Meaningful Marketing with Chris (Brazilian Baby) Visnieski
When Chris joined the My Loud Speaker crew, he rocked up with a serious expression on his face and was ready for some literal business. Given his beard, general intensity and stellar graphic design skills – I just assumed he was 35. It was a shock when Chris revealed he was merely 23 years old – making him the youngest member of the team. Being that he hails from Brazil and is as fresh as a spring chicken, we collectively dubbed him “Brazilian Baby.”
Just another reason it’s so nice to work here – everyone quickly receives an endearing nickname they have absolutely no control over.
Chris arrived in Vancouver less than a year ago, bidding “Tchau” to his home country to pursue his design ambitions in the true north, strong and free. We suppose it was for the best, he admittedly harbors no love for soccer. After attending the Universidade Federal do Paraná, where he received his degree in graphic design, his skill-set, input, and thought process has been astounding to watch. Any project he touches, he rocket launches to the next level of the stratosphere.
When I was 23, I was lucky if my Kraft Dinner turned out okay.
So, when he was up to the plate to share with us what he deems “Meaningful”, he gave us a little insight into how he got to be such a pro – and so fast. Enter, the Double Diamond. Originally introduced to Chris in school, the double diamond offers an expert approach to creating and executing any design.
The double diamond is made up of four distinct phases: Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver. And any creative type will tell you, the “creative process” is not clean, it’s not tidy and it’s certainly abstract. But with just a couple diamonds, sitting side by side – suddenly, it seems a little more digestible. Maybe it’s not as complicated as creative people are making it out to be? (No. Couldn’t be. That would make me a liar.)
Source: www.designcouncil.org.uk
“In all creative processes a number of possible ideas are created (‘divergent thinking’) before refining and narrowing down to the best idea (‘convergent thinking’), and this can be represented by a diamond shape. But the Double Diamond indicates that this happens twice – once to confirm the problem definition and once to create the solution. One of the greatest mistakes is to omit the left-hand diamond and end up solving the wrong problem,” states the Design Council website.
But the best thing, in Chris’s opinion, is that the Double Diamond is flexible enough to work for extremely complex and detailed process but on the otherhand it can be quick and easy. The process that goes along with the Double Diamond encourages designers to go crazy with their ideas in the early stages, go completely wild, and then filter them through the process of refinement and elimination. It’s overall not a complicated process,” explains Chris (via Google Hangouts right now).
Looks like this could be applied to much more than just design. Given Chris’s incredible work with My Loud Speaker thus far, I’m just going to take his word and never look back.
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