"Brand" is Tired
The word “brand” is tired. It is no longer inspiring to the savvy client. It used to be you could get clients jazzed and hungry for change by merely uttering the word in association with their products. They desperately desired to be a real “brand”.
But “brand” has become a hackneyed term, part of pop culture where every teen on Facebook is nurturing their own personal brand. But I would argue that because of this, having a clearly communicated brand is even more important. The expectations of the consumer have been raised. But “brand” is too small a word to describe what the world expects from a product or service company anymore.
What I see time again, even with Fortune 100 clients, is a brand ecosystem or brand experience that is fractured. Considering the totality of a brands equities and representing them consistently at every consumer touchpoint has gotten harder to achieve as the range of touchpoints has grown exponentially over the last couple decades. Even the biggest brands are often confusing their customers.
What we are really being tasked to do for our clients is “experience design”. This encompasses the whole of a brand, all equities and all consumer interactions. It is our job to come in with fresh eyes and tell them what is broken and what we need to do to fix it. To perform beyond the brief. Show them what could be.
In the world of consumer goods, packaging is the big gun. Experience with a capital “E”. Packaging is a touchpoint that triggers all of the senses. Sight, touch, smell, sound and (in some cases) taste. More than any other, packaging is the equity that keeps on giving. It lives on the consumers home, in their cupboard, on their desk, visible on their shelf long after the purchase decision was made. It is the one equity that can, if well executed, drive trial when a consumer encounters the brand for the first time at a store. We must remember that up to 65% of purchase decisions are made when the consumer is standing in front of the shelf, in that final 3 seconds.
If consumers are overwhelmed and are not choosing our clients offering that is our fault. It is because of an inconsistent brand strategy and an articulation that is not differentiated from its competition. You have to throw a big rock to make a splash these days.
When brands develop, execute and guard focused equities and a clear strategy is when they win. It is our job in design to be bold, be different and create a remarkable “experience”.
Because creating a “brand” is no longer enough.
Credits: Image Source: Flickr.com: Adam Goode
Designers Are Like Cows
While I was at Landor Associates I instituted an inspiration forum called Pasture. The name was inspired by a passage in Gordon MacKenzie's incredible book "Orbiting The Giant Hairball".
In one passage he describes how the majority of the time cows spend creating milk is spent in the pasture, eating grass and soaking up the sun and air. Only a small percentage is actually "producing" the milk attached to the milking machine in the barn. So grazing in the pasture is of incredible importance to creating milk, but this invisible part of the process is often overlooked and forgotten.
In Pasture everyone in the agency, not just designers, brought to a "show and tell" anything they were inspired by, a website, a book, a song, a work of art, a design and shared it with the group at a free pizza lunch. The incredibly wide range of inspiration was energizing to people in every functional area in the agency.
As creative leaders we know that the most disparate influences can find their way into design work to great effect. Looking at only competitive design influences and ideas is the quickest way to get more of the same cliches and well-trodden solutions.
We all know that shopping the competition and looking at award winning work is one way of finding inspiration, but looking outside of a category - far outside - can lead to the most innovative ideas. Designers have that special capacity to take the most divergent input and synthesize it into an elegant and breathtaking piece of work.
Giving designers that much-needed time to metaphorically graze, experience the sunlight and breath fresh air is the best way to keep them from coming up "dry" at milking time.
So yes, designers are like cows. But hey, it's not my analogy, it's Gordon’s and very true indeed.
Credits:
Image Souce: Flickr.com: Terinea IT Support. www.terrine.co.uk
Measuring Up: Quantifying Designers Performance
One question that’s plagued many a creative director is this: How you measure a creatives performance? You can measure an account person by how much business and revenue they generate. How about designers?
Designers in the commercial design industry are tasked with creating work that works. Work that pleases the client, delights the consumer and drives sales of goods or services. Sometime that includes the work pleasing the creative director, sometimes not. It’s commercial work, not fine art. Fine art has the luxury of being subjective and can be purely conceptual. Commercial work has to sell stuff.
The clearest metric to evaluate design work and by extension, the worker, is "adoption rate". Did the client choose the work? Did it make it to shelf, or on-air? Could the client quantify a sales bump? Or were all your designs left in the "outs" bin.
A slightly more subjective metric is whether the design delivered on the strategy of the project. Does the designer consistently hit the target - doing work that actually makes it to a client presentation (that is, past the CD and the account director whether the client chooses it or not).
The final criteria is the WOW factor. Is it gorgeous? Did it make the CD's eyes tear up just a little bit? Pure aesthetics are important, too, and a seasoned creative leader knows beautiful work when they see it. We were trained to recognize it and we have years of experience judging it. It also has a tendency to win awards if you’re lucky on top of being good.
I generally take notes as the year passes and capture who did what work in my designers goals folders, so at annual review time there are clear examples to reference in your conversations.
Other factors also influence a designers success in the studio. Do they show up to work on time? Is the work ready at critique time? Is it visually presented well? How well do they speak strategically to the work? What do they bring to the table in brainstorming sessions? What do they contribute when it comes to studio-wide inspiration? What creative energy two they bring to the workplace? How are their client relationships? All important factors.
But the crucial metric of a designers success is certainly “adoption”. Do they do strategic design work that makes it through the gauntlet? Is that work of high aesthetic quality? If the answers there are yes, you’ve got a winner on your hands and many other sins can be forgiven.
Credits: Image Source: Flickr.com: University of Salford Press, Techhub Manchester Murals Project
Now NOT To Hire A Diva Graphic Designer
If you’re in the creative management field you have certainly run into this. You have that one designer on your team who just can’t seem to let go of that one idea. It’s a good idea and the design is strong, but it needs to be massaged, edited, tweaked, maybe more on strategy. In the critique, when suggestions start to be made about the work, you can almost see the hairs raising on the back of their neck.
You can almost hear the words rattling around in their heads: It’s their baby! They’ve slaved over it! Kerned, tracked the type oh-so-lovingly, created just the perfect illustration. How could it possibly need to be changed? Its perfect for cryin’ out loud! Can’t you see that you overbearing CD?
These are the designers that don’t make anyones life easier. The stubborn ones, the argumentative ones, the ones that go away to work on revisions and come back a day later with virtually nothing changed to the artwork. What? Can’t you see I nudged it up? It’s totally different. But, you know it’s not totally different. They just aren’t budging.
Of course, I respect a designers convictions. If a designer believes strongly in something and can argue it’s merits in aesthetics and design strategy I can be convinced. I’ll come on board. But, sometimes a designer just turns out to be a diva. (or divo…)
And I have the one interview question that will keep you from hiring one.
I’ve probably hired around 400 designers and freelancers in my career. No kidding. I ALWAYS an sure to ask this question. Here it is
“Do you have a creative outlet outside of work?”
You see, if a designer ONLY has the design work that they do during the day, the design work that can have a thumbprint put on it by account managers, strategists, creative directors, by the clients child who happens to be following Daddy around at the office that day - then you are in trouble.
A designer has to have somewhere where they can create something that no one can touch. Where the work is sacred and the total intent is theirs and theirs alone. It can be a song, it can be an illustration, it can be a cupcake, a knitted sock monkey, it just has to be theirs and untouchable.
I would say about 90% of the time the person I am interviewing does have an alternative outlet for their creative juices than what goes on in the design studio. It’s actually very common. Creative people are creative everywhere. At home in the kitchen, on vacation, in a wood shop or even sitting in front of TV noodling on a guitar or sketching.
But when you get that candidate that says, “I just love graphic design, I live and breathe what I do in the design studio at work.”, then you are in trouble.
If a designer doesn’t have another creative outlet you’re in trouble. Then, what they do at work for clients will take on an immense weight of importance to them. It will be come everything. Don’t get me wrong, I want designers to care about what they are doing in the studio, I want them to really think about it, let their passions go wild. What I don’t want them to do is get the idea that it is sacrosanct. Because in the world of commercial graphic design - and let’s not be all hoity-toity about it - it IS commercial art, there is no place for “the precious”.
I’ve ignored a wrong answer from a candidate to this very important question. When I’ve really dug a portfolio, and the resume looks totally tight and the designer is wearing impossibly cool shoes. Thinking they had to be a good hire.
And the answer to this one question has always been able to tell the future.
Image source: Image by Libby Levi for opensource.com
In The Future: All Design Will Be Free
Hear me out on this one. In the future, All Design Will Be Free.
That's right. Free. Anything that can be digitally created: graphic design, music, video, animation, photography, illustration, etc. will be created specifically for you, for free.
Just look at what's happening around us in the branding and design landscape. In the past big branding consultancies could charge top dollar for corporate identities, branding, packaging, collateral, visual media, film, videos, animation. It wasn't uncommon for a Landor, a Pentagram, a Vignelli Associates, to charge $1MM or more from a large corporate ID project. Oodles of research, focus groups, rounds and rounds of explorations and revisions, massive style guides. Don't get me started on advertising. Those dollar figures are sick.
Not to say that those projects don't still happen today, they do. But there is a shift happening.
Those budgets are half what they used to be. Companies are bringing in smaller and smaller agency players that are doing things on the cheap and they are getting cheaper all the time. But corporate ID has taken the smallest hit, all things considered. Where the real bite has come is in the smaller projects. The $50K- $250K projects. "Smaller" being a relative term here.
A couple years ago, I worked on developing a new natural food brand for the biggest grocery store chain in the US. At the last minute, the EVP of private label brands decided to "crowdsource" the brand identity logo. The creative brief was drafted, posted on one of the largest crowdsourcing websites and a prize of $2500 was offered to the winner. We, the agency, were shocked and dismayed, of course. We just watched $100K of our project revenue evaporate. Poof.
Now the design phase of this particular crowdsourcing project saga is a topic for another post. Its long, head-spinning and funny if it wasn't so terrifying. Suffice to say that the client burned 6 weeks of design development time and we were handed a very subpar identity to deal with at the end if it all.
From the point of view of the client, if they could get an identity they liked for $2500 when it was originally going to cost them $100K from the agency, who wouldn't do it?
That's a 97.5% cost reduction, by the way.
We all know crowdsourcing design sites like DesignCrowd, Crowdspring, 99Designs are devaluing design and the design industry as a whole. For example, 99Designs has had 6.5 million logos submitted in the past three years. The company has paid out $20MM - or an average of $3 per design. A sobering figure.
The UK designer Andrew Kelsall posted on his blog a response to a client who decided, after engaging him for a quote, to crowdsource their design project:
"This...is putting hard-working designers out of business. 99% of the designers (on the site)...effectively work for free."
Sadly, this monster was created by the designers themselves. By participating in crowdsourcing, they have driven down prices of design, are promoting pitch-work, and are lowering their own chances of making a living.
But now specifically commissioned creative work is being done for pennies, too.
On Fiverr.com there are literally hundreds of designers who are willing to create work for just five dollars. The site has coders, website builders, videographers, photographers, animators, voice-over artists, musicians, all who offer services for five bucks. In many cases what you get for five bucks is pretty amazing. Granted, designers on the site up-sell for elevated levels of deliverables services, but the precedent is set. And the competition is fierce.
Every day creatives on Fiverr.com are offering more and more for your five bucks.
Hoping to be among the chosen for a project, design hopefuls are doing work for free. Creatives in the developing world economies in particular are making out-sourcing digital creative work incredibly easy and competitive.
In the natural food brand project for the grocery chain I mentioned above, the client received 800 logo submissions to choose from. There were over 250 designers who did work, and some of it very good work, for only the slightest of hope of being chosen. The client saw all the work, evaluated all the work and asked for revisions on a great deal of the work. Then they paid one person for one design.
The rest, 799 designs, they got for free.
Today anything that can be digitally created and transferred: music, design, photography, coding, etc. is being given away for free by talented people who just want their work to be appreciated by someone, somewhere. On Flickr.com, there are currently 58 million photographs available to use under an Attribution Only Creative Commons License. Which means you can use the photos for free commercially, as long as it is attributed to the photographer.
Increasingly, if you want free design work, fonts, video, animations you can get them. Easily. You can use them with the creators blessing. The quality of the work is going up everyday. And it's only going to get better.
And eventually, it will all be free.
Credits:
Image source: "Free Design" http://www.doobybrain.com
In Praise of the Cube: Creatives Need Privacy
I'm a bit of an introvert. Maybe more than a bit. I find group activities somewhat draining. I find solitude rejuvenating and I do my best creative work when I'm alone.
Given that, it's kind of funny that I've spent my career leading large groups of designers and artists in creative settings, Fortune 500 companies, global brand consultancies and learning institutions.
I began weaving the web of my career as a painter, a fine artist. A solitary pursuit for the most part. When I needed to find a path to make a better living I got my MFA so I could teach. I loved teaching because I love learning. I love sharing how to travel a path of learning with others.
Later, I found that being a creative director was a lot like teaching except you made more money. Also, your work and the work of your teams are enjoyed by people all over the world. No artist wants to work in a total vacuum.
But with this transition came a need to be more outgoing. To be more often involved in group pursuits than individual ones. I built up that muscle. And it took a lot of trips to the gym.
Susan Cain, in her book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" writes about how in the 20th century as our society moved from agrarian communities in the country to the cities, we changed. We went from working with a small group of people who we knew well to living and working in large groups of people we didn't know. Being "outgoing" became the goal. Our hero's became the great salesman of the world. Our bible, Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people".
This evolution brought with it physical changes to where and how we are working. In the corporate world and particularly design studios, the move to create open floor plan work spaces has reached a critical mass. In a knee-jerk reaction to breaking down the walls of de-personalization that the Dilbert-esque office cubicle seas wrought, we have lost something that was worth protecting. Solitude. Designers need solitude. They need quiet and privacy to ruminate and ideate and play with ideas. Without distraction.
The casualties of this evolution are everywhere. You can see them in any design studio in the world hiding under their noise-cancelling headphones. They aren't just getting into their own jams. They are trying to escape the constant noise and distraction the crumbling of the cubicle walls has brought down on them.
One designer on Whirlpool articulates what I have heard over and over in my years as a creative leader:
"I work in an open-plan office, and hate talking to the people near me. I just don't want to annoy everyone else. So instead, I hole up at my desk, earphones on all day. I email people who sit five feet from me. Whoever designed my office has absolutely failed: Instead of making people more collaborative, it separated them. This trend needs to stop."
The results of this trend are also quantifiable it turns out. Finland's Institute of Occupational Health reports a decline of 5-10% of the performance of cognitive tasks like reading, writing and other creative work when in an open office setting. Management might be too drunk on the work-pod Kool-Aide and the cost savings in office furniture. Or the shoulder-surfing tabs-keeping on "what the hell are these people doing?".
Or that open office plans just look cool. And I have to say they do look cool. Because if we look cool and modern, we are cool and modern, right? I mean, can you imagine a design firm with cubes? I didn't think so. This, it turns out, is a big part of the problem.
The facts increasingly point to this: Companies see open, collaborative spaces as an extension of their brand image. They are more interested in how it looks, than how well it actually works. Solitude is just out of fashion. Simple as that. And for creatives and designers that's a problem.
It should be a problem for their companies, too.
All this is outweighing optimal creative productivity. And since when has business turned it's back on improved productivity? Especially when in today's business world, creativity and innovation are what separates the winners from the also-rans.
The fact is people whose work is distracted make 50% more mistakes and take twice as long to finish. Maybe that has something to do with the complaint that we are working longer hours than ever.
Plus, most designers don't like it. You've heard "A happy wife is a happy life"? Well it goes triple for designers.
The real question is: What does work? The answer is choice. Balance. Companies and agencies need to give designers access to both kinds of work spaces. If I were to place a bet, I would bet that the spaces that afford designers quiet, uninterrupted concentration and a reasonable amount of visual privacy will be the ones being fought over. Tooth and nail, if I know my designers.
The pendulum of open floor plan offices needs to swing back to center.
In re-watching Susan Cain's amazing TED talk about the power of introversion, one statement jumped out at me. "There are no revelations without solitude."
What design revelations and innovations have we already missed by removing our creatives space to think?
photo credit: Ben Mautner, @flickr
Sensory Packaging: Beyond the Box
I was interviewed by Packaging World Magazine about "sensory packaging" last year. I think that the topic is more important that ever. Everywhere you turn brands are engaging a broader range of senses to elevate the customer experience, improve engagement, driving trial and purchase.
I had a conversation with Microsoft a few months ago about how they might be able to "consider" with much more intent and attention the experience people have when they open one of their products. They have come a long way from the days of "What if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging" but they still have a way to go. Their Surface box is really quite sexy with a really nice use of clean lacquer on black matte.
I discussed Apple with them, of course, how could you not? That's who they are watching and chasing of course. Who isn't? Apart from the admirable visual cleanliness of the pack design, the tactile experience, the tightness of the box seams, the nesting of the product, the feeling in your fingers when the box top pulls off is all completely "considered". Even the smell of the interior.
Have you ever smelled the interior of a new computer box? You probably wouldn't even mentally register it, but I would bet that you have a olfactory memory of it. There is even a company that makes a USB device that exudes smells. Imagine if they offered a "new Mac smell". I'd buy one. Just like the car "scent pine trees" that smelled like "new car".
Olfactory memories are the most indelible that humans have. Every time I smell Chanel #5 I think of my grandmother. Every time. She passed 20 years ago. Every time I smell root beer I think of Deerhorn Camp in Wisconsin (long story…)
Here's my extended interview "The Sentient Side of Packaging" from Packaging World Magazine Anne Marie Mohan was a fantastic interviewer and I thank her for making sense of my ramblings where I discussed everything from scratch and sniff to velvet flocking.
A Great Career Looks More Like A Web Than A Ladder
In my professional life, I'd like to say I'm mostly self-taught. But to be truthful, I didn't teach myself. Hardly anyone does, unless they are a contractor or self-employed. It was on-the-job training; that is, experiencing new challenges and learning on the fly and with the help and guidance of some incredible managers.
I was schooled in the fine arts and got my MFA in Painting. But then, after years of struggling to find teaching work at the college level and working day jobs, I started my own apparel company. I eventually closed my business and went to work for one of my competitors as a T-Shirt designer. This was at the dawn of the computer era, so I taught myself everything I could on my own time at home, and then put it to work at the office, doing apparel, catalogs, marketing collateral, etc.
Eventually I moved up and started managing people and quickly discovered that managing designers was a lot like teaching, except you made a lot more money and weren't out of work every 9 months. And I was good at it. I loved inspiring, developing and leading creative people. And I found I loved business.
I eventually landed at a Fortune 100 apparel company and after 11 years worked my way up from director to VP overseeing 4 departments and 65 people. I had an incredible mentor there who gave me a new challenge or a new department or a promotion just when I needed it. I learned the "business" of business: financial reporting, budgets, HR goal setting, assortment planning, building presentation decks, doing cost/benefit analysis. All the things that they don't tell you you'll have to do when you think you want to be a CD. I am good at it and unlike many creative types, I also like it.
After I left the apparel/retail industry I moved over to the agency-side as an Executive Creative Director, doing strategic design, branding and consumer packaged goods. I had an incredible mentor there as well. I was learning on the job. I could lead designers, but knew little about strategic design or design thinking when I started. I learned to pitch and win new business, manage client relationships, build processes. All on the job.
My career isn't typical. As Paul Pressler used to say at the Gap, "A great career looks more like a web than a ladder." You have to teach yourself whatever you can, when you can. Be open to learning from managers, mentors, co-workers and even vendors. Take new challenges on. Embark on a new career trajectory even though you may only have a vague idea of where it's going or what you're doing. You'll learn more. Learning is one of the great joys in life. It should never end.