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?

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.