That year, the "ONES Totem" we found in Barcelona

Near the end of 2021, the "Christmas Star" will be hung above the "Notre Dame Tower", the second tallest tower of the Sagrada Familia, which means that the cathedral has entered the final stage of construction.

The Sagrada Familia ("Sagrada Familia" for short) is known as the most famous "unfinished building" in the world. Construction began in 1882 and has not yet been completed. It is a famous landmark in Barcelona and the only unfinished building in the world. It is a building listed as a World Heritage Site.

In September 2018, Wang Yingqi, founder and CEO of ONES, a research and development management solution company, led a team to Barcelona to participate in the industry exhibition. Inspired by the Sagrada Familia and many local architectural designs in Barcelona, the organization team redesigned the ONES that is still in use today. LOGO, completed a brand visual upgrade.

Reminiscing about the splendid years of the past. The following is Wang Yingqi's self-report on his journey to find "ONES Totem" in Barcelona.

The confusion of recognition

Entering 2018, ONES' business has made great progress. Customers gradually began to recognize the functions of the R&D management tools we provided, but at the same time, customers also expressed "confusion" about the recognition of our brand LOGO.

At that time, the ONES LOGO was a simple circle with a sharp corner, black and white, which looked so similar or even similar to other unrelated brand LOGOs that some customers said that the ONES brand could not be remembered at all.

At this time, I realized that in the early stage of the business, we did not pay enough attention to the logo design, and did not visually organize the brand completely and self-consistently.

Of course, it depends on the stage of development of the company. ONES was founded in 2015, but until 2017, we did not have a single client. 2018 was a turning point for ONES. We had a series of seed customers. After getting feedback from customers on the brand, I found that our original preparation for brand communication was not enough. The core is whether the brand visual materials are not. compliant.

For the company itself, LOGO is a kind of totem, and totem is a symbol system that can arouse group identity, form a distinction with others, and gain a sense of security and inspiration. From a commercial point of view, a highly recognizable LOGO can reduce cognitive costs, decision-making costs and communication costs, so it has huge commercial value.

So, we started to explore the direction of changing the LOGO, referring to the latest LOGO design features of the international Internet giants, pondering for a few months, and doing many versions of the draft plan at the same time, but I feel that those are not what I really want, so I still haven't decided which LOGO to change.

Intentionally planting flowers but failing to deliver, the turning point happened in my Barcelona trip "inadvertently".

Change your mind first

At the beginning of September 2018, the A+ round financing of ONES was coming to an end. It happened that an international R&D management industry exhibition was held in Barcelona, so I made an appointment with the product manager of ONES and an investor, and the three of us went from Shenzhen to Barcelona together. Learn and understand the latest trends at the forefront of the industry.

In addition to participating in the exhibition, I have a half-day free time. We tasted local wines together and ate all kinds of local hams - from the cheapest to the most expensive.

When I was slightly drunk, I glanced at the many art museums in Barcelona, and felt like I was in a dream that was both fantastic and real.

Next stop, we went to the thunderous Sagrada Familia. As soon as I got out of the car, I looked up to the sky and saw several large spires towering into the clouds; looking up at the spires, it was still a large construction site, and the long arms of the crane were a little out of tune on the top of the majestic and sacred church. But this has struck me.

After nearly 140 years of construction, the cathedral is still unfinished, and the citizens of Barcelona estimate that it will hopefully be completed by 2026-2028. However, although this is only an unfinished project, there is a long queue at the door, and everyone is waiting to visit.

Seeing is better than seeing. Immersive, I was first amazed at the fine carvings and intricate details on the whole church door and column. All the figures, plants, birds and beasts are lifelike, and the texture of the rocks makes them appear like sand paintings. soft.

The columns inside the Sagrada Familia are like tree trunks, with several branches extending upward to support the huge vault of the church - this makes me feel that the buildings here are not built, but natural growth like living things, full of "upward" the power of growth".

I found that there are no right angles and almost no straight lines inside and outside the entire church. Because Gaudi, the representative designer of the Sagrada Familia, believes that architecture should be more like nature, and nature has no straight lines.

When I saw the spiral staircase inside the Sagrada Familia, at that time, I began to think that the straight line is indeed the science and engineering thinking, or "simple functional thinking".

To change LOGO, you must first change your thinking.

engineering representative

With curiosity, I continued to visit other architectural works designed by Gaudí.

We came to Casa Batllo, another of Gaudi's magic touches. The entire building design adheres to the consistent style of Gaudí, with no edges and corners, all soft waves.

Gaudí said that straight lines belong to man, while curves belong to God. The master architect wields his curves, creating a variety of smart buildings, turning Barcelona into a fairy tale world.

Casa Batllo tells a fairy tale about sword-wielding heroes, beautiful princesses and dragons. Oceanic elements run through the entire interior decoration, with a huge spiral at the top of the room spreading out like a vortex of the sea, while the center of the vortex is decorated with anemone-like ceiling lights, a whale skeleton-shaped dome, a shell-scalloped fireplace, and A doorknob shaped like a dinosaur shoulder blade.

Gaudi is not only a designer, but also an expert in engineering mechanics. Casa Batllo houses an exhibition gallery that describes Gaudí's creative process, including a series of photos of the Nautilus, showing how Gaudí drew inspiration from the Nautilus - both in design and engineering mechanics. of.

At this moment, I have a feeling of enlightenment: isn't the spiral of the nautilus the perfect representation of engineering?

Before, I always thought that straight lines represented engineering; after I came to Barcelona to re-understand the curves, I found that the curves containing the Fibonacci sequence are the more beautiful and inclusive representatives of engineering.

The Fibonacci sequence starts with 0 and 1, and the subsequent Fibonacci numbers are obtained by adding the previous two numbers. And when the value tends to infinity, the ratio of the former item to the latter item is getting closer and closer to the golden ratio of 0.618. Many biological components are positively correlated with the Fibonacci sequence.

The spiral proportions of the nautilus fit the Fibonacci sequence's golden ratio—meaning that the nautilus is meaningfully connected to software engineering.

Moreover, the "engineering spiral" embodies: ONES provides products to customers in an engineering way, and then they provide products through software engineering. Our efficiency is scaled up layer by layer in such a spiral progression, leveraging the R&D management industry.

So, I took a picture of the nautilus and sent it to our company's designers.

I found a clear direction for the renewal of the logo: we want the image of Nautilus.

The power of curves

Churchill said that we shape architecture, and architecture in turn affects us.

The architecture of Barcelona and Gaudí inspired me in ways I didn't expect.

Previously, my favorite architect was Tadao Ando. His buildings have always used fair-faced concrete with simple and pure geometric shapes to form an independent space that is closed to the outside world. experience.

The so-called "fair-faced concrete" has strict technical requirements. It is necessary to ensure that the final surface effect is particularly smooth and delicate, without foreign objects and scratches. The traces left by the fixed formwork must be straight, and even those round holes after construction must be opened. same size and neatly arranged.

Therefore, for a long time, I believed that the project is a straight line - the straight line of "Steel Straight Man" is also the straight line of "Fair Concrete". At least, until I went to Barcelona, curves were not an element worth my time to think about. So much so that ONES's early LOGO was composed of simple straight lines - the circle represented the target, and the two supported straight lines represented the project.

Some people say that God is a great programmer. Nature can be understood as one program after another: spring, summer, autumn and winter, cold and summer, flowers bloom and fall, and geese from the north fly to the south.

However, people do not passively execute programs, and we will not let the pre-programmed arrangements in a fully written program, but will have the right to choose at many crossroads.

I used Confucius's "Gentleman is not a Tool" as one of the Slogans on the official website of ONES in the early days. In the current colloquial translation, it is "Don't be a tool person". Because although we are a research and development management tool company, we pay attention to people themselves and the application of management methods and concepts.

Inamori Kazuo's life motto is "respect God and love one". My understanding of this sentence is that "respecting the heaven" means respecting nature, and "loving people" means putting people first.

The trip to Barcelona made me feel the power of curves. Engineering is not a straight line, but a combination of a lot of curves; caring for people is not a straight line, but a curve full of relaxation.

I think logic is linear. Before, out of our admiration for logic, we pushed a lot of self-righteous things out of ourselves, and we lacked respect for people and nature.

Only respect for the curve, and the expression of the curve in our brand, is to respect the natural development in essence, respect the harmonious coexistence of man and nature, and respect the existence of an "unknown state" in this world.

Further triggering my thinking is: life should be the unity of knowledge and action.

Nautilus by ONES

Although I have basically decided to use Nautilus as the LOGO, in this process, there will be challenges. Others may ask: Why can ONES use Nautilus? How to prove that this is the Nautilus belonging to ONES?

So, I went to consult an external design guru. The feedback received is: the figurative nautilus can be used as the company's LOGO, but it must have its own special expression.

In my opinion, our products are engineering project tools, and traditional tools that embody the meshing and communication of teams are gears. Therefore, we added the pattern of gears to the LOGO design. Moreover, the gears represent that the ONES business can bring about a flywheel effect, allowing customers to constantly "turn".

Therefore, the Nautilus with gears is the Nautilus of ONES. After several revisions and adjustments, the presented LOGO effect is "two parts, three levels, and three shapes", which reflects the respect for the curve, also contains the meaning of "yin and yang", and also expresses the ONES company's own natural growth state.

The so-called "natural growth state", I think, we live in a state full of uncertainty and uncontrollable, allowing some chaos or even chaos.

The spiral line of Nautilus itself means that ONES serves customers well by doing its own business well; and customers serve their customers well with better products, so that the total value created is like a snowball "more and more" The bigger the roll", the acceleration is delivered to the end user. For example, ONES provides Watsons with high-quality services and improves its R&D efficiency, and then Watsons contributes better products and services to its customers.

In general, this LOGO expresses what it should express, and it is simple enough. At least in the visual expression of the brand, the message of "what the company wants to do and what the company needs" is conveyed.

So far, the logo has effectively assumed the function of this visual brand. From the perspective of the founders, and from the perspective of most employees, everyone already likes this expression. In the long days to come, this LOGO will be an important image of our external brand output.

However, from the product point of view, I think that the ONES product is still a "straight line product". I respect the "straight line", but I think it's those curved things that help us at the core of our clients, our society, and our lives.

Specifically, the function we deliver to the customer is a "straight line product", and he can do a good job in the product and better serve his customers, which can produce a magnifying effect - these incalculable values are "curve". functional value.

Now, we have found our totem. But it will grow by itself. In the process of becoming a super symbol of modern business, we accompany it to grow upwards.