The Evolution of Branding and Product Design - David Landa - S3 Ep. 2

In this episode of UX Banter, we are joined by Mr. David Landa, Partner, and Executive Design Director at Free Association. With a passion for design, he helps brands create value through innovative product design, brand strategy, and team leadership. Specializing in Innovation, Brand Strategy, Prototyping, Storytelling, and UX/UI Evolution, David is an expert in navigating complex design and innovation challenges.

Discussion points - 

• How did you come into this profession, and what made you what you're doing today? 1:43
• Why did you name the company ‘Free Association’? 7:43
• How was your experience working with Google Maps & Apple Maps? 10:00
• What sort of work went into the smart city project of Toyota that you are associated with? Share with us your experience. 
• How do you differentiate between working for a bigger organization's prototyping, or North star vision versus any North Star development for any startup? 
• What importance should young entrepreneurs give to the UX for designing the North star? 18:41
• Rapid Fire Questions 20:32
• What role does psychology play in defining the initial product or prototype that you're working on?
• Intuition versus relevance, how does that play and fit into the bigger picture? 28:29
• How do you connect the entire narrative - lead designs to intuition to brand personality, and then product design? 30:49 
• What are your thoughts on generative AI? 33:33
• What do you think about the anti-AI voices? 36:54
• What advice would you give to somebody who is just starting their career? 38:58

 

Show notes

 

• I learned through making stuff. And it's always really been the way of just putting myself into new environments, new challenges, and trying to figure it out. 
• We started to learn what it was about design that we loved, and how to follow that path. And started to move up from doing websites and advertising, moving into branding, starting to get into UX, and that's when it started trending as a real thing. 
• Another part that's exciting about Toyota is they think of mobility, as movement as in moving hearts and minds. So that's always been a fun part of Toyota. 
• The Woven City is a living laboratory that they're building on the foothills of Mount Fuji to accelerate automated technologies and technologies connected to this idea of being a mobility company, by having people live work, and play in the city, they can have these different technologies out in a very connected way. 
• The kind of experience that we're trying to create, and understand that technology is really in service of people or are the people in service of technology? 
• Picking a horizon is important, as knowing what you're shooting for and how far out. The reason you do North Star vision is to set the idea or the concept for where you're trying to go for right the moonshot. 
• Society has to be ready for innovations for them to take off and for people to adopt them. Culturally, it has to make sense. 
• I try to understand a brand and a company through an archetype. There is a discipline called archetypal branding, which is used more in marketing and branding, I tend actually to bring it over into product design. 
• Believe in your ideas for a little bit, just give them oxygen and let them go. Even bad ideas, good ideas, whatever. Get it out there and see where they take you. 
• Generative AI is great at sketching business plans and giving you a roadmap to do things and telling you where to research. But I still think humans need to make sense of it, and humans need to put spirit into it. 
• Do stuff that brings value to the world and know that it'll come back X fold. 

 

Links -

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlanda/ 

Company website: https://www.freeassociation.com/