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Part two of a two-part interview, Damian Borchok continues our conversation by discussing the need for designers to have some understanding of business, how design studios might consider tackling growth, and why all businesses need to be purpose-driven. This interview was featured in Open Manifesto #7 which focused on the theme ‘Enlightened self-interest’.

Note: At the time of this interview, Damian Borchok was CEO of Interbrand Australia. He is now Managing Director, APAC, of Koto, Sydney.

Kevin Finn: With such a volatile and unpredictable economic climate and with perhaps diminishing client budgets as a result, how financially viable are large studios or large networks—as opposed to a group of smaller, independent studios that might be a collaborative force?

Damian Borchok: I think we’ll always have both. In my experience it comes and it goes in waves. I remember when there was a big move towards big global brand businesses; they had a certain expertise. Then, a number of clients began thinking: “Actually, they’re expensive, they’re a bit slow. In reality we have a relationship with a subset of that group—who are our team. At the end of the day, they kind of look like a small business.” Eventually, some of those little teams often start their own businesses. The big client follows them, and more clients pick that up.

I think we certainly see some of that—this agility thing, and the speed of being in the small agency. If you have some really top talent, if you focus that talent around a couple of top clients, you can do really well. It switches back, because a lot of those businesses then recognise that when they start up, they might have a fresh new client, there’s energy, but then they get caught up in a lot of the management. How do you deal with growth? “Do I have the infrastructure to deal with finance and IT and all the other things if I bring a big client across?” It starts to break down. A couple of people might leave. You bring in some other people. All of a sudden the quality of the firm declines. The client says, “FYI, it’s not really working. I’m going back to ‘B’ agency.”

You get these waves of changes. To me, I don’t see scale as really being the driving force around quality and results. I think there are a lot of really great small businesses and there are really, really cool big ones, too. There are really crappy small ones and really crappy big ones. There’s no correlation between size and quality of the work that you get. It’s very much around how is the business is being led? Who’s the talent in the business? How progressively minded are they in the way that they are improving their products and the way that they can serve their clients? It’s those kind of questions that you think about to find whether an organisation is going to do great creative work for you or not.

I guess there’s a perception that growth means you have to get more staff, get bigger clients, and that produces a need to ‘feed the machine.’ Then it’s difficult to be selective in deciding on client work to accept. This begins to cannibalize your position because you’re just trying to pay the bills. Now, that’s one perception of growth. You’ve personally experienced growth at Interbrand, from just a few people to quite a large organization. How have you navigated that growth so that it doesn’t begin to impact the product?

In the back of your mind you always have to ask: how sustainable is big? That’s often a challenge. There’s a real fear, particularly if you’re in a business that has to achieve monthly targets in order to get there. Does that dysfunctional behavior force compromise, or chasing the dollar? That is always a balancing act. From our experience, I would say that, in Sydney, it’s a much bigger market than anywhere else in Australia. You can sustain a decent size studio, probably 30 or 40, maybe on a good day 50, people with what I would call a standard consulting service.

One approach is identifying the great business you did and just doing more of the same. But some organisations ask themselves how they can extend those relationships with other things and get deeper in the relationship. The other option is you add new products. That’s the important thing for us. The product firm is really the key. Motion graphic business is certainly a few years old but doing well. Verbal identity is growing. Employee engagement programs and team is vital too. They started to expand after about 18 months of hard work in finding the right sort of relationships to do that kind of work. That allows us to have a fairly stable and traditional strategy and design group, but the other parts of the business that we add on are new. New types of work that we’re doing is adding new value to the business and allowing us to grow.

The other thing with the brand globally isn’t simply about the size of the office, or the geographic spread of the service. Sydney has grown to a particular size. Melbourne has a lot more opportunity to advance the business. To me it’s still very early days for that part of the business, in terms of its opportunity. Growth can significantly expand that office in the coming year. There are different ways that you manage growth. There are some ways you can chase the dollar. To me that’s not sustainable, because sure enough somewhere along the track, you’re going to lose a client, or there’s going to be another GFC [Global Financial Crisis]. You have a big, lumbering business that’s got a long way to fall.

I guess the two sides of that coin are: Diversify and, if you refer back to something that you mentioned earlier, to be good at one thing as opposed to being a generalist. Is there a danger when you start adding new products and expanding your business? It achieves diversification, but do you then have to walk that fine line by being very clear about what you do?

Yes. That can be a challenge. We usually expect about a three year lead-time before it actually gets real traction, because you have all those classic innovation curve events. There may be a few clients who are early adopters. They might take it on. Some of them might question the experience you’ve got in a new area for the business. They might question how good your team is. They might think: “I have never heard Interbrand doing this sort of stuff locally before. Is this real?” Those are probably a more mass market kind of client, and so they will wait for a couple of years. You have to be quite mindful of that. If you build a product, go to market and think that it didn’t take off this year, you are leveling the opportunities on the table.

The other point is that we don’t play that generalist game. We are essentially a large office of specialists. We are very much focused on hiring people who have specific skills. Like, for example, with our environments people they are interior designers and architects. Hiring a person whose career has been built in that area, and has that expertise, that’s a very different conversation to your marketing department, for example. Those kind of perspectives enrich the business, as well as actually provide us with the credibility that we need.

A softer way to introduce those new products would be to offer those new services to your existing clients so you can say, “This is something else—within the remit of our project with you. But we can also do this new service.” That way you’re not going to the market with a whole new pitch to new clients…

Yeah. You can sometimes have those wins, and that’s good if you have the trust of your client, but then you have other clients that you’ve worked with for a long time who have a very fixed view of what they have hired you for, and they just will not accept that you do anything else. We do. We have those challenges quite a bit. They hire us for our strategic thinking, and they have a very blind view of all the other things that we can do. Sometimes they are the ones that take the longest to come around. It is horses for courses. You do get a mix on that front.

Interbrand is part of the Omnicom Group so with the Publicis Omnicom mega merger, does this development impact the business structure at all? Does it put extra pressure or add KPIs, or change the business focus? Or, is it more of a positive addition to the service that you can provide? [Editor’s Note: This interview took place before the Publicis Omnicom merger collapsed.]

It’s really hard to say at the moment. It’s a merger that has been stated, but there’s a whole bunch of things that have to happen before it becomes official. At this stage, there’s no change as far as I can tell. We’re ‘business as usual’ for the minute. I’ll probably wait and see what becomes of it. I haven’t been through one of these large scale mergers before so I’m not really sure what to expect. Because these acquisitions tend to be lots of businesses that are part of a portfolio coming together they tend to go about their business— unless there’s some crossover.

Obviously, there are scale opportunities and things like that, and there are probably some competitive advantages. It’s still certainly very early days to fully understand the implications.

Some could argue that, with this kind of super power mega merger, it might create a less creative landscape. Would you agree with this assessment?

It was Martin Sorrell who made that point. But no, I don’t necessarily think there’s a correlation between scale and creativity. It’s often an argument that you could become less creative, but I don’t buy that argument. There are plenty of really rubbish small firms, as well. There are plenty of good, big firms. It comes back to the conditions that you create to deliver creativity. No, I don’t agree that’s going to be an issue.

We see the rise of the smaller, independent studio. It’s an increasing trend at the moment, but do you think it might galvanise the smaller independents or at least increase the number of them?

It may, certainly. It’s always interesting when you have a major shift in the market. The smaller studios work to fill that in, because the emergence of more small, creative agencies is probably a cool thing to have happen. The more new things that are happening in a marketplace the more it provides a better dynamic, a better sense of competitiveness. The interesting thing around the emergence of the smaller agencies is a response to a particular shift that’s happening—the need for organizations to be more agile, more creative, more adaptive.

Smaller agencies are certainly meeting that challenge. We often talk about the war for talent. In our industries, it can often take a bunch of talented mavericks to come together, and they’ve got a very new, exciting product. The thing that I find interesting about this is the challenge this sets and how you renew yourself. How do you refresh yourself? And how do these other players set benchmarks? You then have to think about: “If we’re a leader, we need to think about that context.” And also ask: “What does leadership mean for our kind of business?”

These are the kinds of things that I find interesting. I actually like a marketplace with that kind of dynamic. Apart from keeping me on my toes, I think it keeps everybody fresh—if they actually want to be successful.

You mentioned earlier that one of the products, which Interbrand has developed—and a term Interbrand may have coined—is the term verbal identity. Can you expand on that?

Verbal identity responds to what branding identity does, in relation to the graphic side of things. But there is a whole bunch of other things you can think about. Language is one. I know sound is becoming more popular. The nature of touch, and particularly when it comes to user experience and interface is now becoming something to consider as a more important dimension of emotionalising, and creating a sensory experience around a brand.

To come back to the idea of ‘verbal identity,’ A number of years ago there was a guy called John Simmons, who worked at Interbrand. He ran a language practice within the London office, and he wrote a number of books. The one that I read was called The Invisible Grail, which certainly stuck in my mind as being one of the more interesting business books, which I often find really boring and formulaic for the most part.

But this one is really exciting, because he opened my mind to the idea of language, and he was probably one of the real pioneers of this field. Whilst we’ve had copywriters for years and years as a key part of brand communication, nobody actually thought of establishing ‘verbal identity’ as a product when building visual brands. This has been something Interbrand has been doing for many years. It makes a lot of sense, when you start to think about how brand guidelines usually consist of many hundreds of pages of visual expression. When you get to the verbal identity part, you usually have about two or three pages. But if you consider the amount of interactions that you have with a brand, whether it’s spoken, or with a specific language, that’s a very disproportional representation in your guidelines document.

For us, it’s a fundamentally important piece of what we offer and how people communicate your service. For example, it’s important for when somebody in a call centre talks on the phone. But it also involves looking at how you write. Given the extent of social media, and how it is such a language-based medium, this is really key. Anybody who reads literature will be aware that certain writers have their own kind of voice. Why wouldn’t a brand have its own tone of voice? When we refer to tone it isn’t just about a list of things like: “Keep it simple, use straightforward language, be friendly and engaging.” It’s about finding a style that’s all your own.

One great example I use is a gym in Utah called Gym Jones. They have such a strong tone of voice, and you can see that it’s come from the leader—and the passion of that leader. It’s an extreme gym, and only the most elite athletes go there. They talk about this on their home page and their tagline is The Art of Suffering. They state they are exclusive—in that they exclude. They say you can expect to have mental and physical breakdowns there. There are no mirrors in the gym. There is no air conditioning. You have concrete floors, and it’s hard work. There is an intensity and brutality to their attitude and their language represents the experience you have. This is a very honest, true representation of the tone of that business, all delivered through its language. It’s a hugely successful business. Anyhow, you’re left with no confusion about what you are going to get. I think more brands need that kind of clarity. Perhaps not in that style, but certainly understanding the world that you want to build, and how people want to see that world.

This is not simply dumbed down by the legal department, and a boring 2000 word lexicon of business speak, which is what most organizations present. Just go to most corporate websites and you can see that the same repetitive, jargonistic language is there.

It’s interchangeable…

It’s created to cause anonymity and to ensure that, essentially, it flattens out the experience you have with the organisation so there are no bumps along the way. The result is that you are left with a characterless organisation—and an absence of branding their language.

I guess, in many ways, it refers back to the point we discussed earlier about the pitch process where, oftentimes, the pitch process becomes self-selecting. Verbal identity helps that self-selection, in terms of who you might attract. For example, the gym you gave as a case study, they will attract a particular kind of person who is looking for that experience. It is self-selecting.

Absolutely! They know exactly who they want. They don’t want some 20 something that just wants it to be cool and hip. They want somebody who is an elite athlete and they’re obviously clearly positioned that way. It may not work as a mainstream proposition— it probably wouldn’t—but for them that’s absolutely spot on.

It’s a niche market. They know exactly what to do, what they want to do, and I’m sure they have included within their language that it’s not just about the brutality of the experience, but also the benefit, the outcome.

Absolutely. Yeah. You get the full leadership piece that they have on their site about the kind of development and how they grow their people. Everything is pretty extraordinary. You can see the whole package, in terms of this intensity and brutality on one side, but you also see yourself coming out the other end as the best person you expect to be.

You’ve mentioned ‘innovation’ a few times, and in a recent conversation we briefly discussed the issue of innovation and its potential overuse in the context of business expectations. My view is that true innovation is a game changer, and usually only happens over a longer period of time. You argue that the idea of innovation can actually be a language tool, which can be used regularly to specifically leverage or persuade in a client situation. Can you expand on this?

It very much comes down to whether you want to narrowly or broadly define the nature of innovation. It’s not so important to me. I probably use the term as a short-hand because there are lots of different types of innovation. There is business model innovation. There is service innovation, client innovation. There’s all sorts of ways to actually cut that conversation up. For us, the idea that innovation needs to be something big isn’t the case, because innovation can be evolutionary by its nature.

You don’t necessarily come to an end, but we see the exploits and end results of innovation, and usually those innovations are a consequence of months, years, decades of evolution, and work, and thinking. That’s why I probably have a wider view of it. I know when you look back on the history of branding it has evolved, but it has been done through certain individuals and organisations who question the way branding works and find a better way of looking at it, which actually moves things along.

That is part of the innovation process; even though it may look quite glacial over time. There are categories that should be considered as innovation, other than just the new product they want to launch, or the new service that they are going to do. Instead, they need to look at the way they think about their category, the way they think about how their business is run, the way that they interact with each other as potential sources innovating the nature of their firm and their behaviour to actually deliver new results.

I have a wider definition, because I find it helpful to consider how you bring about change, and the ongoing effects as this can be quite substantial. Even though, initially, they might come from quite small things.

Is that something you actively put into context for people? Because there is the sense that innovation, or a start-up mentality, is the new buzz, or the most recent buzz phrase within business, and people expect to be innovating every other week. In terms of when you use the term ‘innovation,’ is it within the context of what you just described?

What I’ve just talked about it is within that context, but I think there is a dangerous trap companies who hire ‘innovation experts’ can fall into by sticking them in a corner with certain expectations put upon them. Not surprisingly nothing happens, because they weren’t connected with all the things that work in the business and which were required to actually deliver the innovation.

They hire companies that are really great at consulting on how innovation can be done. The meetings are really fun and feel like great entertainment and are emotionally inspiring. But at the end of the day when they return back to the business they recognise they couldn’t make any of this stuff, because the firms were great about inspiration, but they really avoided the fact that you have to operationalise innovation.

That’s where the hardest part comes in. I hate the idea of trying to create the big, explosive results in a disconnected way with a business. I’ve often had clients say to me: “Now, we need to think out of the box.” That’s when I say: “Here we go again!” Out of the box is disconnective thinking, so I say to clients: “You’ve got to stop thinking out of the box. You need to think inside the box. The problem with you people is that your box is too bloody small, and what you need to do is create the conditions in the business to be better at creating those new things. If you don’t do that, you’re going to be stuffed.”

A few years ago I read a really interesting thing about Pedigree. Before they did anything they spent a lot of time in the organisation looking into the things they needed to change. A lot of that was very much around: “You know what? Why aren’t there any pets in this office?” It was as simple as that. How do you have empathy for your end customer if you don’t actually allow them in the office? Its understanding how you create those conditions for creativity and innovation first, and whether you can actually create sustainable behaviour in the business around that. It isn’t a one-off event, and you might have one little bit of success. It needs to by systemic to be real.

So it’s absolutely cultural. It also relates to a phrase Ji Lee uses: “Ideas are nothing, doing is everything.” That’s the follow through you’re talking about, right?

Yeah. For too many organisations, it’s very easy to analyze and strategize when you’re sitting in meetings. But the real talent in your business is those people who actually get down to doing the stuff, those that know how to do things. That’s what more organisations need. I think this will happen, because we are starting to see the emergence of more and more metrics around employee behaviour. I think as technology develops, and big data becomes more widely used in the way business works, we will see a lot more evaluation on who is doing what, when, where, how—and how they are going to get outcomes.

That will shine a very stark light on these kinds of dysfunctional behaviours around not actually doing stuff in business. That’s a pretty exciting thing to see happen, because oftentimes companies don’t react to the culture of not doing by saying: “We need to be more entrepreneurial, and we need to be the leader,” and all that sort of stuff. Which is correct, but often there is a misunderstanding in the nature of this, because entrepreneurship is often seen as cowboy, and radical, and fly-by-night. We need to pick out the right characteristics from that behaviour because here is an operational skill these people have that is really important to our business, and that’s what we need to introduce, creating conditions for that to work effectively.

Earlier in our conversation you mentioned how branding—or the brand landscape—has changed over time; market driven, technology driven, etc. A recent development within the branding field is dynamic identities, and I know Interbrand has developed a number of dynamic identities, which are identity systems with numerous variations of a logo or a visual theme. In an interview on Design Boom Michael Bierut [Pentagram, New York] proposed that the popularity of dynamic identities will decline. He states: “Looking at 10,000 logo variations is entropic and exhausting.” He goes on to say: “on the other hand there is something so calm and comforting about a fixed, enduring symbol upon which people can impose their own private interpretations there. The dynamism happens in the real world in a more natural way.” Do you agree with this prediction, and also his assessment?

I probably agree with a lot of what he says. But I don’t think it’ll be as absolute. I think he is completely right that it is faddish. Will it return to stability? For some organizations, yes. I think they’ll make that choice. They will probably feel having 300 different versions of their logos is too hard to manage. The thing is, though, when you look at the degree of change in technology it’s not slowing down. And it’s just going to get faster and faster. Things are more dynamic. They change with a high degree of regularity. We have more touch points. We have more points of interaction. We’ve reached more people. There is a need for dynamism that I don’t think will go away.

Now, with dynamism you also need to have stability. Otherwise, people end up being disoriented in all that they see. His point of view about having that kind of stability does make sense. One of the various essentials to understand is that language is a dynamic thing. Is your language the element that changes? You don’t have to have your visual side change as much, but certainly it’s a mix of a range of things that will occur. The fact that we are moving more towards a video database world, which is only bigger and more expansive, means we will see identities evolve again—not necessarily return to where they were, but certainly evolve.

We are starting to see that Microsoft and BBC have done work around this intersection between brand interaction design, experience, and user interface. That’s a really interesting development where it’s no longer the design of your identity, and then separating the design of an interface. It’s the two of those coming together to create one, and for me it’s a wider idea of the concept of design working holistically in the business to create an experience. That is often why it’s actually going to be a more dynamic experience. It will breed new waves for considering these intersection points, and the way brands work will have more interesting functionality in how they represent brand to people.

Will that relate to logos? I’m not so sure, but I think certainly the other design elements that you create will become just as important, because they are part of the operating system of your business. That’s a really cool development. I am more interested in that than worrying about whether it’s going back to static logos, or whether we going to have more dynamic identities, because it’s neither here nor there, really.

There are other sides to brand communications that can be dynamic. In a conversation I had with Peter Saville we discussed developments in branding. His view was that a key thing for a brand is that it must be a regular, frequent news generator. If it’s not generating news, it gets clipped out of our awareness, and the news that it generates must be ‘on message.’ That could be a space for dynamism. Would you agree with that? If so, does the fact of being a news generator depend on the size and the nature of the brand in question?

I can certainly agree with that point. I think brand identity is often created for purposes of anonymity, and at best they are often created just to be a signpost for an organisation. That’s all that they do. They don’t play an active role in shaping and influencing people’s behaviour, and often organisations make the compromising assumption that it’s about creating perception, and I don’t buy that. You don’t get a result on perception. You get a result on behaviour.

Therefore, if you believe that brand has a role in shaping people’s behaviour, you need to first understand what behaviour you want to shape and influence. You need to know what the brand needs to do. Your concept of newsworthiness is fundamental. It means your brand has to be on the front foot. And you have to have a point of view. It has to have something to say where people actually want to sit up and take notice. I think all of those things are hallmarks of really great brands. That would be a fundamental part of brand performance. It’s a sign of confidence about knowing who you are and what you want to do, and being able to engage and shape the way people think about the world, and how they think about you as an organisation. All of those things are good things.

Of course being a news generator—or being within the wider consciousness—does help with perception. Even though you dismissed perception earlier, it is a valid concern for a lot of people where perception may be nothing near reality. When perception is more visible than reality then perception plays a huge role as a news generator.

Yes. My view around perception is that it’s part of the journey, but it’s not the end result. Also, many organizations are still happy to look at evaluating perception but not actually getting to the hard questions regarding to what degree they are influencing behavior. Behavior is certainly influenced by perception. That’s what I mean. It’s part of the way on the journey. At the end of the day, this is where so much cynicism comes around design projects and marketing activities because most CEOs, CFOs, and COOs are saying: “You know what? My sales team have told me I’ve sold about 10 percent more than I did last year. What’s our marketing telling me? We’ve increased perception by X percentage points, and that some of our attributes are performing better than they were last year, right? But tell me how this is actually changing people’s behavior to get a result.”

That’s where the results-based view of branding needs to become a far more behavioural-based view where branding speaks for more than simply ‘perceptions’ management, because with perceptions management you are only doing part of your job. It’s about operationalising the brand. Understand, for example, how brand can play a role in improving the way your front line staff actually engage customers because that prompts comments like: “You know what? These front line staff are actually influencing buyer behaviour.”

It’s through our ability to shape the way they improve their service and get access to their behaviour, where I can actually show my brand activity is doing something. It’s those kinds of things that are particularly interesting, and if you want to do the hard job of providing real facts around what brand can do, that’s the stuff that you need to be thinking about rather than simply how can my communications move perception.

I’ll finish on this question, which comes off the back of what we’ve just discussed, and it’s in relation to perception. There is a lot of public pressure for organisations to engage in corporate, social, and environmental responsibility, and in a conversation that I had with Wally Olins around this topic he stated: “If a commercial organisation believes that it will be in its interest to become charitable, I don’t want to sound cynical here, but the appropriate phrase is lacking self-interest. If they see it as being in their interest to be socially responsible, then that is what they will do, and that is a very powerful mechanism for change.”

Generally speaking, do you feel that we are at a point where most organizations do see the benefit of this—beyond their own self-interest—or are we still in that marketing spin stage?

I think some organisations are in different stages of evolution. It’s part of the innovation curve. There are some that very quickly adopt it and fully embrace it, and fundamentally understand it. There are others that say: “You know what? A few people have done that sort of thing, and it seems to be the right thing to do so we’ll adopt it.” And there are others that will be unrepentant in saying: “Absolutely no. This is nonsense. I don’t see any upside. We are in this to make more sales, and we are going to stay focused. We are going to stay lean and mean around that.” You are always going to have these various states of organisational evolution.

I guess the wider consideration—and it’s the thing that’s most compelling for me around this whole conversation—is that it’s leading us to a place which is far more interesting and far more important in the nature of the role of organisation in society. Historically, organisations are always seeing themselves as something apart from society. They are almost like this old garden in which commerce is conducted, very much about creating shareholder value, and where they set their own operating rules and rhythm, feeling they should be allowed to just get on with that.

I think economics is a fundamental engine of any society. The participation of business in, not only the economics of that society but also the welfare and the way that we live, is fundamentally important, because they influence degrees of employment. Organisations create a mechanism for commerce to happen. They create wealth that influences the degree to which you can have a healthy corporate sector or not-for-profit sector. It’s a consequence of all these interactions that the businesses can’t see themselves as being separate, and are largely compliant to the rules of the country, but where they are essentially setting their own rules on a day-to-day basis. They are a fundamental part of the fabric of society, and therefore their role is to operate an organisation that is part of a full society. To me, that’s the interesting piece.

This will ultimately evolve into a general requirement for organizations to demonstrate they are playing a role in society as opposed to seeing themselves as separate from it. And I think that will shape the way decisions are made around how organizations behave at a day-to-day cultural level—and how that can be more pervasive. Organizations will be free to choose the degree to which they proactively provide more connections.

It’s also generational, because we tend to forget that organizations are filled with people. The generation that is coming up now, and those following behind them—have much more social, cultural, and environmental awareness, and those people who go into those organizations won’t just be expected to have this type of view. This is the view they already have, and I think, perhaps, what you are predicting will happen purely because of the people who are in those organizations.

You’re probably right about that. I think it will take perhaps maybe another generation or two for them to be more pervasive. It certainly will evolve that way. I think we still have the equivalent of—what might be referred to as—the DNA of the Industrial Age, which is evident in some businesses, though that is certainly disappearing. We are seeing, at almost every level of decision influence, how workplaces are shaped, or the nature of the way you conduct business, and the degree of collaboration, and we are about to see more organisations driven by purposes rather than processes. All these kinds of things are markers toward that evolution.

I think it will be a matter of time because all the particularly big organisations are slow to change, due to the scale of those demands. You do need a generational change to actually bring about those kinds of significant cultural shifts.

Are you optimistic?

Oh, yeah! I am always optimistic. You can’t not be, because part of the job is walking into businesses facing a lot of challenges, and you have to be thinking: “How can make them the best that they can be?” By the very nature of what we do we have to be optimistic about it—because we like fixing stuff.

Debbie Millman—author and inspirational host of the world’s first design podcast, Design Matters—shares her hard-won advice on how we can make a living doing what we love.

What is the biggest obstacle to making a living doing what you love?

You.

You are.

When people suggest that getting what you want—or not—is all in your head, they are actually right. Well, nearly. It’s all in your brain.

50,000 years ago our brains underwent a major transformation as a result of a major genetic mutation, resulting in a biological reorganization of the brain into three distinct parts. After the reorganization, there was an explosion of tool making, more sophisticated weaponry, and we created our first cave paintings. Scientists refer to this phenomenon as the big brain bang or—far more poetically—the Great Leap Forward. This is where the seeds of our need to make and mark things emerge. This Great Leap Forward is also responsible for most of our modern abilities: language, art, music, cooking, and self-decoration. These are considered cultural universals: everyone everywhere engages in this behavior.

In the book, “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,” author Julian Jaynes theorizes that conscious thinking began only about 3,000 years ago. This is about the time the human brain increased in size, which he contends is evidence of our evolutionary efforts to solve the problem of coming up with better, smarter ways to hunt for food. This ability to “think better” impacted the outer part of the brain, the neocortex.

James Watson, the Nobel-prize winning scientist who helped discover the structure of DNA, described the human brain as the “most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.” The three distinct parts of the human brain are considered “sub-brains,” each the result of a distinct age in our evolutionary history. The three brains communicate with each other and intermingle, but these “three brains in one,” (or what is now called a triune) is unique to only one species: humans. The three parts of the triune brain are the reptilian brain, the neocortex, and the limbic brain.

The neocortex is the most recent of the triune, and it is also the largest. Language, reading, writing and reasoning all originate in this area of the brain. In fact, all of the experiences of our senses and all of our voluntary behavior are controlled by the neocortex. This is what we now refer to as consciousness or awareness. Our neocortal brain has the ability to organize and convey logic and reason, but the most fascinating aspect of the neocortal brain is its skills of abstraction. As a result, all problem solving (whether artistic or scientific) and any exercise that requires symbolic representation and has its origins in the neocortex.

In the late 1800s Paul Broca, a French neuroanatomist, published a paper that suggested the brains of all mammals had something in common. He called this the great limbic lobe. This proved to be the part of the brain that separates prehistoric man from modern man. Mammals have an innate orientation to their offspring, which we now consider the feelings of love. The limbic brain establishes positive or negative ties before the neocortex articulates them. Humans everywhere all over the world show identical facial expressions. A smile signals friendliness and joy in everywhere in the world. These culturally universal expressions allow us to communicate with other humans instantaneously and without conscious thought.

The oldest of the three parts of the triune is the reptilian brain. The reptilian brain, which we share with our distant relatives the crocodiles and snakes, regulates heartbeat, digestion, and other basic life functions. But the reptilian brain supports neither emotion nor cognition. This brain is responsible for all of our vital but involuntary behaviors: regulation of the heart and lungs, metabolism, the digestive system and the adrenalin rush we feel when we believe we may be in danger. This ancient part of our brain is fundamentally all about security and survival. We can’t control this part of our brain at all. Despite our best efforts, we can’t help but feel vulnerable (and thus fearful) when we are facing an uncertain future or experience something or someone unknown. As a result, this has a profound impact on our ability to imagine our future or to “reach for the stars.” Any uncertain outcome has the potential to create a sense of fear or dread.

When thinking about our hopes and dreams, we often self-edit in an effort to avoid uncertainty and vulnerability. This is best exhibited when I ask my students the following question: What are you most afraid of if you don’t achieve your dreams? One of the most honest and heartbreaking responses I’ve heard was from one young man who declared that if he went after what he wanted and didn’t achieve it, he would “die of heartbreak.” As a result, he (and so many students I meet and teach) would rather not pursue their dreams at all in an effort to avoid the debilitating, life-threatening heartbreak that might occur if they try something and fail. They would rather compromise their hopes and dreams in an effort to avoid a heartbreak that will kill them.

But, surprisingly, that kind of heartbreak rarely happens.

You see, our human triune brain is also a regulation machine. When we are cold, we seek warmth; when we are hot, we seek to be cool. When we are hungry we eat, and on days like Thanksgiving, we might eat so much that are sure we may never want to eat again. But, as we all know, that feeling doesn’t last forever. How many of us have found ourselves in front of the refrigerator on a late Thanksgiving evening picking through the leftovers? We’ve metabolized all that turkey and suddenly want something more. Or, we fall madly in love and feel as if we can never get enough of our beloved. How wondrous that is! Fast-forward 18 months later and we find that we’re shouting at them to stop breathing “that way.” We metabolize everything—love, hunger, body temperature, and even heartbreak. What seems unbearable at first might prove to be the best thing that ever happened to us—or so our brains will convince us.

The real tragedy of not going after what we really want is that we can live in the paralyzed state of fear forever: It seems the only thing we don’t metabolize is our involuntary fear of the unknown. Despite the many self-help books out there trying to outsmart the reptilian brain, I contend that is it unlikely these efforts will ever be successful. Our brains are clever little muscles that have been evolving for a long time to successfully get us here, right now. I believe that in order to step into our future dreams, we have to simply do just that: take the first step. It might hurt and the outcome might very well break our hearts. But the human brain is a resilient one. It wants us to survive and it will construct new dreams for our hearts to pursue. Then, if we do attain the success we so desire, we will dream up new dreams to pursue, again and again.

Greg Branson—co-founder of the Design Business Council—offers design studios his expert advice on how to approach the significant challenge of defining their difference and value to clients.

Just like clients, every design business needs the same care and attention to its business management. While that’s a simple statement, it’s actually very hard to put into practice for most design studios—just as it is for every business. After all, that’s why clients come to a design studio to get their brand defined and designed.

So where does a design studio start the design their business?

The first task is to define your ‘onlyness’. Nilofer Merchant coined this phrase and describes it this way: “power is no longer determined by your status, but by “onlyness”—that spot in the world only you stand in, a function of your distinct history and experiences, visions and hopes.”

Think about it. If you look at the collective experience in your studio, add their collective histories, then their collective visions and hopes, you have a unique set of talents that no one else has.

So, the task is to define your onlyness. But how does a studio do this? It can be achieved by using a profile form that each team member completes. This shows their history (where they studied, worked and travelled). It then asks them to define the most meaningful experience they had in each stage of their history. Then they are asked to describe how this has shaped their vision and hopes for the future.

The final stage is to ask how they would have applied this thinking to some of the work they have previously done in the studio or how they would have approached clients. It’s also asks them to define the culture of the studio.

From all of this you set a direction for the studio: What type of work you want to do; Which clients best match that direction; etc. The end of this process has everyone buying into the growth of the business, making it much easier for everyone to manage clients and projects.

The take away: Having mastered this method you can use it as a consultancy service to help your clients identify their onlyness.

Michaela Webb—internationally recognised designer and co-founder of Studio Round—shares her expert advice and practical guiding principles on how to generate creative ideas.

Bad ideas shouldn’t scare you

I had a teacher in design school who used to say, “You’ll have 100 bad ideas. Just get them out quickly.” I think it was this advice that really etched in me my first real understanding of the design process. The journey to a great idea, concept or product is nearly always a difficult one; one that’s fundamentally flawed by nature of being essentially human, and sometimes, the first step is accepting that.

We always try to foster a culture where no one is afraid of a bad idea, and where everyone feels empowered to start from somewhere. What follows are some of our guiding principles around ideation that may make your path a little easier.

Purposeful intuition

We hear so often that great ideas don’t exist in a vacuum, and I think ‘purposeful intuition’ is Round’s way of articulating that concept in a design sense. So much so, it’s now become our overarching design philosophy.

The application of purposeful intuition is a valuable steering tool in the creative process because it’s a reminder to look from the outside in, and inside out at a concept. It also requires that we balance tensions like tenacity with understanding, intent with awareness, and determination with perception to ensure we’re arriving at something ‘humanly’ intelligent.

Practically, it means going back to the strategy to check whether we’re achieving our original purpose, but also ensuring that the pragmatic is overlaid with the perceptive way we see the world. To put it simply, a great idea should be logical, it should meet the brief, but it should also ‘feel’ right and understand its position in the world.

The pursuit of simplicity

Great ideas are often incredibly (and sometimes deceptively) simple. While the ideation process can take you around the world and back again, be conscious of the simplest or most ‘obvious’ idea born in a brainstorm because it just might be the best. It could take you a week or a minute to stumble across it, but by deliberately pursuing simplicity, you’re able to weed through the hundred quicker.

Call on the collective

There’s great diversity in the backgrounds and skillsets within the team at Round and it’s something we use to our advantage in the creative process.

At the beginning of a project, rather than retreating into private, we call on the collective to come together, share thoughts, and make things happen. While people can wear certain ‘hats’ or excel in specific areas of design that make them seem right for the work, it pays to bring many different brains and energies together initially and see what happens.

Strategise first, then design

We always encourage our designers to create or analyse a strategy before diving into the design. While something may look beautiful, unless it fulfils a purpose per the brief, it may not be the right answer in the end. By developing a clear strategy first, you’ll define the parameters in which to work. And when it feels like the world is overripe with options, having a defined scope can be a significant time saver.

Anne Miltenburg is a Dutch brand director on a mission to leverage the power of brand for social and environmental causes. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, she is the founder of Brand The Change, an independent learning organization that trains change makers in brand building skills. Here, she  offers personal insights on how designers should build their brand with purpose.

I am assuming that if you are reading this you’re a designer—possibly a young designer. So my first piece of advice on building your brand is: don’t do it. At least not in the way most designers do it.

As someone who builds brands for others for a living, who teaches people how to think more like brand strategists, and has to do quite a bit of brand building for my own business, this might seem odd and counter intuitive. But there are solid reasons.

We spend a disproportionate amount of time focusing on what most people consider brand building. We create nice portfolio websites; we get kick-ass business cards; we sit on a design award jury; we write blogs, tweet, lecture at renowned colleges; and we put our coffees and design processes on Instagram. But to what end?

The fact is, most people watching all this are other designers. Which buys you nothing, unless you are looking to switch to another agency soon, or you merely want to be famous amongst your own set. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that and it’s entirely your prerogative to pursue.

But for many of us, building our brand becomes a goal on its own, creating countless tasks and sucking away precious hours in the week. Before embarking on the endless self promotional marathon required to sustain your career over a couple of decades, invest time in answering one big question: Where do you want to be in five years?

That might sound cliched but you need to identify what you want to be working on, who you want to work with, and where you want to work from. You need to make your dream concrete and tangible. You can do this by focusing on two or three dream projects or designing your ideal design practice.

Now consider what you need in order to get there: what should your reputation be, who needs to know about you, and how will they find out?

I’ll dust off one of my own experiences as an example and to provide some personal context. Four years ago I was working as creative director at Interbrand. But I realized branding skills could be used for more meaningful purposes and asked myself how I could help create a world where a family starting a fair trade lemonade factory has as much access to branding knowledge as a company like Coca-Cola. I decided to start a learning company that helps social entrepreneurs build stronger brands. I made this dream really tangible by being very specific about what I wanted my week to look like: working with female entrepreneurs in Jordan on Monday and Tuesday, hosting workshops in Kenya on Thursday, and doing research and writing on Friday. I knew my dream clients needed to recognize me as an authority in the field of branding for social enterprise so I mapped out who I needed to know about my venture, where they hung out and what they read, whose recommendations would matter, and which partnerships would impress (product placement alert: in doing all this I was using my own branding tools, of course).

I then developed a training format prototype and piloted it around the world at well known social enterprise institutes. This led to being invited to a social enterprise institute in Nairobi, which was in my original plans. A Saudi Princess saw my workshop in Amsterdam and invited me to Riyadh. I also pitched my essays on branding for social change to the media platforms that social entrepreneurs read, like Stanford Social Innovation Review. Word quickly spread amongst social impact funders, co-working spaces and educational institutes. I accepted only specific assignments that would build our expertise in branding for social change, and said no to other assignments that wouldn’t contribute to building our expertise or reputation as experts on the topic. The lesson: focus at first comes at a price, but it pays off massively over time.

Today, my reputation means that, for many people I’m the person to go to if you want to build a brand with purpose. And I have achieved almost every single goal I set for my business—through building a brand the smart way.

This is exactly what a brand is supposed to do: to get you where you want to be going. So, don’t fall into the brand building trap of self promotion without a purpose. Make your goals concrete, create a good brand strategy to get there, and your brand will start to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Kay Khoo—Malaysian designer and influential design ambassador based in Mumbai, India—shares his advice on building a design community through direct connections and social interactions.

I am socially awkward.

I dread the idea of being placed in a social setting where I am forced to answer questions like: How’s work?; How’s life; or, How’s the weather?

I would—at any point—be happier at my desk scribbling down notes to the make the next big idea happen. Or preparing another keynote file to sell a clever strategy. Or be engrossed in the self-indulgent exercise called ‘kerning’ and optically aligning type. (Of course, I then have to explain to the world that this is otherwise called designing).

Don’t get me wrong; it isn’t as bad as I make it sound. I actually enjoy going to clients’ meetings and I do like working with designers. Just not socialising, or what the business-savvy folk call ‘networking’.

So here’s the biggest irony in my life. I’ve spent the last 15 years building platforms for design communities—in Malaysia, in South East Asia, and in India. I have masterminded large-scale conferences, workshops, exhibitions, award shows, digital platforms, design publications, and the occasional informal meet-and-chat-in-cafés. The single purpose? To help designers (like myself) break out of their perfectly designed, eccentric but cozy cocoons. Especially when we’re talking about the stereotypical timid, submissive, and shy Asian designers, for the sake of cultural context.

Today, Asia has changed. “Bold”, “confident” and “breaking new ground” are frequently used to describe the creative output from a new generation of Asian designers. It doesn’t surprise me that the world is waking up to the plethora of designs that fuse traditional themes with contemporary interpretations, which are further propagated furiously through social media channels.

But some roots stand firm. Designers, especially Asians, are still very “Asian”. Take a few keywords from what Asians uphold as values, words such as: harmony, self-dependency, order and respect. These reflect a non-confrontational, non-collaborative, non-intrusive way of working.

Design events and platforms are more than just to celebrate, promote and to some extent, glorify design. Their purpose is really to start meaningful conversations and relationships within the design community; to break some of these conservative values which hold people back.

I could narrate a few good stories from these design platforms, especially from India.

For example, on the business front: A graphic design studio connected with an architectural consultancy years ago. Now they’re partners in many notable rebranding projects; A group of designers met at a design event, became friends, and eventually formed a collaborative working arrangement between three countries, and are now taking on some of the largest design assignments. These are unique stories of scaling up, adding more services and capabilities to smaller teams, and enhancing the quality of the outcome, without expanding the physical base or infrastructure.

What inspires me more are the personal narratives. It usually starts with: “That one conversation… with XYZ changed me”; “That one conversation… with Daan Roosegaarde [Studio Roosegaarde] made me realise there’s so much more to do than just designing more products”; “That one conversation… with Sarang [Kulkarni] made me realise there’s so much more to Indian typography than what the western world could offer”; “That one conversation with… Natasha Jen made me realise there’s so many reasons not to be an outstanding ‘Asian’ designer.”

These conversations always inspire me to do more design events—and to attend them too.

To be able to tell the experience of spending an afternoon with the Vignellis [Massimo and Lella] at Victoria Terminus station, and tea at the Taj Hotel, are the bragging rights I earned—the best perks of the job. That is the subject matter of a deeper conversation if we do meet at some design event, and I manage to overcome my social awkwardness.

Image credit:

Kay Khoo portrait photograph supplied by Kay Khoo.

Garech Stone—co-founder of Amsterdam-based design practice The Stone Twins—presents a compelling case around the many issues facing the graphic design profession, including design education, the business of design and how clients commission it. This essay was featured in Open Manifesto #8, which focused on the theme ‘Change’.

Something is rotten in the state of design (particularly the area of visual communication design or graphic design). Something is wrong when many peers are struggling to make a living, and when Cum Laude graduates are working in coffee shops. Something is rotten when working cheap (or even free) with the promise of something called ‘exposure’ is endemic in the industry. Something is wrong—and it’s time to reassess the philosophy of our profession, and its meaning as it stands today. It’s time to remove the mouldy rot before the business of design is further trivialised and humiliated.

A few years ago, as Department Head at Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE), I was privy to a survey administered to alumni from the previous decade. The report tracked the journeys of former students and revealed that their average annual income was €10,000. Yes, a paltry ten thousand Euros per year. One earns more serving Happy Meals. Compounding the shock was the smug reaction of DAE management who hypothesized that design schools are not intended to prepare students for the job market. Instead, they spoke of loftier goals, such as exhibiting in musea, or saving the planet.

Soon after, when I met a red-faced Cum Laude graduate serving coffee in a museum, and another behind the ticket desk of a theatre, my simmering frustration gave way to anger. Of course, the place (and role) of design has changed significantly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, globalisation and the democratisation of design. But, perhaps, it’s time that design schools also shared responsibility for the growing hordes of unemployed designers?

It may be unwelcome to ask, but are design schools adequately preparing students for the realities of the labour market? Do they impart sufficient skills, and a certain humility? Or are they perpetuating a culture of self-indulgence, whilst championing experimental, niche and esoteric design?

Most annual graduate shows are organised (or ‘curated’, if you want the new buzzword) like museum exhibitions. Formulaic showcases of books that can only be viewed with gloves, cubicles made out of black curtains for private video-showings and popinjay-designers who try to elevate design into a performance. All these things don’t exist in the real world, yet are staple entries in any graduate show. Is it any wonder that many design graduates flounder in the job market?

Meanwhile, the ugly culture of internships is spreading faster than the latest Grumpy Cat meme. In former times, the internship experience was seen as training and was for the benefit of the intern (who was strictly a student). But few internships these days are serious about students or training, and most don’t even pretend. It’s nauseating to see so many established design agencies getting inexpensive labour. “Naturally you’ll receive a monthly allowance to cover some costs and hopefully a little extra to play with…” states a shameless recruitment ad by an Amsterdam agency. The paltry monthly wage is mitigated with the promise of ‘exposure’ and a way to boost a résumé.

The reality is that too many firms are getting something for next to nothing. The average payment of €400 per month for an Amsterdam internship is below minimum wage, and for a degree-bearing professional is wage theft. Unscrupulous firms have normalised this practice, design schools have made it official with academic credit, and organisations that should be looking after the rights of designers (such as the BNO and ADCN in the Netherlands) have looked the other way. Meanwhile, desperate young designers accept it as standard practice.

Right now many internships are not just exploitative and unethical, they are disrupting the labour market, because they are increasingly eradicating the entry-level job and replacing regular positions altogether—since many so-called ‘interns’ have already graduated from design school. The practice ultimately has far-reaching affects on salary expectations for members of an already-underpaid industry. If our industry doesn’t act fairly with its own, how can it be respected in the business world?

However, the practice of being asked to work for almost nothing in return for ‘the joy of creative freedom’ and ‘the exposure’ is not just restricted to the humble intern. Not long ago my studio was invited to pitch for a brand identity for a government department. After a lengthy briefing, and the signing of a non-disclosure, we noticed an audacious paragraph that read: “As we are requesting a creative response we will be offering a nominal fee of €X per invitee. This is really only a nominal fee for a project that we feel is more prestigious than of a commercial venture.” Asking designers to work for “a nominal fee” suggests that design has no value.

The work of designers provides significant value to business, yet somehow low-paid, free and speculative design work is commonplace. Design is not merely a form of creative expression, it is also an activity to solve problems, think strategically and make the intangible tangible. In a world where visual communication is increasingly prevalent, why are designers regularly squeezed? How come many clients think it’s OK to drive the price of design down? Do they also haggle with their dentist, or the plumber? Can you imagine them saying to a pizza service: “You should be honoured to serve us, so can you give us a free pizza?” before adding: “If we like it, then we’ll pay you for the next delivery.” Of course not! It’s absurd. Yet, in our industry, these patronising requests are par for the course.

Having said that, we designers can be our own worst enemy. As long as we continue to work for very little (or free), we undervalue our skills, and diminish the true economic value of design. In addition, isn’t it time that we also started to take our own industry more seriously? Outside the annual whitewashing of design school walls, the practice of visual communication design is steadily morphing into a frivolous profession. The industry has shifted away from its traditional role as a conveyor of ideas and information in a visual form (be it to inform, educate, or persuade a person or audience). It does not seem like the serious problem solving activity that it was 20 years ago.

Today, many young designers seem too self-absorbed. These ‘selfie-designers’ produce graphic paraphernalia with no real content or relevance outside the practice of graphic design. It’s a world full of t-shirts with ironic slogans, posters held aloft by their makers, visually seductive (yet superficial) data visualisations, framed letter-press posters of oxymoronic quotes and Pantone© mugs. Oh, and don’t forget the Tumblr and Pinterest followers that endlessly re-tag, re-share and re-arrange all this graphic merchandise—and the blogs and festivals that celebrate it.

Ultimately, this is design for designers, in an overly incestuous tightly-kerned world. Have you ever heard car mechanics in cafés talk excitedly about spark plugs, or bakers tweeting photos of pastry rollers? No, me neither. Such navel-gazing is unhealthy in any field and has damaging consequences for the profession.

To borrow a quote from the late great Tibor Kalman: “Graphic design is a means, not an end. A language, not content.” These days much graphic design is impotent. It doesn’t feel compelled to communicate. It’s design for design’s sake. If we cannot take our industry seriously, then how can we expect others (potential clients) to? No wonder graphic design is often devalued.

Too simplistic, perhaps? Or maybe this piece sounds like an anecdotal rant. The points may be unwelcome—but, at least, let’s start a conversation. Too much coffee vapour has settled on the design industry’s dark-rimmed glasses, and it’s time to wipe them clean. We need to see the failings and understand the need for change. We need to stop celebrating only the niche and the frivolous. We need to advocate for the fair treatment of designers in the workplace, and for a fair compensation for our services and products. Difficult economic times are not an excuse for short-changing the sector. At present, it is an unsustainable business model.

Image Credit:

Garech Stone portrait provided by Garech Stone

Graham Wood, influential designer and co-founder of the international creative collective Tomato and a previous Executive Creative Director at JWT NYC, offers a thought-provoking treatise on the state of design education.

While observing the output from recent commercial arts education, it seems clear to me that the well has run dry—mainly because everyone is visiting the same well. And it’s dictated by the need for ‘smart’ decisions that are strategically cogent, with a firm eye on economics and a thorough understanding of one’s place in the pecking order. A sort of desperate symbiosis with industry as it exists today—rather than a self-sufficient invention of the present, and the future.

In this world, aesthetics and emotion are simply a layer, if present at all. There is no sense of the past, the present or the future. In its place there is a hollow sense of ultra-conservative stasis. It’s mired in slick.

Some moan about it—a bit—but only at lunch, or ‘down the pub’. And there is the ever present lure of competitions; an obligation to do all of the D&AD briefs. This is possibly one of the single most damaging aspects of education—the subtle enforcement of homogenisation by the industry itself; dangling the carrot while the lobotomy is carried out. It’s an excuse for colleges to absolve themselves of any responsibility… No, even worse, of personality.

When students ought to be pursuing their own tangents, their own journeys and wanderings, enter the leaden drear of the D&AD brief. It’s the sound of the bucket rattling at the bottom of the dry well. A wheeze beckoning one-and-all to believe the buzz and the words. But most of all, a reassurance not to rock the boat. In fact, it’s my impression that the main ‘skill’ being taught at the moment is just that: don’t rock the boat. The argument is: “They told me.” “We had to…” But it’s a cold conditioning to toe the line.

I mention all this because it seems to be about alienation—but a kind of autonomously sought and deliberate alienation. And yet, it’s nothing like that of the punks, for example. They felt, and were rejected by, society but were most certainly not victims. Their remit was to create, even though they said ‘destroy’. In contrast, this contemporary alienation is perverse—a childish refusal, rather than a rejection by an atrophied state. Today’s version has become an alienation driven by being wilfully bland, voiceless, and disappearing, whilst simultaneously exuding a cloying, demanding need. This new world has become clinical, automated and templated.

But I remember a different path, and I remember it clearly: a drawing class in a foundation course. Previously, we had been introduced to grids, the nuances of greyscale and hand rendering. The drawing class, however, was a little looser and included landscape. One class required us to draw layers of soil and undergrowth. In another, the tutor asked us to look out the window—at the view outside, at the room surrounding the window—but the task was to imagine what we were seeing as flat, not dimensional. This changed the way I saw the world. One moment I was an observer of the things around (and outside) me, passively looking. But in the next moment, I emerged as someone who found themselves truly ‘seeing’. Suddenly, I could see the interrelationship of things: lines intersecting, shapes overlapping and interrupting, shapes and shade, structure, pattern, form—the drama of form in the world, and within myself. No longer just outside of me. Everywhere the expressive world was present: tension, drift, emotion, light.

And I remember other similar moments.

I remember a 12 inch vinyl record label for Pearly Dewdrops Drops by The Cocteau Twins (4AD Records). It felt like my vision was slipping, that I couldn’t see the image. The truth was I didn’t know what it was, so I didn’t know ‘how to see it’. Understanding this was profound. It felt like I’d been handed the means and the guidance to always be able to make something. Beyond ‘inspiration’, this was innate. It had become part of me—even more than reflex. It was as if some visceral exchange had taken place; a change of state.

It’s the difference between one person suggesting to look out a window versus another who values toeing the line. These are enormous yet simple things. Just like communality; making the college studio the heart of things. Just like the humanities; integrating all of culture as much as possible in every situation, not just those elements of culture that have a seemingly ‘direct’ relationship to the thing at hand.

In contrast, the industry now operates along these lines: go to the D&AD annual in order to make something. It’s akin to drinking ones own piss. Where is independence and self-determination? Why not let the student and their work create the course (the path)? Why not emphasise the importance of realisation while one is at college, working as hard as possible to gather the things one needs to create ones own space—whether that is a thing, a company, a studio, a collective? All this is preparation for when the time comes to leave college and to keep on going. Because there is no ‘Real World’ (this constant distinction between the ‘Real Word’ and everything else)—it’s what you make it. This is a practical approach. It values using time and resources as working tools: limiting both, expanding both, and changing both… It’s about developing spaces to think, spaces for chaos, and so on.

Ultimately, time is the one true thing college really accommodates: Time to think, time to play, time to question, time to experience, time to understand, time to make… Time to continually pursue interconnection as the heart of study and learning.

Time to explore work, life, play, art, college, studio, street, world, mind, heart, work… Not manufacturing passive students. Not defining the ‘Real World’ (because ‘we’ say the ‘Real World’ is scary and you must obey).

The imagined/invented obligations of the ‘Real World’ are probably the single cause of the flat grey landscape of commercial arts today. The antidote? Be a monster. Provoke. Fuck it up. Question. Subvert. Think. Express. Follow your own map. Most of all—make things. Never stop. It’s art school motherfuckers. It should be like inhaling a face-full of scalding imagination. Forever.

Image credits:

Graham Wood portrait provided by Graham Wood

From personal collection: Pearly Dewdrops Drops by The Cocteau Twins (4AD Records) released April 2, 1984. Design by 23 Envelope

Mark Bonner walks us through the compelling and historic story of how D&AD was established, detailing the significant figures involved and offering insights on their collaborations, as well as how they navigated the many challenges. This essay was featured in Open Manifesto #8, which focuses on the theme ‘Change’.

Like any great creative project, the invention of D&AD [Design & Art Direction] can be traced right back to formative and collaborative years at college. Central School of Art, now part of LCC, was the place where the bright young British minds that co-created D&AD learnt their trade. Seminal figures in design history such as Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes and Derek Birdsall all studied Publicity Design under Typography tutor Anthony Froshaug, with Terence Conran, Ken Garland and Theo Crosby all contemporaries. This golden period at Central in tandem with the MA course at the ‘College’— the Royal College of Art—was to form the backbone not only of D&AD, but of the British creative industry over the next half century.

The story begins with an unlikely collaboration between rival principals of what were to become two of the most important design studios of the 1960s, Birdsall Daulby Mayhew Wilbur Associates (BDMW), and Fletcher Forbes Gill (F/F/G). Re-united from Central School in competition for clients such as Mobil, Penguin Books, IBM, and Pirelli, these two pioneering ‘design groups’ put their energy and enthusiasm to the age old problem of any fledgling studio: getting known. Their work spoke volumes, but to get hired in Europe and in the US, something deeper was required. A way of showcasing the very best work in London.

After forming BDMW in 1959, Derek Birdsall set in motion a chain of events which ultimately went on to create D&AD. With encouragement from friend, client and landlord, John Commander, Art Director and man of many talents from Wisbech based printers Balding+Mansell (B+M), he founded the Association of Graphic Designers, London (AGDL). BDMW rented studio space at the London office of B+M, and Derek and John often spoke of the need to show the world the revolutionary work going on in Britain at the time.

Early members of the association included Birdsalls’ partners at BDMW, Alan Fletcher and Colin Forbes pre F/F/G, and a selection of some of the most important designers and Art Directors of the time, including Dennis Bailey, Romek Marber and Arnold Schwartzman.

Significantly, the fledgling creative industry of late 1950s Britain existed in a void. There were no design competitions of real note and only one, largely unsatisfactory ‘gong’ remained available in Advertising: The Layton Awards. A situation so different to the crowded industry mantelpiece we have today.

In Design, there was the Society of Industrial Artists (SIA), headed up by fabled publicity designer FHK Henrion, and boasting luminaries such as Mischa Black, Abram Games and Milner Grey amongst their dusty, but respected ranks. As Bob Gill recalls, “they were very much the rolled up umbrella and bowler hat brigade. I came to England in 1960, and I’d already judged a couple times for the New York Art Directors Club. When I arrived in London I thought, why can’t we have something similar here? London had nothing comparable. So we thought we’d better do something about it. We wanted to find a way of showing the best work.”

Bob Gill [featured in Open Manifesto #3], a bold young Art Director and Illustrator from Brooklyn, New York, came to London to work short-term for advertising agency Charles Hobson, but stayed 15 years. “It was just a wonderful bit of dumb luck. I was going on a holiday to Europe, and there was an ad in The New York Times saying there was an English agency hiring an Art Director, and I thought it made much more fun to work in Europe than just have a holiday. They hired me, and I never looked back; it was just the most wonderful experience.” Bob fell in love with the city and his drive lit the fire that still burns inside D&AD today. With enough energy to set the sixties swinging on his own, Bob decided to leave Hobson’s—hiring his own replacement before resigning. He then began working with a young but prolific Alan Fletcher, fresh from freelancing at Time-Life in New York, and recent Head of School at Central, ex-student Colin Forbes.

Fuelled by the relative success of the first AGDL initiative, 12 Designers, the exhibition, 17 Graphic Designers, London was planned by Derek, Alan and then AGDL chairman, John Commander at Alan’s client’s Time-Life Building in Bond Street.

At around the same time, an impatient Bob Gill persuaded new partner Colin Forbes (fresh from the formation of F/F/G on April Fool’s Day in 1962), to go on stage against Henrion in a debate about membership for the SIA. “Because we were obviously the young turks, they asked us to join. I knew… these people weren’t the right vehicle to make some magic happen, so I suggested we have a debate for the fun of it. I suggested the title ‘The SIA is Full of Shit’. The SIA didn’t like the title, so we compromised on ‘Why join the SIA?’. Forbes took the negative argument and we had a debate at a hall in London.” Colin remembers the SIA well: “Anybody could join. When they had an exhibition, there were no juries. It wasn’t very well organised. When we did our exhibition we did it at the Hilton, and they were at the Seymour Hall Swimming Pool!”

The young Ken Garland (ex-Editor of Design Magazine and by now of Ken Garland Associates) was there: “I was at the back of a conference room when there was a sort of debate going on about why younger designers should join the Society of Industrial Artists (SIA). I went along because some of my chums were going, but all I wanted to join was a trade union.” Ken’s famous First Thing’s First manifesto was actually drafted in that room, encouraged by the debate. “The manifesto was written in the heat of the moment. (It was) meant to be an alert to the fact that monies, which were pouring into visual communications of all sorts, seemed to be going down the wrong channels. There were all sorts of things that we could have been about and we weren’t. I hardly expected it to raise any interest but I got this terrific reception.”

Bob Gill’s importance in the story is confirmed by his recollection of a meeting in the summer of 1960 with yet another Bob from New York now working in London, Bob Brooks, from advertising agency Bensons. Gill remembers: “Bob couldn’t get enough of us guys, he wanted more US Art Directors in his agency. He asked me to get the word out, so I put an ad in the New York Times in September 1960, asking for US Art Directors to join us in London. I held interviews in a hotel room in Manhattan. One of the first guys I saw was Lou Klein, and I hired him (to replace me at Hobsons).”

Bob Geers (at the time working for Bensons NY), was on the other side of the table: “I was one of the people Bob interviewed. It all went fine and he even came around to visit my wife. It sounded pretty good. He said he was going to think about it, he had other people to see and he’d let me know. Now, at the time I was taking a night course with a man named Ivan Chermayeff and he and I got along pretty well, and on that Monday night there was a Poker game and Bob Gill and Ivan were there. The subject of my interview came up and Ivan said to Bob, “you’re making a mistake hiring him, he’ll want your job before the day is out!” Bob Gill then called me up and said he’d found someone else!”

“I talked to my boss (at Bensons NY) and asked to go anyway, and Bob Brooks, who was already here, put in a good word for me”, remembers Geers. “So, I came to London to work for Brooks (by then at Benton & Bowles), and I was looking for Bob Gill so I could break his arm, but he was much bigger than I thought!”

Alan Fletcher, then 30, was intuitively socialising with Art Directors in London’s advertising agencies, seeing no division between skills. Famously inclusive and generous, Alan’s easy friendships with his contemporaries discovered a shared impatience in London’s advertising scene. With only the Printing and Block supplier’s ‘Layton Awards’ to win, Advertising was also desperate for a bigger platform for its work and envious of the developed awards schemes in the US at the time. The Layton Awards shone a light only on the agency itself, and not on the individuals whose work was rewarded. Dissatisfaction with this lack of individual credit was discussed in a meeting with Alan Fletcher by Bob Brooks, and his friend Colin Millward, ex-Colman Prentis & Varley and by now Creative Director at an important new London agency, Collet Dickinson Pearce (CDP).

“We got together,” says Brooks, “and Colin brought in Malcolm Hart, another Art Director with Bensons at the time. Malcom Hart was something else!,” remembers Gross. “He was working with a writer named Bob Pethick and they were doing some of the best stuff around.”

Malcolm remembers the circumstances leading up to meeting the designers well: “Bob Brooks of course had just come from NY. Colin Millward was a rather retiring kind of person. He was very talented, had very good ideas. He was good at organising people, he wasn’t given to a politicising view of things, but Bob was. Bob was very determined.”

“I was at an agency (Bensons) where the writers were called the ‘Literary Department’. I was Group Creative Head, but I had a typewriter. I wrote down ideas, rather than try to illustrate these dreary bits of copy. I nearly got fired because of my arrogance and attitude. Until Bob Pethick came from Canada, that’s how it was. He was appointed Group Copy Head and he had to work with me. The ‘Literary Department’ put out a pamphlet explaining how advertising should be created, which circulated in the agency. Pethick took out his cigarette lighter and burnt it right there and then. That was the spirit. We were very determined.”

“The designers had the same difficulties in a way. All their ideas were contrary to common practices at the time. We both had that going for us. The designers of the that time, Birdsall, F/F/G and so on, they regarded themselves as artists. They looked disparagingly at us Art Directors—we were the hucksters, you know?—doing commercial stuff. The differences soon disappeared and nobody gave a shit whether you were a designer or an art director after a time.”

This important meeting is recalled by ex-D&AD president Mike Dempsey, then a young designer of just 21: “I remember Alan telling me that there was a graphics exhibition on the back of the ‘17 Designers book’. (Around that time) he met with some advertising guys about setting up something. He was dubious as they seemed to want to run the show!”

Finding broad agreement, Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, Bob Gill, Derek Birdsall, Bob Brooks, Colin Millward and Malcolm Hart devised the early systems which were to define the new Design and Art Direction Association of London (DADA). Colin Forbes remembers tight times: “We were all beginning and nobody had any money.” Derek confirms: “It started off very much being Graphic Designers, but the Advertising agencies took over, mainly because they had all the money!”

Alan re-worded an NYADC entry form, Colin Forbes designed the famous D&AD logo as Alan remembers: “He found a cube of wood, stuck the four characters on adjacent sides and photographed the angulation. John Commander was elected Chairman (with Derek Birdsall (Hon) Secretary) and the first show was held in June 1963 and mounted by Bob Gill and students overnight on the mezzanine of the Hilton Hotel.” Derek recalls John’s chairmanship: “Balding+Mansell commissioned a lot of work through F/F/G and us (so) he became a focal point. He undertook the role with enthusiasm. He had worked for the Design Council, so he had a real knowledge of the arts. He didn’t come from a background of Art or Design, but he evolved into a very good commissioner of design.” F/F/G designed the call for entries and BDMW partner George Daulby designed the very first ‘annual’, a 16 page A5 pamphlet with no pictures at all.

Derek remembers helping Bob Gill pin up a Penguin book jacket called ‘Chosen Words’. “Jesus, this is great!” he shouted over the boards to Colin Forbes, who was pinning with Alan Fletcher. “Colin, did we do this?” “No, you bloody idiot, Derek did it!”

The first DADA show in 1963 featured 403 items of print and 38 films from approximately 3,500 entries. The first judging panel was a mix of AGDL members featured in the forthcoming 17 Graphic Designers, London show; Derek Birdsall, Jock Kinneir, Romek Marber and Germano Facetti amongst others and US Art Directors Robert Brownjohn, Bob Brooks, as well as John Pearce of CDP (Colin Millward’s boss), Bob Geers and Bob Gross. Just one DADA gold Award was bestowed upon a short film for Shell by Geoffrey Jones, with 16 Silver Awards presented at the Hilton by Lord Snowdon.

The original DADA Awards were probably designed by designer Marcello Minale in 1963. Actual size black pencils, beautifully presented in a black ebony pencil case, were made in two varieties with a gold and silver leads by The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. The pencils were referenced in Minale’s subsequent design of the 1964 and 1965 Certificates, featuring an early precursor to the world famous Minale Tattersfield Provencialli ‘scribble’ of 1968.

“The sun shone. Everyone could see what everyone else was doing. Standards were established. Clients became engaged. Creativity acquired value”, remembered Alan.

In early 1964, chairman John Commander stepped down while DADA faced financial peril. Alan Fletcher recalled the DADA general meeting in a gloomy Bloomsbury hotel, where John announced he was resigning. “Bob Brooks nominated an art director at J Walter Thompson called Edward Booth-Clibborn. My recollection is that a young guy stood up at the back and we were all so relieved we voted him in.”

Edward returns the compliment: “Alan did it all without any ulterior motive. Most people did it because they had a reason, but Alan didn’t. Nor did Colin (Forbes). They really were really quite extraordinary in that way. They were entirely alturistic. That was the genius of those guys.”

Soon after Edward took the helm, the current DADA awards were ruled to be too costly to produce, and too fragile to handle. In an incredible quirk of fate, new committee member Lou Klein—interviewed by Bob Gill for emigrée status in 1960—stood forward and volunteered to re-design Marcello’s pencil icon, and the chunky, all wooden black and yellow pencils we covet today were born, cleverly evolving the original silver and gold varieties.

If Bob Gill had never placed that ad… “ha! I never even thought of that!”, he laughs.

DADA’s educational instincts first surfaced in 1965 with the first D&AD Workshops taking place in advertising agency Charles Hobson’s basement, with sessions hosted by Bob Gill, Brian Tattersfield (a student of Gill’s at the RCA), Lou Klein and Germano Facetti.

Designed in 1966 by Ernö Goldfinger, the Trellick Tower was home to a glittering array of designers, art directors, musicians, actors and celebrities including Fletcher, Forbes and Gill, Robert Brownjohn, Terence Conran, Tom Jones, Bamber Gascoigne and Lionel Blair among others.

Bob Brooks recalls: “The tower, where they all had apartments, was really an interesting place because they were all there. That was in Notting Hill, it was the first tower up there.”

“A whole bunch of them were in there”, says Bob Geers, “but I was in a basement flat in Fulham!” The modest and witty Geers was to team up with Brooks’ co-Director at B&B, Bob Gross and set up London’s first ‘hot shop’, GeersGross in 1969, boasting Homepride flour as one of its legendary accounts.

1967 saw Edward lead DADA to a major exhibition called It’s Great Britain, which travelled to New York and several cities in the US, spreading the DADA story and influence. Bob Gill left a fast-growing Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes/Gill for something simpler. Eventually, joined by new partners Kenneth Grange and ex-BDMW assistant Mervyn Kurlansky, Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes became the world famous design group Pentagram in 1972.

In a final irony, 1967 also saw DADA join Sir Roland Penrose’s ICA in the Society of Art Organisations, and share office space at Nash House, Carlton House Terrace with the very same SIA (now SIAD) from the debate in 1960, before moving to Graphite Square and on to its current home in Hanbury Street in late 2011.

Edward Booth-Cibborn was to steer the DADA ship for 29 perilous and challenging years, with it changing its name to British Design & Art Direction and then finally to the more international, D&AD.

In 1972, Alan Fletcher became President of the organisation he helped found and won D&AD Gold two years later. Fellow founder, Colin Millward was awarded the organisation’s first President’s Award in 1976, Alan Fletcher and Colin Forbes were joint winners in 1977 and advertising Art Director, photographer and then feature film director, Bob Brooks finally achieved the same accolade in 1984. Original founder Derek Birdsall has incredibly never won a D&AD award in a legendary career spanning all five decades. But at 78 years young [at the time of writing], there is perhaps still time.

Alan Fletcher sadly passed away in 2006, and is held in the highest regard by the creative industry worldwide. Alan’s ex-assistant and family friend Quentin Newark, now creative director at Atelier remembers his special qualities: “It was not only that his work was damn good, but it was how warm he was as a person. How much effort and time he put into being friends with other people. (His wife) Paola was always catering for people… he was constantly having people round for supper… any Designer or art director of a certain calibre who was travelling to London was round at Alan’s. I think that lay at the birth of D&AD. A mixture of ambition, trust and friendship. I don’t think that could have been built by people who had purely professional instincts.”

Thanks to the sound platform of collaboration laid down by these pioneers and enhanced by many, many more over our first 50 years, D&AD looks proudly forward to the next 50 and beyond.

A D&AD award’s integrity is still the secret of its desirability. Bob Geers once famously confided to Alan Fletcher: “I paid (my friend and eventual partner) Bob Gross a fiver to get one of my ads in (in 1963). Without any luck, AND he kept the fiver!”

As a D&AD Executive Committee member, Mark Bonner conducted new interviews with Derek Birdsall, Bob Brooks, Edward Booth-Clibborn, Mike Dempsey, Colin Forbes, Bob Gill, Bob Gross, Ken Garland, Malcolm Hart, Michael Johnson, Bernard Lodge and Quentin Newark during Spring 2012 to attempt to achieve a definitive account of the history of D&AD’s formation. Information has been consolidated from D&AD annuals [up to #49], as well as numerous books and magazines. Mark would also like to thank John McConnell, Pentagram and Sarah Fakray for their generous help in writing this article.

Image credits

Mark Bonner portrait provided by Mark Bonner

A painting featuring the eight original founders of D&AD in 1962—Derek Birdsall, John Commander, Colin Millward, Colin Forbes, Bob Gill, Malcolm Hart, Bob Brooks and Alan Fletcher—designed by GBH.

Left to Right: Bob Gill, Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes sourced on Graphic Journey Blog

First Things First Manifesto, written in 1963 and published in 1964 by Ken Garland along with 20 other designers, photographers and students.

D&AD logo designed by Colin Forbes, 1963.

Chosen Words (by Ivor Brown) book cover designed by Derek Birdsall, 1961.

D&AD winners were presented with actual-size black pencils in an ebony case designed by Marcello Minale.

Minale Tattersfield Provencialli ‘scribble’, 1968.

D&AD Yellow and Black Pencils, designed by Lou Klein, 1966.