The power of design process as told through a poster series

The Black Sheep team loves process as much as we love the written word and the visual art form.

The Black Sheep team loves process as much as we love the written word and the visual art form. By nature of the work we do, we love smashing words, visuals and heart together – mesmerized by how they intersect to create a powerful, lasting message.

Condensed

In the last several decades, Boys and Girls Harbor has done amazing work.

Popping the Cork on a New Brand

In the last several decades, Boys and Girls Harbor has done amazing work. For 70 years they have been steadfast in caring for our region’s abused and neglected children.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs : Anxiety

Tiffany Pratt: Designer + Stylist

CreativeMornings x WordPress.com

Beatriz Craven: Compassion

We’re not morning people, but we’re Creative Mornings people.

Our Favorite Mornings Are Creative

We’re not morning people, but we’re Creative Mornings people.(See what we did there? *Swish*) Since the inspirational creative coffee klatch launched in 2014—with our fearless leader speaking about Kid Cudi, the pursuit of happiness and having the courage to say“No”—we’ve been hooked on the community connecting, brain-rebooting whiz-bang that this event brings(not to mention the plentiful Greenway Coffee). 

Black Sheep has been working with BakerRipley (formerly Neighborhood Centers) for a long time—nearly since the inception of our company.

HUMAN, A BakerRipley Campaign

Black Sheep has been working with Baker Ripley (formerly Neighborhood Centers) for a long time—nearly since the inception of our company. It’s impossible to enumerate the effects they have had on our agency.

A few years ago, I read the book Brilliance by Marcus Sakey.

Pattern Recognition

A few years ago, I read the book Brilliance by Marcus Sakey. I don’t want to spoil it for you by giving away the plot, but something stuck with me—enough to read this book again for inspiration—was how the characters in this novel have special abilities. Realistic ones. One character could visualize the movement and patterns in crowds, giving her the ability to seamlessly weave through people for quick escapes. Another man was blessed with infallible emotion-recognition skills, making him a human lie detector. They had super powers but not necessarily supernatural ones, as Jess helped me summarize. (Thanks, Jess!)

In 2016, iconic Houston institution Bering Omega merged with Houston Area Community Services (HACS) to form one big super-org focused on community medical care.

Creating a 360-Degree Brand

In 2016, iconic Houston institution Bering Omega merged with Houston Area Community Services (HACS) to form one big super-org focused on community medical care. The resulting powerhouse was namedAvenue 360 Health & Wellness—“Avenue” for the simple, friendly pathway to care and “360” for the huge variety of services offered. Avenue 360 provides everything from medical and behavioral health to dental services, help with housing and even more specialized support services.

Combined Arms: A New Brand About Moving Forward Together

If you know Black Sheep, you know that we like to believe in things—one of those things is the power of a logo. Another is the power of veterans in our community.

When I was a little kid, my sister and I were prepared for our annual visit to my grandparents’ house with one very intense lecture. It went a little something like this:

Culture Keepers and Design Preservers

Don’t touch the pots.
Don’t even LOOK at the pots.
DO NOT. BREAK. THE POTS.

Learn To Ad: Madison Avenue Strategies To Strengthen School Communication

If you’ve ever had your eyeballs attacked or your fingers befuddled by a poorly designed app or website, you’ve probably had a moment of Poor Design Experience, or PDE.*

If you’ve ever had your eyeballs attacked or your fingers befuddled by a poorly designed app or website, you’ve probably had a moment of Poor Design Experience, or PDE.* As painful as these experiences are, you probably feel as though they’re not really hurting you—and you’re probably right. But, in the case of communications between schools and students, PDEs can make a lot of difference when it comes to important things, like understanding the college application process or becoming informed of educational options at different high schools. Black Sheep’s art director Jo Skillman has teamed up with University of Virginia educator and researcher Ben Castlemanto write about the importance of solid communications for educational organizations in an article published by the Brookings Institution. In true Black Sheep style, we’ve managed to pun the title.

Good design awareness is a resolution worth making

Pay attention to good design

Regular

Not Just for Typophiles

Most branding advice assumes one organization with one leader making the final call. Coalitions, networks with local chapters and groups of partners chasing a shared goal don't work that way. They decide together, priorities compete and the smallest partners often have the fewest people to carry the brand once it exists.

We've been working through these dynamics with the Houston Cultural Districts and the institutions and artists around them, building a shared brand for the city's arts scene. Recently, Natalie Wells (Director of Strategy), Jo Skillman (Creative Director) and Ren Mitchell (Director of Growth) walked through that process at the Houston Media Conference in a luncheon keynote called "Undefinable On Purpose." 

Here's what we've learned that applies to any organization whose brand depends on partners it doesn't control.


Who needs to be heard before a shared brand can take shape?

A shared brand needs input from everyone who will be asked to use it, champion it or be represented by it. Those groups overlap less than most leaders expect. Funders and civic partners tend to focus on visibility and economic impact. Practitioners care about credibility and fair representation. Community members want to know whether the story sounds like them.

We layer our research so each group is heard where they'll be most candid:

1:1 interviews draw out honest perspectives from decision-makers.

Focus groups show how people negotiate their differences in real time.

Sitting in on partner board meetings, when we're invited, adds context no interview can.

This phase doubles as early community building. People are far more likely to adopt a brand they helped shape.

Try this: Before any creative work starts, list every group that will use, fund or be represented by the brand. Then decide how you'll hear from each one.


How should research tensions inform brand strategy?

A tension is a place where two things people care about pull in different directions, and both sides are usually true. As Natalie put it, tensions show where people are most invested, which makes them some of the most useful findings research can turn up.

In our work with the Houston Cultural District, nearly every strength came with a risk. Greater visibility for neighborhood arts could accelerate displacement in communities already under pressure. Recognition tends to concentrate around large institutions, leaving midsize organizations and mid-career artists out of the story. And many of the stakeholders who want a stronger collective story are the same ones who resist being summarized.

Most complex nonprofits carry their own versions: headquarters versus chapters, legacy programs versus emerging ones, a national message versus local identity. Naming them explicitly gives the creative team something real to design around. It also moves the hard conversations to the start of the process, where they cost the least.

Try this: Write your biggest tensions into the research findings as plain either/or statements. Then decide together how the brand will handle each one before design begins.


How can a brand reflect real complexity without losing clarity?

A brand can hold complexity only when it commits to a clear point of view. When research keeps concluding that a community is everything at once, creative teams stall and strategy drifts toward language that feels safe and says very little. Jo named this risk directly in the creative brief:

"We've all heard it said: Houston is a little bit of a lot of things. Diverse, a tapestry rich with culture. However, trying to be everything to everyone will water down our visual and written creative. The brand directions we propose must contain a strong point of view on who we are and why. It's difficult but necessary."

The shared brands that hold up best work as a frame. They hold many stories at once while making a clear claim about what connects them. That gives participants room to see themselves in the brand without diluting the whole.

Try this: Test every brand direction with one question: could another city or coalition say this about itself? If the answer is yes, it isn't specific enough yet.


How do you keep a coalition aligned through creative decisions?

Alignment depends on agreeing to the goal in writing before anyone sees creative. We view the creative brief as the document that nails everything to the wall. Keep it short and candid, and use it to surface likely friction before hours go into design.

The brief earns its keep later, when feedback drifts toward personal preference. The group doesn't need to agree on the shade of blue. It needs to agree the work is reaching the larger goal. With many decision-makers, holding that line keeps reviews productive and protects the timeline.

When stakeholders are creatives themselves, start with a session reviewing a wide range of visual references. The value is in the reasoning behind each reaction, which gives the group a shared vocabulary for every review that follows.

Try this: Open every creative review by rereading the brief's goal out loud. Ask reviewers to tie each piece of feedback back to it.


How does a shared brand stay recognizable across very different organizations?

Consistency in a distributed brand comes from a small set of elements that never change. A system that has to work on a neighborhood mural and a museum banner needs a recognizable thread, whether a color, a mark, a pattern or a phrase. Protect those elements and let everything around them flex to fit the partner and the setting. 

Adoption also depends on capacity. Many coalition partners have no designer or communications staff, so participation has to be easy. Toolkits, templates, co-branding guidance and ready-to-post assets lower the barrier and help smaller organizations stay visible within the brand.

Try this: Choose the few elements partners can never change. Then build a starter kit that a partner with no designer could use in an afternoon.


When should rollout planning begin for a multi-stakeholder brand?

Rollout planning should begin while the brand is still in development. A shared brand gains value only through use, so partner onboarding, distribution and digital activation need to be designed alongside the identity. Each partner should see a role that matches its capacity, from a large institution running a full campaign to a small organization sharing a single post. Planning early also surfaces practical questions, especially around funding, while there's still time to solve them.

Try this: Ask each partner now what they could realistically do in the first month after launch, and build the plan and budget around those answers.


What makes a shared brand worth the effort?

A brand built across many organizations takes more listening and more deliberate facilitation than one built for a single institution. The return is a story more people feel ownership of and will carry into their own work.

If you're leading a coalition, network or multi-partner effort and the brand keeps stalling, we can help. 

Coalitions and multi-partner networks need a brand everyone can carry. Lessons from building a shared Houston arts brand with the Houston Cultural Districts, with steps to try.

How to Build One Brand for Many Organizations | Black Sheep

What building a shared Houston arts brand with the Houston Cultural Districts taught us about building one brand for many organizations

Coalitions don’t get one decision-maker or one story. Here’s what we learned building a shared arts brand with the Houston Cultural Districts.

The Black Sheep blog is turning up the volume on community engagement, social media strategy, Houston happenings and what it means to lead a purpose-driven life.

The Black Sheep Agency | Social impact and nonprofit blog

We like to type as much as we like to listen.

We're not shy.

How Can a Coalition Share One Brand?