Two years ago, designer Joe Duffy ended a 20-year relationship with Minneapolis advertising agency Fallon Worldwide, where his Duffy Design Group served as in-house design firm.
“The independence that comes with having your own little company and making decisions as to who is the best client for you to work with in order to do work that you’re proud of is a very liberating thing,” says Duffy, now creative principal of Duffy & Partners in Minneapolis.
But Duffy’s decision to break from Fallon also reflects his belief that design wins consumers’ hearts more effectively than advertising alone does. He says that in recent years, Americans’ appreciation for design has ascended, as has their ability to tune out (or TiVo out) advertising. At the same time, the likes of Apple and Target have made high style more widely accessible. Duffy says that based on the success of these and other brands, “many companies now are saying, ‘Let’s get back to basics and just make our products better and more unique.’ And that’s very much about design.”
Advertising “used to be the primary builder of brands,” he explains. “Now I think people are realizing that design is much more important and playing a huge role in establishing why a brand is different, first. Then, once you establish that voice, if you will, you can talk about it. That voice is important, though, and talking about it, which I equate to advertising, comes after the voice is established.”
Duffy envisions design firms like his spearheading more brand-building efforts, rather than simply complementing traditional “trend-driven” ad campaigns. Design is able to burrow down to the very essence of a brand, and therefore provide it with its foundational characteristics and “language,” he says, whereas advertising messages change based on pop culture, “what’s hot,” et cetera. Put another way, design focuses on “who or what the brand is” and advertising focuses on “what’s the best way to sell it now.”
Duffy’s portfolio includes work for big brands like Coca-Cola, Toyota, and BMW, as well as smaller ones like SmartWool apparel. His company has not only designed logos and Web sites, but also interiors, such as the Sony Gallery Dreambox store in Shanghai. It also has developed packaging for many consumer products, such as the four-pack carton for Starbucks’ DoubleShot coffee beverage. Duffy says that after the DoubleShot design hit the market, Starbucks experienced a 22 percent increase in sales of the brand.
Last year, Duffy received the Legacy Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Artists for “a lifetime of contributions to the field of visual communications.” And that’s not just in the U.S. During the past six years, Duffy has conducted annual workshops for design students in China. “They already can build things faster and cheaper,” he says. “If they can create really proprietary ideas, as opposed to knocking things off, their force in the marketplace will be even more significant than it is today.”
