[Podcast] Simplicity in Branding with Scott Buschkuhl

Today we have Scott Buschkuhl who is the Creative Director at Siegel & Gale, a brand strategy, design, and experience firm with its global headquarters located in NYC. Here, Scott develops teams and works hands-on with his clients who have included folks like New York Times, Victoria’s Secret, Wired, and dozens more.

He’s got a ton of awards on his belt, he’s a sought-after lecturer, an esteemed judge for competition juries, and also a professor at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. He’s previously worked at Pentagram and also ran his own agency for 12 years so it’s safe to say we’re in good hands.

We’re going to be discussing Simplicity in Branding which is S&G’s philosophy on brand in general. In fact, they state “We’re the simplicity company” as their tagline.

We discuss designing for humans, emotional responses, team collaboration, simplicity as an approach to brand strategy, presentation techniques, and much more!

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Show Notes

• Scott’s S&G Website

 

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Transcript (Auto Generated)

Hello, and welcome to JUST Branding, the only podcast dedicated to helping designers and entrepreneurs grow brands. Here are your hosts, Jacob Cass and Matt Davies.

Today we have Scott Buschkuhl, who is the creative director at Siegel & Gale, a brand strategy, design and experience firm with its global headquarters located in New York City. Here Scott develops teams and works hands-on with his clients, who have included folks like New York Times, Victoria’s Secret, Wired and dozens more. He’s got a ton of awards on his belt.

He’s a Sordar lecturer, an esteemed judge for competition juries, and also a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He’s previously worked at Pentagram and also ran his own agency for 12 years. So it’s safe to say we’re in good hands.

Today, we’re going to be discussing simplicity in branding, which is S&G’s philosophy on brand in general. In fact, they state where the simplicity company has their tagline. Before we jump into that, welcome to the show, Scotty.

Thanks so much. Great to be here, guys.

I love having professionals on the show. It sounds so very intelligent. That was great.

So Scotty, we’ve heard you’ve got a bit of a backstory in regards to becoming an accidental entrepreneur. What’s that all about?

So I went to School of Visual Arts here in New York City. And during my last year at school, I started interning at Pentagram. Eventually that transitioned to a full-time job.

I worked there for a couple of years under Woody Pertle. And then eventually the writing was on the wall that the partner I was working for was retiring. So I loved my first job.

Where do I go next? Eventually I landed in the world of publishing. I worked at Timing, New York Times, McGraw-Hill, Wired.

And then eventually just started pulling in more and more freelance work. And then that work grew, led to more work. I started a relationship with a variety of clients.

And I ended up with a designer and then an intern and then a space. And I ran that studio for 12 years. And we focused on identity and branding for print, physical and digital environments.

And it was, it wasn’t planned. It was extremely organic. And it just kind of built on it until eventually I found myself with this small business and ran it for 12 years.

And then my feet started to get itchy. So I was thinking, okay, maybe it was midlife crisis moment. Maybe I wasn’t satisfied with the work anymore.

Maybe it was a little bit of both and more. I started asking myself, like if the work we were doing was making enough of an impact. And then that started this journey of, well, maybe I should look for a new position.

Maybe I should try something. Maybe I can go in house. Maybe I can work at an agency.

And I ended up at Siegel & Gale. I’ve been here since June.

So we’re going to get into simplicity and branding. But first, so we know like the lens that we’re looking through this on, how do you define brand and branding? How does simplicity get into all of this?

So I think branding is, it’s all about the emotional response. It’s how does a customer, a user, humans, at the end of the day, interact with a brand, a product, a service, and how can we communicate the value of those things to them in the simplest way possible? It’s like finding the actual gem of an idea and then growing from there.

So I think finding that gem is the hard part. Simplicity is extremely difficult. I mean, you can imagine writing, you have a letter you want to write to someone and to drill it down to like one to two sentences is an extreme challenge.

How can you tell that story as briefly as possible? And I think if we can figure out what that gem is and then create a close partnership with the businesses that we’re working with, we understand their needs and we understand their customers’ needs. And then there’s this possibility to create something really beautiful in a brand that resonates in the world that everyone wants to interact with.

Yeah, it reminds me of that quote. I didn’t have time to write a short letter. You know, a bit of a long one instead.

So that ties in simplicity very well. So how does this get applied to brand strategy and design?

So I think, you know, it’s this simplicity and approach. So we start off with, you know, we have insights, we have data, and how do we build on that data to visually express it? So we have an opportunity together.

I think strategy, design, and experience at Siegel & Gale is like a three-legged stool. We need those three things to support the overall idea and to get it out in the world. If we have those three things working together well, then we have a creative solution for a brand that can exist and can be successful and can drive meaningful change.

So when you say strategy, design, and experience, right, what do you mean by those? Because they’re quite broad, simple titles, so what’s the meaning behind them?

All right, so if we say design, like what does design do at Siegel & Gale? We can do identities, we can do brand communications, we could do short films, we could do motion work, we could do campaigns. When I talk about strategy, it’s like what is the overall big idea for the business that’s going to drive change in the future for them?

And we talk about experiences, experiences are large, but broadly speaking, it’s like, is it some type of digital experience? Is it some type of physical experience? If it’s digital, is it as simple as a website?

If it’s a physical experience, is it somehow the brand experience within a space? So if we could hit all three of those and make them work together and not have them be like a very siloed approach where you have a brand strategy, then you create to that brand strategy and then maybe experience tags on to it, but we’re all working together at the same time, then that’s how the three-legged stool holds up and becomes the support for this big idea.

So can we dive a little deeper into, let’s get some examples out there to how this could be applied to a real-world project. How would you and your team approach building or finding that gem of an idea and how would you actually go about building it out with strategy, design, experience and making them all so cohesive? What’s that actually look like?

So we have a process at Siegel & Gale called simple futures, which, simply put, is looking at the future of your business in a really, really simple way. So from a strategic lens, it’s looking at what is the future for the business, where it’s the least complicated, the least amount of friction so that it can go out in the real world. We start off with working closely with our communications team, so our voice, and they can write a story or a big narrative, kind of an anthem for what the business can do, and then we drill down from that anthem and then we start to visually express it.

And this in the simple futures exercise is just, this is a look and feel, a personality, a mood. This is the tone of your business moving forward that we can then start to build on. So it’s basically about getting buy-in from the client about their new future, their new vision.

And then once we have that buy-in on a specific kind of strategy, we can then kind of create from there, really dial in voice, really dial in creative, and figure out is it a website? Is it a campaign? How do we move this thing into the real world where people actually interact with it?

What would they actually come to for? What’s an example of a brief? And then you figure out what the next thing is.

I don’t know if there’s anything that you could speak about there.

So it’s interesting because our services on the creative side and JUST as an agency are pretty wide. So a large kind of Fortune 500, Fortune 100 might come to us and say we have a brand architecture problem. So then we solve that brand architecture problem, and then design still comes into play there.

But it’s more about a design system in the future. Or they might come and say we have a naming issue. And then like our naming will join with our brand architecture, which will join with our voice to then build from there.

So we have a variety of disciplines that we can offer to clients. And they’re not coming for one thing specifically. It’s when they come to us, we actually have to decide what that problem is.

Because they may say we need a new website. This will drive sales. We get more customers in.

It’s all about revenue done. Maybe that’s not the real solve. Maybe they don’t need a new website.

Maybe that’s the wrong end. They’re looking for a solution, looking for a problem. We have other opportunities to help you expand what you need to do to make you successful and differentiate you from the competitors in the field.

I love what you said there in terms of actually finding the problem and not just coming in and giving them the solution or the thing that they asked for. How do you actually uncover that problem? I just want to get into the nuts and bolts.

What’s actually happening?

I think the nuts and bolts, and this starts with… It goes back. I’m going to probably hammer on this three-legged stool a bit too much.

That’s what we want.

I think it’s those three things right at the beginning is letting strategy take the data that we have and then build insights off of that data and then coming back to them. But it’s always working together with experience and design to help understand what’s working and what’s not working. Again, they might come to us in the beginning with an idea.

We might scope out the job in one way, but it can shift. There is this opportunity for it to pivot as the discovery happens. So we spend on kind of brand architecture or simple futures maybe one to like one month or two months.

It depends on how big the project is and what the problem is we’re trying to solve. So I’d say there’s no kind of one plus one equals two in this. It’s more like a one plus one equals 11.

Like it’s a combination of things and we end up with a new result each time.

Yeah, I understand. So you’re uncovering data, you’re getting insights from that data. Well, you’re getting insights and turn that into data, sorry.

And then going about, I guess, exploring and connecting the dots to move you forward to the next phase. Is that more or less?

Yeah, that sounds perfect.

All right. Well, I thought we were talking about designing for humans. I think it’s kind of a good segue.

So what do you mean by designing for humans?

Right now, we’re in the current state that we’re in, right? The world went on fire about a year ago. And I’d say we haven’t reset yet.

We’re working towards it. But now that we’re all alone, we’re all alone, but working together. So if we’re designing for humans, it becomes even more important now that there is this disconnect.

We’re together, but we’re together on screen. So how can we create designs that… I mean, at a top level, all the designs we create should be timeless.

But all of them really require this emotional response. If our creative work and our strategic work and all business decisions in general are kind of created with an eye on humanity, it will be a force for good now or for whatever comes next. If we put people first and we put customers first, or more importantly, humans first, we treat the profit as an outcome rather than a goal.

So Scott, in your work, when you’re putting the human first, what kind of approach does that mean? Like I hear what you say and it sounds great, but realistically, what does that actually mean when you come to look at a project?

Well, for example, we’re working with a healthcare business right now. And it’s healthcare business that’s, technology is the main thing that they have to offer. But at the end of the day, our health, our health is most important and the humanity in that comes forward.

So as much as the technology is valuable, we should really lean into how it can affect your health, your existence and know that it’s backed by technology. So we put that customer first, we put the human first, and then we’re able to think about how that kind of technology enabled or backed by technology becomes important.

Yes, I think that is absolutely a cracking, the only approach, right? Because when you think about it, I always say businesses that are focused on the profit side, which you mentioned earlier, it’s kind of like, well, that’s great, but that only really appeals to you, right? It doesn’t appeal to anyone else.

It doesn’t appeal to a consumer. The consumer doesn’t care that you want to get rich and fat and go and retire and to exit the company in four years time and go to Hawaii. No one cares about that apart from you.

We have to give a more compelling reason for a consumer to join us. Although your commercial reasons are all absolutely valid and we’re not putting them in the bin, we do need to think about this from the customer’s perspective, the human side. I completely agree with your approach there.

I think it comes down to profits or table stakes. Yes, we’re in the service industry. We want these businesses to do well.

We want them to succeed. We want them to challenge other businesses in their space. But who is using it at the end?

At the end of it, it’s people. And these people are either buying a product or a service. We need to make it benefit them.

And then it will benefit the business in the long run, and it will benefit all of us in the long run. So it’s just looking at it more globally, like a bigger picture and not just focused on the profit. We focus on the people, and the people will bring the profit.

I also think that’s more of a long-term thinking process. It’s more of a strategic approach as well, because if you don’t have that mindset, you tend to be very focused on the quick wins, which are great for a short period of time, but then everything fizzles out very quickly. You don’t get that loyalty, you don’t get that buy-in, you don’t get that momentum that you need from a brand.

And I think that more… Would you say… Here’s another question for you.

Would you say that in your experience, more brands are getting more used to that approach? Or do you still find yourself having to bang your head against that wall and say, come on, let’s think about that human? Or do you find that more brands are coming to you for that?

I think they’re coming to us for that. I think in the end, from a creative side, all the work we should do should be timeless. But I also think from a business side, your decisions should be timeless.

You might have these short wins, but in the long run, you’re trying to build this success over time that can last. So I think at the end of the day, what we need and what they need is this long-term plan. We don’t need these quick hits.

We need to think about the future of the business. Even if you exit it, as you mentioned in four years, that business should continue to just grow and grow and grow.

Well, I think we could take a little bit of a left turn here, and I think talking about collaboration, I know it’s a big part of S&G. How do you actually, I guess, can you run us by how that works in S&G? Collaboration, how do you work with the situation going on, and how does simplicity get applied to, I guess, this teamwork as well?

Yeah, I mean, again, it’s where we are right now. We’re disconnected, so how do we connect via technology? How do we build an internal culture, like something with new rituals?

The time we spend together, right now, the time the three of us are spending together, even though it’s virtual, we have the opportunity for it to lead to more creativity, more inspiration, that will then, the end result is better work, more opportunities, and we’ll feel good about it. So the design group, we meet twice a week, and we talk about what inspires you, what you’re passionate about, what you’re enthusiastic about. We also do work shares and some basic housekeeping, just to have a chat about the business.

I mean, it’s kind of, it’s like virtual coffee catch-ups. We’re at the water cooler, but we’re not at the water cooler, we’re on screen. So I think having those get-togethers twice a week brings us all closer together.

And I started back in June, and I’ve met maybe a handful of people in person since I started, and I feel close to almost everyone that I work with because we have this constant FaceTime. And hopefully, even though we have a certain amount of speed to get the work done, there’s an opportunity that every time we interact, it’s not transactional. Like we have to get through the work, but we can also connect with each other as human beings, learn more about each other.

And I think that’s a way that we can work together and keep it simple. Every day, depending on the projects that I’m on, I’ll meet with my teams in the morning and then again at night, kind of before the day closed or in between when we have meetings. And I think this constant being connected on screen and having FaceTime is what brings us closer together.

So we work together alone and we do it really, really well.

I love that. And you’re not just meeting to do work, right? You’re meeting to connect.

And I think that’s a big part of like to have that human connection.

That’s the whole part of avoiding this like transactional nature where it’s like we have a meeting, we talk about the work, we move on. No, like what did you do over the weekend? What are you excited by?

I don’t know, what are the challenges you’re having right now? What’s frustrating you? It’s like we need to have these conversations with each other so that we can do much, much better work.

And if we keep an open conversation, then the work we produce on the outside can be more friendly, more approachable. But the way we deal with it, like deal with a team can be more friendly and approachable. And that goes back to kind of the three core values of Siegel & Gale, smart, nice and unstoppable.

If we lean really into that nice internally, we’ll be really successful. It’s like we’re looking out for each other. We wanna do good work together.

We want to be seen as unstoppable. We wanna be seen as smart, but we focus in on again, being nice, being human, and just kind of connecting in that way.

So Scott, amazing, amazing process, amazing way of working in the way that you’ve described. Does that link back to those core values of the firm and how does that kind of all play out in relation to what you’ve just described?

Yeah, I think it’s huge. Siegel & Gale, they say that they’re smart, nice and unstoppable. And the way I look at it is it’s not just lip service.

It’s really, really part of the day-to-day function of the firm. And it’s one of the main reasons that I wanted to join. So during the interview process, I met some brilliant people.

They were nice, genuinely nice, real good human beings. And there was just this intensity there that it was obvious that they take the shit seriously. So like you hit those three things, and I was like, I wanna be there.

I wanna be surrounded by people who are smart, who are constantly thinking about new and innovative ways to solve problems. I wanna be in a nice office environment, albeit on screen. And I wanna be part of a focused and unstoppable team to do good work.

All right, so can we go a little bit deeper in terms of the, I guess, working collaboratively? Like how important is speed in this process? And like, does the remote work actually help or hinder this whole, I guess, collaborative approach?

That’s an interesting question. I think the remote work helps the idea from a client perspective hinders, where I do think things are actually happening a lot faster. And we find ways to work better because we’re embracing technology to solve these problems.

But then from a client side, over the past two decades, like things get faster and faster and faster. And I think just in the past year, it’s almost ramped up like 20%. It seems like things even happen faster than they did before.

So the deadlines are really extreme to deliver on what we can do, but somehow we get it done. I just think the expectations are a lot higher than what they were.

Well, I guess we have less meetings and less travel. So we actually have a little bit more time to work on the business. So you’re probably actually working harder, working more.

That’s interesting. Okay, all right, well, another, I’m just gonna spin out a conversation a little bit more and talk about mistakes that companies make when they approach brand design. Like, what do you notice, like, that happens often, when companies come to you with a problem, for example?

I mean, there’s many mistakes. I think one of the big ones is that design is decoration and design is about making things that are beautiful and not solving like strategic problems that can make their business successful. And, you know, maybe they come and they say like, I want to look like this.

Like, I love what this brand is doing. Can we look like this? Well, is that the right answer?

Is just looking like this gonna solve your problem? Maybe the bigger problem is how your business is running. Maybe you’re not, you know, making the right steps into the right places to solve your problem before we even worry about kind of creative decisions.

So it can be… I think the mistake is being designed…

Scott, we’ll just let that… That’s New York for you, right? Don’t miss that.

What were they thinking?

They’re after you. They found you. They found you.

Quick, do a runner.

Yeah, it’s fascinating to hear you talk along those lines. And in terms of the… You talked about the speed that things are ramping up.

You talked about the many mistakes people come to you, in a sense, weird. What do you think the future looks like for brands and design and experiential design like you’ve described? Looking ahead into your Scott crystal ball, right?

What would you say? What do you imagine the future is gonna be like? Do you think it’s gonna get even faster?

Cause like, man, I agree with you. Like the work I do in the US like the pace is ramping up. It’s nuts.

Less so in other parts of the world, I’m finding. So that’s just a little tip for you. You might find the odd sort of slower approach in other parts of the world.

So there’s an avenue. But yeah, what’s the future? What do you think?

I think there’s going to be a point where it plateaus. Like, I don’t think it can just exponentially keep going and going and going. But I do think there’s going to be something about just the speed of the simplicity of like transactions, like the future of payments.

Maybe biometrics is going to become really, really huge. And there’s going to be a point where, I mean, think about what Amazon is doing with their stores where you just read with the palm of your hand. So I think there’s going to be things like that, that expand it.

But as far as like say like creative solutions, like traditional design, air quotes, I think there’s just going to be a bigger lean on video, on kind of 3D renderings, like things where we basically are living within the machine. I think we’re going to see a bit more of that, but I think the big thing is going to be about experiences. That’s where things are going to ramp up and change and speed up just the way we’ve been used to doing things.

10 years ago, we probably all purchased with cash, not a big deal. Five years ago, cards are more important. This past year, Touchless explodes because just the nature of the world that we exist in.

So what happens in the next five years? And I think Amazon’s probably landing it right now with the lean into biometrics, but it’s going to build on that. There’s going to be a lot more innovation in the overall experiences of the brands.

Yeah, and I suppose going back to the point that we were talking about earlier around simplicity, I know we were talking about simplicity of concept, but if you apply simplicity to the experience side of things as well, as you said, biometrics, the easier you make it for the consumer, the easier, the simpler it is for everybody concerned from the customer’s perspective, from the human perspective, it’s, as you say, the speed from that side is going to ramp up. I guess the challenge is can we as an industry, can we as a community keep up with the pace of that? And does that require simplicity from our side in terms of the way that we execute, the way that we deliver?

And can we even do that if we need to come up with emotional kind of stuff? Because creativity takes time, right? Well, I think it does anyway.

Or does it? Who knows? What do you think, Scott?

Does it take time or can we keep going faster and faster and faster, coming up with stuff?

Well, it takes time. I think a really great idea takes time. The obviously we have to speed things up.

I’m kind of a, I’m a mix of an idealist and a realist, right? So ideally, I think we can keep going, right? We can get faster.

Realistically, there’s gotta be like a break point, but I think, you know, there’s opportunity for, I think the industry has the ability to adapt. Because if you look at what’s happened in the past 20 years, I mean, just prior to the existence of a, you know, a touch surface on a phone, right? Like what was it like before then?

So I think we could just keep ramping and it will happen. But I think there’s opportunity out there and I think we can handle the speed. It will plateau.

We’ll figure it out together.

As humans, right?

As humans, yeah.

As humans. Love this, love this. So Scott, we’re coming towards the end of the episode now.

And you’re a man in his prime in the height of his career. And so it’d be great for you to kind of, maybe for perhaps some of our younger listeners, without being patronizing, maybe some of our less experienced listeners to the podcast. I wonder if you would be so kind as to kind of share maybe your hot tips, your top tips, that you would sort of recommend to people that want to follow in your footsteps.

And yeah, share anything you can to help us.

Sure. So I guess one of the things before starting a project, I like to think about this quote from Carl Sagan, and maybe this goes back to this like idealism side, and it’s somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known. And I think if you approach every project in that way, thinking about like the magic moments, the opportunities, then there is something waiting to be known, something magical waiting to be known.

But we, like whenever I start a project, it’s creating work that fits in three different categories, something that’s conservative, something that’s expressive, and something that’s somewhere in the middle, making sure that they’re always appropriate, but really leaning kind of heavy into that expressive, maybe even pushing it to the point where it’s, it’s something that can be viewed as wrong, completely wrong. And if we do that, we challenge our clients in this way, right? So it can be hard to make it work.

It could be hard to let it resonate with the client. It’ll be, maybe it’s even hard for it to resonate with the customers and the end users or the humans, but it will create a unique experience. It’ll create a magical experience that they can have with the product or service.

Nice, you heard it first folks.

Yep, it’s kind of like the soft round and spiky approach. I guess you said conservative, expressive and somewhere in the middle, you know.

Let’s hit them with the spiky one.

So Scott, we’re coming to the end of the episode now. But before we sort of sign off, I know you’re involved very much in education. So it’ll be great to just kind of get a bit of a snapshot from you as to, you know, as to the value that that brings to you and your work and also any kind of thinking around, you know, why that’s helpful, you know, and why you’ve gone into that.

So any thoughts?

Oh, definitely. So I’ve been teaching at the School of Visual Arts for about 12 years now. And I’d say that being a teacher there, interacting with the students has transformed my life as a designer.

I started off teaching second-year design, then eventually third-year typography, fourth-year portfolio. And it’s really an influence on the work that I do every day at the agency. Helping students make decisions, kind of helping them figure out this opportunity to discover something new, you know, seeing the spark in their eye when they find that solution that works, or the sadness when they see that it doesn’t work and they have to start over and over and over again.

But that’s exciting for me. It brings design to life for me. You know, I hammer into them that the idea is nothing without the execution and the execution is nothing without the presentation.

I take that same mindset, the mindset of the combination of, you know, creative director and an educator, and then bring that to working with my clients every day. There’s this sense of educating them, but also them educating me. It’s like being the forever student, which is really, really exciting for me.

And it just makes, you know, it makes design really, really exciting.

Yeah. You mentioned presentation there. We haven’t actually really talked about that.

We talked about the soft hard, spiky approach before. I think you actually apply that to a presentation. I think that would be interesting to discuss.

So with the presentations, we are the simplicity company, but our presentations can be rather long. And I think because sometimes it’s hard to tell that story in a succinct way with a few, like few visuals, few moments for voice, and we might be delivering say three to five big ideas. And if we deliver three to five big ideas across a variety of touch points, the deck can extend out, but still we do it in a really, really quick way so that it doesn’t burden you.

You can get right to the point. You can digest it quickly. And now that we do all our presentations on screen, right?

Like you’re not in a room with anyone anymore. So I think you even have to be quicker with the message. You just, so if it’s left, this deck is left in an email that someone will review at a later date because they weren’t able to attend the meeting because they had to pick up their kid from school.

It’s like they can still digest this information really, really quickly. So I think, you know, being as succinct as possible in our presentations is extremely important and polished. So we keep the work polished at a high level of fidelity with a great idea in a really smooth and simple way to digest it.

You can see it quicker.

It totally wraps up to this whole simplicity in branding. Like the idea should sell itself with a very well-executed, I guess, presentation as well. If you can do that without someone talking over it and so that you can see it in an email, that’s like the caliber of work that you should be aiming for, right?

So I think that’s an amazing way to end. So thank you, Scott. Do you want to let our viewers know where they can connect with you?

Yeah, you could find me on LinkedIn. Just search my name in the window. It’s a little bit difficult to spell.

It’s kind of like a mix of, almost looks like a mix of hieroglyphics. It’s too many. You can find me on LinkedIn.

Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. And yeah, we’ll leave it here.

So thank you so much, man.

Thanks so much.

There’s more of us.

Take care, guys.