Protect the Process – Design Leaders Conference 2024
We’ve been mulling over our key takeaways from the Design Leaders Conference 2024, and in summary, it all boils down to how important our process is. Protecting and trusting the design process, from a client and a creator point of view. We now want to take you on a journey to show why process is important – with a peppering of insight from the event.
Trust us, it’s worth it.
Let’s get familiar
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a commercial brand or a creative working in the industry. Or, you’ve an interest in either. If so, you may be familiar with the concept of taking a client along the brand journey, but let’s talk about it.
Client First
As designers, we’re across all impressions we make on the client. We know that often, first impressions go a long way to winning new work. What we’ve found in our work, and as was shared at the conference, is that often the last impressions are the most important ones we give.
This too splits into two perspectives:
- our impression with the client, and
- the impression our final product gives both the client and the consumer when it’s out in the world.
Both require a lot of trust.
We build relationships with our clients that are based on trust. We have learned to get under the skin of the brand, gain a clear view of the perspective of the client, and build out our creative from there. As a brand strategy first agency, we build a rationale for all work which is relevant to the commercial sensibilities of the business. We bring purpose-led design to the table.
Our approach?
We work to understand you and your point of view.
We help you to understand brand, taking you along the journey.
Creatives and their Leaders
A key insight all of our team took away from the day was the role of leaders in providing “air cover and a runway” (protection and a clear direction) for their team to do what they do best and lean into the creative process. Let’s reveal a few trade secrets about how we get from A to B, and how there are many junctions, roundabouts, ups and downs between them!
Vulnerability and Confidence
Yes, they come hand-in-hand in the creative process. How? As designers, strategists and creatives, we need to be comfortable with the vulnerability to say “We don’t have the answer now…” but the confidence in our process to say “…but we will create it”.
Between A and B is a lot of trial and error. We need failure to know what’s right. We’re confident in using our vulnerability of trying and trying again to get to the solution. Vulnerability and confidence are core to the creative process that leads us to purpose-led design that’s commercially viable.
We’re in the business of driving your business forward with brand. Our process starts with strategy, so we know where to go. We don’t need to do brave. Our approach of allowing strategy to guide the design process de-risks the outcome.
We believe in our process, paved with strategy and design-led thinking.
As leaders in design, we have an obligation to protect this process.
True Partnership is Driven by People
We treat our clients like partners, and we take them along the brand journey. We know every brand is unique, so we embark on every partnership by learning more about the “ask”. At Bradley, we really listen. For every brief written and deck built, there’s a wealth of untapped knowledge and context behind each person who worked on it. Here is where collaboration truly begins.
We’d like to thank all involved in running the Design Leaders Conference 2024. It’s an event we are privileged and excited to attend every year. Thank you to all of the speakers for sharing their process, their thinking, and igniting ours.
