Love your experiments

4D Branding for my Life

Hmm.. a brand that means something to my life..?

Gap.

I have worked at Gap for almost 5 years in college. I know it inside and out. And Gap has definitely had its ups and downs when it comes to how people perceive it.

When I first started working there in 2007, they had a scandal going on about kids working in their sweatshops in China. People kind of boycotted Gap for awhile. However, now they are all about designing in the US and trying to be more down to earth. I have been there through different designers and really terrible Spring lines.

So....

Functional - Gap creates the essentials for your wardrobe. You can layer on them and keep them for years.

Mental - Gap has been a staple in jeans and apparel since 1969. Customers associate it with American fashion.

Social - Gap is a social shopping experience, because it has men's, women's, kid's all in the same store. (At least in Lawrence)

Spiritual - Gap is an easy to look at, simple, nice place to shop. It isn't crazy or over-designed. It's a calming shopping experience.

Zag

"When everyone else zigs, zag."

What is different about your brand? You really have to know your brand inside and out. You have to know the competition inside and out. It's all about research. Which is great for me, because I'm all about evaluating. I think it's from my Journalism degree. We had to do soo much research on every brand and company that we worked with. I can't help but do the same thing in design.

Creative Problem Solving

I took a creative problem solving test and well.... it came out exactly how I thought it would.

The test rates your creative problem solving on 1. Experiencing, 2. Ideation, 3. Thinking, and 4. Evaluating. I was almost completely "Evaluating."

That truly is how I solve problems. I evaluate everything, and then I come up with a solution. I don't dilly-dally and I don't over think what I'm doing. I'm a very straight-forward, no nonsense kind of designer.

And I plan to stay that way.

Thirty Conversations on Design

"What problem should design solve next?"

I think that "education" is the right answer -- How children are educated, specifically. The way that children in America are educated in public schools is so static and so modeled after test-taking, that it really impedes children's potential. They should have the opportunity to decide what interests them more.

http://thirtyconversationsondesign.com/