Create Bigger, Better Ideas—Landor

Giles Day—Founding Partner at NorthandSouth, an innovation agency that makes ideas real—recently stepped into the classroom at Shillington Sydney. In 2015 NorthandSouth partnered with international branding agency Landor to combine idea-led innovation with design thinking. The result was a streamlined approach to creating powerful, strategically robust and commercially viable ideas. Giles shared the secret to his process—the power of empathy—as he taught our Shillington Sydney students to be brave, step outside their comfort zone and tap into their emotional intelligence.

Whether you’re creating a new brand or evolving an existing product—here are ten insights from Giles’s guest lecture that will help you smash your next branding project:

1. “Design thinking is based on creativity, iteration and empathy.”
2. “The fundamental points of design thinking are: idea > prototype > test > improve. Repeat as many times as it takes!”
3. “Don’t wait for a brilliant idea! Have the hard work and diligence to pursue the loop.”
   
4. “To have good ideas you have to have hypotheses. It’s a nice word, but kind of pretentious. Have hypotheses even though you don’t believe in them. You have to permit yourself to believe in them, even though they’re rubbish. Test them so you can prove them. Test them with real people and don’t keep them to yourself.”
5. “Your first instinctive idea—throw it away! Your second—most will have thought of as well. Your third is the one! However saying this sometimes obvious ideas are the best. Even if an idea is sensible you owe it to yourself to explore it further.”
6. “Be the thing you want to appear.”
7. “People aren’t logical so you have to guess what they want. Once you understand what people want, you can please them.”
8. “Millennials have changed the world and we are less likely to accept mediocre design now as a result.”
9. “Rather than finding clever ways to project desire onto things, create products that have the ability to sell themselves. Create things people connect with.”
10. “You have to think quicker and more entrepreneurial. We need to act more like entrepreneurs!”

“One thing to write down is this: 95% of all decisions we make are based on emotion. Our whole profession is based around appealing to emotion and creating desire.”

During the talk Shillington Sydney students posed three very important questions on the creative process. Find out the advice Giles had to offer those struggling through the concept development stage of a brief—as he addressed their frustrations from personal experience:

How do you prevent losing time exploring failed ideas?

Take one step forward—if you don’t like it, take one step back. The best thinkers have strong ideas that are held lightly—so they can let them go if it doesn’t work out and move on to the next.

What do you do if you’ve hit a brick wall?

Just as Charles Darwin had his biggest breakthroughs strolling the gravel path in his garden—otherwise known as his “thinking path”—your subconscious is always working on the brief, so give yourself some time. If that fails, let the fear of the deadline kick in!

How often do you get a brief asking for ABC but you’re giving them XYZ?

You get paid to pitch three ideas but give them a fourth for free. This is the one that pushes them and is probably your best idea!

“There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.”—Goethe

Applause all around to Giles Day for joining us at Shillington Sydney. Our students learnt how to evolve their design thinking and use empathy as a tool to generate better ideas, and we can’t wait to see these ideas in action! For the latest news from Landor’s innovation agency follow NorthandSouth on Instagram and Twitter.

Would you like to hear a guest lecture like this? Every Shillington class gets insights from at least three industry professionals. Learn more –> shillingtoneducation.com.