Strategies for assessing design. How do you know what’s good?

August 3rd, 2011  |  Glenda Rissman

When planning a new creative initiative, you know the importance of aligning the visuals, and messaging to your marketing and strategic objectives. But how can you assess if your creative partner understands those goals and – more critically – has the ability to translate them into action?

This is no idle question. Improperly executed programs can do more than damage your brand integrity. They can also weaken customer loyalty. Although checks and balances exist to ensure creative executions support strategic objectives, many companies still frequently approve and distribute questionable executions. So where’s the disconnect? Why do some marketing managers inadvertently green light designs that could harm their company’s image?

Although there are several answers to that question, sometimes it comes down to this: companies rely on the executions presented by their creative partner, even when those executions may be off-target, off-brand or simply sub-standard.

This happens most frequently when companies begin work with a new creative partner. Despite competitive RFPs and careful assessment of portfolios, companies still often select firms that lack the ability, know-how or capacity to fulfill their needs. Whether you’re selecting a new firm or reviewing the quality of your existing firm’s work, you need to:

1. Understand the project’s history.
The question is not whether the creative resonates with you; it’s whether it fulfilled that specific client’s objectives. That means beautiful visuals alone aren’t enough. Creative firms can’t deliver solutions that align with your visual identity and messaging guidelines if they don’t have a complete understanding of your strategic objectives. This largely explains why speculative work rarely allows companies to gauge a creative partner’s underlying ability.

2. Ascertain that the creative partner can deliver on your needs.
Although strategic workshops and creative processes can be important introductory tools, the creative partner you select must have the requisite expertise to translate the information you share into tangible results. Do they have proven experience bringing corporate visions to life? Can they perform beyond your expected baseline?

3. Select a creative partner with the skills to analyze gut reactions.
Does your creative partner know how to elicit a response that reflects your organization? Do they understand the overall industry landscape? Have they analyzed what your competitors are doing? Do they have the finger on the pulse of creative innovation? Do they follow best practices in the design world and from different media?

4. Assess if the solution represents the organization’s culture or essence.
Is it targeted to the appropriate audience? Does it reflect the company’s character attributes? Is it properly differentiated? Does it evoke a specific spirit or mood? Is it aspirational?

5. Take intangible elements into account.
Is the execution both creatively fresh and capable of withstanding the test of time? Is it thought provoking? Irreverent? Immediate without being too trendy? Beyond the norm? Or perhaps pared down to something so simple that it evokes surprise or delight?

While there is no foolproof process for assessing and selecting the ideal creative partner, asking yourself these questions gives you a basis to begin objectively analyzing something that, by its nature, can be abstract and immeasurable. This checklist should help to raise the bar on creative executions across the board.

A Simple Solution

June 8th, 2011  |  Karen Henricks

It’s nice to see designers come up with a branding solution that doesn’t try too hard, that works precisely because of its simplicity. Case in point: the new (old) Canadian Olympic Team logo and supporting mosaic graphic, designed by Ben Hulse.

With respect to the value of the iconic symbol of the maple leaf as Canadian and the rings as Olympic, the logo communicates what it needs to.

Does it bother me that the logo is virtually identical to a version in Canada’s Olympic past? Not in the slightest.

I look forward to seeing the mosaic graphic applied to both online and printed materials.

Modern observation

February 17th, 2011  |  Glenda Rissman

I was at a dinner party recently and shared an art experience I had in 1980. I was 19 years old, it was late summer and I was ending a 2 month, budget trip in London. I had very little money so I walked a lot and spent what little I had on subways and museums. I went to the Tate Modern and found myself in a room that housed 3 huge Rothko paintings. There was no one else in the room so I sat down on the bench and allowed myself to take in the glorious reds and maroons of these exquisite canvases. Seeing them in books just didn’t do them justice. I sat there for twenty minutes and it was unforgettable.

Could that happen today? Would it be possible for me to have the same kind of experience if I were 19 today? Do we take the time to truly experience any more?

Museums are so crowded all the time now. It has become very difficult to take the time to reflect in these places without having someone jostle you or step in front of your line of sight. It has become all about recording – and then posting it to Facebook! An afternoon at the MOMA demonstrated that art is now viewed with a cell phone or camera between the viewer and the art. Why would you want to look at a poorly lit reproduction later when you can experience the real thing in all it’s glory now. I don’t need an image of the Rothkos as evidence that I was there – they are permanently etched in my mind, accurate or not. It’s when the digital camera’s battery dies or I’ve left the cell phone in another pocket that I allow myself to live in the now and truly take in what is around me and then I realize what I have been missing.

At that very dinner party, where I shared my Rothko moment, was an illustrator that I had worked with 18 years ago and had not reconnected with until that night. She looked at me in amazement as I told my story because she too had a revelatory Rothko moment at the Tate when she was a teen. It was something we could share and experience again together… and then I tweeted about it.

Brand backlash!

February 9th, 2011  |  Peter Scott

There is a current trend where shortly after, or sometimes even before, they are made official an organization’s new identity and brand collateral takes a beating in the public domain. New branding efforts have provoked emotional responses in the past. For example the “new Coke” fiasco of 1985, when a massive negative public reaction occurred in response to Coke’s unsolicited reformulation of their popular soft drink flavour. There have been other public outcries since, but the recent flurry of public brand-bashing has reached new heights with the helping hand of social media. Notable big brands GAP and Tropicana have bowed to public pressure and more locally the University of Waterloo has been targeted. Each example illustrates very different fumbles in the branding process, all resulting with unwanted PR, and in some cases, requiring a complete reversal of the initiative.

Why the fuss?
I doubt that there is one universal reason, but social media isn’t the culprit – it just makes it easier and faster to get a response out to the public and the media. Granted, we as consumers are all reticent of change to some degree. Some of the examples above seem to have been launched in a manner that might not have helped with consumer adoption. Sensitivity to brand heritage, equity, nostalgia and longevity all play into the potential reaction to newly launched brands. An inclusive process is often sought in rebranding engagements and while this can help to manage public response through the involvement of major stakeholders, it often results in a watered-down design that rarely does its job to differentiate the organization in a crowded marketplace.

What to do?
A successful rebranding must be deeply rooted in the organization’s business strategy and goals. Sounds pretty straightforward, but in execution it is anything but! It takes a rare skill to translate the essence of an organization and it’s asprirations in to a graphic and distinctive mark. Successful brands are not campaign driven – they need to withstand the test of time. You should include a proper cross-section of stakeholders throughout the process and ask specific questions when requesting feedback to help control the outcome. Finally, launch it in a way that best reflects the organization’s values after doing your due diligence to ensure your work is ownable. If you’ve done your job well, then you will be able to withstand the inevitable squawking that comes from inside and out.

Collaborative consumption

February 3rd, 2011  |  Janice Carter

WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS from rachel botsman on Vimeo.

Until recently, the term “collaborative consumption” was absent from my vocabulary. According to Wikipedia “The term collaborative consumption is used to describe the cultural and economic force away from ‘hyper-consumption’ to re-invented economic models of sharing, swapping, bartering, trading or renting that have been enabled by advances in social media and peer-to-peer online platforms.” Nominated by GOOD Magazine as “One Of The 15 Books You Should Have Read In 2010”,  “What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption” presents a compelling case. Authors Roo Rogers and Rachel Botsman discuss the rise of car sharing, temporary room rentals, clothing swaps and social lending. I found it refreshing to read about real examples of these peer-to-peer marketplaces: zipcar, city car share, AirBnB, iStopOver, thredup, Lending Club and Zopa.

Since reading the book, I’ve become aware of collaborative consumption and started to notice other instances of the movement. For example, Alex Bogusky recently left advertising hot-shop Crispin Porter + Bogusky to build “COMMON.” It calls itself a “new capitalist brand” built on “transitioning from competitive advantage to collaborative advantage.”

Along similar lines, former Nike creative at Wieden+Kennedy and worldwide creative director at Ogilvy released a new book this month. “We First” explores how social media and emerging technologies bring brands and consumers together to build a more socially and economically prosperous world. Bogusky and “We First” strike me as trying too hard to be do-gooders, but I admire the premise and think they’re on to something.

The complexity of simplicity

February 1st, 2011  |  Darrell Corriveau

Recently I attended a talk at OCADU, by User Experience (UX) designer and author Dan Saffer, called The Complexity of Simplicity in Design. The talk centered around the idea that achieving simplicity in design is the ideal, but the process to get there is often very complex. In his examples Saffer mainly referred to consumer products and software, but the lessons can be applied to user interfaces and, by extension, web sites and web platforms as well.

Saffer first outlined various roadblocks and pitfalls that occur and must be dealt with to achieve the desired end result. These include things like feature creep, version control and something called edge cases – which on its own deserves exploration in another post. He then went into some detail about the concept of Tesler’s Law. Tesler’s Law, formulated by human-computer interaction pioneer Larry Tesler, states that all tasks or processes have an inherent level of complexity that can’t be reduced. All we can do is shift the responsibility of the task to either the user (more control) or the product (more automation). For example, the first generations of the iPod gave the user basic control over song selection and volume, but the system automatically displayed songs in easy to access categories like album title, artist and genre. The balance of control and automation contributed greatly to the usability of the product.

We see this control/automation interplay on web sites when we perform searches, fill out forms, navigate shopping carts and try to pay for things. The designer and client must make dozens of small decisions on how best to make these experiences easy for users while allowing enough interaction so they feel in control.

When everything is in balance, as in the iPod, the solution seems simple and inevitable. Attributes that were neatly summed up in Saffer’s concluding slide – a quote from Christian Lindholm, Managing Partner and Director at Fjord: “Most companies are looking to ‘wow’ with their products, when in reality what they should be looking for is an ‘of course’ reaction.”

Molson Blue?

September 15th, 2010  |  Darrell Corriveau

As a result of a convoluted set of circumstances, the iconic Canadian beer brand Labatt’s Blue (for sale in the U.S.) will be produced by beer giant and main competitor Molson-Coors. Companies often produce goods for other companies to package and brand as their own, but it is unusual for two longstanding archrivals in the same consumer space to have agreed to an arrangement like this.

Through my formative beer drinking years (long since past) a person usually drank one or the other. You were either a Labatt’s Blue person or a Molson Canadian person. Once the line was drawn, you never crossed to the other side. The taste of the product didn’t seem to matter. People became loyal brand disciples through the influence of friends, older family members and of course the overwhelming force of giant advertising campaigns and brand awareness schemes.

Differentiating these brands on the basis of taste and quality is pointless. Already very similar, now they are even being produced in the same factories. The effect of this is to further reduce these brands to generic commodity status. The only difference seems to be that they employ slightly different marketing strategies.

Maybe the nature of the product is that traits such as uniqueness and authenticity don’t matter, but those Blue and Canadian loyalists are already crossing to other sides entirely. The competition from foreign imports, micro-brews and ironically, large American brands that are often brewed here by Molson or Labatt’s, will likely contribute to declining market share. In the face of this, advertising and brand building is more essential than ever. The question is, will people buy it anymore?

We Are Happy To Serve You

April 30th, 2010  |  Janice Carter

Today, Leslie Buck, designer of the iconic coffee cup dies at 87. If you were in New York, particularly before the advent of a certain coffee establishment with a green logo, his cup will likely look familiar to you. Even if you haven’t been to NY, you’ve likely spotted the java holder in “Law & Order”, “Sex & the City” and other NY-based TV shows and movies.

Buck, a refugee from then Czechoslovakia, introduced the cup in the 1960s. The graphics have since been slapped on t-shirts, mugs and tourist memorabilia. If imitation is a form of flattery, Buck should certainly be flattered.

Now, does this mean that the cup is well-designed? I don’t think the answer matters. I think the point is that the cup has become part of pop-culture. How many designers can say they’re leaving a legacy? The next time you’re in New York, grab a coffee in one of the old diners and remember Buck. He was happy to serve you.

Feeling a little blue?

April 23rd, 2010  |  Peter Scott

The rapid expansion of Walmart and Sam’s Club since the early 60’s has been a phenomenon. This compelling time-based info-map by Flowing Data helps explain (or perhaps mirrors?) the ongoing decline of small towns everywhere as the country gets subsumed by the big box/power centre invasion. Notice how growth starts slowly at first, and then accelerates greatly as more stores are added. Truly virus-like.

What is Apple?

April 14th, 2010  |  Karen Henricks