Carl Wills

Critical Form – Landor

In this critical forum, Carl Wills stressed the importance of getting the strategy right because if you design based on the right strategic approach, it can get people to invest in the brand.

Kellogg’s
Kellogg wasn’t going to reduce its sugar content while other brands were doing it. The question was, how do you get such a brand crowded when everyone is so health-conscious?

Their strategy was to make – Kellogg’s had to come first, and the sub-brand follow. This reaffirmed Kellogg’s as the best brand in all cereal categories because subbrands tend to fight subbrands. But because everyone knows Kellogg’s, by highlighting, the focus shifts on the main brand rather than the subbrand itself. Kellogg’s is the first thing you see, and then you see the rest of the packaging.

Creating a vibrant new masterbrand visual identity for Kellogg’s

Le shuttle
Many brands are trying to strip away personality from their branding
But Landor did the opposite for this brand. The strategy was simply to make people aware of the brand’s unique benefits that already make it different from other competitors like Eurostar.

Le shuttles branding by Landor

Be Average and Curious
Carl also talked about suffering from the impostor syndrome, even after years of being a creatiove professional. The only solution to this fear of being average is to take these average things and then apply things to it.

For instance, you can take the average and then add curiosity to it – Carl has been a very curious person, which has really helped him in his career. In one of his projects for the UN, he was really curious about them and kept surfing their website. He came across the list of every single one of their meeting which have been recorded and uploaded there. The aim was to show people that the UN takes action and has a real impact through its words. This was further taken up to show how they are using words to make changes.

Be Average and Naive
Ask questions that people don’t usually ask. For example, during the Kellogg’s project, an intern questioned why we weren’t using the “og” in Kellogg’s. That’s when everyone realised it had been in front of their eyes all along, but no one questioned it until the intern did.

Kellogg’s ‘og’ graphics

Be Average and Persistent
For a D&AD project for Brewdog, Carl’s team came up with an idea to flip the often negative connotation of rain – dull, inconvenient, unwanted: They came up with the idea that if “It’s raining outside, then it’s pouring inside.” A playful twist that turned gloomy weather into an invitation, not to stay in, but to head to BrewDog and enjoy what’s on tap.

Despite no initial response from the company, they didn’t give up. He believed in the idea, so he found a way — sending 30 guessed email addresses until one finally landed. If you believe in your work, persistence finds a path.

Be Average & a Storyteller
You can’t judge only based on the design; it’s the story that wins hearts. You need to get your idea down to 5 to 7 slides and also need to be able to put out your idea in one sentence.

All of this is thinking about –
How do you centre on one key insight?
How do you show your thought process?

You need to –
Find a way to provoke the recruiters
Don’t give everything away
Hook them in and then show the process

Carl on Ethics
Most companies have questionable clients, but you have autonomy in life. If I can make one of the world’s worst companies sustainable, then that’s it.

Carl on Strategy
Strategy is about mining information – It’s the clever bit. It’s the clarity.

Things to consider when applying for Jobs

  • Apply for jobs based on your research. Find a place that you really like.
  • Talk to the right people, who actually hire
  • Tailor your folio to them – the biggest thing is if you can provoke them.
  • Make people look at something in a different way. They just expect you to think differently. They look at how you have taken the problem and solved it differently.
    Even if the visuals aren’t great but your thinking really comes through.
  • Never showing the visuals at the start, because then they are not reading stuff
  • Keep looking at your pitch and trimming it down

Links
https://landor.com/en/our-work/kelloggs/
https://landor.com/en/our-work/leshuttle/

Nicer Tuesdays

Us two games

One of the speakers was Lili Ibrahim from Us Two Games, a small games studio in South London known for its Monument Valley game. I was positively surprised to see that this studio is the world’s first B-corporation games studio, with the profits going to a humanitarian network. 

As a games studio, no one would expect them to do more than entertain, but if they are also able to incorporate a little bit of positivity while being playful, to me, that is the true definition of being ‘positively playful’, even if it’s in a small way. 

The game itself was well-designed – it’s an atmospheric puzzle game with dreamlike environments. It felt like the perfect blend of illustration and games. With tactile interactions and printable artwork as well, the game has a great balance of feeling good and looking good. It was very interesting to see their game-level compositions that were directly and indirectly inspired by optical illusions. The whole game is based on the Pen rose triangle – a physically impossible triangle that exists only in the game.

Sweet-Thang Zine

Zoe Thompson, the founder of ‘Sweet-Thang Zine’, shared how her entire life has been filled with DIY creations that helped her understand and harness their power. She discussed her journey from being a teenager who blogged to express her feelings and opinions, to discovering zines and eventually becoming the owner of a self-funded independent press that celebrates Black creatives.

I appreciated her perspective of viewing everything she has experimented with over the years as her playground. These playgrounds are reflective, open spaces that helped her find her future direction. This really underscores the idea that every new creative endeavor can help define your path and highlights the importance of engaging in projects that reflect your true interests, rather than solely focusing on work-related tasks.

SPIN Studio

Eve Broke, the Creative Director of SPIN Studios, and Tony Brook, the CEO, discussed their unique studio setup, which is actually in a house that they shifted into, from a commercial space. About seven creatives live together in this house with a garden where they play around with whatever is lying around. They started working analogue and digital – even got a typewriter. They believe that combining these different elements ignites a ‘metamorphosis’ that leads to unique ideas. This inspired me to incorporate more physical experiments into my own practice since it’s easy to feel constrained by digital tools at times. Simply looking around for inspiration can be an enjoyable and straightforward way to spark great ideas for projects or enhance the overall creativity of the studio.