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Foresight Design recently spoke with Firebelly’s Strategic Director, Antonio Garcia, about the importance of “good design for good reason” and the studio’s expertise in sustainability.
Let’s start with the studio’s tagline of Good Design For Good Reason. What does it mean to you?
“Good Design For Good Reason” is our tagline but it’s really the idea behind everything Firebelly does. Dawn Hancock (Firebelly’s owner and creative director) built the studio on a foundation of sustainability, authenticity and social responsibility—three areas that continue to inform and strengthen our work. We believe “good” design should be afforded to any and everyone doing “good” work—not just companies with enormous budgets who can afford downtown ad agencies and big marketing firms.
When Firebelly started in 1999, it was one of just a handful of studios in the country putting an emphasis on social responsibility. For us that claim meant drawing an ethical line between clients, project and pursuits we would—and would not—engage in. Good Design For Good Reason became shorthand for explaining this mission and for defining the work we create.
So who do you work for? What types of projects do clients come to Firebelly for?
We work with anyone we can believe in. For the most part, clients come to Firebelly because they already know what kind of studio we are and are interested in using our expertise in sustainability, authenticity and social responsibility to help connect others with their products, services or ideas. Good fits for Firebelly include progressive clients who value their corporate citizenship, share our ethical perspective and value good design as an integral part of their communication and messaging. That said, we love the opportunity to advise curious clients on ways to be more sustainable in their own industries and provide them with socially responsible perspectives and green options they may never even have considered.
Firebelly is a design and strategy studio. So we create work using whatever medium best communicates our clients’ story. Because there are always new and varied methods to tell those stories, we don’t limit ourselves to one type of project—we love print, web and motion design equally. We start by creating a brand story; from there we look for the most efficient, practical and engaging way to tell it.
Could you explain what you mean by telling your clients’ “stories”?
We look for stories behind our clients’ brands. It may sound a bit romantic, but a company’s essence and identity should be infused into their brand. This could be a company’s history, its mission or even an idea that sparked a prototype. People should get a sense of what the company stands for by looking at its logo and listening to the tone of its copy. If it’s authentic and coming from a genuine place, a company’s brand story will be far more interesting to an audience than a list of features and benefits. Telling a story humanizes a company and its pursuits while offering an experience that’s unique, enriching and relatable. Plus, it really helps the people within that company better understand and relate to their brand.
That sounds very comprehensive. How do you find enough backstory to do that level of work?
Firebelly is very research oriented. We see research as the most critical phase of our four-part creative process because it lays the foundation for everything we do later. And research is especially critical to clients looking to invest in something that will last like brand development, identity work or a website. So we always approach our work with sustainability in mind. At the onset of a project, our clients complete a 40-question project profile to ensure everyone involved with the project is on the same page regarding purpose, goals and expectations. For strategy, it means digging deep into our client’s history as well as learning everything we can about their competition. It involves looking at relatable successes and failures in and out of their industry. And in many cases, we create detailed audience personae based on in-depth interviews and observational research to help identify new targets as well as shifts in legacy clients.
You mentioned a four-part creative process. What are the other phases after research?
We’ve defined our process as four phases: Intensive Research, Structured Exploration, Design Execution and Final Application. After we assess our client’s needs, study their industry, invest in qualitative research and identify emerging trends, we begin our Exploration phase—which includes brainstorming concepts and solutions. We share those ideas with the client and work with them to select the best, most viable option. From there, we begin the third phase of Design, developing visuals and messages around the framework of our research and exploration. After fleshing out the conceptual work, we conclude with application, the fourth and final step. Depending on the project, this could be programming a website or final production for a printed piece. Our process isn’t proprietary by any means. It just makes for a clearly defined workflow and guarantees results because it’s based on research. Our methodology is completely scalable and can be adapted to projects ranging from tradeshow booths and environmental design to ad campaigns and annual reports to motion design and digital video
So how do you reconcile print work considering the resources it uses compared to web design?
That’s a great question! We always look for ways to achieve the best results using a digital or web-based alternative, but it really boils down to the project scope, audience and specific communication goals. When it comes to print, clients should be conscious of economic and environmental costs. We help our clients determine the effectiveness of print from every angle. We ask a lot of questions about audience, readership and content. Questions like, “Does this 48-page sustainability report have to be printed? Could we instead design an amazing 8-page preview document or exciting promotional postcard to drive people to a microsite where the entire document exists online and is available for download as a PDF?”
If a project has to go to press, we scrutinize the volume, materials and physical dimensions very closely. We work to maximize the press sheet and minimize waste. We encourage our clients to use 100% post-consumer papers and demonstrate the amazing quality you can get when combining recycled stocks with high-grade soy-based inks and professional printers who know what they’re doing. We also have very good relationships with several local printers including a minority-owned, union shop just around the corner from our office—this helps reduce transportation and shipping costs. We find clever ways of reusing our client’s surplus like taking back unused materials and giving them away as samples to inspire young designers when we lecture at colleges and universities.
Don’t get me wrong: while Firebelly recognizes its limitations, we see print’s inherent qualities—it’s textural, intimate and viewed as an authentic artifact—as superior to digital media. But we also see motion design, video and online networks as a more practical (and popular) way to create a sense of community. Because they offer interactivity, those media are typically more engaging, farther reaching and easier to track with web-based analytics.
The new Obama administration pledges to nurture a major green movement. How do you see your roll as designers factoring into how these incentives will impact businesses?
Thanks to the Internet, the people have a very powerful voice now. With the heightened awareness amongst today’s consumers, it’s incredibly difficult for companies to hide their past or greenwash their futures. Deciding to be more sustainable requires a long-term commitment and a particular set of values. As sustainability becomes standardized, we work with our clients to help them see the demand for transparency as an opportunity to communicate their process and progress rather than to fear it and bend the truth.
Hopefully Obama’s “carrot and stick” approach will encourage/force companies to make sustainability part of their daily operation. Being green will be just like having a website was in the 90s. Companies with the foresight to see bottom line value and another “touch point” to a global community—flourished. Those who called it a passing phase no longer exist.
That’s an interesting way to put it. Besides your take on sustainability, what else sets you apart from other design firms or advertising agencies?
Like I said earlier, we invest a lot of time in upfront research. We build our strategies around ethnography, sustainability and authenticity. We look for ways to make our clients better—both competitively in the marketplace and in terms of CSR (corporate social responsibility). We see every engagement as part of a much broader branding initiative. We turn down work that’s not a good fit ethically. And we work extremely hard to realize our clients’ goals and tell genuine human stories people can believe in.
Six years ago, we established the Firebelly Design + Marketing Grant to award one worthy nonprofit with an entire year of design and strategy. It’s an annual project that empowers organizations with the skills and understanding to manage and expand their brand and messaging. Rather than doing piecemeal pro bono work (which actually hurts nonprofits by splintering their brand and destroying consistency), we focus on one grantee a year and approach their brand development holistically. By the end of the grant, they have everything it takes to sustain their brand and tell their own story. Both ideas are critical to seeking funding, developing programming and promoting an organizational culture conducive to keeping a nonprofit strong.
Another project setting us apart is Camp Firebelly, a youth-focused design charrette where we host ten super-talented student designers from around the country to address a social justice issue with design. The “campers” live in our studio for ten days straight and work together to create a solution for one of our nonprofit clients.
We actually started the Firebelly Foundation two years ago in order to facilitate these projects as well as support the launch of our own nonprofit, ReasonToGive.com which offers a webstore of our community’s basics needs. It’s like Extreme Makeover Home Edition meets Amazon.com!
Very cool. Is there anything else you’d like to share about Firebelly’s “story”?
From the very beginning, Dawn set out to prove Firebelly could sustain itself creating design and strategy for organizations it believed in. At 25, she created a place where Good Design For Good Reason trumped bloated budgets, corporate waste and new media’s “style over substance” attitude. She built it from a one-woman shop to an 8-person branding + strategy firm in less than 10 years. And yet nothing’s really changed: we still create award-winning work that changes minds and the world—we just do more of it now.
