🌪 Creative Strategy at WONDERLAND
🌪 Creative Strategy at WONDERLAND
A newsletter about design and creativity, and how they contribute to a better world.
Welcome to Edition #39 of HUMAN
In summary of today:
What we’ve learned, 1-year into integrating strategy into our design process.
Our newest case study is LIVE + a reintroduction to Learning by Doing It.
This week’s finds from around the internet.
A peek into 36 Days of Type.
What we’ve learned, 1-year into integrating strategy into our design process.
Over the past year, creative strategy has slowly become an essential piece of our design process. We know that strategy is essential in the creation of meaningful brands that connect culture with the brand’s purpose and further unite the design of a brand under a single vision. Our strategy phase at WONDERLAND starts with extensive research into a client’s market, audience, and surrounding culture. Using this research, our strategy team is able to effectively capture an audience’s attention, differentiate a client’s business, expand an existing brand into new market domains, and ensure the KPIs of the business are met. In this week’s edition of In Our Humble Opinion, we will quickly take you through what we’ve learned about strategy this year.
First, and what may be an obvious one, we've found out that a strong concept is key to creating relevant brands. Rather than striving for an aesthetic or following a fleeting design trend, we started to prioritise delving into cultural trends, relying on behavioural and market research, and fully understanding the brand, the product, and the ecosystem where it lives. Instead of relying on microtrends, we focus on understanding the underlying motivations, consumer needs and forces of change driving these micro trends. Figuring out the brand and its context before we start the design process leads to concrete ideas and concepts behind the design, and in the end, designing a campaign or a brand that connects with people.
We've recognised that having strategists who are well-versed in design (and vice versa, designers who are versed in strategy) enable a nearly-seamless transition between the creative strategy and brand design phases of a project. There is a clear advantage to having a strategist who can start to formulate how a concept or strategy could be translated to a design, or having a designer who is eager to dig into the concept and the background research. In the end, having designers and strategists work together within both phases of a project has consistently lead to a design system that accurately reflects the strategy and the brand.
We've learned that a one-size-fits-all strategy approach doesn't work. While the ideal project would be an 8-week in-depth brand strategy phase (you can see what this would entail here), some clients come to us with already partially formed brand strategies that they need help executing, while others are still figuring out their target market. Being adaptable to what clients are bringing to the table and knowing when and where to guide a strategy project has been essential for the effectiveness and growth of our strategy team.
We are always looking to advance our existing strategy process and evolve how, when, and what kind of strategy is the best fit for our clients. With the growth of our strategy team and as new strategy projects are completed, we are sure we will have tons more points to share by this time next year. Want to know more about our services?
And check out our previous Ideas post on Strategy at W.
Do you have a design or creativity-related question that you would like to have answered? Mail them to us at hello@wonderlandams.com and we’ll take it from there.
Our newest case study is live on the website: Learning by Doing It ⭐️
For this project, Wonderland was responsible for LBDI’s updated brand design, UX and UI Design, motion design, and development.
Wonderland Designer and Strategist, Michelle Se Yoon Kee, created ‘Learning By Doing It (LBDI)’, which is an anonymous platform for sharing valuable lessons learned through sexual experiences. The platform aims to bring a humane perspective to sexual education and diversify our understanding of what sex can be by presenting unique and different perspectives. By sharing honest and vulnerable stories, LBDI presents a more comprehensive picture of what sex means to the wider public and helps people see similarities rather than differences. LBDI was selected by Wonderland for our annual Talent Program.
Click here to have a look at the case study, and here to explore, participate, and interact with the platform.
This week’s interesting design, creativity, and sustainability finds from around the internet.
Ikea dusts off its archives for its new 80th-anniversary collection.
Is AI driving us away from designing human-centric experiences?
B Corp makes agencies attractive to dealmakers – it’ll change your business model too
How Rabbithole took Leeds Festival of Ideas in a brave, inflatable design direction.
The first time we're convinced that AI can match or surpass the original musician.
We are now almost two weeks into the 36 days of type, and we’ve seen many designers stretch the boundaries of letters in vastly experimental ways. We’re fond of one designer, in particular, Vera van de Seyp.
Vera’s submissions are animated, yes, but they are also much more than that. In one of them, she riso-prints each frame to create a flip-book effect, other letters are constructed by code. One day she writes algorithms, and another comes up with an analogue execution, or combines both!
Our favourite? Animation made with p5.js, turned into frames, turned into a physical, knitted piece, photographed and turned back into an animation.
With events like these, the everyday demand for a new design often makes the motivation dry out eventually. However, we would love to see what ideas Vera has up her sleeve for the remaining twenty-something letters. Other interesting creatives to follow on this journey? Check out Jelena Peeters, Darius Pronowski or Daniel Maarleveld.
This feature was written by Zuza Loch, Brand Designer at WONDERLAND.