More and more recently we have been asked what we do. Sure we have designed websites and brochures over the years. But fundamentally we have been a branding company at first this has been produced through the visual aspects of branding such as the mark, and other communications such as stationery, flyers, powerpoint templates etc. More recently however we have been developing projects that also get into the strategy of our clients and what they do and more importantly why they do it.
As we have all heard the big challenge of today is to create authentic stories that are of your brand. Describing what and how you do it are still important but it seems to be the story and narrative that really gets people emotionally involved in a brand and it's experience. The above short video a quick snapshot of a recent project we have worked on with EDC. What has been interesting with the ongoing project is the huge amount of stories people have when it comes to Ecodesign, yet it is still on initial approach seen as a bit of a grey area. You can see more of EDC's thoughts on their blog EDCshare.
With the goal of opening up the organisation as much as possible we think the blog is a good start. And it is this that has made us realise that 'making' and 'doing' can be done in many different ways. We feel the next decade or so will be our role to challenge preconceptions of our clients and hope to bring insight. Curating to create brand narratives.
Well we have been working on this for a year or so now. After years working on the brand communications for Calon Wen, we have developed a new series of packaging for Milk and soon to be Butter, (there might even be a few more things as well). The project has been interesting for us mainly due to the project being a genuine brand development project. It is quite rare to get these as normally they are a total re-brand or it's a start-up with no visual language.
So to develop a brand and it's message while not alienating the already existing market. So what about Calon Wen? what were they changing? With the recent recession 'Organic' products have suffered. Perceived luxury products are always going to have a hard time in a shrinking economy, in particular products that are seen as everyday (like milk). So we had to develop Calon Wen beyond being organic and provided a richer story that was based on people. The labels themselves are a small micro-representation of this. The previous labels were highly successful however 'ORGANIC' was over powering in comparison to the brand name. Also the fun playful element of the cows was limited to being in a traditional stamp design above the name. So the cow's have been integrated into a scene that allows for a richer and more engaging label. Finally the roundel that we have developed for the other products such as Cheese has been incorporated into the label.
The story of family farms being for us a hugely important in who Calon Wen are and what they are about. This was kind of lost within the sides of the Calon Wen story and label so we wanted to bring this to the front. Above you can see the new label and below the older version. It would be great to hear peoples thoughts on the labels and thinking behind it. You can also visit the Calon Wen facebook page to see a lot more of the work we have been doing.
Prototyping made simple from thinkpublic on Vimeo.
As some of you may know myself and allie and the rest of thinkARK are going to be holding a games festival which will take place at the start of October and will take place during the 2011 Cardiff Design Festival. The festival will cover a conference and also some playing of games both on and offline (and everything in between). In the lead up to the festival we will be testing games to see how things work etc. Two weekends ago we did our first games testing day. We didn't have very long to put the game together but we were pretty sure how it was going to play and how people would react. One word... WRONG!!!
Things that had seemed insignificant became big issues, and things that had not really been planned were a great success. So to this point and think about our own practice and brand strategy. There is a huge amount of information to be learnt to trying things out first. We would call it prototyping and there is a great video above from Designers Front and thinkpublic who describe the strengths of prototyping. The thing therefore that we do is to apply a design process to the project that standardises how a project is produced yet allows for the the unique brand to steer the outcome.
This is the most important thing you can ever do if you want to get anywhere in solving a problem. Questions are where it all starts. If you have a bad question you will invariably get a bad reply. In today's culture the question and how it is delivered is also even more complex. We must look at how and where the question is asked.
A few examples for you:
THE BAD - The old time travel story
Imagine a group of people from the middle ages have been transported to 2011. You want to ask them about their thoughts on the 21st century, and how it compares to their lives back in the middle ages. You decide to ask them through an online questionnaire as it is cheap and simple to implement. Only problem is the people dont know how to access the internet or use a computer, so you don't get any responses and are no further in your understanding of their opinions.
THE GOOD - So lets imagine another scenario which is based on open IDEO's learnings
You have a plan to develop an online community that works together to create responses to some of the issues in the world through design and creative responses. You start to think about how best to get to these people. You think the best way would be to go to them and so ask them on a online community that already exists (facebook), you ask them a few questions about your plans and see what kind of issues these people are interested in. You get great feedback and learn some important information to then go ahead and setup your own venture.
Finally one more thing - Framing
A good question can always be improved by adding a bit of context to it. If it is online then add some further information to frame the question. So stopping people take the question off in directions you do not want to investigate. Also the context or story immediately pulls you into the question and brings better responses.
Note
A big thanks to Tom Hulme, IDEO for his talk at Intersection 2011 who spoke about open IDEO and the learnings they have had through the project.