Play.

Design Director Lee Davies argues it’s the brands that offer more, not less that see success sooner…

In 1949 the square and circle were transformed. Ole Kirk Christiansen and his team had made a breakthrough that would change childhood forever. No longer did they see the square and circle as flat and boring, they elevated them to something greater. They were now colourful. 3D. But the best part of their breakthrough? They could be bound together hence their rather uninspiring early name — Automatic Binding Bricks. These were, of course, later renamed Lego bricks and now litter the playroom floors of children (and adults) across the globe. What Lego has managed to do over the past 55 years is nail their brand vision to ‘inspire and develop children to think creatively’. They encourage play and they do it brilliantly.

For me the best part of Lego is the simplicity. Sure you can buy the Death Star, eagerly follow the instructions whilst the rest of your family nod off after Christmas lunch and voilà, the final model will look great. The real fun though is when you litter the floor with colourful plastic pieces and build whatever your mind can muster. ‘Pass me those bits, I really need them for my Pirate Ship.’ The reality is it looks nothing like a Pirate Ship but in your mind, it’s the best thing you’ve ever made and it’ll keep you entertained for hours on end. No matter what it looks like though it’s always Lego.

Lego is a perfect example that a fixed framework of elements can be tuned and adapted to suit a wide spectrum of applications. It allows you to do more. This is something that is vital when creating a new identity for a brand, or even adding to an existing brand. Brands are living things, they don’t stand still in the same suit in the same environment everyday, if they did they simply won’t be seen or heard. They’ll slip away into the dark abyss, never to return.

Brands are rarely straightforward, they are complex and multifaceted. They exist in what can most certainly be described as an increasingly complex world. We absorb brands everywhere in an ever-increasing manner of ways. When developing a brand that might have a complex offer for a complex world, what’s the best thing to do? Keep it simple. Simplicity is your friend. You only have to look at a brand like Apple to realise simplicity works.

So if you develop a simple framework, people won’t be confused by it. It’ll be easy to understand and implement. They can see the potential in it and will play with it. They’ll do more with it. Traditional guidelines will often set out to dampen creativity; don’t do this, don’t do that, use it only at this size, in this place, only use these colours. I’m more of a fan of providing a book of inspiration. Show people what can be done within the framework set out before them and you’re back in Lego territory. It’ll hopefully inspire people to think creatively and develop the brand.

Sometimes you have to deal with a complex brand world. When we worked with LOCOG to develop pictograms for the Olympic Games, the London 2012 Brand was indeed complex. The controversial logo was born out of a chaotic series of intersecting lines. These lines inspired a series of patterns that were coloured in a bold and energetic set of colours. Everything started to look too busy, too confusing and people were turned off.

Developing the pictograms for the Olympic Games so early on in my design career (I was only two years out of university) taught me many valuable lessons. One of these has followed until this very day and that’s simplicity. To develop the pictograms we stripped back the complexity and took the element that informed the entire identity. The line. Inspired by Harry Beck’s underground map the lines were set at right angles. Like the tube map, they ran either horizontal or vertical. When these lines intersected, that’s where the magic happened. It was in this space that the pictograms were formed. It was a simple system that still lived in the original London 2012 world, but more importantly, it was a system they could do more with. It wasn’t a set of fixed assets that other designers were then tasked to badge on every surface they were briefed to design. They were encouraged to play within the system. They could develop it into something wider, it could adapt. Take a line drawing of a London landmark, for example, and add extending vertical and horizontal lines and it’s now ownable. They could draw anything using this simple system and it immediately placed it in the London 2012 brandworld. During the time we worked with LOCOG, the system was used to brand workshops, international legacy initiatives and extended to a suite of landmark icons that were used across the Games merchandise and their retail outlets.

Over the past year, we have been busy bees developing a brand for the world’s best visual effects production house, The Mill. We developed a visual identity that mirrored the thinking of Lego. We tasked ourselves to develop a framework of elements that enabled us to tell The Mill’s story. A framework that when seen could only be The Mill. Thankfully for us, we already had a key piece of this branding puzzle: the Logo. Although it was based on a bygone facet of the industry, it is supposedly built out of six strips of film and it was loved across the board. We loved it. They loved it. Everyone loved it. A lot of love for a logo. But the logo is dead! I hear you say. Yes, yes, the logo is dead when it lives in solitude, that’s why we were hired. Their beautifully robust mark designed by North in the late 90’s was dying. It lived in solitude.

The world we developed made sense of their logo. Not only did it give it a purpose, it put the logo at the centre of the brand. It’s DNA ran through the identity even if it wasn’t present. Therein lies the holy grail of identity design. Cover the logo and ask yourself ‘Who is this piece of communication from?’. If the answer is correct, the designers have done their job properly and can give themselves a well-deserved pat on the back.

The principles that established the framework for The Mill’s brandworld were straightforward, somewhat simplistic in fact. But it created a system that encouraged play. And regardless of our age, we love to play. The system was adaptable. It could also be added to when required. It helped them to develop a brand that’s not consistent—because that’s frankly a bit dull and boring—but coherent.

During this process they launched Mill Plus, combining the craft skills of The Mill with a range of design and animation directors. We were designing for creatives. It could have been a nightmare, but it wasn’t. The system that we already had in place was liked. We simply added elements and tuned their visual identity to suit their needs. Yet it sits alongside The Mill in perfect harmony. It’s this adaptation that makes brandworld thinking more useful than traditional badging that still happens in design studios and branding consultancies across the land today. Shame on them.

One Nottinghamshire gent has developed a clever system without the need for design studios or brand consultancies. He has harnessed the ability to do more with his brand signature. The real beauty is its simplicity. Draw some varied width stripes butted together, colour them using a well crafted, beautifully considered colour palette and you’ll instantly know his name. His name is Paul Smith. What he has with his stripes is different to other fashion brands that are famous for a pattern. Like the Louis Vuitton’s famous monogram pattern, Burberry’s check or Eley Kishimoto’s flash. All fantastic and instantly recognisable albeit rather one dimensional. Louis Vuitton under Marc Jacobs have covered some ground to catch up but they are still some way off.

Where the Paul Smith Stripes differ is they can flex and adapt. They change colour. They can swirl. They overlap. You can recolour a Zebra with them. They separate and interact. They all retain the same visual cues. The stripes have become a powerful branding tool. Whatever it is they cover, be it a mini, a wallet or a football. You know it’s Paul Smith. All of this and not a logo in sight.

Simple frameworks that have a capacity to flex will allow people to play with a brand, allowing it to distinguish itself. It allows the brand to do more, it can evolve and expand and the visual identity can evolve and expand with it. It is this idea of ‘doing more’ that is the most powerful and it’s what we do for every client. We invite our clients to rediscover the art of play. We give them the tools to do more. We don’t simply tell them what to do with our work and walk away because no one likes being told what to do. We work with them to build them something useful and versatile. What we hope is the excitement and opportunity we envision for them is instilled into them at the start of their brands new journey. Allowing them to grow and adapt on their way to flourish, with flair.