Raise the bar. Raise it higher!
Interrobang exists within a circle of all types of creative professionals. We regularly collaborate with other designers, photographers, producers, stylists, illustrators, videographers, web developers, and printers of all kinds. And the common thread with the company we like to keep is talent. Collectively we are the kind of people seeking that creative solution, that final piece, that you just can’t stop looking at. We are bar raisers.
There is a trend in marketing to dumb things down. We call it ‘the race to the bottom’ where marketing strategies play it safe in their branding, messaging, and design approach. Why? Well, we see a couple reasons. One, it’s businesses not trusting their audience’s ability to understand something other than the obvious, which is symptomatic of not really knowing the audience and their needs. Think of it this way, they don’t need their meat cut for them.
Paired with that we see a fear of stepping out of the box and an unwillingness to trust an informed, strategic, design approach that can move the needle. The whole point of a design strategy is to know what you’re working with, working towards, and know where to begin to create effective design solutions. We’re not throwing spaghetti at the wall or just making things that look cool.
The risk that comes with underestimating your audience and not creating or trusting a design strategy is becoming mundane. Uninteresting. Easy to pass by. And that is not going to get you where you want to go.
So yeah, we can do your branding. We can design your marketing materials. But it’s going to be built of two things: Research that informs a design strategy. And collaboration with you and other creative professionals with all of us thinking big and raising the bar.
You need to aim higher than your goal to reach your goal. Not the other way around.