By Curt Schreiber
How did you get started as a designer? My mother ran a craft shop, and my father was an engineer. They taught me to appreciate and understand art and science. Design lives at the intersection of form and function, beauty and purpose, instinct and intellect. Both parts are equally essential, and both play roles in design. I’ve always been drawn to this tension—obsessing over aesthetics and intention.
At an early age, my parents encouraged me to pursue my interest in art. Starting in elementary school, I drew buildings, painted landscapes and molded sculptures. By the time I was seventeen, I started testing my business skills by selling art at shows and local galleries—a funny and unsuccessful endeavor.
My formal design training began at Iowa State University. I learned the core principles of design, specifically graphic design. Robert Vogele, the founding partner of VSA Partners (VSA), taught me the business of design. And today, I’m still learning what it means to be a designer.
Do you notice a unifying theme among the design challenges that brands are bringing to VSA today? One unifying theme is the desire to think fast and to think slow—making an immediate impact while innovating for the future. Both are essential to building brands and businesses. Shareholder and market demands require businesses to intensely focus on the short term. Performance is measured in quarters, and world markets change in moments. At the same time, the long-term health and stability of a business also requires innovative thinking.
How is the rise of mobile helping or hurting the brands you work with? Mobile is hurting companies or brands that have been slow to respond. Many are still focused on “digital-first” strategies. Companies need to shift to “mobile-first.” It’s a different mindset with different requirements. User experiences need to be optimized for the mobile device, then translated to other channels. Pokémon Go is a phenomenal gaming experience designed exclusively for mobile. Square helped to reinvent retail transactions. Snapchat has reinvented social communication. Even grocery shopping is being transformed with Instacart.
The statistics on consumer usage and adoption is staggering. Statistics show that mobile now represents more than 60 percent of all digital media time, with mobile apps dominating that usage. The desktop PC and TV have been losing significant percentage points since 2013 and are projected to decline. Apple might change that for TV.
What place does storytelling have in branding? If storytelling is intended to provide messaging, it will lack effectiveness and be viewed as campaignery. If a brand defines storytelling as a narrative and is experienced by a user, then it can be a meaningful interaction between a person and a brand. Every consumer seeks a brand possessing attributes that align with the consumer’s personal identity. And increasingly, long-term relationships are built by branded experiences, rather than messages or products.
What is the biggest challenge currently facing design firms that they must overcome in order to stay relevant? One challenge includes the client’s need to co-create and a firm’s unwillingness to work in that manner. Best-in-class branding means building a team composed of stakeholders—marketers, designers, thought leaders, end users, etc.—from across the entire value chain. Exposing them to design thinking and disruption methodologies ensures that they are systemically solving problems. Those teams should tackle the biggest business challenges to create innovative, dynamic brand interactions.
Ultimately, clients understand the value of design and are acquiring or building in-house capabilities at a record pace. In some cases, we are helping them to position, build and even staff these offerings. By blending our design thinking and execution teams with theirs, we get more direct insights and better feedback, which leads to solutions with greater impact. Design firms need to embrace co-creation to best connect the dots.
The second challenge I see is a hesitancy to iterate in-market. Branding engagements take time, are costly to execute and are difficult to measure in terms of return on investment. Our own personal experiences with brands happen in fast-paced, ever-changing environments. The most advanced branding firms will embrace a sprint-based brand development process that automates research and data gathering. Then, they can focus on rapid idea generation for fast prototyping and turnarounds.
What is it like to work with iconic brands such as Harley-Davidson, Converse and IBM to help change their perceptions over time? It’s inspiring and challenging—a privilege. We have built brands from the ground up and helped rebrand established companies. For many reasons, clients have come to appreciate VSA’s sensibility to carefully shepherd legacy brands into the future. It’s a combination of defining what has always been true about a brand and tapping into what matters in the minds of consumers today—what’s authentic and what’s relevant. Relevance, not freshness. Freshening up a company is like treading water, a visual or verbal graphic veneer that only lasts for so long. Customers see through it, and quickly. Relevance equals meaning—winning hearts and minds.
Willie G. Davidson, former senior vice president and chief styling officer for Harley-Davidson, believes that form follows emotion. Designing a Harley-Davidson experience means tapping into an inner, unexplainable lure that only a legacy brand is capable of doing.
There is a time and place to be nostalgic. When Louis Gerstner, former chairman of the board and CEO for IBM, decided to keep IBM together and not break up the company, it was essential that he cast a new strategic direction and not hold on to the past. Once greatness was restored, only Samuel Palmisano, the succeeding CEO, could point to the past and relate it to today.
Where do you seek inspiration? I pay attention to brands and products that are disruptive in nature: brands that are doing something different, stirring the conversation or activating in a really smart way. Today, more than ever, it’s important for brands to think slow and to think fast. Companies are intensely focused on the short term and shareholder value, yet need to be able to disrupt themselves to innovate for the future.
I also find myself asking my kids what they think, what they like, what they buy and why. They are an amazing focus group born on the web. They lead digital lives—a superunique generation that views the world differently than I do.
Do you have any advice for people just starting out in design? Get as much diverse experience and learning as you can. Study the sociology of people, study business and understand the future of technology. Travel to understand the nuances of culture. And collaborate with people not like yourself. Design is more than an understanding of typography, color and composition—it’s an understanding of the world around us.
What’s one thing you wish you knew when you started your career? Design is a business, not just a form of art.
At an early age, my parents encouraged me to pursue my interest in art. Starting in elementary school, I drew buildings, painted landscapes and molded sculptures. By the time I was seventeen, I started testing my business skills by selling art at shows and local galleries—a funny and unsuccessful endeavor.
My formal design training began at Iowa State University. I learned the core principles of design, specifically graphic design. Robert Vogele, the founding partner of VSA Partners (VSA), taught me the business of design. And today, I’m still learning what it means to be a designer.
Do you notice a unifying theme among the design challenges that brands are bringing to VSA today? One unifying theme is the desire to think fast and to think slow—making an immediate impact while innovating for the future. Both are essential to building brands and businesses. Shareholder and market demands require businesses to intensely focus on the short term. Performance is measured in quarters, and world markets change in moments. At the same time, the long-term health and stability of a business also requires innovative thinking.
Design is a business, not just a form of art.
How is the rise of mobile helping or hurting the brands you work with? Mobile is hurting companies or brands that have been slow to respond. Many are still focused on “digital-first” strategies. Companies need to shift to “mobile-first.” It’s a different mindset with different requirements. User experiences need to be optimized for the mobile device, then translated to other channels. Pokémon Go is a phenomenal gaming experience designed exclusively for mobile. Square helped to reinvent retail transactions. Snapchat has reinvented social communication. Even grocery shopping is being transformed with Instacart.
The statistics on consumer usage and adoption is staggering. Statistics show that mobile now represents more than 60 percent of all digital media time, with mobile apps dominating that usage. The desktop PC and TV have been losing significant percentage points since 2013 and are projected to decline. Apple might change that for TV.
What place does storytelling have in branding? If storytelling is intended to provide messaging, it will lack effectiveness and be viewed as campaignery. If a brand defines storytelling as a narrative and is experienced by a user, then it can be a meaningful interaction between a person and a brand. Every consumer seeks a brand possessing attributes that align with the consumer’s personal identity. And increasingly, long-term relationships are built by branded experiences, rather than messages or products.
What is the biggest challenge currently facing design firms that they must overcome in order to stay relevant? One challenge includes the client’s need to co-create and a firm’s unwillingness to work in that manner. Best-in-class branding means building a team composed of stakeholders—marketers, designers, thought leaders, end users, etc.—from across the entire value chain. Exposing them to design thinking and disruption methodologies ensures that they are systemically solving problems. Those teams should tackle the biggest business challenges to create innovative, dynamic brand interactions.
Ultimately, clients understand the value of design and are acquiring or building in-house capabilities at a record pace. In some cases, we are helping them to position, build and even staff these offerings. By blending our design thinking and execution teams with theirs, we get more direct insights and better feedback, which leads to solutions with greater impact. Design firms need to embrace co-creation to best connect the dots.
The second challenge I see is a hesitancy to iterate in-market. Branding engagements take time, are costly to execute and are difficult to measure in terms of return on investment. Our own personal experiences with brands happen in fast-paced, ever-changing environments. The most advanced branding firms will embrace a sprint-based brand development process that automates research and data gathering. Then, they can focus on rapid idea generation for fast prototyping and turnarounds.
What is it like to work with iconic brands such as Harley-Davidson, Converse and IBM to help change their perceptions over time? It’s inspiring and challenging—a privilege. We have built brands from the ground up and helped rebrand established companies. For many reasons, clients have come to appreciate VSA’s sensibility to carefully shepherd legacy brands into the future. It’s a combination of defining what has always been true about a brand and tapping into what matters in the minds of consumers today—what’s authentic and what’s relevant. Relevance, not freshness. Freshening up a company is like treading water, a visual or verbal graphic veneer that only lasts for so long. Customers see through it, and quickly. Relevance equals meaning—winning hearts and minds.
Willie G. Davidson, former senior vice president and chief styling officer for Harley-Davidson, believes that form follows emotion. Designing a Harley-Davidson experience means tapping into an inner, unexplainable lure that only a legacy brand is capable of doing.
There is a time and place to be nostalgic. When Louis Gerstner, former chairman of the board and CEO for IBM, decided to keep IBM together and not break up the company, it was essential that he cast a new strategic direction and not hold on to the past. Once greatness was restored, only Samuel Palmisano, the succeeding CEO, could point to the past and relate it to today.
Where do you seek inspiration? I pay attention to brands and products that are disruptive in nature: brands that are doing something different, stirring the conversation or activating in a really smart way. Today, more than ever, it’s important for brands to think slow and to think fast. Companies are intensely focused on the short term and shareholder value, yet need to be able to disrupt themselves to innovate for the future.
I also find myself asking my kids what they think, what they like, what they buy and why. They are an amazing focus group born on the web. They lead digital lives—a superunique generation that views the world differently than I do.
Do you have any advice for people just starting out in design? Get as much diverse experience and learning as you can. Study the sociology of people, study business and understand the future of technology. Travel to understand the nuances of culture. And collaborate with people not like yourself. Design is more than an understanding of typography, color and composition—it’s an understanding of the world around us.
What’s one thing you wish you knew when you started your career? Design is a business, not just a form of art.
Curt Schreiber leads the client engagement practice at Chicago-based branding and marketing firm VSA Partners (VSA), setting organization-wide standards for client management and helping to shape the firm’s long-term growth strategy. Schreiber joined VSA in 1991 as one of the firm’s first designers and has been instrumental in creating many of its most important creative solutions and client relationships. 25 years ago, he was part of the team behind the design-driven 1993 Chicago Board of Trade annual report, which put VSA on the map. Today, Schreiber leads the firm’s decades-long relationship with IBM, guiding its brand strategy and identity, corporate marketing communications, and digital presence. All along the way, he has helped shape VSA from a small shop of fifteen to a multioffice firm of more than 300 professionals that produces integrated world-class branding and marketing solutions for clients of all sizes and from all industries.
