The Strategic Conceptual Approach

— to —

Applied Creativity.

Throughout your journey, I'll be your teams brand design champion, to guide you through the design-thinking process, to apply the principles, and structure, I'll be there to work through any obstacles or challenges, bring you through to successful completion.

It’s Not Magic

— IT’S LOGIC —

Design Is A Process.

Through conversation, observation, asking the right questions and listening, and digging deeper still. It is through exercise, and discussion, and research and analysis, I will lead your team, towards bringing your product to life or embodying your service brand.

Design is a way of envisioning the future and the craft of bringing it to fruition. Design is a pursuit in making the invisible, not only visible — but, meaningful, useful and beautiful.

Brand Design is a practice in applied strategy & creativity, across Aesthetic, Business, Culture & Technology.

The intention in my practice is in the interest of connecting business & brand strategy with sales & marketing. Driven by the strategic conceptual approach, design forms both the context & content of any intentionally crafted experience, along the path of a journey, where soul-stirring touchstones mingle with valuable benefits, where relationship is found, and memories that matter are made. Strategic Brand Design frames + translates business strategy — the sum of your organizations intention & actions — into customer experience. When your team, strategy, direction and design of product & service experiences are all agreed, focused, and aligned, you unlock the power of Brand: Origins, Truths, Language, Icons, Story, Positioning and Culture.

“Art is in the Framing”

— Paul Rand

—A Method Towards Brand Design As A Whole

In essence, the narrative arc of the Brand Design Method, is similar to the basic design process: Learn > Understand > Articulate > Visualize > Build > Test > Observe > Repeat. Most importantly this process — from strategy to activation — is an iterative and collaborative progression. The design of the brand, is the design of the whole.  The brand is the sum of the perception and understanding of the value, meaning, purpose of your offering — it's shaped in each conversation, each interaction, each touchstone and story you tell along the customer journey — it's the belief they have around why your brand matters, made up of the memories and ideas the audience holds in their mind. This is the brand as a whole, and as Paul Rand so eloquently states, the "art is in the framing". I bring 20 years of brand thinking & design process, art direction & visual language, storytelling & problem solving expertise, to your business challenges.

—A Method Towards Brand Design As A Whole

In essence, the narrative arc of the Brand Design Methodology, is the same are the design process: Learn > Understand > Articulate > Visualize > Build > Test > Observe > Repeat. The design of the brand, is the design of the whole — the brand is the sum of the perception & understanding of the value, meaning and purpose of your offering — with each touchstone, each interaction and the story you tell along the way — the total experience, memories and ideas the audience holds in their mind about it. This is the brand, and as Paul Rand so eloquently states, the art is in the framing. I bring 20 years experience of brand design thinking & process, art direction & visual language, system design communication & problem solving to your business communication challenge.

This highly specialized endeavour of Brand Design is one that continuously advancing the understanding of the audience, the offering and the market; as we strive to empathize, learn and re-learn from new perspectives. We analyze research and synthesize insights. Hypothesize and evaluate ideas; develop concepts and hypothetical answers; rapidly prototype, test and scrutinizes these ideas.  So to iterate, improve, test, refine, and iterate again — before producing, launching and delivering the right design solution and customer experience, that is truly innovative, meaningful and delightful, which provides the customer with the value, belief, and meaning they seek from the brand.

I help ambitious teams navigate brand & design strategy, and creative direction — bringing logic and intuition, curiosity and creativity, research &  customer centric lens to brand internal & external communication. My goal is to transform your vision, your teams expertise, business aims & intentions, into brand identity, activation and experience. I will help you define, distill and package products, services and touchstones which define your competitive advantage.

—A Strategic Conceptual Approach, Brings it All Together.

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A

Strategy:The agreed foundation upon which we plan & build the conceptual approach.

Discover and define the vision, the truth & meaning and value in the concept. We build a sound foundation of understanding, from which we distill the value and distinction of the offering. Through internal, customer and competitor research & analysis, we can illuminate opportunities, and reflect insights.

We start with curiosity and empathic human-centric exploration, to grow the clarity in the category and persona, of their experience, their needs, their perception of the offering, the environment, the market, the competition.

Define the ethics, the ideology and underlying principles that uphold your brand. Define the framework for telling the story of your brand. We articulate the design strategy, and define the project drivers, factors, challenges and opportunity, which will inform the conceptual approach, and bring focus to the entire process.

B

Direction:The tactics & treatments to inspire + focus the brand and the creative; to tell a story that matters.

Translate the verbal — criteria, requirements, goals, messages, meaning & value outlined in the strategy — into the art direction and visual language, developing a voice, a personality with the look & feel. How can we use image (perception, tone and theme), universal language, design and cultural cues, to enhance the brand's perception, association, positioning, meaning?

The strategy is brought to life, made tangible and visual through a series of creative briefs to communicate the overall Design Direction — the concept, core visual themes, and visual language, including key design ingredients and cues, to be leveraged to tell the brand (audience) story) to create the desired impression, perception and tone; to support the concept.

C

Creation:Craft experiences & touch-stones all along the way, to activate + embody the brand meaning & value.

Based on our Direction, articulating a conceptual approach, to being relevant within a desired aesthetic, perception, culture; to reflect a discernible and aspiring style, that delivers the desired message, in a preferred voice/tone, required to make the necessary impression, to influence the audience to choose the brand.

This third dimension, is where design rubber meets the road. Where design ideas and decisions are guided by the direction, to merge form + content, type, image, and colour, information, medium, meaning, and value, to craft an experience that is meaning and memorable to the audience.

The design of products, services and touch-points — each interaction, designed on-purpose. Experiences tasked with provoking recall, engagement & loyalty; while shaping an experience that delivers the solution, belief and connection the customer desires.

“Clarity Comes Through Articulation.”

— David C. Baker

BRAND DESIGN PROCESS

01  Discovery ———

02  Roadmap ———

03  Story ———

04  Positioning ———

05  Direction ———

06  Identity ———

07  Offering ———

08  Experience ———

Research, observation, exercise, dialog. Asking the right question and listen. We discover origins, ethos, vision, truth, and insights.

Further analysis internally, to capture the wisdom of your team members, until we can define and articulate the brand strategy.

Brand the human connection to build a relationship. Create brand audience personas, brand as person, character, culture of the MVA.

Express the brand's valuable distinction. Articulate a refined understanding of the audience, category, offering, competition, value proposition.

Translate verbal language, vocabulary and meaning into visual language, aesthetic toolbox, art and image direction.

Develop a visual system for for expressing the values, personality, tone, perception, tone to create the right impression on the audience.

When your offer is attuned to your audience, packaged in the identity, with messaging reinforcing the concept, you can identify your Competitive Sustainable Advantage or the category defining must have product or service.

Take Your First Step Towards Brand Unity, Clarity and Expression↓

Free Brand Audit!

What Are Your Greatest Challenges?

What are your greatest challenges — is it in brand planning, expression, design, implementation or activation? Does your messaging accurately communicate the value of your brand product or services to your customers, in an efficient, clear and intuitive manner? How well does your brand visual identity differentiate your services within your category, or the packaged product on the shelf? Is your brand image, campaign, ad, and content easily recognized, clearly defined, and aligned with your philosophy? How relevant are the messages and value proposed therein, to your bulls-eye target audience? Does your brand experience create the desired perception, impression, and memory for your audience? Does your brand communication — verbal & visual languages + messages — clarify, exemplify and embody your brand positioning? How are you measuring the success of your marketing strategy and initiatives throughout the customer journey? Having trouble articulating your vision for your brand, product,service or campaign? →

NEED STRATEGIC DESIGN ?

AN EVOLVED APPROACH

Brand Thinking

Essentially, strategy (noun) is a plan to achieve a goal — they say, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. As a verb, strategy is more of a bridge between the tactics and the desired results. For each brand or business the primary strategy is one of differentiation. Understanding how you are different & better than the next brands offering a similar, solving the same problem. The integrated & holistic planning process which provides and guides a set of activities or patterns to be applied, to bridge the gaps from business intention to design direction to brand experience.

Research Lens

Research guides “how” we frame the context of the problem, and the solution. Paul Rand, said: “Art is in the Framing” — he was certainly right. How we look at something, our perception of the subject/object, is informed by our unique perspective. The more perspectives we can gain and understand, the more well-rounded our understanding will become. Research gives form to human-empathy, insights, and shine light on the path forward.

Customer Centric

I enjoy working together closely with my clients on a continuum, to ensure that the execution of the strategy, the implementation of the communication, the tactics — i am there to follow through to guide the strategy and design. This ensure the activation of brand strategy, identity, campaigns excel at expressing the focused value and meaning.

Crossing Boundaries

As the great design educator Kenneth Hiebert — who trained at the Swiss Basel School of Design, under legendary tutelage of Ruder, Hofmann, Weignart — teaches us; “crossing boundaries — discovering the application of one experience of life to another — is the basis for many of the greatest discoveries.”

Philosophy:

For the love of wisdom and study of the fundamental nature of our existence.Quest to understand true selfClosely tied to identity and culture, unifying aesthetics & ethicsUnderstanding interplay and relationship of the individual parts of the system, to each other and to the whole.

Cognition & Psychology:

Hierarchy of needs. Mirroring & social validation. Contiguity. Psychology of colour. Cognitive bias codex. Gestalt: figure-ground, Law of Proximity, Law of Similarity, Law of Closure, Law of Continuity, Law of Symmetry. Psychology: Von Restorff effect, Hick’s Law, The Principle of Least Effort, The Serial Positioning Effect, The Principle of Perpetual Habit.

Myth & Storytelling:

Archetypes. Narrative arc. Moments. Universal concepts & themes. Repeating patterns. Dream & Invision. Protagonist & antagonist. Culture and meaning..

Symbology & Metaphor:

Cognitive tools used to simplify process of human information absorption. Figure of speech and association. Figurative language. Cultural symbols representative of desired value. Universal language. Universal knowing.

—On Practice

The Brand Design Method is an ongoing collaborative pursuit to bridge the gap between business & brand, and unite your sales & marketing. The overall approach is research-lead, customer-centric, purpose built, focused on value creation, and measured success — where brand design translates business aim & intention into brand experiences. We do so by actively observing and listening, by imagining a better future, and designing it, breathing life and energy and personality into these brands, services and products to tell their story, to connect one each of us, and enflame the human spirit to flight, and root our soul further into the purpose.

“The best way to predict the futureis to design it.”

— Buckminster Fuller

Brand Thinking

Essentially, strategy (noun) is a plan to achieve a goal — they say, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. As a verb, strategy is more of a bridge between the tactics and the desired results. For each brand or business the primary strategy is one of differentiation. Understanding how you are different & better than the next brands offering a similar, solving the same problem. The integrated & holistic planning process which provides and guides a set of activities or patterns to be applied, to bridge the gaps from business intention to design direction to brand experience.

Human Centric

I enjoy working together closely with my clients on a continuum, to ensure that the execution of the strategy, the implementation of the communication, the tactics — i am there to follow through to guide the strategy and design. This ensure the activation of brand strategy, identity, campaigns excel at expressing the focused value and meaning.

Research Lens

Research guides “how” we frame the context of the problem, and the solution. Paul Rand, said: “Art is in the Framing” — he was certainly right. How we look at something, our perception of the subject/object, is informed by our unique perspective. The more perspectives we can gain and understand, the more well-rounded our understanding will become. Research gives form to human-empathy, insights, and shine light on the path forward.

Crossing Boundaries

As the great design educator Kenneth Hiebert, teaches us; “crossing boundaries — discovering the application of one experience of life to another — is the basis for many of the greatest discoveries.”

Philosophy

For the love of wisdom and study of the fundamental nature of our existence. I am on a Quest to understand the universe & true self. Closely tied to identity and culture, unifying aesthetics & ethics Understanding interplay and relationship of the individual parts of the system, to each other and to the whole.

Cognition & Psychology

Hierarchy of needs. Mirroring & social validation. Contiguity. Psychology of colour. Cognitive bias codex. Gestalt: figure-ground, Law of Proximity, Law of Similarity, Law of Closure, Law of Continuity, Law of Symmetry. Psychology: Von Restorff effect, Hick’s Law, The Principle of Least Effort, The Serial Positioning Effect, The Principle of Perpetual Habit.

Myth & Storytelling

An understanding of archetypes, and how they influence and reflect our lives. And the use of the narrative arc, highlighting moments within a script. Thinking in universal concepts & themes, the golden threads in which we weave the story of time. Recognizing and embracing repeating patterns. The ability to translate dream & the power of invision. The protagonist & antagonist. Fluent in relevant culture and meaning.

Symbology & Metaphor

Cognitive tools used to simplify the process of human information absorption. The workings of figures of speech and association. Figurative language. Cultural symbols representative of meaning & value. Universal language, based on esoteric roots in ancients natural sciences of astrology & hematic wisdoms.

“The best way to predict the futureis to design it.”

— Buckminster Fuller