Branding

can learn from Architecture. They are both equally concerned with how people act.

I would argue that the majority of Brand folks come from either a communications or graphic design background. For the writers, branding is a storytelling exercise where the focus tends to be on the message above all else. For graphic designers, brand is usually a collection of aesthetic decisions including logos, colours, images and fonts. If a process is too heavily dominated by one or the other you can usually tell, and in many cases achieving holistic brand experiences is the ultimate challenge.

The leadership of Cause+Affect arrived into branding from architecture. This journey was unexpected but seems like a natural progression as we look back. For us, architecture was a playground for human interaction. And we were happiest when that playground was layered with some greater message, meaning and purpose. This led us to the design of branded spaces including restaurants, museums and gallery exhibitions, retail interiors, even airplanes.

From there it was fairly straightforward to grow the brand experience from spatial to graphic design and writing, etc as most of these assets were already present within the spatial solution. See, we approach the design of a brand as a system of human interactions and experiences with many layers and scales, just like an architectural space.

If you have created a good brand, you should be able to build it, feel it, touch it, smell it, live with it. Every touchpoint should impact your feelings and perceptions.

These days, we don’t design nearly as many spaces as we used to. What we do now is more choreography. We work with companies and organizations to manifest the things that make them special and develop experiences that show those traits to the people that matter most to them.

We still think as designers of space, but they’re cultural spaces. And they exist primarily in the mind.