MindComet

RE:BRAND:02 - Mood Boards

Previously the rebrand team performed a “keyword” exercise to start establishing common thoughts and ideas about the direction our brand should take. In step 2 of the creative process for our rebrand, we requested the core team to pull images for assembling mood boards that reflected their thoughts and keyword choices for the new brand. These images would include colors, shapes, textures, and photography styles. When reinventing MindComet, we felt it important to represent our creativity, experience, technical expertise, people and culture in the overall image. When thinking about and gathering examples to support the brand image, we asked ourselves a few questions:

1) How do we show our adaptability and flow with the ever-changing market, technologies and trends? 

2) How can we represent our creatively crazy, fun culture and vibrant personalities?  

3) What about the fact that we all obsess over the details and will work all day and night in order to deliver a product we are proud off? 

4) How do we envision ourselves in the next year, 3 years, 5 years? 

5) Where have we already been as a company and how can build from that image? 

Here are some of the favorite options from the exercise:  

Organic, Intelligent, Versatile, Impact, Interesting, Flowy, Graphic, Sophisticated 

Electric, Cutting Edge, Edgy, Elite, Flowy, Organic, Personality, Morphing 

Fun, Bold, Fresh, Compelling, Fun, Thoughtful, Dreamers, Tactile, Unique, Customer Focused, Alive 

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Posted by David Martin on Nov. 06, 2009

RE:BRAND:01 - Keywords, “All Aboard!“

In this one of several series, I discuss the step by step process I used to re:build the creative components for our brand. So, to get everyone “All Aboard”, how do you collectively incorporate every team member’s point-of-view and get them involved in the process of re:building a brand at the infant stages? 

It’s been extremely busy in the labs at MindComet for the past several months. Though the Executive team all agreed to maintain our brand recognition and loyalty with our current Identity mark, we have been redesigning ALL of our entire brand materials while maintaining a consistent flow of client work. Many of late nights, long weekends, beer and coffee drips have been part of this long process, but the biggest and most important part has certainly been our collective team’s drive and dedication. Not every team member could be involved in every step of the process, but we did encourage everyone in contributing their point-of-view of what, ideally, the new MindComet brand should represent. An effective exercise that I have used in my career on several occasions is establishing a “Keyword” list. This is a great way for multiple parties with different skill sets to get involved in the creative process without getting into the minutia of immediate details and wants. You can easily assemble feedback and obtain a better “unbiased understanding” of where everyone fits into the puzzle, and what is ultimately important in their eyes.  
 
To get this started, I asked two simple questions…  
1) “What qualities do you feel the MindComet brand represents?“ and  
2) “In the future, how would you like our current clients and new clients to feel about MindComet?“ 
 
On a sheet of paper, I had everyone write down a series of words to help mold and shape their thoughts as it relates to the questions asked. One at a time, everyone read back their list and described what each word meant to them and why they ultimately chose it. The lists were collected, and consolidated into a single list to be referenced throughout the re:branding process. This was our final keyword “thought cloud” (See Image Above) supporting and molding the new direction MindComet’s visuals would be taking moving fowards. 
 

Below is a list of the team’s original keywords: 
 
 

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Posted by David Martin on Oct. 19, 2009

Creative Exercise 1: Discover Your Design Point-Of-View in 10 Minutes

Discovering your design point-of-view in 10 minutes? Is that even possible? In this multiple part series, I will show you how to exercise your inner creative mind and unlock that untapped potential. In our weekly creative team meetings, we start with a creative exercise. The rules of the exercise are quite simple, 1) the weekly meeting moderator is responsible for bringing the activity, 2) we have 10 minutes to complete it and 3) We then briefly present our results and thought behind the decisions to the rest of the team.   

One of our first exercises turned out rather well. I found scrap mounting board and used magazines from throughout the office along with scissors, x-acto knives, and glue sticks. I then wrote the instructions on the dry-erase board as follows: 

1) Think about your CORE design value or philosophy. Write it down.
2) Use the assets on the table in front of you to create a small collage representing what you wrote down.
3) You have 10 minutes. GO! 

I then wrapped it up with the question: 
How can you best represent this point-of-view in the future when addressing your client work and objectives? 

These were the results of the activity and the comments from each designer: 

James: “Simple, but Meaningful”
High visual impact, bold imagery
 

Joe C: “Form Equals Function”
Texture, high contrast, intentional, design with purpose.
 

Tuck: “Knowledge”
Using what you know and how to apply it for smart design.
 

David: “Beyond”
Reach beyond the norm, deconstruct recognized forms and shapes and reinterpret into something new, fluidity, movement & pattern.
 

Steph: “Clean”
Clean lines, use of patterns, textures, clean fonts, in a subtle manner.
 

Feel free to try this exercise when you need to ignite some creative sparks and let me know how it goes!

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Posted by David Martin on Sep. 22, 2009

The Art of Brainstorming 2

How to lead an effective brainstorm

1. Pre-Brainstorm Prep

• Those involved need to research brand and competitors prior to meeting
• Provide an outline of current media usages
• Determine what is working and what is not
• Determine what they have not leveraged and if it makes sense
• Determine client objectives

2. During Brainstorm

• If an individual has not prepped, then do not allow them to participate. There should not be time allowed to “get them up to speed”. Time is valuable.
• Perform group creative exercises like "the object game",  "art mash-up" or simply "word association" to bring individuals out of their comfort zone, help de-clutter the mind and position everyone’s thought process on the brand and task at hand (no computers on, no distractions about other work, no phone calls, no heavy sales and numbers talk to pull you back into left brain thinking, this is a right brain activity!)
• Do not have a final time to end brainstorm, but rather a range.
• Do not be disappointed if brainstorm results are limited. Thought will continue after the session. Just make sure everyone involve continues to write down their thoughts throughout the day.
• Only bring in a few key people for the brainstorm. Too many becomes a distraction and those not into it will add to wasted energy and time.
• Do not rely on technology to give you an idea, rather match a concept to the technology. You do not need to leverage every new gimmick to show value or be successful.
• No idea is a bad idea at this point. Bad ideas could open discussions to potentially revolutionary ideas. Limit criticisms and take notes. Quiet breaks in a room are not necessarily bad, it means people could be piecing thoughts together.

3. Post Brainstorm

• What additional thoughts came to you later?
• Send an aggregated list of ideas and/or post them for group review
• Wrap ideas into a sellable campaign!
• and repeat…

So next time I will start dissecting further and venture into other forms of idea creation.

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Posted by David Martin on Apr. 30, 2009