What I do...
I bridge gaps, I search for context, I obsess over the user, and I’m the one always asking “why?”

What do I mean by
bridging gaps?

Marty Neumeier talks about a fundamental space in The Brand Gap¹. The gap between a business’s strategy and creativity.

I love the concept, and it’s no doubt a big issue in many businesses but the gaps I see and often bridge are much more abundant.

• The gap between the C-suite’s desires and the end-user or customer’s expectations.
• The gap between the product team’s ideas and the development team’s delivery.
• The gap between what the boss wants and what the user wants.
• The gap between forward-thinking innovation costs and the remaining budget.

There are endless gaps in many businesses and there is often someone with a design-centred mind at the heart of trying to bridge those gaps.

What do I mean by
searching for context?

Since Jeffrey Zeldman tweeted “Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.” back in 2008², we’ve all been using that as a nice little justification for making sure we have content up front when it comes to designing something.

Again, I love this concept but it’s not always so simple. I’d take it all a step further and argue that context is also crucial, and importantly, covers two key things:

1. The literal context of where and how the audience comes into contact with the design in question: Monitor screen, mobile device, TV, brochure, shop signage or taxi wraparound, Inside or outside? How well is it lit? Do they have any impairments? What are they doing at the time? The list goes on.
2. The more abstract context of where the audience is in their user journey. What contact have they already had with your brand or business? How did they find this piece of design? What will they do next?

What do I mean by
obsess over the user?

I’m user obsessed. Since seeing a talk at Catalyst Conference³ in 2021 by the rather adept design team at Tesco I realised it. They talk about “user obsession” because it’s more than just caring about the user.

It’s understanding that the user is at the centre of everything you do as a designer or design team.

It’s not just considering the user, it’s involving the user. Have customers attend creative or innovation workshops, put them into the process.

If your brand or business doesn’t solve a fundamental problem your target audience is having, then it’s not likely to last particularly long.

What do I mean by
always asking why?

This is partially linked to context, partially linked to the user, but when presented with any piece of design work whether it’s strategy or a simple button fix, one of the first questions should almost always be “why?”.

Not just once.

Ask it again and again till you get to the inception. Go as deep as you can down the rabbit hole, because the root of the work is likely to uncover itself if it wasn’t already apparent, and then you’re armed with context. Likely both for the business and the user.

If you’re just blindly designing willy-nilly without question, the first thing you should probably be questioning is yourself.

Web Design & Build

I’ve been designing and building websites since we got the web at high school back in 1995. That’s concept right through wireframes and design to hand-coding flat HTML/CSS pages. I can even build you a custom Wordpress theme or integrate basic JavaScript but I draw the line at back-end development or anything server-side.

Brand Identity

The strategy, research, conceptualisation and development of branding is one of my real loves. It came from logo design, but encompasses the full brand identity gamut now.

Strategic frameworks, creative vision, the usual logo design, type, colours, imagery, graphics and then all supporting elements from presentation templates to business cards, sales and marketing collateral and everything in between.

Product Design

Understanding the product lifecycle, Agile or Waterfall methodologies and rituals, the release cycle and everything involved in a robust product design ecosystem is only something you find after years of product design work.

• Knowing that a proper cross-functional product design team will produce more innovative and achievable features.
• Knowing that a robust and expanding design system is an evolving piece of work to be nurtured and maintained, not a single fix-all solution to be done ahead of everything.
• Knowing how your incredible overarching future product design might be chunked into tickets or epics and not necessarily end up as you might have expected.
• Knowing that a prioritisation matrix means you might not get to design that awesome image uploader because a form redesign is more profitable, more urgent or more suitable.

All of these things play into being an efficient product design leader.

Design Leadership

Although already considered part of the leadership and subsequently executive team at Brainnwave, I was encouraged to expand the design team, so hired a direct report and managed regular check-ins, skills development and encouraged efficiency, autonomy and growth.

In the past, I provided mentorship for design peers, with regular check-ins and both career and employment/colleague management advice.

At Brainnwave I was also able to facilitate a work experience week for a young student to help them understand both design (and front-end development) in the workplace.

Strategy

Understanding campaigns, project planning, workflows, deliverables and processes is really only part of the strategy puzzle.

Going deep and gathering an understanding of the business, the marketplace, competitors and what makes a brand unique is also involved. Building on that data, the audience profiles and user personas as well as goals and vision all comes together to play into creative strategy.

That could be a simple document determining creative campaigns, tactics for marketing, a channel breakdown. It could encompass the brand identity, the core messaging, example creative and more.

The Element of Surprise

OK so the reality is, since 2005 I’ve designed (and been involved with) an awful lot of things. Yes, all the usual design and marketing stuff, but what about stunt-plane livery? What about taxi-wraparounds? Home made cider labels? Not unusual enough?

What about being a voice artist for a telephony system? How about an audio identity for logo animation? Heck, animation itself in some cases.

How about analysing and overhauling recruitment strategy and job specs to encourage a more candidate pool?

What about music production or soundtracks for corporate videos? Photoshoot direction? Video editing or podcast production? Internal one-page email signature generation web pages?

I’ll stop now.

1. The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier
2. Jeffrey Zeldman Presents
3. Catalyst Conference