Side Notes: Issue #2

Our monthly update from the studio. Here’s what’s in this edition:

→ When the opportunity comes before the brief

→ Why good design pays off long after delivery

→ One less thing to stress about

→ Where we use AI, and where we don’t

It’s been a busy one in the studio, so this is a mix of what we’ve been working on and a few things worth knowing before your next project. We also explain how good design can keep working long after delivery, and where we draw the line with AI. Hope you find something helpful in it.

Design doesn’t always wait for the perfect brief. Sometimes the opportunity arrives first, and the work has to keep up. It was that kind of month in the studio. Alongside our regular run of work, four new websites and two new brands went out the door, each one kicked off because someone spotted an opportunity and had to move quickly.

The standout was Redemption Ventures, a US charity that backs formerly incarcerated founders, helping them build businesses after prison with mentorship and grants. They needed a brand and website that could carry real weight: credible, confident and human, without slipping into the kind of earnest charity aesthetic so often used. The work they do matters, and the brand had to live up to it.

A month like this works when the thinking is sharp from the start. That’s how you move quickly without the stress, and without cutting corners.

Read the full article ‘When the opportunity comes before the brief’

One thing worth knowing before you commission creative work: the real value often turns up long after delivery day. Two projects we did for Hy-Line International, one of the world’s leading breeders of egg-laying hens, are a good example of it.

The first was a big corporate presentation with custom animation. The second, a separate job, was a standalone brand identity for their 90th anniversary. Two different briefs, two different jobs.

The useful part is what happened next. Hy-Line have their own in-house design team, and because the identity was built as a proper, flexible system with clean files to work from, they were able to take it and run with it: onto exhibition stand graphics, tote bags, caps, pens, lanyards, enamel pins and branded clothing, all without coming back to us. Bits of the presentation found their way into other materials too.

That’s the whole point of building something properly: get the foundations and the files right, and the work keeps being useful long after you’ve signed it off, often in the client’s own hands. So before you commission anything, it’s worth asking what you’ll want to do with it in six months or a year.

Read the full article ‘Good design keeps working long after delivery’

Here’s something worth knowing before your next project: the parts of it are more connected than they look. What you decide about the brand shapes the website. The website shapes the presentations. Split those across three suppliers, and you end up managing the joins yourself, on top of your actual job.

That’s the case for keeping connected work in one place. Omnia covers most of it: brand, websites, presentations, animation, e-learning, marketing collateral in print and digital, and exhibition design. Where something falls outside what we do, like advanced development or copywriting, we bring in partners we trust, so it’s still one team. Not every project needs all of it, but when the pieces talk to each other the result looks like one brand, and you get your time back.

The quickest way to see the range is the showreel. It covers more in two minutes than a list like this can

Read the full article ‘Why joined up creative work saves you time and money’

AI comes up in a lot of design conversations right now. Here’s where we’ve landed on it.

We use AI for some of the background work: research when we’re getting up to speed on a new sector, and repetitive production jobs like preparing large sets of assets. It saves time on the parts that used to be slow.

What it doesn’t get used for is the design work itself. The strategy, the design decisions, the crafting: that’s the part that makes the work ours. The real risk with AI isn’t the tool, it’s using it to skip that part, and it tends to show. We also keep it well away from anything confidential you share with us, and we don’t use it to make the brand work you’ll own, so it stays original and yours.

Used like that, AI just gives us more time for the design and craft you’re paying us for.

Read the full article ‘Where we use AI, and where we don’t’

Thanks for reading.

Colin & the Omnia team