Finding new interpretors.

I spent my lunch hour today listening to Roberto Verganti – professor at Politecnico di Milano – as he spoke about "Design Driven Innovation" at HDK design school in Göteborg. To be honest, I was a bit distracted during his speech – I am quite preoccupied by thinking about my own company and it's offerings at the moment – but some of the things he spoke of caught my attention.

His main topic discussed the fact that lots of companies today use design as an advantage in driving innovation, which makes it no advantage at all anymore (everybody is doing it). The challenge is instead to give meaning or significance to the products we make, in order to create an advantage. This is something I can relate to in my world of brands where the brand core is not about what a company does but how.

Roberto went on to speak about the importance new interpretors of a product/concept when working with innovation. He used Apple as an example (not very unique but a good example indeed) and how the company not only appointed Ken Segall as Creative Director, but also worked with designers who had never designed computers before. The outcome in 1998: The iMac, looking nothing like our idea of a computer (and the name was long debated too before "i" became the most used prefix in the world of technical devices), and the device "Think different" (it was dreamed up by an art director, Craig Tanimoto). The computer was a radical proposal on a market filled with grey boxes, but became a success, by fitting very well in a home environment, at a time when the Internet was exploding and people started surfing from home. (Read more about the birth of the iMac here.)

Roberto's final call to action was to find the new interpretors to create the advantage. Something to think about in the world of branding indeed.

Read more about Roberto and his new book "Design Driven Innovation" here and here.

The book by Roberto Verganti

The name game

I'm running my own company where I develop brands for different companies. Up until now I've been using my own name (Ida Alfredsson) and added "brand & design consultant". It's worked fairly well, but recently I started a branding process for my own company (I decided to pay someone else to do it for good sports). And needless to say, I was thrown into the name game. So now I'm consulting everybody around me and getting all sorts of suggestions (with varying quality, I might add) as to what the name of my company should be.

The challenge is this: I work with both strategy/analysis AND creativity/design. I work with developing brand strategies, analyzing the souls of brands, visualizing brand cores and personas, helping companies implement brand strategy internally and externally, creating brand identities, and even doing campaigns (advertising if you will). Sometimes alone and sometimes with other specialists. And sometimes in bigger agency teams. I also do brand seminars and workshops. I sometimes teach /visual/ communication to university students and I occasionally write about brands in design magazines. Oh, and I wrote a book about the communication between creatives and their clients. I'm based in Sweden but occasionally do work for companies in other countries.

So if you have any ideas for a name, they are more than welcome!

A brand gathering.

The Swedish Franchise Association gathers franchise companies around Sweden – from Swedish McDonald's to Swedbank – and has been a client of mine for quite some time now. I've helped them mostly with smaller pieces of communication, but a while back the board decided it was time for a new logo, and later on, also a new name for marketing purposes (Svensk Franchise).

After a number of drafts the logo was developed – based on the idea of the dandelion symbolizing a n organic gathering point for numerous individual seeds, or what the association aims to be for its members.

A few days ago the new website was launched, which aims to be a living channel to existing members as well as a window for marketing the organization. The site targets mainly a Swedish audience but a short summary in English is available. The site is maintained and updated by the association.