Design Shift

I have recently been working on a lot of brand centric design. This has included the redefinition of the brand essence. A document for briefing designers how to correctly use the 3D brand equity when executing designs and the redefinition of “x’s” structural packing offer.

All good stuff that is growing my capabilities as a designer – and helping to define and transform the brand that I work for.

On this particular occasion, part of the structural packaging brief that I was executing was very exciting!

Packaging as dictated by fmcg and other categories, lives and dies on a few characteristics: Size, Shape, Form and colour. These appeal to our human senses of touch, sight, and sometimes sound depending on the execution. But what if you were to add smell into the mix?

It is unusual for a product to have a smell. The only exception that I could think of being a new car, that has a heady mixture of “chemical clean” and synthetic leather that you breathe in, as you sit in it for the first time.

So could we do this for an electronic product?? I was tasked with finding out.

To do this I arranged a meeting with Penhaligons – London’s oldest fragrance manufacturer.

I had been in email with Emily – their marketing manager and explained our brief. She was more than keen to take on the challenge and I visited their Burlington arcade store for a fragrance profiling session to define what our brand could smell like.

Upon arrival, I was led upstairs to a private room where a mirrored dresser sat adorned with just under a hundred glass bottles of Penhaligons secret smells.

After a brief introduction to the different families of fragrance, I proceeded to explain our brand character to Emily. Who through a process of skillful deduction reduced the assortment of glass bottles on the dresser down to a select few.

The smell that we arrived at was a triumph.

I laughed out loud! I didn’t think it possible to represent our brand with a smell, but in less than 30 minutes Penhaligons had done it.

What Emily and Penhaligons had constructed was a series of focused questions that allowed a trained expert to deduce what was right for our brand based upon the brand essence/character that I had defined for our company weeks earlier.

This consumer profiling is similar to the actions designers undertake in a research phase, when creating consumer personas to tailor their design to. Be it product, web interface or a smell.

What is increasingly obvious to me, is that although the vernacular may be different. The actions are the same. Regardless of the brief and the execution, we need to undertake thorough detailed research to understand, define and design for our consumers.

As a young man I was mesmerized by records.

I still have a huge haul of varied LP’s and 12′s taking up space and gathering dust in my brothers garage in West Sussex. (I apologize once again Shelton…)

As a teenager at art college in Brighton, I was a very visual young man with very little self control when it came to music.

I would spend pretty much all the money that I made working in an independent record shop back on the very records that I would recommend to our customers.

I would find it irresistible not to be swayed by the large graphic imagery of the record covers and there was one recording label in particular that always got my last pound.

I was a prolific collector of MoWax recordings, largely due to the in house graphic style of Ben Drury. – His work often enhancing the purchase of a very pedestrian music track, with its inspirational coupling of “turntable-genre” imagery and 3d typography.

See more of his work here

I’m still a fan today. when the rest of the records are gone,  I know that Ill still have the MoWax vinyl.

- Not for the music but for the record covers!

I read.  A lot. Mostly for work. But less often than I’d like for me. I was considering this on a train journey a few weeks back.

Then during an animated conversation with my mentor that week I discovered that we had a mutual appreciation for comics and graphic novels. We pontificated on such important topics as how the “league of extraordinary gentlemen” film wasn’t true to the comic and who was our favourite Marvel character – You know… the big things in life.

This sat with me for a few days as I began to think of all the comics that I had bought as a child and then as a teenager and how they had become my companion through those years.

I started to think what was the first comic that I ever read and wondered if I could still get a copy? Firing up the ebay app on my phone I looked through the listings, found it and bought it!

Christmas 1981 was a funny time in our house. I lived with my brother and my mum in a small council flat on the outskirts of Brighton and Hove. We didn’t have a lot of money but what we did have my mum spent on things for me and my brother.

That year I received a bumper collection of star wars toys! My brother being older, got these. A science set (-that I later ate) and a “hard backed comic book”. Once the initial furor of my millennium falcon had worn off, I took a look through my brother’s treasure and discovered the comic book.

I was hooked! The comic he had received was the 1981 2000AD Annual – a collection of sci fi and fantasy stories that kept me engrossed that year and for many years to come. I became an instant convert to 2000AD, waiting for it to arrive weekly, so that I could keep up to date with Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog.

These and the other comics would inspire me and form the basis for my escapism and creativity. I’d frequently ask my mum to help me redraw the characters and then I’d create my own adventures, spiriting me away to another future world.

I started this post after buying the annual on ebay and then discovered a similar interview featuring Richard Seymour on the Eastman Innovation lab website a few weeks later.

Fantasy and science fiction have the power to inspire and take you to another place where anything is possible. Sometimes it’s nice to visit for inspiration.  Sometimes it’s good to look back to see what influenced me to becoming a designer.

See Richards interview HERE.

So as I mentioned in previous posts I have been helping a friend develop a range of kitchen products for sale in the UK and internationally.

The brief was simple – take the existing idea and make it better.

The client(!) was looking to improve upon the existing design as he felt that it lacked the “x” factor that all successful products must have to surpass the competition and succeed in the marketplace.

After producing a book of ideas and selecting a finalist I set about constructing the cad model and rendering up the model in showcase.

We discussed the final design and questioned the relevance of certain features that suggested to the user how the product might be interacted with.

This lead to the removal of a spout feature and another iteration of the design that was more functional and utilitarian.

At this moment it would probably be good to show you a pic but this project is under wraps until December so bear with me.

What we ended up with were three design treatments of the same product that would appeal to different consumers.

Surface details were used to “dial up” or “dial down” emotion to leverage the product to different types of buyers at different brand stores.

- One design was more interested in the aesthetic -  with function a firm second. Another variation of this was even more expressive with extra detailing. And a third execution was the complete opposite with a regular surface pattern suggestive of how it was to be used.

It was interesting to see how the more detailed variations of the product lent themselves to subtler colourways, allowing the details to pick up light and breathe. Where as the more utilitarian product could take bright acid colours and not lose anything of the design.

Form versus function plus subtlety versus in-your-face.

I recently completed a course in the fundamentals of copywriting as an aid to my professional development. The reason that I decided to investigate this area was because I had a desire to be able to write about design and communicate with clients and collegues in a clear and concised manner.

The course took place during a single day at an office in central London and was certified by the chartered institute of marketing which meant that I reached a professional standard at the end and received an acredited qualification.

The day began with some exercises to help us think like professional copywriters.

Very quickly on during the morning I discovered to my pleasure, that the crafting of words and the creation process of design share some parallels. The distillation of ideas to a concised structured message and the refinement of a 3D design are very similar objectives.

One of the very first exercises of the day was to deconstruct the copy from four company websites and build personas for the target audience of each of the sites based upon words used and the format of the paragraphs.

From this exercise we were able to build fictional characters with names, occupations, aspirations and shopping habits.

These profiles helped uncover the framework with which the copywriters had worked in and unlock the principles/vernacular with which they, and therefore we, could successfully use to speak to the chosen audience.

This is a very similar process to that is used in UX design research and one that I discovered when reading “Designing for the Digital Age” by Kim Goodwin.

Although the desired outcome may be different, by building a persona you are forced to step outside of your self and are asked to comprehend the needs, desires, shopping habits etc of an invented character. By doing this you can empathise and uncover insights that allow you to successfully design an experience, product or piece of prose that speaks to the chosen audience on their level.

Further reading:

Designing for the digital age: Kim Goodwin Chapter 11

Copywriting Successful writing for design, advertising and marketing: Mark Shaw

Okay, so Ive been a little preoccupied with life and work of late – hence the lack of an update on here for a while.

I’m hoping to correct this in the next few weeks but for now will have to make this update brief.

The things that have been keeping me busy include:

• Planning my wedding (very important and super distracting – but in a good way)!

• Training – Watch out! I’ve been learning some things. Design related of course, but less ID and more creative!

• Designing – Making stuff! i got my hands dirty and got involved with a start-up venture. Helping them re-design their flagship product by injecting some much needed emotion into the product / packaging.

• Work! ….hmmmm, well its been a mixed bag of a couple of months! some disappointments and some victories. but there are some interesting new branding / design projects that I have become involved in that will help steer the company that I am designing for.

Interesting times huh? you betcha. I’m loving the challenge. I just wish that there were more days in the week to fit it in…!

What I am noticing more and more is the documenting of ideas and processes by creative individuals.

Although it feels a bit weird at first, its such a great pleasure to be able to connect with someone and see why, and how they have made the choices that they have made.

I’m going to drop a post about an app idea that I conceived while on a city break with my girlfriend in Amsterdam last month. -However I wanted to fully understand UI process as created by designers in the field and interpret it to suit my needs in the execution of my idea.

To do this I asked a colleague at my workplace about sites that help facilitate learning in UX  – he suggested a couple of which this one leapt out at me.

The reason it inspires and connects with me is because that it is all about using your skill as a designer to help facilitate creativity in others. This is the kind of work that I was a part of at a large agency in WPP and during my time at a boutique agency in Soho.

I love it!

JASON FURNELL

As a designer it is very inspiring to throw ideas out there and bounce the ball with a room full of people who are learning to unlock their own creativity.

I’m looking to learn more techniques like this in order to gain qualitative insights from others and hope to bring them to my projects in the future

A quick share of a project that is both thoughtful and inspiring. Enjoy.

Microsoft Vision 2019

Referencing The T shaped designer specified by Ideo and mentioned in an earlier post I sat down and quickly put this Illo together.

It shows the areas that I have already covered in my career so far….

The grey tiles represent the areas that I am confident in and have been a part of during my career as a product designer. This is the depth!

The Horizontal set of tiles at the top of the illustration represent potential areas for growth. – The areas that I’d like to explore over the next few months!

The Horizontal areas of breadth also show areas that I have already created worked in that differ from standard product design. – I have highlighted these tiles in magenta (structural packaging for example) when I believe I have a good understanding of the topic and purple when they are transitional – ie i’m in the middle of mastering that area!

Visualizing the T shape designer model for me helped me verbalize the areas that I know and identify the areas that I do not but would like to understand.

- The challenge is there, but when broken down into bite sized chunks it seems much more attainable.

Back to the job at hand.

The BBC announced the Superbrands Top Ten brands as voted by consumers this week – See it HERE.

During my mentoring sessions we tried an exercise that I recommend to anyone looking to switch things up.

If you feel a bit stuck in a rut, consider making a list of all the companies / brands that you have worked for during your career so far.

Its a bit of a reality check – but a good one, as it reminds you of the brands that you have worked with and the types of project covered along the way.

I’ve had quite the “snaking path” so far and it made for an interesting read. – Maybe you could try it for yourself ??

It’s a refreshing exercise when you consider that most employers are buying you on the depth and variety of this experience.

So be bold and speak up!

Brands that I have worked for: (in chronological order…)

Mitsubishi

Swatch

Samsung

Laurent Perrier

Mathmos

Cif

Aston Martin

Land Rover

Ford Motor Company

Jaguar

Nike

Nokia

British Telecom

Boeing

Virgin Atlantic Airways

Pepsi

Tropicana

Boots

Marlborough ( I didnt feel good about that though…)

Air Mauritius

Copella Apple Juice

Telefonica

Corvoisier

Braastad XO

British Airways

Diageo

Motorola

NextGen Venturi

Tomy

Tom Tom

Burton Snowboards

Unilever

Proctor and Gamble

Nestle

Vertu

Phew!! Feels good to know that they were jobs well done and that the clients were happy with the work.