Designing the Invisible

Founded in 1977 by Gert Dumbar in Holland, Studio Dumbar has a long and illustrious history. Almost thirty years after their inception the studio expanded to China, setting up their Shanghai office in 2005. Zou Zhengfang, Managing Director for the agency's China studio was key to the studio's early and continued success in China, and last year was joined by Joost Roozekrans, Creative Director, whose experience at the agency's Netherlands HQ stands him in good stead to guide his and Zou's team through the creative challenges China presents.

A recent design triumph was the visual identity for the Dutch Cultural Centre at 800Show – those colourful, floating, three-petal tulips, seemingly ubiquitous throughout the Expo's six-month duration. The pair took time out to chat with Creative Hunt about just a few of their projects, invisible design and the future of the craft in China.

"It was the early 90s, my first commission for Studio Dumbar", Joost reminisces of his revamp of the Dutch Police Force's visual identity, one of the agency's better-known projects, and one that reaffirms the dexterity of the agency's expertise.

"There was more needed to establish a strong visual identity than just a logo. It needed to be upgraded for organizational reasons – there used to be two police forces in Holland, a national one and a local one – they merged and reorganized… there was a big thing in the media, everyone has an opinion on the police!."



The most striking part of Studio Dumbar's redesign is the impossible-to-miss, striped vehicles. "They're central, more so than the logo itself: think of how police have to communicate – in city traffic, it becomes very important"

Not only are they easy to spot by day thanks to fluorescent orange stripes, the design also encompasses a safety element, most noticeable at night in the form of reflective blue stripes and dots, marking out the vehicles' silhouettes in low light. "There's also a practical element – you can open the doors to make a visual road block. It needs to be practical – these are tools for police men, they use them to be visible but also to protect themselves."

Joost's solution made financial sense, too, incorporating a single wrap that could be quickly and easily applied to white cars of any model: "It sold itself via its economy and simplicity."

There were side effects, positive and negative, of the design. Zou points out, "What was interesting was that as the force reorganized and the number of police actually dropped… people had the feeling that in fact the numbers were going up…"

"That's right", agrees Joost "Because they were more visible and for the first time they were all wearing the same outfit - that's what design can do."

And the negative? "Three police unions were all organizing events and making arguments against the design. There were threatening calls and letters too – I still have one actually, I keep it at home. The envelope was covered in all these bible quotes and inside there were articles relating to the police and the Dutch royal family and a tape of religious music. I think it was from someone who was in prison and who found out that Studio Dumbar did the design… it was really quite spooky", shudders Joost.



People soon got over their initial displeasure, though, and the design was recently voted number 13 in a survey of the most popular Dutch design from the past century.

"It proves the idea that contemporary visual identities are not necessarily dependent on a logo – we believe logo thinking is really from the 1970s or 80s. Of course you can still use them, and it's important in terms of giving personality to an organization, but it's just the cherry on the cake."

Police cars likely become so much part of life's daily fabric that for some they start to disappear – accolade indeed for the designers. Studio Dumbar recently took on another such project, in the form of redesigning the road signs in South Korea.

"We worked with a university in Seoul called Hongik University and a Korean designer called Ahn Sang Soo, the Dean of the design department and a longtime friend of Studio Dumbar", Zou explains.

So what was the problem with the signs? Were they really affecting drivers' experiences that much? "The public of South Korea were getting sick of them; there were a lot of complaints. Seoul is quite international; there are lots of foreigners living there as well as people traveling from all over the world to do business. The country is developing very fast with new roads being built and so you need to put the signs in sensible places", Zou explains.

South Korean roads were experiencing information overload, with simply too many signs. Joost explains "The information wasn't paced; instead the whole street, bridge or whatever was just jammed with information. Traffic signs need a rhythm, so we did extensive research and a full inventory in Korea, as well as f in surrounding countries, Europe and the US to see how they deal with their signs – size, reflective materials and type face."

The solution was to design a custom font for Korean characters, taller and slimmer than the original. We compare old and new, and despite not understanding a word of the signs' message, the difference is clear. "Depending on what type face you use, the eye is drawn not only to the strokes of the character, but also the spaces in-between. If it's too tight it can start to blur together, but make it more open, and it becomes more legible, particularly from far away. It's still quite condensed - the problem was that translating Korean words into a Latin type face means that you get very long words"



The signs are still being installed and will take another three years or so until they're all in situ. Time will tell how successful they are, but already, to the untrained eye, they look to be a great improvement. "It's quite natural design in that way. It should be good, and if it's not, it's then that's when people notice. People just don't see good design sometimes"

In fact such 'invisible' design is the exact opposite of what Studio Dumbar normally specializes. In China, for example, they were responsible for Buick's transformation from slightly confused to key players on the Chinese automotive stage.

Zou was the lead on this particularly Chinese conundrum: "It was a unique situation – usually when we're talking about an existing brand the first thing to consider is consistency. Buick is quite an exceptional case in that we decided to go for a new identity in China, whilst the United States would stay the same. They're two different markets: the States is far less flexible; they've more or less carried on their marketing tradition that was established years ago. But China is changing so fast, we needed to think of a different solution.

A new logo was developed that America finally ended up adopting, bar a custom font developed especially for the brand. The key, however, according to Studio Dumbar's findings, was in the dealerships themselves. Zou explains, "When we started working with Buick their dealerships were looking really, really old – blue, grey, run down no service, and very crowded. Customer satisfaction drops very quickly like that

People perceive cars differently in China from the West… it's more general – it's about status and style. Customers care more about how their car looks and whether the interior is leather than the engine itself. If we extend that, then the environment in which they're going to buy the car, or later service the car also becomes very important."

The dealerships underwent a Studio Dumbar makeover, injecting comfort and style, and also elements of the Buick brand. "We included lots of video, interactive and sound elements not for people to only about price and specifications, but also to give people opportunity to interact with the car."

Do the differences Studio Dumbar encountered in their dealings with Buick translate to wider cultural differences when it comes to Western and Eastern design? "In most cases I think Chinese clients are likely to see design as a way to express something luxury or upscale about their brand. I agree that design can play quite an important role in this but the difference comes down to what words like 'premium' really mean to you, them and of course their customers".

Joost expands: "In China design is more marketing driven, more hard-sell than it is in Europe. It's just one aspect of design, and of course it's important, but so is just designing a good environment – that's where things like road signs come into play."

Zou points out another factor: "The decision making process is different too… you can end up with something just mediocre, you compromise too much. In China many times you need to go through all these hierarchies, all these middle managers reporting to their boss and they have their bosses and if you go through that channel, many good ideas get killed along the way – people just report ideas they think their bosses expect.

"Maybe it's also economic", Joost suggests. "China is still climbing and that creates different expectations of what design can be used for – that's why in China as opposed to elsewhere design is used for selling stuff - because people are starting to buy. There's a need for that now – in terms of designing a nice environment, that will come, but just not yet."

On the subject of the future of design in China, and for Studio Dumbar, Zou is insightful, assured and motivated: "China will develop differently from the West, and that's a strange situation. It will cause a lot of shortcomings of course, but the dynamics behind are very high, so we as a studio need to take dynamic steps to keep up."

For more on Studio Dumbar and their many, many projects, check out their website here