Ken Camozzi, DRB Creative Director

When I think about all the projects I’ve worked on over the past 25 years, regardless of the size and scope, one truth emerges—the best designs are born from the strongest concepts. Without a concept, a design is just design for design’s sake. The design might be stunning to look at, but unless it’s conveying a concept, it’s like the façade of a building on a movie set: you can walk through the doors, but there’s nothing of substance on the other side.  Design is most effective when it ties captivating graphics to a solid concept.

What do I mean by a solid concept? Essentially it’s an idea that captures the message to be delivered, adds clarity or value and lends itself to multi-media execution.

Anyone who has ever written a resume knows how difficult it is to promote oneself. I don’t know why, it just is. So when we decided to create a new capabilities brochure to promote our agency, we realized we had to treat ourselves like one of our own clients. The process begins with a concept and messaging meeting. Frankly, it took awhile to get everybody at DRB on the same page—lots of random ideas about execution were flying around the room, but we still didn’t have a concept.

I grew up in the age of Apollo—the era of Tang, Space Food Sticks, The Jetsons and Lost in Space. As a kid I collected space stamps. The space race mesmerized the world; it seemed to give everyone renewed hope and optimism about the future. It occurred to me that hope, optimism, and a little levity were exactly what everyone needed, especially in this down economy.

I wrote three words on the white board: Market Space Program. “That’s a concept,” I said. “It’s a metaphor for the “space” (or market niche) our clients occupy, and the “space” (or medium) we help them communicate in. Light bulbs went off and our message began to emerge until we carved out a succinct statement: “Creativity Happens in All Kinds of Space”. The concept was that all forms of media—print publications, the Internet, direct mail, Web sites, TV, radio, envelopes, T-shirts, trade show booths, vehicle wraps—can all be regarded as space in which to communicate your message. The principles of creative design are fundamental regardless of the space you occupy.

We decided on the space theme for the capability brochure, so I reached back to my roots and went all out, playing with retro space imagery. The final artwork is whimsical and optimistic, and I hope it’s uplifting to readers, but at the same time I hope it demonstrates DRB’s creative capabilities.

I really wanted to have fun with this project, so I created original illustrations instead of using photography. In the process I generated lots of graphical ideas, many of which we’ve used in other DRB materials. The idea is to carry out the theme in all of our promotional materials. The first illustrations appeared on our revised Web site. Next, our e-newsletter became the Explorer with a rocket ship logo.  Just for fun, I made an animated YouTube video featuring the DRB team as a source of creative energy; DRB on You Tube. I designed a swirly, retro-space style icon for our logo and also used the graphics to create a space-themed DRB Partners wrap for my laptop. Now, with this issue of the Explorer we are launching our capabilities brochure. This project was a lot of fun and it got the entire DRB team pumped up too. I hope you like it and it makes you smile. Oh, and that you’ll hire us to design your next project!