It’s how we find the solution to every challenge; whether we’re designing a logo or delivering a strategic insight. It’s an approach that uses left and right sides of the brain. It’s a combination of the rational and emotional. It needs cogs to whirr and blood to pump. It demands collaboration and dedication. It’s a harder way of doing things, for a greater reward. And we love it.

And the great thing about love is that it grows over time. Our greatest 300million love story? That started in 2005.

In the Summer of 2005, a friend of 300million calls when we’re in a taxi coming back from a meeting. The Guild of Food Writers – an organization growing in stature off the back of the UK’s new found love of food and cuisine – needed a new logo. Sure, no problem. Come over to our place. We’d love to talk.

Carol came to our studio and we went through the Guild’s needs in detail. We love to squeeze out every bit of information that we can. We love our inquisitive approach, though it’s borderline ‘geek’ at times. We love to meet people and reassure them. Buying creativity can be a scary thing! We love to write a sharp, focused creative brief. We drafted our one-page brief and presented it to Carol. She thought we captured everything and gave us the green light to go. We thought Carol was lovely.

We love working as a team. Almost every project starts on our walls. We have to scrape and repaint them every six months or so as they’re scarred with tattered paper, tape and Blu-Tak. Everyone loves to see, share and debate ideas. A creatively intelligent approach needs this. And this is how it was for the Guild.

We love being inspired by what’s out there. We love our thick, heavy design resource books and awards annuals and we love the web. We love to feel envious about great design. We love the little books of logos Pentagram produce. Things like that set the benchmarks.

We love staying off the computer. Or, at least, being smart with how we use them. We love Macs. But they can limit thinking if not used carefully. So we use our pens, pencils, pads and Post-It notes. We love working fast – and sketching ideas is as fast as it gets. We love our shared sense of what’s what. A scribble can mean a beautiful bit of typography. We also love keeping one idea to a single piece of A4 paper; as we love to expose any weakness in an idea – as well as let brilliant ideas have space to live.

And so it was we were looking at a sketch of a pen nib… with a fork shape reversed-out of it. We loved it – but thought we could love it more. Something about those prongs that made it overly detailed. A three prong fork? A larger fork? We love the way we don’t stop until we get that tingle when you know something is special. We love the way we don’t always tweak an idea – but that we go right back to near the start with them sometimes. So, when someone suggested a spoon, instead of a fork, we all thought it suddenly looked simple, purer and lovely.

We love aesthetics; the balance of shape and proportion. It’s a human thing. Taking a sketch and making it beautiful needs love to get right. A lovely idea can quickly become banal through poor execution. It’s perhaps the most subtle but important part of the final design: it’s a creatively intelligent idea, that looks lovely too. Certainly, that’s what the Guild thought.

We love feedback. The logo quickly found its way around design blogs and forums. We loved all the kind words that started to come our way. It became the most creatively awarded logo design of the year. Judges loved it. And, the love has never really stopped since. In January 2011, it was recognised as one of the most loved logos of all time, nestled in between Coca-Cola and Volkswagen. It’s lovely how something so humble in comparison can rub shoulders with giants.

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