Basics Design: Design Thinking

Personification is an abstract quality that is used to represent the highlighted

characteristics of a company or brand. Designers create graphic devices that

personify these qualities so that consumers or customers can form an emotional

identification. Many company or brand logos function in this way.

For personification to be successful and credible, the graphic device – and the

attributes it represents – needs to successfully resonate with the target audience

and be compatible with the characteristics of the product or organisation. If not,

it will appear incongruous.

To achieve this requires the use of both top-down and bottom-up approaches

to design: top-down in that the characteristics that will be personified must be

identified and prioritised and bottom-up in that visual ideas are generated and

conceptualised in consideration of what will appeal to the target audience.

Heal’s (facing page)

Pictured is a packaging range created by Pentagram for furniture and home products

manufacturer, Heal’s. The monotone, imageless design personifies the company’s

simple, clean style, and uses a subtle, dry humour approach to design. Typograms

are used as graphic elements to form the stem of a glass, the handle of a fork and

the flame of a candle.

Personification

Personification

A design often personifies the particular

aims, attributes or characteristics of a

company, product or programme into

a recognisable graphic device.

Design Thinking

Refinement
Typogram
The deliberate use of typography to express an idea visually and through more than just the letters that
constitute the word.

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Title: Basic Design-Thinking

Client: QPL Size: 160mmx230mm

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