Creativity vs. Consistency

There's a line that's hard to find between creativity and consistency. At Group innovation and creativity are major parts of who we are. At the same time, we want to deliver something to the customer that is consistent enough not to be confusing. When they order two quarters of the same curriculum line, they need to know what features to expect with the second quarter. We want to wow people, but not confuse them.

And therein lies the struggle. Here's one I struggle with: email signatures. Group recently created a standard format for email signatures. There's a value to the consistency there. It's part of the brand. If a customer emails two Groupies, that signature is a brand. There's slightly different content (obviously the identity and contact information), but there's a brand associated.

But then, does that rob us of our creativity? What if I wanted to use red in my signature? (Which I do, actually, despite the fact that it breaks the brand...)

But by allowing a free-for-all, would we have some people with no concept of readability and design that they put neon green text on a purple background in some obnoxiously hard to read font?

At Group we're always being challenged to think outside the box, break the mold, see things in a different way. Even to break the rules sometimes. But there must be some rules or things would be mass chaos, with customers too confused to use Group again.

The problem is finding the line in the middle of the spectrum.