Got a problem? Try black and white thinking.

People thought we were mad attempting to get a design business off the ground during the deepest UK recession since records began. There's certainly no shortage of competition: a simple Google search of the phrase ‘design agency UK’ throws up 194,000,000 results. It looked as if the world didn't need another design or branding consultancy, yet it was clear to us that such challenging economic conditions called for an alternative approach to design and brand building - one where we cut out the hubris and get back to basics.

We live in an age where we’re swamped with information. But information and technology don't always make life simpler. From confusing charts and models, to uninterruptible jargon and wordy propositions, modern marketing has become a highly complicated and frustrating business. It’s little wonder that so much of what it delivers misses the mark and leaves consumers baffled and boards nonplussed.

What’s needed in today’s complex business environment is some good old fashioned simplicity, or as we call it - black and white thinking. We focus on what good design has always done well: creative problem solving. Black and white thinking is important for problem solving. It's a skill, like carpentry, but somehow we lost it along the way in the hubbub about branding.

This desire for simplicity isn’t just talk. It has required us to fundamentally shift the way that we work:

1. We've seen so much marketing effort and design time go to waste in answering the wrong problem. But when you’re forced to be simple you’ll quickly discover that you’re forced to face the real problem. We put emphasis on defining the problem up front, because the old adage remains true today: a problem well defined is a problem half solved.

2.  Most marketing problems these days are confronted by the creation of a lengthy presentation. There is a tendency to mistake simplicity for naïvety. It's assumed that the longer and more verbose the ‘slide deck’ the more credibility it will have. We've always found that a jazzy fifty plus slide presentations, as impressive as they might look, often mask a lack of real understanding of the problem. We prefer to hash things out around our table, and instead of heading to Getty Images we hand-draw our slides for each client. This process forces us to be sure we really know what we’re talking about.

3.  One of the most challenging aspects of black and white thinking is that there's nowhere to hide. When you can't deliver decoration, you have to deliver substance. Our ideas begin as black and white sketches. This way we can all agree on the power of an idea in its simplest form.

This new - old - approach to black and white thinking also streamlines the process - shortening the time it takes to agree on a great idea. Simplicity reduces our clients' stress levels rather than adding to it, but most importantly it helps them to make better decisions. And sound decision making is what's needed to succeed in this challenging economic climate.