The dynamic blend of a strong brand proposition and a compelling brand personality gives birth to a powerful brand expression. Key brand attributes like: texture, color, imagery, typography, forms, tone of voice, sound and environment play a unique role in defining the proposition and developing the personality. These attributes are then used like a palette to design all touchpoints of the brand to foster the environment necessary to create the desired expectation. Designed by Artefice Group, Italy, "Coca-Cola offers consumers a special edition of the legendary glass bottle: an original interpretation of the brand personality through a series of three creative subjects. What catches the attention is the movements, the depth of shading, the colors that convey all brand values in a stylish way." The keywords here – movement, depth of shading, colors all substantiates the The Journey to Shared Value: A world where cultural revolution is alive... "We can’t control how Coca-Cola gets painted on the side of a wall, for thousands of people to see. But we believe that if we engage the market with stories that provoke happiness and inspire optimism, our consumers are going to talk about our brand in a way that is more powerful than we could ever do ourselves." This expansion in brand expression has helped Coca Cola to sell over 1.8 billion servings of its products to consumers in every country in the world, save Cuba and North Korea (officially). Understood, not all brands have the resources nor the grit "to walk the talk." However, we can all benefit from the valuable lessons imparted by the slogan, "The Coke Side of Life". Andy Payne, the Chief Global Creative Director of Interbrand, professes the vital role of creativity in creating and managing brand value. Start with a Great Brand Proposition: "If you have a body, you are an athlete. This proposition taps into Nike’s dedication to human potential, and makes it relevant to its business by grounding human potential in athleticism." Very clever and very consistent with the brand proposition. This visual and verbal expression may vary dependent on culture and country but the brand intent and atttitude is always consistent. "Great brand propositions and expressions are universally understood, believable, actionable and stand the test of time." Drive Demand Through Expression: When we see BMW’s brand mark, we don’t think of it in the form of blue and white quadrants. We think of it as the ultimate “driving machine,” and this is because expression has become synonymous with the brand proposition. The Disney brand proposition is built around family-centric entertainment. "The use of characters to create fantasy leads to being able to physically engage similar themes in a physical space, one that immerses the customer in a 360-degree, multisensory, branded experience." Expression Creates Value: As Andy Payne mentions, consumers and audiences encounter emotion and meaning through personality and storytelling. The journey towards creating a compelling expression of your brand is never complete. Brand propositions, personality, and expressions have to be continually evaluated, evolved, and reevaluated. In this era virtual reality and digital distraction most brands are yet to explore the compelling territory of emotional enticement. Trade shows and events are the grand avenues for embracing this territory. "Brands that claim powerful emotional propositions and capture them with an exciting world of expression, have the ability to maintain a fond place in the mind of their audiences now and in the future." Articles you might like:
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This self-portrait was based on a drawing made by Arneson’s son Kregg when the artist and his first wife was in the midst of a marital crisis. Although the representation echoes Renaissance bust of mortally wounded martyred saints, the wildly exaggerated grotesque details—such as the exploding gun, bloody knife and arrow, and globs of blood and snot—recall the style of cartoon and comic strips. The sculpture is one of Arneson’s most emotionally expressive self-portrait. He was prolific in creating self-portraits using photographs, mirrors, and drawings. Each expression seemed to reveal a different emotion. These self-referential portraits iconic and humorous are vehicles to render universal concepts of feeling, sentiments, reaction and response. That what is true for sculpting is also true when crafting concepts for your trade show booth graphics. The emotion of the sculptor is set in motion as he uses his tools to carve out forms out of formless. In a similar fashion, the visual that you are composing should be emotionally captivating. Instead of addressing raw data of features and benefits (that addresses the verbal brain), it should highlight one aspect of the pain point that your audience can associate with. By evoking emotion, your message becomes engrained in their long-term memory. Every time they encounter the pain-point they will sub-consciously visualize your brand, your message. Because, emotion happens, it is not something that we do or don't do. When creating graphic that embellishes your trade show booth, here is another path that you may want to explore. Start with the intangible aspect of your product and that happens to be your brand. Think about what emotion your brand triggers. After all, your brand does not dwell inside the four walls of your company. It resides in the hearts and minds of the people in your market. For example when you think of Nike, what comes to your mind? It is superior athleticism and the thrill of victory (of course leaving aside the negative press). Now imagine all the visuals that Nike as generated over the years. They all actualize the intangible concept of the brand. Classical mythology is a great avenue to derive inspiration for your visuals. Stories of passion, tragedy, war, and heroism (all trigger points for making emotions happen). Again, did you know Nike is the goddess of victory in the Greek Mythology. "Frequently she is seen hovering with outspread wings over the victor in a competition." That is how the powerful Nike swoosh has been brought into existence. Obviously Nike corporation knows very well what they are doing. Reading poetry, visiting museums, attending lectures on the odd, the improbable, or merely interesting are some of the things that I indulge in quite often. These are the silent seeds that gets sprinkled in my subconscious only to find its outlet in some sort of creative endeavors. Assassination of a Famous Nut Artist was my find in one of my visits to one of the many museums that I frequent. It is this sculpture that inspired me to write this article. Articles you might like:
We live in very dynamic times. "We are shifting from a managerial society to an entrepreneurial society." "Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data." John Naisbitt Intuition, insight, discernment, perception, awareness, understanding, comprehension, apprehension, appreciation, penetration, acumen, judgment, acuity, vision, wisdom, savvy are some of the words that constantly pop up in different journals and business books. The word that I am hooked to is Insight. The dictionary defines insight as the act or outcome of grasping the inward or hidden nature of things or of perceiving in an intuitive manner. A great example that comes to mind is the discovery of penicillin. During those times it was the norm to throw away moldy blood samples. However, Sir Alexander Fleming, the Scottish bacteriologist, had an instinct to study the mold on a blood sample that had gone bad. That instinct ushered in the era of penicillin and antibiotics. There are thousands of example: perhaps the most studied being Mr. Steve Jobs in our our recent memory. Overnight the IPhone was a best seller because the learning curve was substantially reduced. "The percentage of users actually utilizing all of the features that a smart phone offers was higher than other phones we've tested. The iPhone was more intuitive than other devices." Even a few years ago who would have thought about a technical device being intuitive. Experts do acknowledge that insight is a learned skill. Asking a lot of questions does build strong intuitive muscles. In design discovery meetings, the most powerful creative intuitions shows up after a long question and answer sessions. Don't be fearful to ask any questions. Ask questions that does not particularly pertain to the project. See where it goes. To get a feel for the clients emotions' layout a visual map of the conversation. Ask more questions based on the map. Then walk away from the project. Let your sub-conscious take over. Find solitude. Listen to yourself in solitude. Training yourself to listen to your inner voice when you aren’t alone and will lead to catching powerful intuitive ideas right when you need them. Strangle the inner critic within you. Turn off your negative barometer. If your inner voice say this is a dumb idea. Make a conscious choice to ask “what part of this idea will work?” This way you will embark on a journey of asking positive questions and your sub-conscious will feed you with solutions in the form of insight - the art of seeing what is invisible to others. Insight or creative intelligence comes from deep within you. It helps generate not only solutions for your design projects but new opportunities and options for you. Beware! often, it will take you to the less trodden paths that leads to nowhere. "Intuition makes much of it; I mean by this the faculty of seeing a connection between things that in appearance are completely different; it does not fail to lead us astray quite often." Andre Weil Articles you might like
Simplicity is the shining armor of Zen.
Derived from the Sanskrit word Dhyana, Zen found its way to Japan via China in the form of motionless meditation. The word Zen paints a picture of peace, serenity, waterfall and rounded stones. It has become a part of our every day lexicon, yet we hardly practice what it exhorts. Be here and now. Turn off the filters. Dissolve all preconceptions. Perceive directly. "Dissolve into the eternal now, and realize that the Universe itself peers out through your eyes, hears through your ears, and breaths each breath." Experiencing each moment as it is. According to Chinese Ch’an and Zen, understanding comes only by ignoring the intellect and heeding the instincts, the intuition. True perception comes from vast emptiness. Whatever the philosophical construct of Zen may be, we all seem to have a visual concept of what Zen is. We talk about Zen like design, we muse on the elegance in the absence of abundance and of course the Zen Master of Subtraction: Steve Jobs is still very alive in our mass psyche. One of Jobs’ great strengths was knowing how to focus. “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,” he said. “That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.” In his book, The Laws of Subtraction (that will be available on October), Matthew May states 6 simple rules for winning in the age of excess, very much in keeping with the 5 principles of Zen Design Simplicity:
The relevance of this message in our busy business of trade show clutter is huge. Noteworthy, are the first 3 points. Usually, as trade show exhibitors we tend to blast away all the features that our products are capable of. But as Matthews puts it; What isn’t there can often trump what is. He cites the example of Scion. Designers essentially used this strategy in creating the fast-selling and highly profitable xB model, a small and boxy vehicle made intentionally spare by leaving out hundreds of standard features in order to appeal to the Gen Y buyers who wanted to make a personal statement by customizing their cars with trendy options. It wasn’t about the car. It was about what was left out of it. The discipline to discard that does not fit is the bedrock of Zen design. All aspects of your brand can only stand tall in an intelligently designed space that is anchored in elegant suggestive simplicity. It is the suggestive simplicity that engages human imagination, thus injecting it with the merit momentous memorability. Create a compelling environment. Unleash the memory capsule. Any designer who does not appreciate or know about good food is not a very good designer. The planning of a meal and it presentation - the texture, the color, the tastes, the hot and cold temperatures - are the same concerns that affect an environment. Robert Kime, Architectural Digest Pattern, texture, color, light are integral parts of design that aids to the memorability of a brand. Patterns come in various forms and colors. Thy may be abstract, anthemion, argyle or art deco, batik or basket-weave just to name a few. Patterns when combined with texture makes the architectural design rich and beautiful. The space either achieves harmony or excellence. Textures and or patterns are salient features that plays an important role in defining the rhythm of the exhibit design. Textures are recognized by touch and sight. As William Morris so elegantly puts it: "If there is a reason for keeping the wall very quiet, choose a pattern that works all over without pronounced lines...Put very succinctly, architectural effect depends upon a nice balance of horizontal, vertical and oblique. No rules can say how much of each; so nothing can really take the place of feeling and good judgement." “Light is the magical ingredient that makes or breaks a space." Add lighting to the mix and you construct the element of feeling. The space starts to communicate to you at a cellular level. Light when diffused off textured surfaces form interesting patterns. Directional lighting amplifies a texture, producing variations in shadows; soft, diffused lighting, on the contrary, minimize contrast and shadows, making textures difficult to read. A perfect example of the play of light, texture and color comes from Evonik Industries. PLEXIGLAS® Textured Sheet RADIANT creates colors that change according to the viewing angle, which is known as the Radiant effect. There is a colorful play of hues that is set off to particular advantage by the surface textures. Patterns and textures have been part of our life since the per-historic era. Evident everywhere from cave paintings to skin art they play an important role in everyday life and have cultural, religious, and philosophical significance. Our ancestors derived their inspiration from the organic world and everyday objects. Their art has not been forgotten. It dwells deep in our psyche."Old patterns seem excitingly fresh when rejuvenated by a contemporary palette." One perennial design feature always to remember: Contrast is the magic key. The light and the dark "the old and the new, the rough and the soft. The clash of it all is very sexy." Articles you might like
Today, in our dizzy digital age, creativity is the most sought after key word, — that will be my creative and educated guess. We admire creative, thought provoking leaders. We look towards innovative creativity to solve our fossil fuel dependency. We applaud inventive creativity in the form of re-conceptualization of existing governments. The Green Revolution has launched a potent creative skill that I.A. Tayor (1959- The nature of the creative process) calls emergenative creativity. It is a new creation opening an entirely a new paradigm. Good or bad; think about hybrid seeds, cloned corns, plastic from plants and of course the phenomenal creativity of financial engineering that paved way for the financial crisis of 2008. Well, whatever that may be, to be creative and to stay creative is the name of the game. We are all looking for ways to activate our creativity at the snap of our fingers. The irony is we expect ingenuity to be at our beck and call, yet we starve ourselves of the right environment that feeds it. Ask an artist, a musician or an athlete about the out of the world place they call “the zone.” They all acknowledge a sense of immersion and effortless ease. It is called being in the Flow. To encounter creativity as a regular phenomenon, James Webb Young in his classic book, "A Technique for Producing Ideas" provdes some simple steps to harness creative ideas.
Needless to say, the creative process unleashes the Flow State as popularised by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He spent decades studying a wide variety of professionals, actors, artists, scholars and athletes who regularly cultivate that zone-like state of effortlessness he calls Flow. He concluded most of the people he studied experience their deepest flow-states while engaged in extremely challenging physical or mental work. Find expression in something that nourishes a "strong sense of effortless flow to inspire the deliberate practice/work" that will propel you to the pinnacle of your profession. “There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.” — Martha Graham Articles you might like
The fact that Pinterest in now the third most popular social media site, beating Linkedin and Tumblr tells us something about the contemporary mass psychological movement. We are in the Age of Visual Content Revolution. Visuals have become the greatest crutch in the continuity of story telling. Ford, IBM, GE just to name a few have made the transition from stogy boardrooms to being active participants in this mass upheaval of ideas and culture. For artists designers and the creative folks, story boards and visuals were always part of the DNA. Now, visuals are grasping hold of marketers from different industries and they are realizing the forcefulness of visual marketing. Visuals make your Brand Fluid! Visual content draws upon your brand heritage and legacy. It helps in the story telling of your brand. For example, the new Facebook timeline is set up for companies to have opportunity to share their history visually, like Coca-Cola has done below. Brands like Starbucks, harnesses the power of social media to demonstrate what is going on behind the scenes between employees and customers. This humanizes the brand and promotes brand loyalty and awareness between companies and consumers. They have used visuals to make a powerful statement about their brand's stance on important issues that they believe in. Visuals make your Brand Captivating! Visuals capture more than just attention – they capture your heart and drives engagement. In fact, just one month after Facebook introduced timeline for brands, Simply Measured reports that engagement is up 46% percent per post, and visual content (photos and videos) have seen a 65% increase in engagement. Kudos to GE. They have proactively asked for fans to engage with the photos of their products, and the results are phenomenal! Now you know why status updates is loosing the battle to visual updates. Visuals make your Brand User-Worthy! If your customers are on at least a couple of the visually-friendly social networks like Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube, or Instagram, get them involved in helping shape the story of your brand in a more visual way. Keep in mind that there are multiple industries in which prospects won't make a purchase without first consulting user-generated content. That is the reason perhaps why Dunkin Donuts is encouraging fans to create visual content that gets them excited about their product. Referral traffic from social media sites to brand websites is on the rise. Shareaholic study revealed Pinterest generates more referral traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined; only Facebook and StumbleUpon generate more. Bottom Line: Social networks are a direct link to how customers get to your actual website. When brands are communicated through visual mediums, customers are then taking the next step and going directly to your website. No matter how boring the business of goods that you are in; give it a visual flair, weave a story, include your target audience to participate. And, simply watch how your brand evolves. Articles you might like
"Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice. Better than knowledge is meditation. But better still is surrender of attachment to results, because there follows immediate peace." Bhagavad Gita, Zen and now the mathematical equations of quantum physics do not prescribe actual existence - they predict the potential for existence. It states that solidity is a construct of the ordinary mind and that there never was anything permanent to begin with that we could hold on to. Hence, life would be much more efficient if we lived with the knowledge of impermanence as the only constant. Some 3000 years later the same philosophy gets a refresher course in the Google campuses of the high-tech Silicon Valley. Cordell Ratzlaff and Irene Au discusses about creating from the heart and subtracting the attachment factor from the impending results. Watch the video. It is an half hour journey into creativity and mindfulness. When you are not attached to the result in one way or the other, you become so focused in the now that the clarity of your mind goes on over drive. It accesses the wisdom of uncertainty. In uncertainty, lies the freedom from known belief and past conditioning. Professional players are at their best when they are in this "zone". Designers and musicians often surrender themselves to this field of all possibilities. By doing so, they welcome the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe. Keep in mind. You do not give up the intention or the desire to create. You give up your attachment to the result. "Let the beauty of what you love be what you do." Rumi As I come to an end, the words of Dōgen Zenji illuminates my mind: “Do not treasure or belittle what is far away, but be intimate with it. Do not treasure or belittle what is near, but be intimate with it. Do not make light of or a big deal of what you see with your eyes. Do not make light of or a big deal of what you hear with your ears. Rather, illuminate your eyes and ears.” Articles that might interest you:
Conventional wisdom reserves that right hemisphere of our brain is endowed with processing of visual, spatial and emotional manipulation. The left hemisphere is there to serve us for linear reasoning and language functions. However, the irony is there is no direct scientific evidence collaborating the idea that different thinking style lie within the domain specification of each hemisphere...."the neurophysiologists and neuropsychologists who specialize in the human cerebral cortex are starting to view the left-righters with something of the wariness which the astronomers reserve for astrology." - William H. Calvin. The Art of Thinking is a dance between the critique and the creator within. The brain constantly combines, substitutes, adapts, modifies, magnifies, substracts, adds, re-arrange and reverses bits of information in order for thinking to happen. It is like a cerebral symphony where billions of neurons participate as master musicians. Perhaps, for this very reason there is little agreement amongst scholars about the definition of the two kinds of thinking. However, the thinking pattern of the geniuses reveal that they are skilled both in the Art of Science and the Science of Art. They can reduce the sun to a yellow spot and they can easily visualize a yellow spot as the life enforcing sun. In his book, Cracking Creativity, Michael Michalko explores the art of holistic thinking exhibited by geniuses. 1. Know how to see, not just look at: “The invisibility of the obvious”. Great sales people are so good that you do not know when they are selling. 2. Make a thought visible: You interpret via the tangible. "Identify and secure elements needed to draw reasonable conclusions." Be a consummate sketcher. 3. Think fluently: "The holistic experience that people feel when they act with total involvement." It is being in the "flow" as embraced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 4. Make novel combinations: Liquid Paper and Velcro owes their existence due to this novelty. 5. Connect the unconnected: The ever popular Reggae emerged due to the connectivity of traditional African jazz, American jazz, old-time rhythm and blues, ska and rocksteady. Eric Lewis is one such connector. He created a new musical identity: ELEW......it is rock, it is jazz, it is classical piano. 6. Look at the other side: Roger Martin calls this multi-dimensional “integrative thinking”. Martin interviewed more than 50 successful leaders, to find a distinct common characteristic: "the predisposition and capacity to hold two diametrically opposing ideas in their heads. And then, without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they're able to produce a synthesis that is superior to either opposing idea." 7. Look in other worlds: It so happens we have abundance of green plants here on Earth. However, that does make a plant green. When the scientists studied light absorbed and reflected by organisms on Earth (that which attributes to the greenery), determined that if astronomers were to look at the light given off by planets circling distant stars, they might predict that some planets have mostly non-green plants. 8. Find what you are not looking for: The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius who also happened to be a monumental philosopher found equanimity in the midst of conflict. 9. Awaken the collaborative spirit: 'Do Us a Flavour’ An open competition was enacted to design a new crisp flavor for Walkers. The best flavors were then voted on by the public. http://www.walkers.co.uk/flavours/ It is said that the master polymath, Leonardo daVinci always looked at his finished painting from a far distance to get a different perspective. By distancing yourself from the pattern of how you are conceived, you change your perception of who you are, thereby allowing yourself to see something that you could not otherwise see. Articles you might like
The avant-garde movement in art and literature of the 20th-century that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images is often termed as surrealism. Science says that the human nervous system is bombarded with roughly 2 million bits of information. To maintain sanity, our conscious mind filters out most of the stimuli. In 1956 George A. Miller discovered that the number of objects an average human can hold in working memory is 7 ± 2. The rest, that 2 million - 7(± 2) bits are dealt by the unconscious. Such is the glory of our unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is the store house of immense creative potential. It is 90% of our total mind power as opposed to the 10% of the mind that we usually use in our normal waking state. Another way to look at it is 90% of our total mind power is not normally accessed while sleep. We spend 1/3 of our life asleep. It is the inscapable law of life. However, the subconscious mind never rests or sleeps. It is always active, controlling all our vital forces. Dr. John Bigelow, a famous research authority on sleep, demonstrated that at night while asleep you receive impressions showing that the nerves of the eyes, ears, nose, and taste buds are active during sleep, meaning our brain is at work. He says that the main reason we sleep is because “the nobler part of the soul is united by abstraction to our higher nature and becomes a participant in the wisdom and foreknowledge of the gods.” Often, we have experienced the creative intelligence of our subconscious at work in our dreams. A consistent way to tap into your dreams is to sleep with a dream journal. When you are at the edge of half-sleep and half wakefulnes, write down the dream in one sentence. You will be amazed the doors that will be opened in that surreal state of mind. As Brad Holland so skillfully pits it: "Surrealism: An archaic term. Formerly an art movement. No longer distinguishable from everyday life." Surrealism surfaced in the 1920s as a literary movement responding to the illogical mass killings and social turmoil after World War I. Surrealist writers, including former Dadaist Andre Breton, were motivated by Sigmund Freud’s work in exploring the unconscious and sought direct access to the deepest levels of the human mind, unfiltered by logic or reason. By the early 1920s, graphic design and visual art expressed dream-like imagery, ideas mined directly from the unconscious and Salvador Dali became the leader of the Surrealist Movement. The melting watches became the marquee surrealist works of all times. “Deep within, there is something profoundly known, not consciously, but subconsciously. A quiet truth, that is not a version of something, but an original knowing. What this, absolute, truth [identity] is may be none of our business…but it is there, guiding us along the path of greater becoming; a true awareness. It is so self-sustaining that our recognition of it is not required. We are offspring’s of such a powerfully divine force – Creator of all things known and unknown.” ― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence" Articles you might like
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Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. Franz Kafka |