Pretty Package: Jessica Walsh

What drives you?

What motivates you in your work?Pushing forward our creative work, building our diverse team, and growing our business is what drives my productivity and gets me up in the morning. The work we do through our social impact initiatives such as Ladies, Wine & Design and Let’s Talk About Mental Health gives me a sense of purpose. Even when I have a lot of work on my plate, which is more often than not, I find the energy to keep going from connecting with other humans and trying to do some good in a sometimes dark world.

Can you briefly describe your studio for us?

Since I was young, it was always my dream to have a studio that was entirely my own. &Walsh is a creative team based in New York City. With our strengths in brand identity, campaigns, commercials and social strategy, we work with brands in early stages, advising on products, identifying audiences and helping to shape the brand from the ground up.

How would you describe your work? Is there a typical style?

People have described my personal work as “colorful, bold, emotional, surrealist and provocative”. I do have certain visual sensibilities, and I’m drawn to that surface as themes in my personal work. With that said, we don’t have one set style for our branding work with clients. Our goal with brands is to help them discover their own unique brand personality through our strategy phase. All our creative work is a reflection of this: from copywriting and typography to color choices and the images we create. This helps a brand build equity in something true and honest to them that helps set them apart from their competition. I don’t believe in putting my own personal style onto a brand unless it’s a match for the brand’s personality and makes sense for the brand’s goals and target audiences.

What role does beauty play in your work?

When we experience something beautiful, we often feel pleasure. Beauty evokes an emotional response in us. There are many different types of things that we can find beautiful across our five senses. We can see, taste, touch, smell or hear something beautiful. Beauty is a combination of shape, form, color and composition that pleases our aesthetic senses, especially sight. Beauty is not specific to one type of style – nor is it superficial. It creates an emotional response that is hardwired in us. Our brain releases dopamine when we experience beauty, similar to when we go on a good run, have sex, do drugs or eat chocolate. Beauty is a part of functionality in many types of creative work. Research has shown that beautiful environments make people behave better, lowers crime, and even helps people heal in hospitals. People choose to buy products based on the beauty of the package design. As designers and creators, we can’t ignore something so closely tied to functionality.

What constitutes “good design” in general? 

Good design is in my opinion both beautiful and functional. It’s successful at what it’s trying to achieve or communicate. Good design can be used to inform, inspire, delight, sell products or tell a story. It can also make complex topics easier to understand, make experiences simpler, reduce waste or drive attention to a cause.

Do female designers have a harder time getting recognition?

When I was in college, there were only a few women to look up to in the industry. It was a men’s club at the top. Looking at my contemporaries today, many of my favorite creatives are other women. The gender balance is improving for a number of reasons: from women’s movements, increased awareness and intolerance of sexism, men splitting parenting duties, and generally there being more women idols and mentors. With that said, we still have a way to go to equality. Privilege still plays a huge part in who receives accolades and power in our industry: gender, ethnicity and upbringing obviously still impact your chance of success or even being exposed to a field like design. But we’re making great strides from where we were a few ­decades ago.

What is the importance of design for the success of companies in general today?

I believe that the content is the most important part of a brand’s image. That means the product or service or the organization itself usually leaves the largest impression of the brand on a consumer’s mind. If you put great packaging on a poor product, you’re only going to go so far. If the product is already good, however, great design can make a product experience truly great and enhance the experience for all involved. It can help sell more products, increase awareness of a brand, build brand loyalty, tell stories and make emotional connections with consumers.

How does design translate what is at the core of the brand?

We believe that great branding work illuminates a brand’s true voice and personality. Too often we see brands fall back on identity trends that make them look like everyone else: whether that’s corporate Swiss modernism or more recently the “start-up brand” look and feel. The result is that these brands end up looking the same. When your brand looks like everyone else, it’s difficult to differentiate in the competitive landscape and create something memorable and timeless. At &Walsh, we aim to create timeless brands that stand out from the competition. To do this, when we onboard our clients, we will take them through a “brand therapy” phase. This is done through a combination of an onboarding website, stakeholder interviews and brand therapy workshops. The goal of these sessions is to help brands “find their weird”. Too often brands are told to suppress idiosyncrasies or opinions out of fear of how consumers will respond. The problem is that when you try to please everyone and avoid anything that might offend someone, you wind up with a “vanilla” brand that says nothing. No one hates those brands, but no one truly loves them either. We’ve seen that the most successful brands stand for who they are unapologetically. A great brand is like a great person: true and honest about who they are and unafraid to show their true colors. “Finding your weird” does not mean all our brands turn out bizarre. We help each brand discover what truly makes them unique, who they are at their core.

How do you manage to make informed decisions in a complex world that can have a long-term and positive impact on society?

As a business owner, I aim to make a positive impact by working with clients that share our mission to make the world a better place to live. We accomplish this through design and with informed products and ideas. Geltor for instance is a sustainable and Earth-conscious protein brand. Another great example is Isodope, a.k.a. Isabelle Boemeke, a Brazilian model and influencer who has dedicated her platform to the fight against our current climate crisis. As a creative, I make sure I dedicate part of my time to personal projects that have long-term and positive impacts. Besides the social initiatives I’ve already mentioned, there’s also Pins Won’t Save the World, which raised over $120,000 in only three months and donated 100% of the profits to the charities under threat from Donald Trump’s administration. With the Sorry I Have no Filter photographic image series, the goal is to show my thoughts and emotions without a filter, in response to Instagram becoming a place where people try to show off their life in a pretty package – and I’m guilty of falling into that trap myself. [laughs]