The power of logic & magic

'How do you go about creating meaningful transformation for clients?' 'How can you create a brand that will deliver on strategic objectives, creatively engage with your audience and bring about an elevated experience?' Dean Hazelgrove, head of brand and Charlie Bromley, head of environments at Australian creative agency THERE, write that the answers to these questions can be found in two simple words that combined together make great things: logic and magic.

As a team of specialists across branding, placemaking & wayfinding, we often have many diverse and eclectic briefs working their way through the studio. From communicating stories to activating spaces to navigating places, no two projects are ever the same.

So, to ensure we achieve a great result every time we rely on a tried and tested process that encourages a cooperative team effort - not just between our team members, but also with our clients and collaborators. More often than not, this approach creates a more powerful outcome because of the rich input at the outset from many unique voices.

To start any project, we initially apply a bit of logic.

A client may come with a pre-diagnosed problem, but before we try to solve it we like to dig a bit deeper to unpack the brief and make sure that we are actually tackling the real issue. Through a thorough discovery phase, we ask a lot of specific, but simple questions that give the client an opportunity to talk. This also gives us the opportunity to listen, not only to what is said but also to what isn’t. Often, we find that when we ask that one, pointed question the client gets straight to the heart of the matter - and they have the freedom to talk about their business, their aspirations, their customers, their concerns and so on.

From this wealth of information, multiple ideas and sometimes even the solution itself will start to appear - all grounded in logical insights.

Now this is when the magic starts to happen. We begin to build a truly creative solution based on truths from their business. And because the initial seeds of a creative idea have been formulated in collaboration with the client, they in part have already started to solve their own problem.

We thrive on the idea of true transformation and pride ourselves on crafting uniquely designed solutions that respond to an original brief. Every client, and brief, is unique and each bring with them their own suite of challenges to overcome and considerations to factor - but regardless of the starting point we always see that our most impactful projects come about when we’ve followed a process that allows everyone to contribute.

By working through some logical initial steps, we end up with some truly magical outcomes - and create solutions that inherently belong to that client. We end up with a solution that is rich in purpose and meaning - and one that the whole team came along with on the journey.