I was wondering where I should take this Creative Strategy discussion next when a former student called.
Because he doesn’t live in any of the advertising hot spots, he was having trouble recruiting ADs. He now finds himself trying to turn young Graphic Designers into on-the-job trained Designer/Art Directors. He’s a smart guy, knows Kamikaze Creative Strategy; encourages the rest of the agency to use it, as well.
__(insert name here)__ in __(city of his choice)__, this post is for you. I know you’re doing a great job, but since you asked, let me help.
I became interested in Design Strategy long before I started teaching. Because I was a proponent of integrated campaigns, I often worked with Graphic Designers on collateral, direct, promotions, annual reports, packaging, etc. Because they were young and I didn’t know better, we concepted together. Because I am such a big believer, I taught them how to use the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan, how design and copy are two parts of the same whole, won a bunch of awards and learned about great design from some very smart, talented designers in the process.
KAMIKAZE DESIGN STRATEGY
BEYOND THE CONCEPTUAL CREATIVE STRATEGY CONSIDERATIONS of the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan, Kamikaze Design Strategy applies to every aspect of Commercial Design. Packaging, Collateral (brochures, posters, point of sale, annual reports, etc.), Web, Corporate ID (logo, letterhead, business cards, corporate graphic standards, etc.), Direct Mail, Promotions, Signage – the list is as endless as the types of jobs traditionally – and non-traditionally – falling to Designers Graphic, Web or otherwise. Goes without saying it applies to ADs, too.
That’s not to say Kamikaze Design Strategy (KDS) supersedes and/or replaces ad-style Kamikaze Creative Strategy. The demand for Marketing Design over Design for Design’s Sake reflects the market’s need for strategic work and relationships beyond ad agencies or strictly visual design.
Importantly, it also reflects designers’ needs to expand their creative challenges and income producing opportunities. While clients often ask design shops to do ads and other jobs more commonly assigned to Adlandia over Designianna, most design training does not include advertising type Creative Strategy. Knowing it is the difference between a GD’s being asked to do an ad – and the same GD being asked to do another ad.
As in Kamikaze Creative Advertising Strategy, Kamikaze Creative Design Strategy must be considered in all conceptual thinking. It is no longer enough graphics merely “look good.” The mass competition of the global market places great weight on a client’s marketing considerations: response, sales, awareness, brand identity, positioning, international communications, web presence, social networking, etc. etc.
Kamikaze Design Strategy doesn’t replace ad-style Kamikaze Creative Strategy. It’s the clarification and expansion of the Kamikaze Creative Strategy components which most concern Design.
SEVEN-STEP KAMIKAZE DESIGN STRATEGY
Step #1: WHO IS IT FOR? Design Strategy is most importantly Market Driven. Don’t allow clients to fool themselves. Great, effective Graphic Design is done for The Prospect – the people your client wants to reach. Unless it’s personal stationery, it’s never for the clients themselves. Be sure to consider The Prospect as individuals – not merely as part of a group. Think Prospect Definition from the Kamikaze Advertising Creative Work Plan.
A word of caution here about the client and the client’s industry (whether consumer or b2b, the client will have an industry). Just because bankers have always been marketed to/for with conservative, “money” context design does not mean that’s what will move today's banker/banking prospect. Such a conservative graphic approach might not work within the context of newer retail banking and financial investment offerings. Nor will it necessarily resonate with 18-24 year olds.
Changing a traditional approach to motivate current prospects – no matter how targeted and smart - is a creative “risk” you may have to ask your client to trust you in taking. How big a risk is it? Depends upon how good you are at integrating branded graphic standards with a new look and feel.
Tread lightly. For the client, a creative “risk” may be merely doing something no one in the industry has done before. He or she may be putting their job on the line. (Remember my definition of “Kamikaze” Creative – if the idea isn’t worth risking your professional career for, it’s not a good enough idea.)
If you’re proposing something the client’s industry hasn’t seen, that flies in face of the client’s previous work, ask clients to do so with logic, knowledge, street savvy and a dead-on understanding of the prospect, the product’s context, branding and the client’s personal point(s) of view. The client’s job, business, reputation, promotion, kiester may be on the line. No matter how appropriate to your client’s prospect, you won’t get them to take what they perceive to be a risk unless you understand and are sensitive to that.
Step #2: WHAT IS IT FOR? What is the subject of the piece? If it’s the product/service being offered or the client corporation, it’s informational – content. Whatever you’re selling (introducing, branding, positioning, etc. etc.), what’s the story behind it? Is it a technical product/service that may require a technically minded prospect and piece? Is it something warm and fuzzy, that helps prospects somehow feel better about themselves and their world?
It’s not enough to know what the product does. You must also determine what the prospect wants to know, needs to know and how educated they are on the subject. This will help you design around content – long copy or short, photographic or illustration, stock or shoot, color palettes, paper and production costs/techniques, etc. If it’s for an established brand, corporate graphic standards will in many ways set the look, feel and tone of a piece. If it isn’t an established brand, it could be your chance to do it right.
Step #3: WHAT DOES IT NEED TO DO? Will the client use the piece to respond to an inquiry? Inspire inquiry or other response? Must it be appealing enough for the prospect to pick it from a table loaded with competitive offerings? Or will it go directly to individual recipients? Must it force its own identity in an over-cluttered market? Or will it introduce a totally new product/market segment? Obviously not only the prospect and product – but the context of the prospect, product and marketplace – must be considered.
This includes the context of the work’s distribution. Not just is it a brochure, but is it a brochure-to-be-mailed, a brochure-to-be-distributed-at-trade-shows, a brochure-to-be-translated-into-(which/how many)-languages, etc. Beyond who they are, you must consider how the prospect will get the piece and what you want them to do with it. Will they use it to order products? Tape it on the fridge? Use it to convince higher-ups to do business with your client? Can you see how knowing these – and other details – will color your design?
Step #4: WHAT DOES IT HAVE TO SAY? This deals with message/content. Charts? Graphs? Photographs? Lots of information (and copy)? Columns of numbers? Fixed and/or changeable pricing, products, services? Long copy, short, medium? (*Who decides how long the copy will be? AD? CW? Client? CD? ACD? AE? Wrong. The correct decision lies somewhere between the make-up of your Prospect and the information to be disseminated. Basically, the Prospect decides.
There are almost as many components to this question as there are types of jobs. The task of smart Design Strategy is to determine which apply to which job. The Prospect drives this section as well. How will they best assimilate this information? What is the information about? How many pages/frames/minutes/ads do you and your writer think you’ll need to say it?
Step #5: HOW SHOULD IT SAY IT? This deals with look, feel, attitude, tone, etc. If colors, which colors? Will black and white do/be best? Illustrations, photos, all type? Matte or glossy? Textured? Standard size or wildly shaped? Organic? Hi Tech? User Friendly? Streaming video? The parameters go here. Market (Prospect) driven, within context of product, job delivery/distribution/media
Be sure you and your writer are in sync. Nothing’s sadder than disagreement between copy and design. Not only does it ruin your book piece, it cuts down readership.
Step #6: WHAT CAN I SPEND? Contrary to what too many think, good design does not start with cost. The budget is where design and concept end, never where they start.
There are those – usually very experienced – GDs, ADs and CWs who can concept within budget. With too few exceptions, this limits design and other creative possibilities. The best designers start with Design Considerations #1-#5, then adapt their designs to fit budget requirements (#6). Never the other way around.
If you start the design process with budget, you think Well, can’t afford animation, can’t afford new photography/illustration, can’t do X because there’s not enough Y. You’re limiting how you solve the problem, the Big idea, by telling yourself how you can’t do it.
Instead, use your strategic conceptualization to come up with a great idea, sell the idea and them figure out how to produce the idea within the budget. Then it isn’t the IDEA that’s limited, it’s the production. As any good AD or GD or CW can tell you, there’s always a way to do good work with smaller budgets. It’s a matter of how you look at it, and how you sell it.
There are times when an idea’s so big, it can’t be executed within the budget. If that happens, if you put everything you have into the idea, but it’s over budget, don’t dismiss it. Play with the idea until it is as affordable as possible.
Then do another idea that will meet all requirements, budget included. Work from your KCWP and Design Strategy #1-#7, in order. Do several. Present the best. Don’t stop until you have something better that works within budget, or you prove it can’t be done and discuss how much the budget must increase.
No matter what your goal (selling the original idea, producing something, anything, yadda yadda), only good ideas count. Present them along with your original. You’d be surprised how many clients will “find” the extra money needed to do what’s best. But only when it’s properly conceived and presented.
The key here is not to go pie-in-the-sky. If the budget is $10k and you need to increase it, try to bring it in around $12-13k, not $20k. Knowing how to do that’s one more reason we’re called Professionals.
Ideally, we make a conceptual presentation and tell the client what it will take to do the job, then they approve our budget. This requires respect and trust between client and designer, as well as open mindedness in the corporate budgeting process. It’s also unusual. Too often, the client tells us what they want, then asks “how much” before anything’s been designed/concepted. Come in too high. Someone else gets the job.
Most clients have already budgeted funds per year/project. They still might not say “we have $____ to do a brochure…” preferring, instead, to get you to estimate the job although you have no idea, realistically, what they need and what they can spend. Changing this process takes time, trust and another five pages to discuss.
Step #7: MANDATES & LIMITATIONS. Applicable corporate graphic standards, legal content, disclaimers, languages to be translated, graphics standards, etc. Must it be compatible with existing pieces, establish format for all new work, be applied across the board? Anything you must consider/include in both the design process and the finished piece.
Kamikaze Design Strategy isn’t just for graphic design jobs. It’s for everything you must concept and “design” before you produce. Print. Web. Broadcast. Ads. Posters. Streaming Video. Ambient. Retail. Promotional. Anything that involves the way it looks, what it says/how, how it does its job and ultimately, how much it costs. It’ll keep you out of trouble, focused where you should be both conceptually and in your estimate. It saves a lot of heartache, resentment and revisions.
You might consider the entire Kamikaze Design Strategy formula the Mandates & Limitations of your original Kamikaze Creative Work Plan (Traditional or Objective based). Whatever you do, don’t think of Kamikaze Design Strategy as a big NO! Do not think it’s restrictive.
Like the Kamikaze Creative Work Plan, once you get comfortable working with it and use it correctly, Kamikaze Design Strategy will set your concepts free, just free to produce within budget. Use it wrong, the budget and other perceived restrictions will be all you notice.
©2001, 2011/Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative
