Start Licensing’s Ian Downes continues his delve into the licensed design world, chatting to John Davey Studio and Dot Dash Design.
John Davey, the John Davey Studio:
As someone who has designed a lot of licensing style guides and other assets other the years what would you say makes a good brief from a client? Are there some key points that should be covered when you get briefed?
One should be given a comprehensive overview of what the brand is about and what is expected from the guide. It also helps to be given the creative freedom to produce something that excites the guide’s users. It is also important that the guide can go on and achieve results for the brand owner.
It’s important to be collaborative too, it makes the project better and helps both parties to achieve stronger results.
How have the design requirements of the licensing industry changed over recent years?
In truth they haven’t changed that much – the biggest change being the requirement for digital applications and digital delivery.
Is there a particular design trend you would flag up for 2021?
A general overview of trends is essential for a brand to appear of the moment, however the overall importance is how those trends work within the context of the brand.
As Paul Smith said: “Fashion is about trends. For Paul Smith, it is more about individuality… Paul Smith is Paul Smith – very rare in today’s world. The only man whom I have to answer to, is the one with the face that I see in the mirror when I shave every morning.”
Licensing sits between the two. For ‘Paul Smith’ insert your brand name.
The identity and personality of the brand holds the key to its appeal.
I know it can be difficult to talk about the projects you are involved in publicly but could you highlight two or three guides that you are most proud of and tell us why?
The Mr Men guide I did some time ago was pretty special because of its delivery. It was a total concept based on a Mr Men & Little Miss store. The guide was packaged as a product and entry to the guide (a disc!) was through an animation of entering a store.
It couldn’t have happened without a highly creative client, David Wilson-Nunn.
The days of physical guides rather than digital were the best – I designed guides covered in astroturf, foam rubber with patches and embroidery. The guides were a physical manifestation of the brand that created excitement in the designers who used them.
Finally, from licensing or beyond who or what would you nominate as your design icon?
In design I admire Philippe Starck and Javier Mariscal as creatives who follow their own path and have defined styles. From history, Filippo Brunelleschi was pretty special. And Steve Jobs for giving me the means to do my job today.
Paula Rich, Dot Dash Design:
How easy is it to develop a style guide that is relevant to the variety of categories that can make up a licensing programme?
When we first started out as Dot Dash over 11 years ago we quickly became the go-to agency for fashion guides because of our backgrounds in fashion and textiles.
This was initially difficult to shake off – it’s like we were typecast in the licensing world, but we were able to successfully overcome that barrier. We’ve worked really hard as a team to develop our skills in all aspects of style guide development – and we have some amazing talent on board specialising in everything from character illustration to packaging.
It is challenging to design a style guide that is a good fit for a variety of categories due to the technical limitations for different product areas, but if you’ve got the right expertise in place and a good working relationship with the licensor/suppliers you can develop something that is inspirational while still being usable. That is the key to a good style guide.
What do you do to make sure you are up to date with design and consumer trends?
Pre-COVID back in the day when we were all allowed out, we used to shop – a lot! We would normally exhibit at various art trade shows throughout the year both in the US and Europe and would take the opportunity to hit the shops. There’s nothing quite like seeing a range of product in-store – online shopping is great but somehow you miss all theatre of seeing a range all sitting together, touching the fabrics, seeing the POS, window displays, etc. For me the experience of real time shopping is the most inspiring and really gets the creative juices flowing.
We subscribe to WGSN and use this as a basis to create our own trends, combining this with various online resources such as Pinterest and Instagram.
We do also see a lot of new trends emerging at the various trade shows we take part in throughout the year – which is invaluable when working on new licensed product collections.
Are there design lessons that licensing can learn from other industries and how they approach design?
We have been creating our own art based collections for sale and licence over the past five years and I think this has really helped our creative process, and how we approach licensing.
We experiment more, we draw more, we look for new ways of illustrating characters. I also think the surface design community share a lot more ideas both online and at various trade shows/art summits and I wonder if there’s an opportunity to do that for creatives within the licensing industry?
Is there a particular design trend you would flag up for 2021?
Sustainability, Inclusion, Nostalgia, Self care.
These four keep cropping up in artwork requests and project briefs for 2021/22 and we are currently working on new ideas to implement these global trends.
I know it can be difficult to talk about the projects you are involved in publicly but could you highlight two or three guides that you are most proud of and tell us why?
My dream came true earlier this year when we were asked to work with the Natural History Museum The Botanicals Guide. This project perfectly combined our love of print and pattern with licensing.
We worked very closely with Georgie Britton at the NHM to create a collection of prints using a range of floral, animal, bird and plant assets from their archives. Colour palettes were based on the original book Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours, which Charles Darwin used on his voyage on HMS Beagle. The patterns were developed to be used across multiple categories including for stationery, gifting and homewares and I can’t wait to see them realised on product.
Our ongoing partnership with Carte Blanche is one of our most enjoyable brands to work on. We love reinventing Tatty Teddy into new and exciting trends every season and have a really close working relationship with Talia [Tester, licensing manager] and the design team at CBG.
Finally, from licensing or beyond who or what would you nominate as your design icon?
Anna Bond, founder of Rifle Paper Co. who founded the stationery company in 2009 with her husband, Nathan, working from a garage apartment in Florida.
In ten years she has grown her iconic brand into a multi-million pound business, with more than 90 product offerings that extend well beyond the stationery and greetings cards for which the company is best known. She has proved that even in this digital age print is very much alive, and her iconic gouache painted florals have been licensed on shoes, wallpaper, textiles and cosmetics.
Now that is someone I’d like to have a coffee with.
Ian Downes runs Start Licensing, an independent brand licensing agency. His Twitter handle is @startlicensing – he would welcome your suggestions for what to look out for.
