I recently visited the Museum of the City of New York, and got to see the Eero Saarinen exhibit. Saarinen was a Finnish-born architect who appeared to dabble in several ‘styles,’ but all of his work seemed to have a futuristic, iconic, ‘clean’ look that made good use of space while also casting a presence. In addition to his furniture designs, some of his more famous work includes the TWA terminal at JFK Airport and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
As I viewed the exhibit, I was struck at the close relationship between design and the impression that was conveyed by the design. In other words, Saarinen’s work projected brands. And the beauty and genius of Saarinen was that he didn’t necessarily project his own personal brand, but instead projected the brands of the companies/entities for which he was designing. This intangible impression is as much a part of branding as benefits/features, logo, pricing, etc. For example Trans World Airlines (TWA) was at the time a leader in cutting-edge, globe-shrinking technology: the jet airplane. This represented a turning point in modern commercial aviation, and the outlook toward the future seemed bright. The terminal Saarinen designed for TWA conveyed this. Saarinen could have focused on a number of the concepts/features/benefits to drive his design (speed, comfort, ‘improvement,’ etc.), but instead of using a standard, boxy design that was popular at the time in an attempt to convey these themes, Saarinen designed something radically different. He went after what the TWA brand strove to be: forward looking, futuristic, a technical marvel that implied that human innovation was limitless. Sitting in 2010 and looking at the images of the terminal is inspiring. I couldn’t imagine what the public felt seeing it for the first time in 1962.
This is what well-branded product design is about. Not necessarily striving to copy what Saarinen did (not all brands should attempt to position themselves as “forward looking,” “futuristic” or a “technical marvel”), but using the design of a product or service to match and amplify the brand promise. If Saarinen hadn’t designed such a striking building, I don’t know if we would equate a terminal with an airline brand today. Perhaps we would associate an airline brand with the planes it flies, ignoring the surroundings of where we board those planes. But Saarinen and TWA understood that everything, from the paper used in communications to the quality of chairs in a waiting room, reflect a brand.
And we should keep this in mind with everything we create. Consider the exercise where we remove the logo from a product to determine if it reflects the brand on its own (this is a great exercise to do with your communications too). Is the product strong enough on its own to convey the brand promise? Does it support the brand? Or does it draw upon the brand for support? If our products or services continue to fail this test we risk serious damage to our brands. And that type of damage can prove costly in terms of time, money and effort to even start to repair.
