STUDIO INSIGHT
COMPUTERARTS.CREATIVEBLOQ.COMTOM WILDER
Creative director
Tom Wilder is a creative director at COLLINS, where he leads the design
team on client work for companies such as Ogilvy, Dropbox, Facebook,
Coca-Cola, Target, Museum of Moving Image and Babyganics. His work
has been recognised by numerous design organisations and publications
including The One Show, TDC, ADC and AIGA, among others.Look at Nike and Colin Kaepernick. You can
trace Nike’s decision to make Colin the face of
the Just Do It campaign back to the company’s
origins. It’s always been the type of company to
take a meaningful stand. That’s what Nike is. And
its customers responded. Sales shot through the
roof. The stock price climbed. All because Nike
remained true to its most authentic self.
Can branding and design change the world?
Yes. I’ve worked in both advertising and design
across my career. Advertising is about making
something famous. Design is about making
something useful. Both are important, but
increasingly, the long-term value is in the
second approach.
The smartest companies know that their
real competition is no longer with others in their
industry – it’s with the future itself. To stay ahead,
they must anticipate what their customers
will need long before their customers know it
themselves. Companies must now move faster
than the culture around them or they’re dead.
Future-driven brands imagine and create
the world their customers will want to be a part
of. These kinds of companies are asking very
different questions: “What do we really believe?”
“How can the world become better because of
what we believe?” “What should we build to
make that future succeed?” When leaders
answer these questions bravely, their brands
can make a difference. If a brand answers these
questions bravely and well, it can help make the
world a little better.
How do you ensure your work is “a break from
the mundane and extraordinary”?
First, play a long game. Our efforts today pay off
a year or two from now when people see the real,
measurable results of our work together. Clients
are coming to us because of work we did in 2010,
2012, 2014 – and my hope is that clients who
come to us in 2022 will come because of the work
we’re doing right now.
Second, we play a short game. I love the
wisdom in this Chinese proverb: “The best time
to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-
best time is now.” I try to instill in everyone
here the need to plant their own trees – right
now, right here – so they’ll have all sorts of new
possibilities around them in the future. We do
that by making everything we do as good as it
can possibly be. Always.
Third, the library. At COLLINS, all our work
begins in the library. It’s the literal heart
and soul of our practice. Over the years the
collection has grown to more than 2,500 books
covering everything: mythology, faerie tales,
history, science, art, architecture, archeology,
anthropology, philosophy, music, typography,
JUNE 2019
economics, semiotics, biography, design, popular
culture, religion, and comic books.
The library is a space apart from the urgency
of the present. It’s an improbable space brimming
with kismet, and makes it possible for us to do
bigger and better work. To explore the fantastic
and fabulous.
Fourth, invent. Last summer we coded
software to create an exhibition and city-wide
marketing campaign for Inflatable, a giant show
at San Francisco’s amazing Exploratorium
Museum. We animated a set of adaptable,
animated letterforms that became as bouncy as
the art in the exhibit itself; we wanted to embody
the nature of Inflatable in everything we did.
Those playful qualities were then extended into
our ad campaign that poured into San Francisco’s
streets. We blanketed the city with the work.
Museum attendance shot up over 20 per cent.How do you get to the heart of a brief?
I’ll quote a British nanny all your readers will
know: “In every job that must be done there’s an
element of fun. You find the fun and snap, the
job’s a game.” Form follows function? Not here.
Form follows fun. Find the fun and you’ll unlock
a cargo of possibilities. Seriously. It works. Old
umbrellas will start talking.Out of all the many campaigns and brands
you’ve worked on as part of COLLINS, is there
any one you’re particularly proud of?
Actually, the one thing I’m quite proud of here is
the relationships we have among each other and
with our clients in San Francisco and New York.
Trust is everything.What’s next for COLLINS?
We are always on the Brink of Tomorrow here – a
prospect that’s exciting, exhilarating, exhausting
and terrifying. So we have big ambitions for this
year. A flagship store we designed opened this
spring in New York City. We’re re-launching a
beloved entertainment brand. A new hotel brand
we designed opens this summer. And we’re
shooting a short film series around the world.
You know, it’s weird. After 10 years, I feel like
we’re just getting started. And I can’t wait to
begin work every morning. Talking umbrellas
and everything.Top: vitaminwater’s new identity focuses
on the brand’s vibrancy.
Above: This playful packaging was
created for Heyday, Target’s first
electronics and accessories brand.