The importance of designing beyond brand guidelines and making things:
We place a lot of importance on building robust, flexible and distinct identity systems. They're at the core of the foundation of a brand. But, the value of the work that goes into that system only becomes fully unlocked once you start making things.
We mock-up a spectrum of brand applications during the identity-building stage, but the brand is only able to act on those if applications are actually made IRL. It's why we care a lot about the execution of the brand, and why we have a strong POV on brand guidelines being created up-front (more on that another time).
It's also why we love making things. Yes it's satisfying to produce tangible artefacts, but the process of designing to real-world needs and constraints actually also allows us to stress-test and refine the identity system (and evolve it further).
When you stop short of producing these things, you keep a good chunk of the value of the identity locked in the hypothetical, and that's just a bit of a waste really.
Flaus is an example of a brand we developed where the making of assets—the intricate 3D worlds and product renders, the product packaging, photography and the design of the website—really helped tell the story fully, in a consistent and engaging way in every place it was experienced by the various audiences the brand needed to connect with.
(Also a great example of working with extremely talented partners to bring things to life, which is another thing we love).
#visualidentity #3dillustration #packagingdesign #photography #webdesign
