Creative Partner,
Pearlfisher, London
Jonathan is a designer and co-founding partner of Pearlfisher. He oversees a portfolio of award-winning designs, including a high profile list of ethical, entrepreneurial and iconic brands. The outstanding commercial success of many of these design projects has led to Pearlfisher being named by the DBA as the leading design agency for Design Effectiveness in 2008.
He is also a frequent speaker at high-profile international industry events and regular contributor and commentator in the design and brand press.
In his not so spare time he helps REACH, a childhood leukaemia appeal, raises funds for Great Ormond Street Hospital, designs the odd garden, is writing a book for people with a desk job and a dream, and lives his former glorious rugby playing days through his children.
You can follow Jonathan on Twitter — @Jforddesigns
We will always want our pleasures but, yes, health is an increasingly key driver and motivator and brands have a hard job to do to balance our needs and desires. The food and drinks market in particular has taken up this challenge in the past 5 years with the phenomenal launch and growth of, for example, vitamin waters, smoothies, raw food pots and superfruits.
Social media is just a place—just another place in which to position your brand. Ultimately, it’s about always remembering that it’s big idea first, medium second.
Design is the ‘medium’ for the brand message and will take the brand from the physical and the passive to the social and the active to inspire a complete, future-facing and ultimately deeper connection.
The limited edition concept has become proliferated and diluted as brands launch limited editions that are not necessarily limited, where beauty seems to take priority over meaning and slapping a Limited Edition banner on it is maybe seen as a safe way of conducting a new product trial.
The brand name development process must be robust and capable of attaching specific meaning to what is often a broad set of challenges. Craig Swanson discusses three macro approaches that can be used to create a distinctive brand name.
Anthem's expert Kathy Oneto forecasts that 2012 is the year of Movement and Progress across a number of dimensions.
While it’s true that consumers are cost-conscious and more deliberate in their purchase-making decisions as a result of the recession, it’s also true that they’re looking for some bright spots in their daily lives.
It’s nothing new that brands rely on colour recognition, and in some cases words, to boost consumer recognition on noisy shelves. Both are vital in driving market share.
The future of taste is in the celebration of food. Healthy eating brands need to move from the visual imagery of tape measures, weighing scales and comparing ‘before’ and ‘after’ shapes.

