When a creative designer needs to win LeBron James’ approval

This week, we meet creative director Andy Sargent, who co-founded the agency SouthSouthWest more than a decade ago and has worked on creative projects with brands such as Nike Jordan Brand, Visa, Kathmandu, Tesla, Macquarie Bank, and KeepCup. And don't forget, if you like what you read, hit ‘subscribe’ above. 

Who: Andy Sargent, creative director and designer.

Why: Dynamic, entrepreneurial agencies like Sargent’s are leading the way in brand storytelling by leaning on their background in design. SouthSouthWest began as a graphic design studio which evolved into corporate identity and then into branding. “Having come from an Art School background, we don’t necessarily feel limited by mediums to express ideas or communicate,” he says.

Resume: Co-founded the agency SouthSouthWest and worked on campaigns with Google, Tesla and Nike. Last year, Sargent and his team were tasked with a brand refresh of House of Hoops by Foot Locker in conjunction with Nike Retail Brand Design (pictured below).

Sargent shares with us in his own words how storytelling has evolved in the branding design business.

Taking a storytelling approach to design means having a clear idea on what every piece of work you do is trying to communicate. Stories aren’t always told with words. For us, stories could mean content creation, art direction and moving image film or campaign. Now, with the immediacy of content production and social media, storytelling is becoming more relevant to how brands behave and the way they communicate with people.

Our NBA-related projects came about through our relationship with Nike in Portland. We’ve worked with Nike and Jordan brands for almost 9 years, starting with small, one-off design jobs that evolved over time to a much larger scale. Nike and Foot Locker are an example of where we want to take branding in the next few years. They’re kinetic and moving, virtual and non-static.

Our design brief for House of Hoops (pictured) was to bring fans closer to the game. The inspiration behind the brand was the arena jumbotron. The idea is to use the brand mark itself as a content piece that can weave in stories, highlights or updates. The jumbotron is also central to the refreshed retail store design approach (including on New York’s 34th Street).

The story behind the key piece of animation (see video above) featuring LeBron is pretty crazy. Last year, with all the hype around LeBron moving to the Lakers, the project had gone into a quiet period waiting for approvals and reviews. We used a placeholder shot of Lebron in our creative that his team weren’t necessarily happy to use in the finished art. We were hustling to be ready for LeBron’s first home game at Staples Centre in LA, which was on a weekend. At that stage we were only two days away, so we had almost given up hope of LeBron’s people approving animation artwork in time. On the Thursday night, LeBron was playing his first game for the Lakers in Portland and we were at Friday lunch in Melbourne, watching the game on an iPhone. Virtually the first time Lebron touched the ball, he broke away and dunked, a highly anticipated and historical moment in front of a an enormous global audience. An ‘only Lebron could do that’ moment. Seconds later the image was all over social media. From the restaurant, we found the image on Getty, sent our client a screengrab and rushed back to purchase the image and finalize the animation. We had it published, finished and approved on the same day, moments after the game had finished in Portland.

The creative was tested outside the stadium in LA on the Sunday (pictured above) and was up on the big screen at the Staples Center an hour later. It’s phenomenal how quickly things can move and how time zones and locations are increasingly irrelevant to producing content for a global audience. The House of Hoops brand has now rolled out globally I and it’s always a thrill to peek into that world. We’ve also designed for the NBA All Star weekend. In those moments, you feel like (as a designer) you’re genuinely contributing to culture.

Our trajectory with Google was similar. We started on some small design tasks as a favor for somebody that we didn’t initially know was a creative director. That led to a number of subsequent projects before being a major design partner on their VR platform, Daydream.

Google’s Daydream is one of our most difficult design problem solving projects we’ve worked on. We were engaged to create the brand, and it was a Google aspiration that was undefined: was it a platform, or was it technology hardware? We faced a conundrum of creating a physical metaphor for a ‘daydream,’ which is entirely intangible. In the end, we created the ‘eon’, a three dimensional representation of a daydream based on the concept of the golden mean, which is itself taken from Greek philosophy. The idea was that to really understand the virtual world, you must have an understanding of the natural world. The Golden mean is evident in everything around us in the natural world. Google described the Daydream brand as the first major brand identity designed for the virtual environment, and it’s led to us working on more virtual brand marks, which is a fascinating and emerging space for us.

When it comes to design, we’re at a tipping point. Bandwidths, attention spans and sheer volume are converging to a point where there’s a need for design to pick a path. There is a simplicity in modern product design, but then there is an intensity around how to attract and maintain somebody’s attention. Regardless of how ‘digital’ something becomes, we always try to look for a moment that is tactile and can be felt. That’s something we’re really looking to build on. As things are becoming more and more fast paced, we want to create things you feel like you can reach out and touch, hold and manipulate. I’m personally fascinated by this idea.

True originality, regardless of how polished or unpolished that is, always trumps technical ability or the ability to recreate something. Creativity doesn’t have to be polished by a post production studio, it can also be simple and raw. Originality in both the creative process and the thought process is always valuable. You often see that in designers in key leadership roles. They’re not always the most polished designer on the outside, but the way they think and communicate their ideas is second to none.

What do you think of the evolution of design and branding and design’s role in branding? Have you noticed any well designed branding that has inspired you?

?Tell us in the comments below.