The Branded Environment - Design MENA Summit 2016

Brand Creative's Creative Director Carla was approached to speak at the Design MENA Summit 2016 amongst a select group of influential design professionals. The annual event invites key names in the industry to attend and participate in discussion and reflect on design happenings within the Middle East and North Africa. As a Branding Specialist, Carla’s insightful contribution focused on the importance of an inclusive approach to designing spaces, acknowledging the benefits of a holistic approach to create a successful branded environment. ‘As an observer and contributor to the practice of design in the Middle East over the last 10 years is that our clients have become more sophisticated in their requests and briefs in regards to brand creation and brand development. First and foremost – we listen to them. When their voices are the driver, we are able to find a source of authentic inspiration that energizes the branding process. They want innovative design work that stems from discovery through problem solving. They want us to address human centered needs and respond to people’s aspirations. I consider this a powerful tool that anyone involved in the design process can benefit from and that is environmental graphic design. Also referred to as ‘Experiential Graphic Design’, Environmental Graphic Design embraces interior design, architecture, landscape, industrial design and graphic design. It consists of using the built environment and visual communications to effectively communicate identity and information. With a generation that now compresses a spatial experience into a tablet or phone and a focus on info-rich requirements to fully engage people with the built environment, there has been a call for a revamp in graphic training across the world. We’re collaborating on a whole new level, and we’re also including the role of the graphic designer at critical design process stages such as strategy and planning to ensure that we’re all connecting every design decision to a brand’s attributes. Together, we’re mapping experiences to ensure every image, graphic, interactive component and spatial feature is aligned to reinforce the stories we’re telling. We want to ensure that graphic designers are not only engaged in the aesthetic cladding of surfaces but we want to be utilising their skills to inspire, engage, teach, activate and locate. Experiential designers manage the process of understanding a brand’s nature and consider what is not working and resolve to fix it or determine new appropriate future aspirations. The results of an in-depth strategy phase, formulates the design brief and sometimes either the graphics team or interiors team kicks off the creative. When you combine our collective skills, people respond not only positively, but with genuine emotion. We start creating experiences that truly resonate.’ For full coverage of the event, visit http://www.designmena.com/summit/   'The Branded Environment - Enhancing Interior Experiences with Graphic Design' By Carla Conte, Creative Director. Introduction by Helen Ring, Studio Manager