Dré Labre
Art Director
Generative AI
Instructor
Creative Director
I feel design today is more driven by hard data and developers. Design systems dictate a lot of the look and feel and product designers are tasked more with solving problems with design and using research and data to inform their designs. Agency work is still Blue Sky a little more than product work.
Very important. I do not create brand identity's but I know knowing your audience is key to creating a successful brand that resonates with them.
The first project I worked on was at an agency I was at and it was a website for National Geographic.
I think just being creative in life and loving art and movies, and design from an early age made me want to use my creativity in my professional career.
I think you need to think about future proofing your designs so that they can scale with the brand and that the system integrates elements from the brand that can be evergreen and not change much. I think having a living organic and always changing design ecosytems and design system helps with keeping things fresh, on brand and easy to update if things change.
My early influences were movies, museums, Art History and Art, I wanted to go to film school but found my passion in video editing and advertising, and art history. I loved the Apple ads that Chiat Day were doing and some of the early brand work coming out of Nike.
I have a defined 3 step process, that I use for all m y projects, some projects utlilize the whole process while other projects use parts of it, but there is always an intitial strategy and vision process, learning about the brand, the landscapre the users, etc, then a phase for vision and one for execute. The vision stage is where the bulk of the design discovery lives and the execute phase is more for making it and getting designs in the hands of developers.
I have learned to leave your ego at the door, if the client is not happy, make them happy even if u have to go the extra mile. I try to spend a lot of time with the client in strategy sessions upfront and bring them along the journey so that I really am collaborating more with them than just designing in a vacumm and showing them stuff for feedback. This process helps to reduce friction and feedback and get to the solution faster.
Looking at various verticals in business, competitor brands as well as best in class brands, watch movies, play video games, submerse myself in all things creative and the answer will be thwere somewhere.
I tend to lean on the client brand for style, or intial work, and try to use best practices in UX and UI to keep the experience something that is new and innovative while still adhearing to some basic design patterns and principles users are accustomed to.