Brand design: The invisible industry
Jocelyne Henri Danet, group managing director at Lonsdale + Partners, challenges more clients to celebrate their design agency partnerships.
When Louis Vuitton made Pharrell Williams its men’s creative director, the luxury brand celebrated the partnership and the value it added. In fashion, architecture and product design, some names become assets in their own right – people seek out Stella McCartney, Ray Eames or Jonny Ive precisely because they have been involved.
But in brand design, all too often the opposite is true. Agencies disappear. As another awards season gathers pace, it’s worth asking a simple question: why does the talent behind so many brand projects remain so invisible? Why do so many clients not wish to acknowledge the expertise they invest in their single most important asset: their brand?
It’s important to note at this point: #NotAllClients. Some do see the value of celebrating creative partnerships. Some other clients will allow us to claim credit, but with many conditions and an approval chain that can go all the way back to procurement. It can be a long process that smaller studios just won’t have the time or resources to manage. In other cases, it's a flat and final, “No.” Without exception. I understand that a brand will want to control its image, but I don’t think it should come at the cost of making those who helped build it invisible.
This often isn’t the case for our colleagues in advertising. Here, it is common – sometimes even encouraged – for agencies to celebrate work with their clients' blessing. Everyone knows who has been behind Apple's 30-year track record of compelling and effective campaigns: it's a shared source of pride. A client who says, "We led this transformation with such-and-such agency," doesn't come out weakened, they come out credible.
So why is it a problem for brand design? When an agency develops a new brand identity, a visual language, a packaging identity naming system or a creative platform, it is not just delivering a moment, it is creating distinctive assets that will generate value for the client for years, sometimes decades, to come. When these assets and the overall brand identity succeed, this is the mark of absolute success for the business. Meanwhile, a rebrand has only one window of visibility: the launch. If the agency cannot communicate at that moment, the opportunity is lost for years, until the next one.
This isn’t a new problem but today, an added pressure makes things worse. Generative AI creates the illusion that design is just a prompt away. This appearance of ease feeds a dangerous confusion: between the act of generating and the act of designing, between producing a form and building a meaning. If our industry does not now assert the singularity of its creative act, it will allow a devaluation to take hold that will cost it far more than a few missing credits.
The design industry is thus penalised on three fronts: by the nature of work, by contractual practices that close the only available window and by a perception that AI is accelerating. Advertising has the same vulnerability, but it has developed a strong credit culture already. Design has not done this well enough.
How many major rebrands, retail or digital experiences are today presented as the sole work of "internal teams"? How many agencies remain invisible on public projects – sometimes even award-winning ones – at ceremonies they are not allowed to enter? And how many are explicitly forbidden from communicating about work they conceived, led and delivered?
Preventing an agency from communicating about a project limits its ability to demonstrate its expertise, slows its growth and weakens its appeal to talent and future clients. One sometimes hears, implicitly, an unspoken argument: if a brand doesn't want to be associated with its agency, perhaps the work doesn't deserve it. I turn that around without hesitation: work good enough to be deployed is good enough to be signed. Either the work carries the brand for years – and it has an author. Or it is worthless – and it shouldn't be used. You cannot have it both ways.
This isn’t about self-congratulations and trophies – although they are very nice to have – it’s about the growth and viability of our industry as a whole. It’s about celebrating the powerful and long lasting client-agency relationships. It’s about recognition for all the great agencies working so hard to deliver their best work, not just the ones powerful enough to negotiate. This situation is becoming a norm at a time when our industry needs more support than ever.
It is time to evolve. Brand design shouldn’t be one of the only creative disciplines where successful work becomes anonymous the moment it enters the world. The clients who have found the right balance already know this: a partnership claimed jointly is a stronger partnership. A brand that values those who build it actually reinforces its own credibility.
This is not about claiming the spotlight. It is about no longer working in the shadows.
