EMBODY THE POWER OF A CONSISTENT DESIGN LANGUAGE
Delta is a well-established corporation providing power and thermal management solutions. As one of the most competitive players in the industry, it already has a strong and successful corporate image, but the brand DNA hasn’t been fully translated into its product lines. Delta’s corporate brand management team therefore assigned CRE8 to take on this mission and build a consistent design language for all of its product lines.
It is rather challenging to develop a consistent product design identity that works for all of Delta’s business groups due to the large size of the company and the complexity of its product categories. Therefore, CRE8’s designers started with Delta’s largest business group, which has 23 different product categories and over 800 products built for industrial automation. After completing the pioneer, CRE8 will gradually implement the design language in other Delta business groups.
In order to target areas of concern and find suitable solutions, CRE8 conducted a series of interviews plus surveys across different units under the business group as well as the top management team; then collected data and analyzed the information to thoroughly understand the advantages and strengths of each business unit, and what each product line has in common.
CRE8’s designers then extracted the shared genes and came up with a design language and guidelines that incorporates the brand’s core values based on the research, analysis, and multiple times of discussions with Delta. The guidelines established a consistent family look and feel through a clear definition of the brand promise, core attributes, design principles, and signature elements.
To properly implement the guidelines, CRE8 held many workshops for Delta’s different departments, coaching them the importance of design thinking and innovation. We also made proof-of-concept examples by designing Delta’s hero products to demonstrate how to use the guidelines to add values to the products, create differentiation among competitors in the same market segment, and ultimately bolster Delta’s status as a world premium brand.
Through the process, Delta’s staff learned to follow these design directions which help to save product development time and cost in the long run, as well as build brand equity and pride of ownership for their clients.
While more and more recognition has been built, the guidelines are gradually being applied on over 800 products under Delta’s largest business group and have also been adopted by Delta’s other business groups. The design language not only helps with the improvement on physical products, but it is also integrated into the user interface design.
