Firebrand

In the last post, I talked about how design and marketing need to work so closely together in a consumer products company that they should be the same department. One of the reasons that this needs to be is so that there is tangible threads though the industrial design and promotion of a product for consumers to make mental connections with.

I am not talking about high level, intangible vision statements; I am talking about concrete, easily recognizable and executable elements that can repeat themselves both in the product, TV spots, website, print ads, and display fixtures. “Sexy curves” or “light and airy” is not good enough. While having a vision with descriptors is a good thing, it is not tangible enough to be interpreted and implemented the same by different designers. You will waste alot of resources getting new iterations from different designers to get it to match. The threads need to be so tangible that you could write them in a spec, which you should do.

The best example I have come across is the black leather texture on the back of the Blackberry Bold. The back of the Blackberry Bold is black plastic, but it is textures with the relief of a rough leather. A great design element in itself; it reminds me of a high end wallet which is stored and treated similarly to a PDA, and positions the new product as high quality and high end for wealthy business people. It also give some grip for the hand. Well Blackberry uses that Blackberry texture as a background in their website and advertisements. While few customers will ever consciously make the connection between the product and the promotion, it will give them a sense of congruency and commonality in the sub brand. It makes the promotion dollars go further as well, because the tight branding bridges the mental gap between the product and the promotion. (Customer in store: “Oh yeah, I saw the ad for this on The Mentalist last night.) As a fixture and display designer, I know that is an element that I can pick up on to display the product.

This is a tricky thing to implement without constraining designers, of both the industrial, interaction and graphic variety. If you spec it out before the concept generation starts, than industrial designers will let good ideas die on the drawing board because they can’t see how the tread would be implemented. The best part of the design process to write the spec is in the preliminary phase. This is after the product concept has been generated and evaluated. The product hasn’t taken it’s final form yet, but the bones are there. At this point, the industrial designer can come up with ideas for the common thread, and then get feedback on it from the marketing / graphic design. (Eg. Designer: “Can you pick up on these parallel glowing horizontal lines in the advertising?” Marketer: “Yes, I could see that as an element on this print advertisement already.”)

Having the common thread through both the product and promotion will be a great step in creating a 360 degree consistant branding experience. Having that consistant brand experience will allow you to capitalize on the brand you have built in consumers mind, and build it further.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.