Category: Visual Identity

August 16th, 2021. I find myself sitting in front of my oversized monitor, surrounded by the predictable Apple devices. My hand is resting on the mouse, Coldplay sings “Yellow” through my overpriced Air Pro Max headphones, while I stare at the white artboard spread across my screen. My left hand rests on the keyboard, while my index finger taps the “T” key. Tik, tik, tik… is it just me, or is my monitor getting bigger and the artboard getting brighter? Two big sinister eyes appear on my screen and before I know it, the Creative Block Monster grabs a hold of me and sucks me into a bright white room. It’s a monstrously large and so glaringly bright space. The only sound is the buzz of the overhead lights. One thought passed through my mind: “F*%$!”

A month earlier, after a year and a half of in-house work staring at the same logo, colors, and fonts, I had that sinking feeling in my stomach that I was losing the creative part of me. I was a worker on the brand assembly line churning out the same art day-in and day-out. Clock in. Cut. Paste. Repeat. Clock out.

As I exported what had to be my 23rd banner ad, fifth whitepaper, second sales deck, and third costumed canary (don’t ask), I stopped, took a step back, then another away from the assembly line permanently.

Flash forward to today, my new job as a designer includes working with a larger team that builds multiple brands from the ground up. And now I find myself in the white room behind my screen with Kevin, the Creative Block Monster, hissing like a snake, in my ear “You can’t do it. You’re not a real designer. You’re going to fail.” One thing I know for sure that I’m good at is a challenge and I’m going to take Kevin down.

So, what’s my trick to fighting back? It’s not a singular guaranteed solution, like a big switch I turn on and behold my creativity. Instead, it’s more like a series of little tweaks, levers, buttons, and dials that allow at first a trickle, then a stream, a flow, and finally a raging river of ideas and creative solutions all landing on the screen.

1. Write a list.
   List everything you want (not need) to get done today. If you need to do it, it’s a chore. If you want to do it, it’s a choice. While this seems to be far from what a designer should be doing, ticking off list items is very satisfying, and brings about a sense of accomplishment. It also serves a dual purpose of getting distractions out of the way, leaving room for your mind to relax and explore.
2. Doodle.
   I was the child who loved to doodle little stories down the margin of her notebook. Sometimes they were flowers in a secret garden, other times they were stick figures climbing up the margin ladder or swans diving off into a cup of water. Doodling is not meant to be a masterpiece. I suspect even Michelangelo doodled stick figures on the Vatican ceiling. Doodling, like writing, gets you out of your head. Before you know it, you’re sketching ideas and solving the design dilemma, and you haven’t even put it on the screen yet.
3. Step away from the computer.
   I mean it. Stop perusing the internet and staring at Dribble, Pinterest, Designspiration, Behance, or other showcases of beautiful design. You’re feeding the Creative Block Monster with self-doubt and frustration as to why you can’t create what you see. Go back to your design books. You know, those dust-covered blocks of paper that have been carefully arranged so that the shelves and tables scream, “A designer lives here!” When I lived by Japantown in San Francisco, I would walk over to Kinokuniya Bookstore, pull design and art books off the shelves, and flip through them to absorb the ink-based designs right off the pages. Many of those books came home with me and I still refer to them when I’m in a rut.
4. Get physical. Move!
   Go for a walk, hop on the Peloton, run a mile, or dance like nobody’s watching. The release of endorphins frees the mind and activates it at the same time. When you are doing something you don’t need to think about, you aren’t stressing and stress is one of the key blockers to your design ability. It feeds the monster.
5. Talk to someone. Anyone.
   I am lucky to have a boyfriend who’s been in the design field for the last 25 years (it’s closer to 30, but he won’t admit it). I sometimes will ask how he’d solve the problem, and he’ll give me loads of resources to look at. Or I’ll ask to see what he’s working on and we find ourselves collaborating, which in turn gets us both out of our mental blocks. That being said, you don’t need a designer to help you. Talking to a friend in a non-design field can inspire you because you’re looking at the problem from an entirely different angle. 

One last reminder before I go: it’s going to be ok. 

You will have a day or days where you are completely stuck. You will be hard on yourself and want to give up. You will judge yourself horribly and, in frustration, throw a book, or an iPad (that was one expensive tantrum) across the room. But as mom has said when I’ve been down, “It’s always bad at night, but things will be better in the morning.” It’s worse in the moment, but remember that it’s just a moment in a lifetime of moments. Things have a way of working out and when they do, you become a stronger designer because of it.

There’s a method to the madness when it comes to how we approach brand strategy at Emotive Brand. We look at the bigger picture, get all of the necessary information, and dive headfirst into making something that speaks clearly to what our clients need. We asked our design team to shed some light on what works for them when it comes to alignment and how our clients can best prepare for a new project.

Design is a team sport and a new site is often the vehicle through which brands are launched. So, no matter how big, small, long-term, or short-term the project, the success of your end product depends on making sure everybody is on the same page from beginning to end.

Creating a new website depends on alignment first and foremost. If our stakeholders aren’t with us every step of the way, then we’ll hit more bumps in the road and even more roadblocks than expected. 

Without insight into customer needs, business goals, and more concrete instruction, our designers will be left making assumptions, which are never a good thing. There’s a big difference between a brief for a site that is more visually appealing and a site that drives growth.

Creative flexibility, stakeholder alignment, and business expectations all hold the same level of importance. We call it the trifecta of any successful design project, and websites are no exception. The best way that we ensure all three of these things are in play with equal importance is by establishing expectations from the beginning. 

Myth: The more creative freedom you give your designer, the better.

Truth: The more creative direction you give your designer, the better.

The less guidance you or your fellow stakeholders give, the more room the designer has to design whatever their heart desires — this can lead to a product that doesn’t really make any sense for your company’s brand. In this case, endless creative freedom means the project risks becoming too personal to the designer and less about your company’s business goals. 

Pointing a designer in the direction of your brand guidelines, core messaging, and use of language gives them a starting point to build on what’s been done to date, information to better anticipate user needs, and the ability to craft a new digital brand narrative without being overly prescriptive, which often drives bad design outcomes.

EB’s Tricks for Alignment

Alignment is important. We’ve hammered that point in, but how do we at Emotive Brand actually ensure alignment between our creative team, our clients, and stakeholders? What action steps can you take? 

Step #1 Set the table: lay it all out on the table so you can effectively manage your time. This means data, expectations, and whatever else our team or your design team needs to know before starting on the project. 

Step #2 Data first, opinions second: identify any problems early on and make sure to base solutions off of data. You’ll stay aligned on business goals and help the designer figure out exactly what you expect from our team and the project. By centering the conversation around data, you’ll create an environment in which assumptions are challenged and outcomes are more strategic.

Step #3 ​​Embrace feedback: it’s important to create a dialogue between the design team and your clients. This creates an opportunity to take them along on the journey, give insight into your decisions, and strengthen communication.

Step #4 Side effects may include: be sure to communicate the potential effects and benefits of design decisions as both problems and new opportunities emerge. Not everything will be clear from the start and ambiguity often turns into insight midstream.

Step #5 Empathy matters: by seeing things through the eyes of a website user we’ve learned an important lesson in empathy and are better able to center the conversation around value creation, which makes it easier for clients to see the value of our design decisions and discern who might benefit most from them.

Step #6 Be inclusive and flexible: any design process requires one to embrace ambiguity, venture into the unknown, and take people along for the journey. Without these features, it’s unlikely the project will make it across the finish line in one piece.

Stakeholder alignment is often an art form more than a science. While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, overall, it’s most important to communicate web design ideas in ways that speak to what’s most important to your stakeholders. Without sensitivity to stakeholder and customer needs, a website redesign will likely never reach its full potential.

In our line of work, we’re constantly thinking about the future. What’s the vision? What’s the ceiling? How does it scale? But seldom do we get the opportunity to engage with the future on a deeply human level. How will the Bay Area — this complex region we call home — actually look, feel, move, and grow over the next 50 years?

In the Spring of 2020, SPUR, a non-profit public policy organization based in San Francisco, had just completed their Regional Strategy research. The body of work was a 50-year horizon project that proposed ideas and actions on everything from revamping our transportation system to protecting our shorelines in an effort to ensure the Bay Area is a region in which all people thrive.

While the ideas inside the strategy were bold, imaginative, and urgent — the form itself wasn’t telling that story. The question became: how do we transform this vital body of work from a data-driven piece of research people understand in their minds, to an emotional piece of storytelling people feel in their hearts? Together with Art+Action, an artistic coalition for civic participation known best for their incredible work on the 2020 Census, we developed a creative approach for SPUR.

For us as an agency, the strategy behind this project was bigger than just hitting our marks. We sought to realize something near and dear to our hearts: a place that holds many of our families, friends, many of our clients, and all of our hopes and dreams for the future. The big idea behind the work was that the future is not an abstract idea, it is a place we must plan for and build, together, from the ground up. The word “growth,” so often regulated to the world of tech and bottom-lines, could be a force for good, for all of humanity. We could reclaim that innovative spirit and infuse it with something more intentional, diverse, and representative. Because it is often the small, incremental shifts that launch us furthest into the future.

The result was transforming their regional strategy into a hand-drawn cityscape that users navigate from the bottom of the page upwards. This reinforced our core ideas of grassroots action, the seismic power of incremental shifts, and the necessity of altering our perspective to clearly see what’s possible.

“It was fun to help craft this world literally from the ground up, from rough thumbnail sketches and taping sheets of pencil drawings together on my studio floor to ultimately drawing vector-based digital landscapes,” says Robert Saywitz, Design Director at Emotive Brand and lead illustrator on the project. “While it may have been my hand that held the pen to help bring this world to the page, this was truly a massive collaborative effort in so many ways — more like working with a multi-faceted crew to write, create, and produce a film than a traditional branding design project.”

Leveraging Art+Action’s relationships with artists, animators, and activists who have ties to the myriad communities of the region, we embedded spot illustrations throughout the cityscape to help alchemize the strategy further, including work from: Michah Bazant, Antonio Benjamin from Creativity Explored, Nina Janina Charuza, Sophia Foster-Dimino, Nimah Gobir, Ryan Floyd Johnson, Krystal Lauk, Innosanto Nagara, and Leah Nichols.

“Art can move people emotionally — and to action,” says Amy Kisch, Art+Action Co-Founder + Artistic Director, “so we felt it vital that Bay Area creatives express the human side of SPUR’s vision of the region’s future in 2070. Their creative response illustrates an inclusive, prosperous, and healthy region where everyone belongs.”

“There are deeply embedded mindsets, decades-long policies, and almost mythic lifestyle expectations in the Bay Area, which must be reexamined if we want to initiate audacious changes — and we must,” says Amy Schoening, Art+Action Co-Founder + Artistic Director. “This series invites audiences to learn more about SPUR’s vital research through the lens of interconnectedness and equity because ultimately, our individual actions have significant collective consequences.”

Part of what made this project unique was thinking outside of the traditional client-agency relationship. With an aggressive deadline and dozens of stakeholders, we adopted a more agile approach. Instead of forcing the client or our creative partners into our studio methodology, we met them where they were, established a shared vision of the future, leaned into rapid prototyping, and privileged momentum over hierarchy.

“SPUR’s work is both complex and specific,” says Karen Steen, Communications Director at SPUR. “Representing our ideas required many rounds of iteration and a flexible approach to communication and feedback — and it worked. It’s rare to have an emotional response to public policy. But what we’re hearing is that the project conjures a lot of feeling for people.”

As an Oakland-based agency, this project represents the very best of our intentions: represent our region with pride, create memorable brand experiences that last, collaborate without ego, celebrate diverse creators, and make it fast, with feeling, for the future.

Click here to experience the Bay Area of 2070, read more about SPUR, Art+Action, or reach out to build something amazing together.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.

Legend has it that Hemingway once won a bet for the shortest story ever written by crafting a six-word story, “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.” True or not, what resonates from this tale is that simplicity does not necessarily mean simple. ‘Less’ can actually mean ‘more’. When you strip everything away except the most meaningful parts, it forces those remaining parts to tell the whole story.

It supposedly took Leonard Cohen five years of rewriting lyrics until—80 draft verses later—he settled on the final version of his song “Hallelujah”. The art of simplification—from words and stories to pictures and objects, even our own lives—is a difficult process. Simplification is not just about redaction, but a strategic process in itself—the distillation of a complex problem or story down to the essential ideas. Anyone can take things away, but it takes a certain level of craft, critical thought, and tenacity to simplify with precision to tell a compelling story.

Beyond Beauty

The art of simplification pervades many aspects of our lives, but these days it seems that when we think of the relationship between form and function, we often think of product design.

Dieter Rams is a German designer and minimalist visionary who served as the Chief Design Officer at Braun for much of his career. Dieter Rams’s Design Principles is a culmination of the “less is more” philosophy that he used to evaluate work and ask the big question, “What makes Good Design?”. A core belief is that when simplicity can be used to illuminate function, aesthetics go beyond beauty to resonate on a much deeper level. One shouldn’t have to struggle to experience good design—it should clarify and create an emotive response.

“Good design is as little design as possible.”
—Dieter Rams

George Lois, a renowned Art Director probably best known for the many provocative covers he designed for Esquire magazine in the 1960s, brought the art of simplification to the world of advertising to such dramatic effect that it was met with shock and applause in equal measure. In fact, his 1960 advertisement for Coldene made it onto my own mood board for a recent branding project for a trading platform called Topstep—exemplifying how a simplified typographic treatment alone could still move mountains.

Less Really Is More

As brand designers, our goal is to utilize design to build a powerful story—editing, clarifying, and distilling our design expression to the most essential elements. There is often a misconception that simplicity of form can reduce the depth and sophistication of the storytelling. “What do you mean our new logo is just a wordmark? Just letters, no symbol? We need a symbol, an icon, something! Well, if it is just letters, can we at least get our own FedEx moment?”

It may seem counterintuitive to clients, but adding additional touchpoints, words, visual elements—more ‘things’—will ultimately dilute the power of the message. Simplicity of form and strategic restraint actually helps clarify and amplify the story, so long as simplicity functions to reveal the brand idea—and that the brand idea is crafted from a solid, strategic platform that holds it all together. Deep research and strategy create the foundation of the brand, which should then infuse every design decision along the way. Ultimately, this combination of clear strategy and design allows the brand expression to cut through the clutter of the marketplace. As a designer, I pay rigorous attention to details to ensure that what I am creating is not only beautiful, but also easy to understand and purposeful. It’s my job to use design to bring complex ideas into sharp focus, and make the complex intuitively clear.

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple—that’s creativity.”
—Charles Mingus

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.