Mrs. Le Ruche joined our staff working half days. She is an inquisitive designer and specializes in animal communications.
She retired in 2014.
LEFT BRAIN-RIGHT BRAIN
It takes two – two sides of the brain, that is – to learn and retain. The right hemisphere of the brain responds to emotions. So we use emotional techniques to help us get our targeted consumers’ attention. Once we have it, they are in a position to absorb a message and retain it. For that, we target the left hemisphere.
We marry this idea with our WHY-HOW-WHAT message structure. WHY messages are best delivered by targeting using techniques that tap the emotive, or right side of the brain. HOW messages use equal parts of the left and right hemispheres, and WHAT messages utilize the left hemisphere. The left side targets analytical messaging.
A WDS hypothesis is that during an experience the left hemisphere becomes saturated and needs the right side to be restimulated periodically to be ready to retain analytical information again. We use these theories to link together an Experience Arc to our environments. Much like a Story Arc, the Experience Arc carefully orchestrates how a particular message is set up and delivered over time. Concepts like Barbara Fredrickson and Daniel Kahneman’s Peak-End Rule also get woven into our Experience Arcs. More on this in later posts…
Celebrating 25 Years • 2006
“All the Elements” was the theme of our 15th Anniversary campaign. The science metaphor was used to communicate the great chemistry our designers have together in combining various mediums into cohesive design solutions.
TOUCHPOINTS
TouchPoints are defined as “any encounter where customers and business engage to exchange information, provide service, or handle transactions.” and they are another favorite term at our studio. We talk about creating an experience arc by identifying every touchpoint and examining them as a series of events – each building on and shaping the next. A perfect example of the “whole being greater than the sum of the parts.” TouchPoints can be a physical location such as Showroom or a process such as Registration. Any and all points of contact – or touchpoints – are an opportunity to communicate your message, and the cumulative series of touchpoints makes up the overall experience.
CELEBRATING 25 YEARS • 2005
A favorite logo for our friend Suzy Jacobs Knoll, for a boutique called Julia’s Closet. We followed through with the store design and fixtures too.
WINNING
Our first Cincinnati Design Award for our work at JP Flooring in West Chester. Our new identity, architecture, showroom and interior design all combined to create one of the premier flooring showrooms in the country.
Celebrating 25 Years | White’s
Service Center
Peter’s cousins in Urbana, Ohio have a Ford dealership. They came to us because they were frustrated with corporate Ford’s vision for their new facility. We took inspiration from Peter’s Uncle Noel’s garage that had been a fixture in Urbana since the 40’s. The solution incorporated a new identity, architecture, interiors and graphics. It became one of our first, ground-up, integrated designs. The results were a one-of-a-kind, small-town Ford dealership.
CELEBRATING 25 YEARS • 2004
TeachWater is a line of educational models that are used to teach children and adults alike about nature’s water-related principals. An interactive watershed table, cavern simulator, and high-flow stream aquarium are all products that are available. We helped our good friend and collaborator, Mike Strohm, to create an identity and web presence.
YOU CAN’T TURN IT TO 11
Nigel Spivey from Spinal Tap could turn it to 11, but we have to remind ourselves to exercise restraint when designing integrated branding solutions. If everything talks, then nothing does. The volume of the environment without our branding largely determines how loud our design has to talk.
Another use of this phrase has to do with pushing on too many design levers at once. Each design tool – color, type, material, sound, light – can be thought of as an instrument in a rock band. The best music only uses three instruments at a time in a pleasing ratio. Too many instruments playing at the same level results in cacophony.
“Music is the space between the notes” – Claude Debussy
We work hard to compose pleasing compositions that move and change as spaces are explored.
Celebrating 25 Years | Newsletters
The WhiteStuff was the title of our first blog and newsletter. We divided our work into five categories – Logos, Printed, Environmental, Interactive and Internet. Our categories have changed over the years but our passion for providing integrated branding remains.
CELEBRATING 25 YEARS • 2000
JP Flooring was our first customer to use ALL of our skills to create a unified brand. We helped invent what a flooring store should look like—every detail was examined and woven into the final solution. Logo, ads, business cards, architecture, interiors, retail fixturing, furniture, lighting, environmental graphics, website, trucks, events – the list goes on and on.
Since then, we’ve done this same drill for dozens of clients in a variety of industries. We believe that our customer get the maximum value for their design dollar, and we get to build their brand from every angle. Win. Win.
CELEBRATING 25 YEARS • 1991
White Design Studio was founded by Peter White in 1991. A one room office in the former leasing offices of historical Mariemont was and has continued to be our home for 25 years – we have, however, moved across the street and added more space.
Our first equipment? – A state-of-the-art Mac IICX, Radius grayscale and a 13″ Apple color monitor, Agfa scanner and a QMS 11 x 17 black and white laser printer. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, Quark, Persuasion, Macromind Director and Filemaker were the software tools of choice. We still are using Filemaker to run the business and are currently rewriting our 4th version.
CELEBRATING 25 YEARS
• Business Cards
These were Pete’s first business cards from 1982. He used them for freelance projects before he started his studio in 1991. The cards are all different. The cards are printed using oil board or also known as stencil board. Pete’s printer almost broke the press because the oil board was like “plywood.” The dashes are cut with a stencil machine; the colored paint samples are then taped in from the back, a thin sheet of brown paper is affixed to the back, and finally the cards are trimmed.
We have a history of producing the world’s most labor intensive, expensive and difficult to produce business cards. A tradition not lost on our latest cards.