The Path to Special Projects
Change, like a river, flows constantly. This particular river offered three choices:
1. Point the canoe upstream and paddle like you’re holding back time.
2. Head to shore, find a beach and leave the adventure.
3. Find the flow, embrace the change, navigate elegantly and enjoy the new scenery.
Capsule has chosen the scenic option.
We’ve been paddling, portaging, and riding the current for quite a while now, and we have more than a few reflections on where we’ve been and what we’ve done. So we felt it appropriate to give a glimpse into what we’ve learned and why it matters.
This marks the first entry in a series that will unfold over the next handful of weeks to share some of the experience behind our insight. We hope you enjoy the views.
A bit of history from the canoe
Capsule recently celebrated 26 years in design, marketing and brand. We started in the early digital age when Amazon stock was $3.11 per share and the Nokia 3210 was the most popular cell phone.
Our team was a blend of designers, writers, researchers and strategy wonks. We wrote down our values, articulated a philosophy to balance research and design, then went out to find like-minded clients.
Design firm, or perhaps strategic design firm, was the only label that fit. The digital agency age was in infancy and always seemed too fleeting. We wanted to create lasting, thoughtful change for brand owners. Yet the integrated ad agency model seemed to have a challenging future based on our readings. So we looked to how brands became valuable and advertising wasn’t central to that formula.
When The Experience Economy by Joe Pine and Joseph Gilmore was released, it sparked something. And we considered calling ourselves an “experience design firm,” but in 1999, that title belonged to architects, consultants, and a handful of pioneers. So we made “experience design” part of our offering and philosophy, but not our definition.
Instead, we kept building. We expanded our capabilities across marketing, brand, and design, collaborating with clients like Byerly’s, Target, 3M, Best Buy, and other local partners.
Then something unexpected shifted our course.
Design Matters, and it changed everything
We got approached by a publisher, Rockport, to write a series of books on “Design Matters.”
This changed our trajectory and reinforced the belief we held in our vision for high-quality design and brand work fit nicely together.
The first book, Design Matters: Logos 01, gifted us with three things:
1. Perspective. We honed our ability to craft a great story around the role of logos in reflecting great brands.
2. Confidence. We researched the global landscape of firms doing this work with integrity, and it was a short list.
3. Opportunity. And, of course, dropping a book onto a table for every potential new client going forward.
This same exercise took place with the second book, Design Matters: Packaging 01 with amplified results. We started to find national and international clients seeking us out for brand and packaging work, from Red Wing Shoes to Herman Miller to Smartwool and Hydro Flask.
And just like that, we proved our small, agile team was able to jump into large organizations and create the change brands were seeking.
But despite the success, something was missing.
We still didn’t fit neatly into any category: not a design agency, not a branding firm, not a consultancy.
Where the momentum was taking us wasn’t quite clear. We had successes, far beyond our expectations, and didn’t have the words or label for who we were becoming.
But, the current was already shifting.
Next Up... Part 2: Becoming a Special Projects Agency.
Stay tuned for our next piece in the series, where we'll share how a single phrase, shared around a picnic table, changed everything.
