Listening is the first step to collaborating on new ideas. Design Research helps set up a working hypothesis to explore new positioning and possibilities by gathering intelligence from business, consumer and material technology sources.

These trends serve as targets to highlight market opportunities, road map planning, roles and responsibilities for the team. The ideas gathering is to generatively frame the design narrative around visual positioning to reflect the relevance of design to the market at this moment in time.

Creating a visual language that distinguishes itself as a recognizable system which can be leveraged across all touch points. One of the key drivers is the direction of the brand point of view and its attitude to reflect culture,to be harnessed by design to manifest in color graphic and production methods as an integrated asset.

This visual language should be sensitive to the various touch points across product, packaging, trade, Retail, print and online moments.

Creative Direction is creating deliberate expressions of the brand identity system across all forms of creative production to shape the targeted experience in creative choices.

Early design explorations typically begin with 2D hand sketches—a rapid, intuitive way to discover new forms, explore emotional qualities, and bring ideas to life.

Sketching is a powerful tool for provoking conversation and gathering valuable user feedback. It gives tangible form to ideas, helping answer questions emerging from user research while exploring opportunities in usability, convenience, materials, emerging technologies, and business strategy.

Sketches can quickly reveal the potential of challenging established conventions or, conversely, drawing upon the heritage of a brand, product category, or cultural identity. Both approaches can help establish a distinctive product character, strengthen brand equity, and create meaningful market differentiation.

Refinement is the opportunity to super charge directions and review ideas in scale with feedback from consumer and market engagement.

This includes dialing in the details of of a concept to package internals into a body and convey emotions, look at proportions of human scale to be fit for purpose , and considerations in optimization for material performance and mass production. 2D CAD drawings can reveal color and branding integration as well as main features to scale for a more serious review of intentions.

Building Prototypes is the key to test and understand the designs human Scale, fitness for purpose, material performance and pattern recognition for understanding the relevance of both first glance iconic clarity as well as in hand usability.

Building initial volumes in 3D CAD is a first look at overall packaging of forms and how successful concepts translate into human scale from the page.

3D model review rounds Incorporating feedback on Visual Proportions, Functional Fit, process feedback from Engineering or suppliers is a pursuit of an ideal Final Design specification.

The goal is always to build confidence with the production team for a smooth and optimal work flow to get the best outcomes working together.

Character studies for Color and Graphics are layered in to the Concept Refinement phase where part lines are drawn to emphasis of subdue color blockings for production. They spring from Design Research to convey emotions that will signal who this is for.

The exploration blends the role of the brand identity system and the role of the product in the product line to dial up or suppress graphic interest.

Final specification comes later, sized on the Production Finalization parts for vendors, certification and engineering needs so that design and engineering are already built in.

Visualization can be a convincing tool to get ideas over the line for marketing.

Foundry can offer concept sketches, renderings and final product visuals for the purpose of building confidence and feedback at any level of the projects journey.

‍Typically, marketing assets need to be prepared before the final product is finished, for ‘photo realistic image’ creation.

Foundry supports every stage to production for you to navigate your process and go live with targeted visual assets.