My sister-in-law is currently in the process of starting her own business, a fabulous home decor store, in Ottawa. Among the kazillion things she's trying to piece together for the opening is her store's brand identity. She got a great name and she's designed a really unique and striking wordmark from the name, which my twin brother has been helping her refine.

As part of the process she decided to post the logo to a forum related to home decor to solicit feedback from a variety of people. The feedback is absolutely classic. People nitpick about minor points, make recommendations that would render the logo looking like a vanilla home decor shop at the local mini mall, and generally offer suggestions with surprising authority even though their comments are usually comically preceded by 'imho' or 'my 2 c'. Thankfully, my sister-in-law is confident in her first vision and has taken the suggestions for what they're worth—making some minor revisions but sticking with her original vision for the identity.

This whole process reminded me of a brilliant blog post at The Online Photographer a few months ago that pokes fun at the feedback one finds at sites like Flickr by showing how the great photographers of the past century would have been received by the online hordes. Hilarious stuff if you haven't seen it already. The story of the Aeron chair's failure in focus group testing, only to become a hugely successful product, also seems apt. I remember reading a great history of the testing of the Aeron, but can't locate it. Please post in the comments if you know it. Well worth another read.