Kat Lyadova

2Hi, Pulat. Thank you so much for inviting me. This is the first time I'm talking about design, I would say, with lawyers on camera. So I'm not quite sure what to expect. Hopefully what I say is gonna be useful to somebody. Yeah,

4That is true. And it's a great first question. Let's talk about design with a person who doesn't have a design background. Anyways, so I have a professional background in linguistics actually. I went to school back in Russia. That's where I'm originally from, from Siberia. I went to school for linguistics and communications. So, I actually studied English and French. And a whole bunch of other things that were less necessary in my following life. And then after that, I came to Canada and here I actually studied arts. But when I was back in university, I started working as a graphic designer right from, I believe, my second year. And that was the time when design was a lot less seen serious and professional than nowadays.

5It was early 2000s, and as long as you could put something together in Photoshop, you qualified as a designer. So I was one of those young kids who really liked playing with Photoshop, and somebody actually hired me to do job first part-time, and then they hired me full-time. So throughout my whole years in university, I was working as a graphic designer. And I gained quite a bit of experience. Like, at first I was a horrible graphic designer, but then after 4 years working for the same company, I actually learned something. I actually started managing some younger people by the time, and then I was thinking, well, I like graphic design more than I like communication, so why don't I go somewhere and study something more relevant?

6And again, instead of studying design, I studied arts, But the way I like to explain it to myself is that design is basically visual communications. And I have a degree in communications and I have a degree in art. And together they kind of make visual communication, so it makes sense. And on top of that, I obviously have many, many years of experience by now. So, I qualify.

8Yeah, absolutely. There are more connections than people think and there are more connections than I used to think. Let's say back in the times when I was trying to find my first job in Canada, it was really difficult because I had hard times explaining why I have a degree in linguistics and trying to find a job in design. How are the two connected? But to give you an example, a few years back I was working with RBC Bank and I was part— I was working with their frameworks department. And what they do, they basically develop a visual language for the entire bank that everybody would be using and to make sure everybody is on the same page.

9It's basically an extension of branding and digital design. It's creating one big library and it's pretty much exactly the same thing as linguistics. It's organizing a lot of information, making sure people understand each other, people communicate, and people communicate using the same language. It's just instead of words, we're using visual symbols. Like we communicate with color, we communicate with fonts, we communicate with components and it's a big work and it's very, very important and large organizations are very much into creating design systems these days because it— like first of all, it saves money, that's why. Because when you use the same language and you have the same components available to everybody, you like really save time and you save time on errors and development and all of this.

12It depends what you mean by design language. And by the way, you brought up a good point about translating from one language into another because to me, lawyers' language is a different kind of language that you need to have special skill set to be able to understand. Design is also a different kind of language. It's just visual, it's not verbal. How often do I get to design a language? Probably in some, to some extent, every time when I work on a branding project, because branding is effectively an exercise in developing the common language for a company that they will be using to speak to their customers, to their users, and they need to be consistent in what they say and how they come across.

13How they look so people recognize it and people know it's them and they can trust it. So it's a lot, it's definitely about communication and understanding and clarity and building trust. That's why we're doing it.

15Mm-hmm.

18Well, our job would be to try to understand what they are, what they do, and what they want other people to think about them. And then we would process it, compare it to other firms and to industry standards, and basically translate it to the people that they are interested in working with. So, we'll translate it in a simpler language and visual language and make sure that their values are communicated in the way that they would be understood. Because it's very— what happens often when companies, like you mentioned, when they write copy themselves or when they design logos themselves, they, in their realm of professional services, they live in their own let's say, bubble, and they understand each other, and they don't necessarily understand their audience and vice versa.

19So they understand what they say and they think it makes sense, but it doesn't necessarily make sense to the other side. So in that case, when they need to really speak to the audience or when they need to grow, look bigger, get outside of the box, they need a mediator, somebody who would help them translate translate that and explain it to other people. It's also, by the way, good for the company because what I see a lot is that, you know, when you start a professional services business, you don't necessarily think about your branding. You think about the kind of services that you are going to provide. You don't necessarily know what your vision is, what your mission is.

20You just never get to think about it. Like, I mean, sometimes you do, but not all the time. So the branding exercise is also good for you to actually, for you and your company to understand what is that you are. Like, because to be able to explain it to somebody else, you need to know what you are, right? So it's about

22Yeah, of course. Yeah, you need to know who your customers are, and then you, after that, you figure out how to talk to them. Because different things click with different customers, different types of people, right?

24Mm-hmm.

26If— what's— sorry, what's the question? If that's the right tool?

28Yeah, of course. I mean, nowadays everybody needs a website. And I suppose when it comes to professional services like lawyers, a website is basically part of the branding because that's how people find them, that's how people find out about them, that's how they read about their services and see their pictures. It's very often the first a point of interaction. So it's, it's just as important, probably more important nowadays than business cards, and it should be designed at the same time and in the same way as the logo and stationery and everything else.

30Well, sometimes it's the office. It's not something that we do, but it's part of the branding. So like we wouldn't design the whole office necessarily, but we would design the sign. We would design maybe the sign for the door or the sign that you would put inside on the wall in your boardroom. You would pick the color of your chairs and carpets, based on your brand. In case you sponsor any events or activities, I know it's a little bit hard to talk about it nowadays because there are no events or activities, but generally speaking, if there is a trade show, for example, you are going to have a booth and you need it to be branded, or you might have some kind of event.

31You may, like, I can't imagine lawyers wearing matching t-shirts, but maybe sometime in the future something like this might happen.

33What is branding? Branding, it's the face of your company. It's the soul of your company. It's essentially who you are, who you want, or better say, it's not who you are. It's what people think you are.

35Probably. It may not be a very distinct brand. It also depends on how you started the company and what's your background and how much you know about branding and marketing. Maybe you have a very strong personality and a very strong vision and you know exactly what you want to be. And it translates, it reveals itself in how you talk to people, how you sell yourself, what kind of language you use to talk about your services on the website. It's also branding. It may not be necessarily consistent But it's something.

37By making sure everything matches. The language matches the visuals. The visuals match between each other. Like the logo matches the font. The photography is appropriate, the colors are appropriate, and all of it matches the promise that you are trying to make.

39Yeah, it is about the promise. It's about what you promise your customers and what they should expect. It's setting expectations.

41Absolutely.

43Absolutely, 100%. If you stand out, if you look very professional, if you look just exactly how you want to be, it definitely makes you stand out. It makes you cooler, like, excuse my language, I know it's Maybe not very appropriate for lawyers, but it definitely makes you more serious and professional in your professional circles. And by the way, if you are not just a solo practitioner, if you have a team, it's also very good for team building. It's good for the culture and for morale. If you want to retain people, people would rather work for a company that has a personality.

45Yeah, especially young people. It's very important.

48I would say that if they don't plan to grow, if they're absolutely okay where they are, and if they're confident that nothing will change until the end of their career, that's probably fine. But if you are a more ambitious younger firm, if you're especially if you are trying to target younger audience, if you are not just working with baby boomers, but if you, let's say, want to provide services for millennials, those people are a lot more picky about design and branding. It's not— they're not gonna read law papers and they make decisions based on design because that's how our culture works nowadays. I actually have a couple of good examples to illustrate that.

50Yeah, we designed a brand for our accounting firm and we also designed brand for one lawyer. He is human rights lawyer. And both of them came to us with the same ask. They basically said, and they both have been in business, especially the accounting firms, they have been in business for more than 20 years. And they come to us because they say that we want to start targeting young people, we want to work with millennials, we need new fresh clients and we want to look cool. We are not cool. Help us. So people who understand, companies who understand the importance of it, this is basically innovations in that space for lawyers and accountants. Design is innovation.

52I think the biggest challenge was actually the confidentiality, the amount of confidentiality that we had to deal with. He was, he had Like in the past, he had worked with very high-profile clients and he was very much concerned about it. So our communication was very interesting. We basically had to communicate through secure channels and the information that he was able to provide was sort of arriving through different channels as well. And there was a limited amount of information that he was allowed to say. That was quite interesting. I think that was the challenge, that was unusual challenge that I remember. Another challenge that's not unusual that we see quite often is finding the balance between traditional conservative industry and trying to target it to younger audience.

53On the one hand, he wanted to look cool, and on the other hand, it's the industry where that's just supposed to look very professional. We can't afford to be playful. We need to find the balance between too much and not enough, you know. So, we couldn't design a logo for him, let's say, like our company logo. We're a design company, we can do whatever we want. But he is a lawyer, he still needed to look like— he still needed to make sure people trust him. And the same challenge, by the way, we had with accounting firm. It was the same situation where it's a traditional industry, but they positioned themselves as pioneers of some sort.

54They're innovative within a very traditional and old-school industry.

56I can show you the logo, it looks pretty cool. It's a matter of Finding the right language, you know, it's looking at what trends are out there for professional companies, seeing how much of it we can use, how much freedom we can allow ourselves. It's just finding the balance. So sometimes it's a combination of sort of more traditional colors but more interesting innovative shapes and forms or fonts. Yeah, it's doable.

58All of them. I'm gonna answer your last question, all of them. There is typography, there is color, there are shapes, graphics, photography. That's basically it. And you combine them. I mean, there are also Graphics is sort of a broader definition, I would say, because it also includes illustrations and iconography and patterns and all kinds of stuff. I would say you can't really separate them. Everything goes in. When we design the logo, obviously it's shapes and colors and fonts. All together. It's not like— you can think about it as building blocks, right? And you can't just pick one and say this is the finished piece. You have to work with all of them. But for lawyers, I would say, I think I may understand your question.

59So, if you mean that what needs extra attention when designing logos, let's say, or brand for a lawyer's company, I would say that typography definitely is important because there are going to be a lot of legal documents and there is going to be a lot of writing. So choosing the right font that is appropriate for different cases is going to be a big part of it. When we designed the project for the lawyer, we spent quite a bit of time just designing the business card, just finding the right font and making sure it's just perfect.

61Yes,

63There

67Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I'm not familiar with court forms, so I'm not sure how standardized they are. But I can speak about just other kinds of forms and long-form documents. I can tell that I've seen great examples and bad examples, mostly bad examples. And this is where design can make a huge difference. And what we talk about here when we talk about design, it's not necessarily about visuals, it's not about bells and whistles, It's about making it readable. It's about organizing information in a way that's not intimidating and actually makes sense, that the information is broken down in proper sections, they have proper separation, proper font hierarchy, and people can read it and people can fill it in and they know where they need to fill it in without having to spend like an hour of their time just like reading the whole thing and looking for things.

68It's a very, very important thing.

70As long as you want your court form to look different, I'm not sure what are the implications there, but definitely, yeah, we can improve usability. It's not just about 3D picture.

72Maybe they'll see your form and think, oh my God, thanks God for this person. Finally.

74Yeah, I'm just surprised that it hasn't been done before because I know when it comes to, let's say, legal forms that are coming, let's say, from the government, historically there had been like a series of major efforts to improve usability and readability. Of this form. If you read the, like, a design textbook, there are famous use cases when, you know, back in the maybe '60s or '70s, US government hired designers to actually clean the mess, make everything look how it's supposed to. Don't quote me on the time, I don't remember when exactly it happened, but it's a necessary thing.

76Probably email is the best tool to contact us. It's just hello@oddbee.com.

78Thank you so much for inviting me to LabPod. It was fun.