Posted June 29, 2011
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The Power of Creative One of the reasons the agency business has survived all of its downs is the simple fact that most agencies are better at coming up with ideas than their clients. Between managing budgets and deadlines, agencies can only succeed in the idea business if you invest time in people to think, to plan, to scheme and to dream. Besides books, blogs and conferences, exercises such as brainstorming between employees and internal award competitions foster the flow of good ideas. A cool creative workspace with some injected personality further encourages taking your creative thoughts to another level. What's Good Enough? You might argue that your budget and deadline don't allow for stellar ideas that are set apart from the average. Every client needs his project designed and produced yesterday. Most jobs don't allow for big time cushions to utilize the full c...
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Posted June 20, 2011
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Pro-bono work can be rewarding win-win collaboration between a design studio and the nonprofit organization. To keep your agency sane and happy to take on another "free" project, consider the following few rules. 1) Pick an organization/event that you endorse 2) Choose the organizations wisely and make sure you can actually help and further the cause 3) Know what needs to be designed, for whom and how the approval process works 4) Allow enough time for the work. Nobody likes to stress over a project that doesn't pay the bills 5) Do work that is edgy and recognizable, pushing the creative envelope 6) Request a full license to be creative 7) Invest your best talent and don't just hand off the project to an intern simply because it's an unpaid project 8) Look at pro-bono work as a creative exercise that encourages teamwork 9) Pro-Bono work is a quest to create the things...
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Build a charistmatic brand! The prerequisite for a brand to become charismatic is to master the five disciplines of branding: 1. Differentiate 2. Collaborate 3. Innovate 4. Validate 5. Cultivate Differentiate Differentiating is crucial to developing a successful brand because it separates a brand from its competitors. The human brain works to notice differences between things, so the differences the customer sees visually between different brands play a huge role in which one they ultimately choose. “Our brain acts as a filter to protect us from the vast amount of irrelevant information that surrounds us every day…it learns to tell things apart…” Neumeier states that “the sense we rely on most is sight.” The final factor in the customers’ decision to purchase revolves around which company differentiated their product from another in a way that grabbed the customer’s a...
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Is it a logo? A product? A name? A brand is not a logo, nor is it a product. A brand is the gut feeling one gets about a certain product, service, or company. The perception people have defines a brand; each individual creates his or her own vision of a particular brand. “A brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is” (Marty Neumeir in his book, The Brand Gap). Trust is a crucial element in developing a brand, and this trust is formed as the customers’ experiences with the brand constantly meet or exceed their prior expectations. Trust creation is the fundamental goal of brand design, and designs are used to establish that trust. In today’s “information-rich and time-poor” society, people determine which product they will buy based on how much trust they feel towards the product rather than by assessing its attributes and benefits. Some people think str...
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