When I tell people what I do for a living, most of the time the response is something to the effect of, “I thought you drew pictures”. That is an abridged version of all the responses, but the meaning is the same. People tend to see design and those involved with the design industry as people that make things pretty. We create one off items that look nice, and that’s about it. Anyone in any section of the visual design field will tell you there is a hell of a lot more going on than that.

We think about the work at hand, but we also think and execute to the global design environment that the piece will live in. How does this work play into the global brand? How does this work interact with the current print, outdoor, and broadcast campaign? Does this work reflect the overall voice of the clients current interactive campaign? Does it translate to mobile? And on and on.

The work below is from LSDK for the restaurant “Berg”. This is a fantastic example of how the design team thought about more than just color, font, and paper, when designing this mailer for Berg’s anniversary announcement. All of the pieces are well designed and visually impactful on their own, and as a unit work together to complete the look. The quote below the image is from LSDK on the design thinking that went into the mailer. It goes well beyond simply making a pretty balanced layout, or color harmony, or using a trendy font.

“In order to show the restaurants many services we developed Flyers that can easily stand alone or, combined with the others, add up in form, colour and content referring to the Corporate Design and Interior. Single majuscule letters introduce to the content, every single flyer is made of a paper that matches the service/content. So we have an uncoated creamy paper (W & 1), white recycled paper (À) and matte image printing paper (V). For the 1-year celebration the package is extended with an invitation, whose cover is a full hot foil stamping, just leaving the space for the number. Wrapped in linen structure paper and sealed with the restaurants emblem its being sent to all guests.

Materials 1 | Uncoated creamy paper, 1 | Gold hot foil stamping, À | White recycled paper, V | Matte image printing paper, E | Linen structure paper extra white, W | Uncoated creamy paper”