City
Auckland
Design of the StartUp - Graphics
Background
In the quest to define value, designers and StartUps often find themselves asking the same question: what problem are we solving? This shared understanding makes sense – design thinking and doing are actually baked into the DNA of StartUps. Every aspect of a business benefits from great design; operating models, products, packaging, brand identities, customer experiences, delivery channels, communications, environmental impact, risk mitigation and more.
Several unicorn companies like Allbirds, AirBnB and Kickstarter have designers as part of their core team. Perhaps the biggest indicator of design’s value is the recent phenomenon of venture studios and designers holding equity in the StartUps they work with. Something which would’ve been almost unthinkable 20 years ago.
So, how has this affected New Zealand design practice and designers? How has StartUp culture changed our roles as designers? How has it changed the way we work and the type of work we do? How have we responded to the need for market or category disruption? How have StartUps changed the way we do business? What are the upsides and downsides to working with StartUps?
Featuring invited studios the Design of a Startup sessions are a unique first-hand account from three New Zealand design companies and their experiences working with StartUps.
Supported by BJ Ball Papers
Speaker(s)
Animals Like Us
Annual Reports, Undies & Dog Food
Rob Achten, Co-Founder and CEO of Animals Like us references his progression from a purist craft designer to a founder. designing annual reports 20 years ago to undies 10 years ago to dog food now.
His story will be one where he stumbled across a cultural trend and then became obsessed with a consumer (a chinese consumer in actual fact) and how they used that to inspire an idea, and develop a brand concept and then product using iterative prototyping and consumer testing at every step along the way.
He will touch on business model and getting the structure right as this is really important for a company's success.
* Marx Design worked with Rob Achten on the packaging.
Previously Unavailable
The Experiment
James Hurman, Founding Partner of Previously Unavailable talks about how Previously Unavailable is less normal company, and more experiment. One that's been going since 2014, working with start-ups, creating start-ups, and even creating start-ups for start-ups.
James will share case studies and learnings from 7 years of experimentation.
DDMMYY
Truthseekers
Kelvin Soh PDINZ, Creative Director of DDMMYY, will be sharing some core beliefs behind the studio's work and how the pursuit of actionable truths inform the making of disruptive, memorable and effective brands.
Milk
Finding the Enemy
Ben Reid PDINZ, Founder of Milk, takes us through a few of the startup business brands they’ve created using an enemy as a way to rally customer and consumer troops.
He talks about how finding a collective enemy can be powerful. It can rally people into action in a way that very few other things can do. For startups, it can be a very influential positioning that can drive broad customer advocacy and bring to light the not so good of the status quo.
No Ugly
Waging A War On Ugly
Aaron Taylor, No Ugly, and Nick Riley Design PDINZ: In a world full of ugly behaviours, ugly beliefs and ugly products, NO UGLY has taken a firm stance to go against the grain.
We’ll share our insights and process into how we disrupted the wellness category through provocative, purpose-driven design thinking.
Kelvin Soh PDINZ, DDMMYY - Design of the StartUp facilitator
