Adrian Kimpton of Sable&Hawkes writes:
At Sable&Hawkes, we believe that good design companies will design well but the best design companies think well. And the intelligence of the solution is what makes it memorable.
In a meeting or at a brief, isn’t yes always the favourite word? Yes we can do that, follow your guidelines, work to a template and use the right typeface. And yes we can deliver when you need it. But as designers, are we not duty bound to challenge a brief, ask a few questions, challenge some assumptions and consider the problem from our desk, not yours?
You see what you’re doing when you decide to hire a design company, a good design company that is; is hire a company with the implied permission to sit and think ‘what if…?’.
'What if…' we did it a different way?
‘What if…’ is telling a story rather than just listing the facts.
‘What if…’ is a surprise, something unexpected. A little magic.
‘What if…’ is choosing a different spot to pitch your tent, heat the beans, and say “what do you think, do you like the view?
As commercial graphic designers, we all need to strike a balance between challenging preconceptions and clearly understanding our clients needs and resources. But we firmly believe it is our job to show, from brief to delivery, that we’ve been able to bring more to the table than we were asked. Businesses only really get the best out of their design spend when they start the commissioning process with the view that design companies can bring something intelligent, creative and of strategic importance to the table rather than an unusual typeface or an interesting paper stock.
The role of graphic design is now, more than ever, to help our clients retain distinction, in message, image and media, and maintain competitiveness in increasingly testing markets. And that applies however large or small a business they are. When the solution is both creative and intelligent, the message is much more subtle, the audience much more receptive. This in turn gives businesses the ability to position themselves apart from the crowd and set the pace rather than just responding to the competition.
So remember, the next time you get the sell, when the folio gets whipped out and your taken reverentially through those nicely art directed packshots; they may not tell you everything you need to know.
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