Is consistency still the holy grail for modern brands and have we all had enough design? Albert debates this, and more, in the latest episode of our Private View(s) podcast.
Estate agency The Modern House is what happens when a journalist looks at a house listing and thinks: ‘I can do better than that.’ Founded by Matt Gibberd and Albert Hill 20 years ago, The Modern House approached real estate with a truly editorial eye, and in doing so built a brand that continues to be a source of admiration for many.
So when we met Albert – who now regularly advises other founders and businesses – we were keen to discuss how he thinks brands should be using storytelling and creativity today. In short: in a time when good design is almost ubiquitous, brands need to be more instinctive, more experimental, and less worried about the algorithm.
Scroll down for some soundbites from the episode, and listen to the whole thing on SPOTIFY, SOUNDCLOUD AND APPLE PODCASTS.
ON STORYTELLING
“In terms of the founding of The Modern House, it was simply that as a journalist I was used to writing about houses, and the stories of houses, and the stories of the people in the houses. Then you’d go onto an estate agent’s website and all that had been stripped away and boiled down to three bedrooms in a postcode. So it was really trying to cross-breed the two a little.”
ON A CREATIVE REBOOT
“Creativity is obviously the most important, powerful force in design. And it just feels like it needs a bit of a reboot, and there needs to be a new creative force emerging.”
ON FORGETTING THE BRAND GUIDELINES
“A few years ago, it would have been so important to have a style: the palette with x number of colours, and x number of fonts, and everyone knows if you see that font it’s that brand. I think it’s a lot more exciting now to be a lot more instinctive and rip that up. There’s a lot more tolerance of experimentation now, because that’s what people are after. There’s a general thirst for something new, something experimental.”
ON ‘BAD’ DESIGN
“I found the most interesting branding was by a bunch of people who were beer nerds, and not design nerds in the slightest. They obviously just really didn’t care what their labels looked like, and did what they thought was fun. Of course, that really stood out because neither were they trying to be the quirky, wacky, weird craft beer, and neither was it the corporate thing. It was interesting because it was instinctive and wrong but it worked.”
ON BRANDING’S EVOLUTION
“When we started The Modern House we were following our instincts. And our instincts for what was right were different to what it would be today – because culture and life is different. We tried to uniformise and streamline things, and make everything look nice and legible and understandable in a world that was all over the place. And I think now it just requires a different set of thinking.”
ON THE PERCEIVED POWER OF THE ALGORITHM
“A lot of people see the platforms as an enemy that needs to be wrestled with. And I encourage people to start with: what is it that you want to do? Then start to work out which channels will serve that thing. It’s back-to-front, almost. The algorithm is set out to find good things, and if you create something good, the algorithm will find you.”
ON EMBRACING THE RAGGED EDGES
“There’s a certain confidence to not being perfect. The stuff I really enjoy is people who care more about communicating their enthusiasm for something than about saying exactly the right thing. Often they’ll get it wrong, or it doesn’t quite hit the mark, but in their sheer excitement they want to experiment and capture that thrill. Care less about whether something conforms to normal ideas of beauty or order. Embrace chaos and the ragged edges.”
ON CREATIVE AGENCIES
“Creatives are massively important, especially when it comes to brands. I just think that they need to be aware that, culturally, they need to push the envelope a little bit more. The world will thank them for it.”
ON THE HUMANITY OF DESIGN
“There’s a certain reality that there’s more to life than design, which is quite a realisation. But you can still see things that are absolutely mind-blowing when it comes to design. There’s still a level of surprise, and a deep connection and humanity, and all those wonderful things design can do. I often think about it in terms of humanity, because it’s really a way to communicate love and care.”
ON OPTIMISM
“I think it’s massively exciting at the moment. I’m absolutely sick of all these brands out there looking the same, and it’s got to change, and it will change. Go out into the world right now and take a photo of everything, and come back in ten years’ time to compare it. I think it will be quite a lot different.”
