SCAD Guests and Gusto Series: In Conversation with Erica Kelly
This article originates from a conversation between Erica Kelly and CT Nguyen as part of the SCAD Guests and Gusto Virtual Series. You can watch the full replay (with transcripts) here. Video footage is courtesy of SCAD.
Applying the Brand Mentality to Design
What does it mean to put strategy before design?
How does a brand translate into an interior space?
What should we focus on when designing for Gen Z?
Here are the highlights from Erica’s talk with SCAD Preservation Design Chair CT Nguyen as part of the SCAD Guest & Gusto Virtual Series.
Intro
CT: You describe your team as “stratesigners”. Speak more about that.
Erica: We really discovered that what sets us apart is the fact that we bring our brand process to every aspect of design that we do. And so we always say that we're one part strategy and one part design. And really what we mean by that is we’re first part strategy and second part design and we apply that to every service that we offer.
A lot of times if you're a business owner and you employ a designer or even a smaller agency you maybe have a few conversations and then they'll put their pen right to paper and start designing. Which is, you know, considered the “fun” part of what we do. It's the exciting part. The client wants to see images and sketches and concepts. But what happens when you do that and skip the really important conversation surrounding the brand and the strategy of the business, is you end up with something pretty, but it might not be servicing your business the best way that it could. Or maybe it's pretty, but there's there's no story behind it. There's no meat behind it, if you will.
What happens is the business owner is kind of left with this empty shell in a couple of years. When it comes time for them to start marketing their business or they’re starting to create content for their business, they have to have those conversations all over again because they didn't go through that process while they were branding.
“[When you skip strategy], the business owner is kind of left with this empty shell in a few years.”
So that's why, whether we offer residential interior design,identity design, social media management, or a website, we always start with the foundations of that brand process to really help understand:
What value does your product or service bring?
Why is it important that your business exists?
Who are we designing for?
After having those big discussions we look at competitors that are similar to them both here and afar. We assess what they’re doing that works and what doesn’t. All of that is necessary before jumping into the design.
CT: What do you think is the main differences between the terms Brand, Branded, and Branding?
Erica: Let’s start with Brand. There are two faces to a coin when it comes to a brand. The one face is the effort and the image in which a business and the people behind that business tend to try to put out as a facade to the market. They decide, “This is our brand. This is what we believe in. This is our target customer.”
But then there's the flip side of the coin and that's how the consumers see that brand. Right. There’s a saying that “a brand is what people say about your business when you're not looking.”
You can do your best to put out what you want your brand to be, but things don’t always go that way. The market is ever evolving and changing. New demographics and niche demographics are popping up into the market all the time. And so there's kind of a point in which you know you have to let go of the reins a little bit and then the consumers are the ones that are going to ultimately decide how a brand is perceived.
Branding is the process in which a business undergoes with a branding agency to craft that image to the best of their ability.
The term Branded is kind of at the end process of that. I think that is the what the brand becomes once it's in the market.
Branded Environments
“Branding has always been about activating muscle memory within the consumer. ”
CT: How does an interior space become a branded environment?
Erica: The branded environment is really just an extension of an identity design. We take a branded design (identity, logo, colors, fonts) and see the interior environment as just an extension of that. You’re just working with a different palette (lighting, surface materials, space planning).
Within branded environments, you also have the journey of the consumer; how you want a person to flow and interact through that space. There are a lot of parallels between interior design and web design. Designing the sitemap is a lot like deciding how you want to space plan and determine where a person goes first.
“It’s this idea that you’re basically branding with 3D materials and getting the consumers to recognize that.”
CT: When people think of brand, a lot of people think of a specific Pantone or logo-cladded spaces. But you're thinking about applying brand mentality in a much more experiential way. Can you walk us through your process?
Erica: I want to start by making the comment that I think branding has always been about activating muscle memory within the consumer. With branding, that muscle memory was activated with two-dimensional things such as color or font. In a branded environment, that muscle memory has become so much more environmental and so much more three dimensional. It's this idea that you're building that brand awareness using things kind of beyond the screen. So using the way that light falls on a wall, the way that florals are arranged, the way that an interior space kind of evokes emotion. It's the consistency that a brand has to put forth to have the consumer recognize, “Okay, that's Flourish Collaborative.”
And not to say that that can't evolve over time. But getting your consumers on board from the start by really being confident and sure and this is your branded environment. Deciding, “This is what we do and who we are.”
For example, people know when a Glossier pops up in New York City. You don't even have to show me “Glossier” on the door. I know that it's their brand. It's this idea of that you're basically branding with 3D materials and getting the consumers to recognize that.
Designing for Gen Z
CT: The one big thing that matters most to today’s rising demographic, Gen Z, is purpose. It's one of the key things that Gen Z identifies with most within a brand. It’s not about the aesthetic or the brand name anymore. What have you seen recently that has expanded that notion of a purpose-driven brand?
“[Purpose is] one of the key things that Gen Z identifies with most within a brand.”
Erica: Gen Z wants that interpersonal connection between them and a brand. That’s why you see companies choosing to create a small persona or an avatar or a character that guides you through the app or guides you through the experience because it seems more natural to have that one-on-one interaction with a person versus, “Hi, we're a Corporation!”, which completely disconnects Gen Z. What we're just finding is the more human aspect of things. And you're right, millennialswere coming from the 90s and the 80s. We just wanted good design. We just wanted things to be a little bit softer on the edges and not so you know stark and stoic. We wanted something that gave us hope and made us feel good.
I think people are really just realizing that they don't want the big box store; they don't want the big brand. They don't want the suits. They want that person who's advocating for the brand who believes in that brand that they can believe in them. I think it's the human element that's so crucial.
“People don’t want the big box store. [...] They want that person who’s advocating for the brand who believes in that brand that they can believe in them.”
And that's why the work that we do is just so crucial because you cannot in this climate and in this market just go out and design something without strategy. You have to really create with things like brand tone and brand emotion in mind. You really have to treat a business as if it is another person sitting at the table. Ask yourself these questions:
How do they act?
Were they early, late, or on time to the meeting?
What are they wearing?
Where are they going before and after?
To really explore all those elements of a brand is how you're going to connect with the future consumers.