Working directly with Tiller’s creative director, Baker Poulshock, I lead strategy using popular brand-discovery and creation methods. I’ve displayed some of our process below, providing some explanation here.
A short brand questionnaire to kicked off our brand-discovery. The questionnaire included detailed questions to gather information about Tiller’s
- business practice
- target customers / audience
- marketplace
- competition
- likes and dislikes
- look and feel
Following discovery, Baker and I created numerous mind maps. These force-fit-methodology drills work great for seeding creative insight(s). Leverage these we created common theme/story, while avoiding both tunnel-vision and writers block.
Mind maps are first seeded first by writing one subject in the center of a page (“Tiller”). Then, adding free-associated keyphrase ‘children’ around that ‘parent’ subject. Then connecting the children by drawing lines to the respective ‘parent’, encircling each. Adding more keyphrases associated with each, so forth and so on to building outward. The process creates cascading loose word associations, and is said to invoke both the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The result creates novel and unexpected associations and expressions. Only two of ours are shown on below, but we created many massive mind maps on dry-erase boards that unfortunately were not captured.
I’ve also included some notes and sketches of prototypical symbols/icons below. These were based on the keywords we developed through the mind map drills. They aren’t much to look at, but display clear progression from chaos to order sussed out entirely before we ever hit the computer.
