We're in the midst of two design projects: an annual report for Vesper Society, a new Web site for ABHOW. Both projects are coming together nicely. What's most exciting about these projects, and central to our design approach at Signal Hill, is that they are true expressions of the organizations' identities.
True as opposed to false: That may seem like an odd way to speak of design, but it's an important distinction. When exploring design options for an annual report or a Web site, any number of choices will present themselves. We'll go down a variety of paths - photo-driven designs, text-driven options, high-impact colors, subtle conveyances, etc. Many options will be striking in appearance. But not all options will be right. Inspiration really kicks in when we come upon something true, meaning it is consistent with the identity of the organization.
Consistency may, at first, sound like a barrier to exploration, yet it's actually a path to what's most true. Here's why:
With any design project, we generally have an established identity to start with (unless we are creating the identity from scratch), so true options will fit this identity in terms of color and font and overall message. False options, on the other hand, would not fit at all. They may look good, but they would clash with the established identity. We want the design to work at this very practical level.
That's one kind of consistency. Another way of understanding consistency is coherence, how things hang together. In this respect, we're looking at how the design coheres, or is consistent, with what the organization says about itself and what it believes about itself. And here's where we move in the design process beyond simply mimicking what has come before.
An organization's identity, or its brand, includes its promise. That's promise as commitment, i.e. "We promise to deliver exceptional service"; and promise as potential, i.e. "We have the promise to delight our customers." With the latter definition, I am always reminded of a song I learned as a kid: "I am a promise, I am a possibility. I am a promise, with a capital P. I am a great big bundle of potentiality."
As we explore the full promise of an organization, we will come upon some ideas that are a stretch, or rather they require the organization to stretch. We will envision a design that reflects who the organization is today and who it is becoming. For that reason, the design will inspire.
That's what makes our design process exciting. We offer our clients ideas that invite them to be more. But this "more" is not foreign to their organizations nor far-fetched, so it is not false. More is a design that shows an organization at its best, the full promise. When we offer that, the design is true.
