10% Myth
March 10, 2026
Sometimes, it takes forever, like you’re trying to pull blood from a stone. Occasionally, the process feels easy.
The idea for the Design Exec Club popped into my head while I was out for a walk. I scribbled down a sketch on my phone, and kept going.
These sketches are good starting points, but usually need a lot of reshaping to get to the final result. Equally as often, they don’t work out, and you throw them away.
I guess that’s why some people think that branding shouldn’t be expensive.
They don’t put value on something that, to use my exact words, ‘popped into my head’ while I was doing something else.
What they don’t see is the work that happened BEFORE that ‘lightbulb’ 
moment.
Things such as:
– Thinking about the target audience
– Finding out the goals of the business
– Researching the industry
– Analysing competitors
– Creating a strategy
There is a story about a woman who approached Picasso in a restaurant, asking him to scribble something on a napkin, and said she would be happy to pay what he felt it was worth.
Picasso complied and said, “That will be $10,000.”
“But you did that in thirty seconds,” the woman replied.
“No,” Picasso said. “It has taken me forty years to do that.”
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Have you ever heard ‘Change a logo by 10% and then you can legally use it’? We take a look at 2 examples involving Taylor Swift and Tabasco and explain why this is a myth.
Whatever the brief is, it’s exactly the same. Every project. Every time. Every design. It‘s just one word.
It’s that time of year when we start looking forward to the end of the working year, changes in the seasons, and celebrations over the New year…
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