Posted on June 21, 2004

print  e-mail

The Design Process: Taking It in Phases

In my previous column, I suggested that it's essential to honor the evolution of the design process: skip a sequence and the process can fall off a cliff. That's why it's important, before you get started, to make sure the members of your design team are familiar with the various stages of — and roles they'll be expected to play in — the process.

Phase One: Research and Orientation

The initial phase begins after you have determined the members of the team and settled on a graphic designer. "But wait," I can hear you saying. "We already conducted our research. And isn't our design brief orientation enough?" Yes, it is. And the fact that you've prepared a detailed brief should speed things along and save you money.

But while the brief may have served you well to this point, its existence is no guarantee that the design team is ready to be fully engaged in the process. In fact, this is the moment when the team — and especially the designer — must become immersed in the culture and values of your organization. It's a good time, for instance, for the designer to rummage through your archives, looking for that long-lost color palette or typeface that truly captures the essence of your organization. It's also a good time to go over with the designer the organizational materials (brochures, annual reports, letterhead) you've produced in recent years, noting the relative importance of each piece, any common language and brand elements they share, and whether individual pieces were considered a success or failure.

click image to enlarge

This is also the time for your designer to become familiar with other organizations in your corner of the nonprofit universe, competitors as well as those that can provide useful models in terms of successful branding systems. You can bet when United Parcel Service re-branded itself recently, it paid close attention to the successful re-branding effort that Federal Express initiated a few years ago. While both UPS and FedEx changed their logos to be simpler and easier to read, they also realized that color was a key element of their branding systems and retained their primary color schemes — purple and orange in the case of FedEx, brown and golden yellow in the case of UPS — that people had come to associate with each company. The point is, your branding should inspire confidence in your organization while differentiating it from your competitors, and to pull that off you'll need to develop an awareness of your organization's brand landscape.

click image to enlarge

After your designer and branding team have completed their research, the next step is to get the members of the team oriented. Orientation is all about identifying your organization's position vis-a-vis its competitors and partners. Are you a leader or an up-and-comer in your field? What makes your organization and its offerings unique or special? What makes your organization and its work relevant to its main constituency? Is its mission as relevant today as it was when the organization was founded? Where do you expect the organization to be in five years? In ten?

Your entire team needs to know the answers to these questions before you can all proceed confidently on your journey together. Revisit your design brief and, if necessary, challenge and/or modify the brief to ensure that it reflects the most current, accurate, and inspired picture of your organization (see the section called Outlining the Design Brief, in my column "Anatomy of a Design Brief").

The "Elevator" Pitch

As you review the brief one final time with the design team and your designer, develop a succinct positioning statement that sums up what your organization is all about. All the better if it's in one or two memorable lines — not only will it help you down the road with the development of a tagline, it may also become the "elevator pitch" that you and your board members trot out at appropriate moments, whether it's a cocktail party chock-full of potential donors or a chance encounter with an individual who would be a great addition to your board.

This is also the right time — and probably the last good opportunity — for everyone on the design team to speak his or her mind; introducing new information to the process after this stage almost always creates problems. New information can be almost anything, from "I forgot to mention that we're opening an office in Iran next year and the identity has to work in Farsi," to "I neglected to mention that we can't use a cross or flame as part of our identity." Flushing out this kind of critical information at this juncture can save you time and money in the long run, while failure to do so inevitably will result in a demoralized and frustrated design team. Remember, silence equals approval — so if you don't speak your mind, consider yourself guilty of "under-minding" the process.

Identifying Brand Equity

Assuming it's not a startup, your organization probably has built up brand equity that it will want to preserve. Equity, in this context, means the elements of your branding with which audiences readily identify. The brand team at FedEx felt that people recognized and identified with the purple and orange in the company logo but felt no such affinity for the name "Federal Express," which, among other things, had ambiguous connotations based on the word federal.

How will you and your team know when it's time to move on to the next phase of the process? First and probably most importantly, the designer will indicate that she has the tools and information she needs to get started. But before you move on, be sure to summarize, on paper, all the observations and decisions the team has arrived at. Once that has been done, you can move on to phase two.

Phase Two: Design Development

Each designer has his or her own way of proceeding in this phase. In general, the designer will take all the information and decisions arrived at in phase one and, after a week or two, will return with sketches of several ideas for marks (logos) or logotypes (where customized type becomes the mark) positioned on a design continuum — from simple to complex, obvious to obscure, figurative to abstract. To avoid focusing on the logo in isolation, which can lead to more demands being placed on it than it can carry, these ideas are often shown in context — for instance, logos applied to a Web site homepage, T-shirt, and/or letterhead. Putting the logo in context with elements such as language, illustration, and color makes it easier for you to understand how the logo interacts with these elements and shows the possibilities of the larger brand identity. This will help you avoid serious mistakes down the road.

click image to enlarge

Expressions of the brand should be presented as just that — ideas to be discussed, developed, or discarded. This way, each design team member can feel comfortable revealing his or her views before a commitment is made to a specific expression of the overall concept.

click image to enlarge

Making the Process Inclusive

The success of any branding program depends on buy-in — on how well everyone understands the brand strategy and whether they are willing to "get with the program." Because nonprofits tend to be non-hierarchical, it's even more important in a nonprofit setting to make sure that everyone is brought along as the design process unfolds.

So while it's to be expected that different designers will have different ways of presenting their work, I recommend including an educational component in the design process in order to nurture the feeling of inclusiveness. When working with a client, nonprofit or otherwise, designer Roger Whitehouse starts by discussing the brand identities of such well-known heavyweights as IBM, Citicorp, the American Red Cross, and/or CBS. Each logo is explored in depth by both the design team and the designer during the presentation. Before you know it, people start to relax (and defensive attitudes start to dissipate) as they begin to realize they share many of the same attitudes and opinions.

This kind of session is often followed by a brief refresher — a review of the design brief that focuses on the particular components that define the nonprofit's identity, including the tagline, positioning statement, keywords, and/or elevator pitch.

Next, design ideas are presented as broad-stroke concepts — as points of departure that allow team members to jump in and have their say. Some designers may be horrified at this approach, especially if it's made to sound as if control of the process is being taken away from them. But what's brilliant about this tactic is that, if the designer's work is good (i.e., he or she has presented a range of solid ideas effectively) and the design team is working in earnest, it helps to further relax the attitudes of team members and promote buy-in. Unhelpful emotion-based comments such as "I don't like red" or "I'm not comfortable with that typeface" are replaced by valuable insights such as "Red doesn't support the concept because it's too angry for our message of peaceful conflict resolution," or "The typeface is too modern for us; our organization needs to look more traditional because our mission is traditional."

Here are some key questions to consider while you're engaged in the design presentation phase:

• Is the concept valid for our organization?
• Is the concept powerful? Will our primary audiences connect to it on an emotional level?
• Is the concept original? Can we "own" this concept, or is it too generic?
• Is the concept clear and focused or is it ambiguous? Can it be interpreted in more ways than one? If so, do they support our cause or do they undermine it?
• Is the concept versatile or rigid? Does it have "legs" - that is, is it flexible enough to be used in a variety of ways?
• Can the concept be shrunk or expanded and still maintain its integrity?

click image to enlarge

By the end of the presentation, it should be clear what works and what doesn't, and that's helpful for the designer as well as the team. What's more, sometimes totally new ideas will emerge from the discussion. As long as there is no expectation that a logo will be selected during this first meeting, the designer should be able to go away and come back, refinements or new ideas in hand, to a very positive, engaged, and informed committee.

Usually at this second presentation, team members begin to realize that their input has made a difference and, once the brand leader has given the nod to an identity, feel satisfied that they played an important role in the process. Then, with any luck, there is the magical moment where it all clicks and the new identity is embraced. Says Roger Whitehouse, "The client representatives see themselves as members of the design team and have entered into the process as genuine collaborators. In a sense, we never have a situation where the client chooses anything; instead, we all arrive at the same conclusions together."

click image to enlarge

If I've given the impression that the process is predictable, I've misled you. There are no formulas for arriving at a new brand identity — partly because most truly great identities break the mold or are somewhat unconventional. But if it ain't predictable, or even particularly easy, it is the most exciting kind of journey to be on — especially if you are prepared to venture "off map" from time to time in hopes of ending up at an even better place than you could have imagined before you set out.

In my next column, I'll discuss the fine-tuning of your brand identity — the refinement phase — and will take a closer look at the development of the brand's "voice." Until then, keep your eyes open to the brands around you: The more you understand, the more you see!

Writer, strategist, and art director DK Holland has been developing award-winning programs that include branding, licensing, promotion, and product development for companies such as Mattel and Citicorp for thirty years. She was, until 2001, a partner in the Pushpin Group, an internationally acclaimed design and illustration firm based in New York City. Currently the principal of DK Holland, llc, a communications consultancy that works exclusively with nonprofits, her clients include the Literacy Assistance Center, New Internationals, the Sustainability Education Center, World Reach, the Buckminster Fuller Institute, and Sisters of Charity New York. DK serves on the board of directors of the Alliance for Nonprofit Governance, which she is in the process of re-branding; is an editor of Communications Arts magazine and the author/art director of a dozen books on graphic design; and teaches in the graduate school for nonprofit management at New School University. She lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.