Embrace the quirky, unusual and creative

If we could pick a mantra for our graphic design company (other that is, than “design love”), it would be “embrace the creative.” By that, we mean go with what is different. Don’t just say you want to be distinct from your competition, do it.

We chose the slogan “design love” to describe our mission because we believe it represents the idea of perfect communication of message to marketplace. And, on a more basic level, because we love to design. The best design projects, the ones that are really the most fun, are the ones where we work with clients to do something truly distinct, unusual or creative for a particular market.

However, our likes, dislikes or any other preferences as a design company aside, there is an actual competitive advantage to be gained by embracing the creative – no matter what your industry. Everyone can be creative.

Unfortunately, being creative and really getting behind a branding and design strategy that is unique is not easy. There is safety in numbers and comfort in knowing that your company is doing something that fits snugly into the cocoon of what others in your industry are doing. It is one thing to hear advice about distinction and uniqueness and another thing entirely to put it to practical use in the real world. Our markets tend to focus on the short term, looking at quarterly earnings and monthly sales figures. But real building a brand takes time. The temptation to take what appears to be a successful formula from someone else – say a competitor – and try to replicate it may be strong. But it is, in the long term, a losing strategy.

We have worked on projects in the past that start out with great promise. The client is open to creativity. They want, for example, their website to be different; they don’t want to look like everyone else. Then, as the project moves forward, we experience something like a normalcy creep. It may start with one image, or a navigation style, one element that gets modified to reflect what someone else in the industry is doing. It may end there, but sometimes the revision process creeps along, incorporating other elements because the client likes what so and so is doing, or thinks some other website is really neat.

The result of this process is can unfortunately be the development of a site that looks like a template.  And we do not want to create templates. Our goal is to help build brands with unique offerings. Be distinct. Be memorable. Create results for your brand.