Bruno Munari design method… and mine! [steps 5 to 10]

Bruno Munari design method for objects/products is usable also for designing brands and their strategic plans. It’s a methodology that brings the designer from problem to solution with a process based on 10 steps. Having defined the problem, deconstructed it into its primary components, collected and analysed the data related to them, now its time to go though the most enjoyable part and start the creative part of this process.

Step 5. Creativity [NOT Ideas]

In this phase creativity must replace intuitive ideas in order not to nullify the use of a design method. Creativity [from the Latin CRIBRUM: “sieve”] is certainly to be understood as a search, a patient reconstruction of elements known to be connected with each other in an original way, by developing and using the techniques of lateral thinking theorised by Edward De Bono.

Creativity can only consist, therefore, of a mere ideas production process. Starting from exploring experiential known elements by putting them in focus through different points of view, reinterpreting and creating solutions whose validity – even if only in retrospect – is supportable by logic.
Following this search a number of strategies are eventually identified to activate with the aim to achieve the objectives of the brand: the solution.

The strategic ideas will be evaluated on the basis of research carried out on the materials and technologies used for the project [step 6 identified by Munari], experimented [step 7], prototyped [step 8], verified and tested [step 9] before reaching their “final shape” [step 10] and to be put “in production”.

During these other stages that follow the creative phase, some of the strategies will be deleted from the brand management plan, others will be changed in some respect, and every detail will be weighted and refined with the necessary adjustments before it is definitively approved.

By using this design methodology, the brand’s professionals will be sure to have thought of everything, having conceived and developed – among the possible strategic compositions suitable to achieve the need to satisfy – a strategic branding plan that can boast a considerable degree of coherence, coordination and functionality compared to the initial objectives.

Thanks to Bruno Munari every designer can go from problem to solution in 10 very useful and practical steps to avoid workflow mistakes and the production of non-sustainable ideas, don’t you think?