Archives: New Work

The intersection between "real life" and a Web presence can be subtle. To the general public, what, really, is Facebook other than Facebook.com? How is ESPN.com different from ESPN as a company?

With some clients, though, the difference is night and day.

Global Diving & Salvage, Inc., is, as the press releases note, "the largest diving contractor company on the West coast." It has an "international reach and a focus on marine construction, infrastructure support services and casualty response". All of that is well and good and impressive, but words alone struggle to capture the...reality... of what the company does. Divers spend hours and even days in cramped submersibles at depths that would crush an unprotected human body. They handle and clean up sensitive materials that can do serious damage to the environment. They work as a team in hazardous conditions every day.

Compare that to, say, me. I type quickly and I know some stuff about the Web. How do I help capture what Global does?

One of the ways PBDH tried to bring "real life" to a browser near you is by demonstrating the scope of Global's projects. Global's new Web site has advanced mapping features that highlight cross North America and even the world, allowing visitors to see highlighted projects as well as where Global is today.

And I do mean today.

Global Web admins have the ability to add and edit projects as progress is made through an easy content management system. Done with the job in New York? Upload some pictures and put it in the archives. Kicking off a new gig in Alaska? Link to a story from a news outlet or embed a video talking about the work. The Web site also pulls in the latitude and longitude information and uses that to accurately place the projects on the maps. Automatically.

This was pushing what we knew from a technical perspective and it was pushing what the available Web applications could do; we brought in a consultant who's been on the front lines of geomapping and he helped us create a custom-designed map that combines real GIS mapping data with project locations stored in the CMS.

The Web site didn't teach me how to weld underwater, but there's a bit more "real life" in this site than in most.

One of the great things about working on interactive development at a brand design firm like PBDH is the variety of projects and clients we get to work with.

It's not uncommon for us to help one company collaborate with a business audience one day and then help another connect with a retail audience the next.

One interesting retail project we are diving deep into at the moment is the retail web site for The Shops at the Bravern, a European-inspired shopping and dining experience that's set to open in downtown Bellevue later this year.

The Shops at The Bravern will feature outdoor plazas, great stores like Neiman Marcus, fine dining like New York-based Artisanal, as well as urban residential towers.

We are heavy into the design and strategy phase of the project and it is exciting to work with folks from Schnitzer West to as we consider all of the things that today's web makes possible.

Since 2005, I've had the honor of serving as the lead writer for Boeing's standalone exhibits at the Paris Air Show and the Farnborough International Airshow, which alternate hosting duties each year. These international events—where the world's aerospace community gathers to showcase key innovations in both civilian and military aircraft—attract thousands of exhibitors and more than 150,000 visitors annually from around the world. From the 787 Dreamliner to algae-based biofuels, Boeing has utilized the Paris and Farnborough events to unveil game-changing advances. This year's show in Farnborough was no different, and focused on new technologies, some of which had never been publicly detailed before. The exhibit was visually stunning; the biofuels area of the exhibit even featured live algae tanks. More importantly, though, it communicated Boeing's significant investment in a carbon-neutral future for aviation. As always, PBDH was thrilled to collaborate with Boeing's brilliant designer, Paul Haverly, project leader Laura Henderson, and all the other amazing professionals at the aerospace innovator.

I could go on forever, but I think you'll enjoy the photographs more. Have a look and let me know what you think.

For most people, when you think of creative minds, you naturally think about the arts, music or dance. Science and technology rarely come to mind. But it’s obvious that in order to develop innovative ideas, creativity is an essential part of what inspires breakthrough thinking. This was the shared vision in creating Dexter Station, a new 347,000 sq. ft. office building slated for South Lake Union.

PBDH was hired by Capstone Partners to create the brand strategy, naming, identity and sales brochure for this office building targeting the big brains in technology, life sciences and other innovation industries–scheduled to be completed in late 2009/early 2010.

Everything from the cascading building architecture to the three-story interactive space we named "The Hub," fosters an engaging environment of collaboration and sharing of ideas. The brand positioning elements, including the sales brochure, were created with this in mind. The challenge was to capture the essence of the brains behind this creative hub in a dynamic way while still being relevant to the uniquely left-brained target audience.

With “A Place for Breakthrough Thinking” concept as the headline followed by “Fill Your Thought Bubble” on the inside front cover, we addressed the big thinkers, but with all the creativity and visual stopping power normally not associated with a property development brochure. The amenities and features are highlighted in cleverly built equations instead of the usual bullet points and the accordion fold interior opens up into an inspiring place of energy and movement with silhouettes forming the thought bubbles.

Now, let the real breakthrough thinking begin...

The cobbler’s kids have no shoes for the same reason a brand design firm takes so long to update its own brand. While we absolutely live and breathe to shape and steward our clients’ unique brands, it’d been almost 14 years since the launch of our previous brand identity and 4 years since our last major overhaul of pbdh.com. So last August we got a new client: us. We knew that was the only way to make it happen, even though we knew we’d probably end up being the worst client we’ve ever had.

We started where you’re supposed to start: brand positioning. Creative firms are notorious for being positioning-less, since most are willing to be whatever clients want them to be. Also, a lot of firms end up being havens for undiagnosed ADHD sufferers, so focusing on a long-term positioning strategy for the firm itself—without the wonder and sex appeal of an actual client—can be difficult to orchestrate. Even if one person cares fervently, other stakeholders are pre-occupied with client work (go figure).

We did manage to focus long enough to develop what we believed to be a great brand position. We called it Small and Mighty and we loved how it celebrated our unique place in the marketplace. As an independent firm with a 25-year history, we thought it pointed out how we’re smaller than the too bigs, bigger than the too smalls, and mighty in our strategic and creative expertise. But this was a classic blunder. The concept was too much about us and not enough about our relationship with clients. Of course, when developing strategy for our clients, we expertly counsel them about avoiding this mistake, so you’d think we’d know better. But being a client was harder than we thought and made us realize that, when it’s all about you and your business (which it is for our clients), this is hard stuff to sort out. We’re hoping this realization makes us an even better guide and advocate for our clients.

So we started over. We went back and thought more about what makes us different, and if any of those differences were anything our clients would really care about. Concurrently, we’d been tinkering with how we develop and present our work. Instead of showing three refined directions after mowing through most of the budget, we were shrugging off our sense of vulnerability and showing dozens and dozens of rough sketches early on and encouraging clients to explore them with us. We’d also been architecting a new deliverable, called Ideation Lab, which invited our clients directly into the brainstorming process. We were having tremendous success with our new approach, even though nothing was really broken with our old one. What was moving us forward was the realization that the standard model of agency-client relationships is too territorial. This is the standard set-up: client briefs agency and agrees to pay agency. Agency then retreats to some undefined territory where “the magic happens” and tells the client to sit tight—for several weeks—until agency returns with the magic. But our process was definitively moving away from that model. Instead, we were openly inviting our clients into all aspects of the brand development process. So we had a bold idea: maybe we are the most transparent brand design firm. We were getting great results and glowing feedback from current clients about our inclusive approach to brand design and the creative process. We road-tested it with prospective clients during pitch meetings, and we got great feedback from them as well. So that was it. In a word, transparency. We’re striving to be the most transparent brand design firm.

But that was not it. Not quite. Thanks to some expert guidance from someone outside the house that pushed us a bit further—perhaps proving that no one, not even experts who do this for a living, can develop positioning without a trusted, objective, external partner. We were urged to be more clear about who we’re best suited to serve, and to not focus so exclusively on our process. Positioning statements aren’t typically external-facing, but in the spirit of transparency, here’s the positioning statement we came up with:

Phinney Bischoff Design House is a leading brand design and ideation firm on the West Coast. We work with clients in highly competitive markets to help them develop breakthrough ideas through an inclusive, transparent creative process.

Finished. This idea is who we are, what we do, and how we do it. It’s our promise to the market. From this idea we’ve completely refreshed our voice and redesigned our look and feel—including a new logo, business papers, Web site, and more.

Now for the big question: what do you think of our new brand?