Design leaders conference: the best bits

Code Enigma’s design and marketing team met up in Dublin last week for the inspiring design leaders conference. We took so much away from it that I thought it’d be good to reflect on it.

I wrote a summary of everything I learned and soon had 11 pages of insight and actions for our own company. I won’t post those 11 pages here (because one of the things I learned was that clients like to be consulted, rather than spoken at with reams of content).

Key takeaways

Branding must reflect you and what you do.

Sounds really simple, doesn’t it? But so many don’t hit the mark. You have to consider if another company could fill your shoes if you packed it all in tomorrow. If they could, you aren’t offering anything unique. If you’re doing it right, then you’ll be able to recruit brand ambassadors from your client base, and doing that is a fantastic strategy to boost your success further. The key is staying true to your values and working with like-minded clients.

Know what you’re good at. Be different and stand out in the crowd.

Clients are busy.

When you think about how little time a client has, make sure you don’t waste their time when you do have it. Go to them instead of making them come to you. They want to know what we think, but they don’t have time to go looking for it. Ask more questions. Understand their bigger picture.

Be proactive.

Make things happen. Don’t sit and wait.

We came back from the conference and talked about it until the early hours, and we’re still buzzing from the ideas we came up with off the back of everything we heard. We picked up so much that has already positively influenced how we’re going to improve our communication and our customer relationships from today.

Thank you to the organisers and speakers!