Brand-Driven Change

Any agency worth its salt will make it clear that your brand is more than your logo: it’s your values, what you stand for, the experience that your customers have at every touch point.

We believe your brand is your engine of change: the driving force behind the culture you build, the decisions you make and the behaviours you inspire.

As the common touch point for customers, staff, directors, suppliers and shareholders alike, your brand is the crucible of sustainable change within your organisation.

When built properly—when designed—it stimulates desire, loyalty, motivation and trust, internally and externally. It drives change that all stakeholders can participate in, contribute to and own. Yes, you might need research and insight, strategy and creative, social and digital. But what you definitely do need is Brand-Driven Change.

But don’t worry, it’s what we do. If you would like to run a Brand-Driven Change workshop contact our Creative Director, Simon, for details.

What Is Design | The Power of Linkedin

"Design is not just what is looks and feels like. Design is how it works." Steve Jobs once said this, in relation to Apple product, and he was right. He still is right. As a designer, you can quickly get caught up in how something looks, whether you're happy with the design you've settled on for a client, but it is a whole other job to actually design something that changes people's lives.

Linkedin is a place to see how and where you stand as a professional, build and keep in touch with your network, and get the knowledge you need to progress. Sounds like a huge task doesn't it? That's because with something as potentially powerful as Linkedin it has to work in a way that will suit and benefit every single user.

To make Linkedin work there are a number of things that have to be the main focus -

1. A strong brand that can sit with other successful social platforms.
2. Smart user interface that is simple and easy to use.
3. A strong understanding of the human mind to give the user exactly what they will want and need.

Creating something like Linkedin, when nothing like it has been done before (bar Facebook) will have been a mammoth task. So design isn't just how something looks, but how it works too. How it works technically and how it works to benefit each and every user. What is design to you? Share your thoughts over in our Linkedin group and keep the discussion going!

What Is Design | Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a way of strategising for designers to help them solve complex problems for their clients, that put the consumer first.

Many ways of building a strategy are from looking from the outside, but design thinking is putting yourself on the inside. For example, thinking like a consumer, or potential customer, will give you a different idea of where to start than if you stay in the mind of 'just a designer'.

Design isn't just creativity and skill, it's finding a way to the desired outcome, while being functional, beautiful and simplistic. It involves both logical analysis and imagination.

Design can be, and is, applied to everything you ever see. Products, services, buildings, fashion, advertising, physical locations… anything that involves human interaction or use. It is also used for processes, which play a big part in the way we work, live and interact with others. Design is everything, and everywhere.

What do you design? Would you call yourself a designer? Leave your thoughts on www.whatisdesign.co.uk

What Is Design | The Concept of Collaboration

When you think of well known designers, you are aware of their individual projects and their most successful work. You also think of the studios they have worked in. One thing that can easily be overlooked, in design and in design studios, is the benefit and the positive effect of collaboration.

What Is Collaboration?

Collaboration is 'the action of working with someone to produce something'. Whether it be a designer and writer working together, or designers sharing their knowledge and skill with each other, collaborating is the relationship that is built between different minds. 

In design, collaboration can form ideas from multiple perspectives, beliefs, tastes and skill sets. You may have one person who has a more vast knowledge of typography, and another who has a skill for brand building. Whatever an individual is capable of doing, or how experience they are, collaboration can be beneficial with any and all projects.

What Can Collaboration Do For Design?

What do you think collaboration can do for design? This is where you weigh in. Let us know what you think collaboration is, means and can do for design and designers alike.

Just go to www.whatisdesign.co.uk and leave your thoughts and comments there!

What Is Design | A New Home for Design Museum

The Design Museum, is one of the world's leading museum devoted to contemporary design in every form from architecture and fashion to graphics, product and industrial design.

In 2008, following a long search for larger premises, the Design Museum selected the former Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington High Street, West London, as its new home.

This unique landmark from the 1960s, a Grade II* listed building that stood vacant for over a decade, is being transformed by a design team led by John Pawson who will make the building fit for a 21st century museum, whilst at the same time retaining its unique spatial quality.

The Arts Council awarded a £3 million grant to the Design Museum, which will go towards the transformation of the Design Museum Kensington. The move will give the museum three times more space than in its current location at Shad Thames.

There will also be improved learning facilities and a dedicated gallery to display its permanent collection, which will be accessible free of charge. It will bring the museum into Kensington’s cultural quarter, where it will join the Royal College of Art, V&A, Science Museum, Natural History Museum and Serpentine Gallery.


What are your thoughts on the new Design Museum? Why not share them over on our What Is Design website?

What Is Design | A Student's Perspective - Lillie Prior

Everything we do revolves around design. The clothes we wear, the transport we take, the technology we use. You may not realise it but design defines us. It gives us the power to exceed expectations, challenge the ordinary and above all be original, innovative and imaginative.

There is a wealth of design wherever you go whether it be sitting in traffic, surrounded by billboards pasted with promotional posters or doing the weekly shop, encompassed by thousands of individually packaged products. You just have to have the creative instinct to notice an appreciate it. Even the simple, monotonous act of travelling to work is rich with elements of design. Most people standing on the platform at 8 o’clock in the morning with a sophisticated suit and a sturdy leather briefcase won’t look twice at the grid formation on a timetable, the text on a coffee cup or the photograph displayed on the front cover of a glossy magazine. They are unaware of the power of design and unlike designers, they do not possess the ability to immerse oneself amongst design and understand the concept, decisions and thought process behind it.

Being a student interested in design at the Grange School, Hartford is an exciting, intriguing yet quite daunting position to be in. Working on exam tailored briefs in the safety of the classroom seems comfortable and uncomplicated in comparison to the competitive industry of design that I will be hopefully be exposed to in the coming years. Design is all about coming up with new ways of communicating ideas, perceptions and information to others and trying to make a piece of work stand out can be challenging. This however, is what I love about the world of design. It gives you the freedom to be creative, the license to be bold and the drive to be different!

“What is design?”
“Design is a journey of discovery.”

Lillie Prior

It's official - We're Growth Accelerators and Growth Voucher Advisers!

At DFA, design is more than visual appearance and marketing communication. Design, used properly, is your engine for commercial growth. Our Brand Driven Change framework outlines how we use design to engage customers and drive sales externally, whilst motivating colleagues and building culture internally.

In recognition of the commercial focus of our design approach, we have recently been given preferred supplier status as part of the government-backed Growth Accelerator Programme (GAP) and Growth Voucher Advisers.

GAP and Growth Voucher offers match funding for development projects that can be shown to drive commercial growth. Get in touch if you'd like to know about applying for funding, with DFA as your design partner.

Introducing... DePol

Leyland-based DePol Associates are our second Growth Accelerator and Growth Voucher client. This rapidly growing team of planning consultants has commissioned DFA to help develop a brand presence capable of driving their ambitious growth plans.

Starting with exploratory workshops with staff, we are now in the process of conducting primary qualitative research with the firm's customer base as a foundation for providing brand strategy and development recommendations by the end of July.

Design Is | An Insight To Charles Eames

On the discussion of What Is Design, there are multiple questions we could ask and discuss. In our research we discovered a very rare Q&A article with Charles Eames from 1972. The Eames duo had a profound effect on how we view design today, and so to read such an influential perspective is a joy and a privilege.

In the article, Charles Eames discusses the use of computers, what effect design has on an individual and what design means/is.

What do you think of Charles Eames' answers to the question What Is Design? What does it mean to you? What would you like to discuss in relation to design?

Let us know, or share your thoughts over on www.whatisdesign.co.uk

Case Study | Liverpool College: Learning with Character

As it negotiated the transition to Academy status, this prestigious independent college promised the best of both worlds: modern education powered by traditional values. However, working with a 170-year heritage, a dynamic, progressive Principal realised that if this was to become a reality, something had to change.

Our work with the Principal and Governors helped DEFINE the change that was required. Interestingly for a college, the challenge wasn’t about grades. It was more about the type of learner its schools were producing and the extent to which they were prepared for the challenge of modern life.

Our RESEARCH showed that the school’s tradition—encapsulated in its motto, ‘Not only the intellect, but also the character’—was simultaneously its most valuable asset and its biggest liability. Rather than inspiring the resilience and strength required for success in the modern world, staff and pupils interpreted ‘character’ in terms of ‘individuality’—personal expression through extra curricular activities.

The task was now clear: reclaim the motto. We needed to rebuild the concept of ‘character’ to make it resonant with its true meaning: resilience, confidence and moral strength. And we needed to infiltrate the culture of the school and the behaviours of its staff and pupils with this refreshed understanding.

Based on this killer insight we developed range of internal communications and individual brand platforms for each of the college’s 5 schools to ENABLE a process of culture change across the college and support the practical changes that had been made to lesson plans and teaching practices.

By monitoring student and staff performance against key metrics associated with the concept of Character, we are undertaking ongoing MEASUREMENT of the impact that Brand Drive Change is having on Liverpool College.

Design Is | An Insight To Paul Rand

Paul Rand was an American art director and graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM and UPS.

You could say he lived the real Graphic Designer's life. Starting from the bottom with a part-time job creating stock images that were supplied to magazines and newspapers.

Simplicity, or Modernist Design, was at the core of everything Rand did. He said logos "cannot survive unless it is designed with the utmost simplicity and restraint." Simplicity takes restraint from the designer, and that's what makes it so complicated.

Design brings everything together, and creates an understanding for the person who sees it. Rand said "Copy, art, and typography should be seen as a living entity; each element integrally related, in harmony with the whole, and essential to the execution of an idea."

If your job is outside of design, it can easily pass you by - or at least you think it does. Design is everything, and it is everywhere. Whether you notice it or not, it is always doing its intended job.

I haven't changed my mind about modernism from the first day I ever did it... It means integrity; it means honesty; it means the absence of sentimentality and the absence of nostalgia; it means simplicity; it means clarity. That's what modernism means to me. - Paul Rand

Share your thoughts, either on our Linkedin Group, Twitter or our What Is Design website.

Case Study | KB Packaging: Sharing the Load

Midlands-based packaging company KB Packaging was approaching its 30th Anniversary. The board realised that in order to achieve their commercial and personal ambitions, something had to change.

Working closely with management team, we DEFINED the required change. Specific turnover and margin targets provided the foundation, but personal ambitions for a better work/life balance and a more collaborative internal culture were equally important.

In-depth primary RESEARCH delivered the essence of the KB brand. We realised that whilst KB was a packaging business, it was really in the business of solving problems. That’s what the people at KB did, day-in-day-out—for each other and for customers. It’s what they loved doing. It’s what they’re good at. It’s what customers want.

This killer insight served as a catalyst to ENABLE change across the business. ‘Sharing the Load’ became the core brand purpose: the conviction that inspired internal teams, guided employee behaviours and corporate strategy and communicated tangible value to customers.

As the co-creators of the new brand position, all staff gathered for a launch event to ACTIVATE change. By visualising the business as an interconnected system, we triggered a fresh approach to HR based on an understanding of how each colleague was vital to the wider success of the business—how KB shares the load with colleagues.

By creating a brand-driven suite of marketing material and sales training, we clearly demonstrated how KB’s products and services add commercial value to client businesses—how KB shares the load with customers.
 
Clear baselines were established at the outset as the foundations for hard-and-fast MEASUREMENT of our Brand Driven Change. Focusing on commercial metrics based on turnover, profitable sales and growth of key sectors, and internal metrics based on staff satisfaction, we will be reviewing performance against baselines at 6 and 12 months.

Design Is | An Insight To Saul Bass

Design can mean something different from one person to the next. Whether you are a designer, or you work with designers, you can understand it in completely different ways.

Saul Bass, an American graphic designer, said "design is thinking made visual". Best known for his design of film posters and title sequences, you can see why he thought this. With film, a poster or title sequence must explain not only the story in one image, but the themes and genre that run through it.

Design isn't just how it looks, it's an explanation of what the design is for and is about. 'Symbolize & Summarize' is how Saul Bass put it. This is what he did throughout his film work, most evidently in his work for Hitchcock.

Even when design has a purpose, which most of the time it does, there's always an element of artistry and care that goes into a designer's work. Saul Bass said "I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares." and I think deep down that's what we all want. Whether it's for a client, or for ourselves, there's a feeling that what you're creating is a form of art and like everything in life, you can't please everybody so it's better to go with what you think, or even know, is right.

What do you think of design? Do you agree with Saul Bass?

Let us know on our Linkedin discussion group or tweet us!

You can also send us your thoughts in word or design form on our What Is Design? site!