Frost*Collective’s CEO Vince Frost On Designing Success

Internationally recognised, Sydney-based founder and executive creative director of Frost*Collective, Vince Frost needs little introduction. Along with other leading experts and creatives, Frost is speaking at Adobe’s annual Symposium next month (August 15 and 16), so B&T caught up with the man himself as he has a special place in our hearts…

You see, among his many claims to fame, Frost is responsible for B&T’s current logo and the entire print magazine’s look and feel a few iterations back.

He’s one of Australia’s best-known design imports, he’s established a thriving practice and won a swag of awards.

However, while his professional life has been a raging success, Frost realised his personal life was a complete shambles.

“I was helping people work smarter. But I did not know how to live smarter. I was designing and redesigning everything but me,” Frost says.

His solution was to turn his principles of good design upon himself.

“I began applying my principles of design to my own life. And I found my flow: I am more reflective, more alive to my senses, more in touch with the people in my life and more aware of my value. In short, I am happier.”

Now, many years on from what he insists was an evolution rather than a revolution, Frost can added published author to his glowing resume.

When he takes to the stage at Adobe Symposium, Frost will be joined by client and close friend Ronni Khan, founder of Australian charity OzHarvest. OzHarvest is Australia’s leading food rescue charity. It collects quality surplus food, distributes it to people in need and diverts food waste from landfill.

This is no coincidence and sits with Frost’s current mission of making the world a better place to live in. His goal in life is to influence everyone he can to share his mission.

“Doing the right thing has always been there, but like never before there’s a focus on sustainability, social good… it’s becoming the focus of what people do. It’s no longer all about making money.

“The more you know, the more you’re close to, the better the opportunity to hone in on something that’s relevant to the project.

“Our clients have often given us lots of information, reams of it, but it’s not the designers job to analyse all of that, so they rely on their intuition and what’s worked in the past. That’s no longer a guarantee of success.

“Strategy has to happen before design.

“We traditionally would have looked to please the person who commissioned the work. Now you have to focus on the end user, the customer.”

“Some people focus on what looks nice, and that’s great, there’s room for everyone, but my focus is on designing success and we’ll do whatever it takes to design that successful outcome. What it looks like, we need it to connect with the end user, and to do that we need to utilise the technology and science to achieve that.

“It won’t be long and clients will soon start to demand that we can prove that the design will deliver the designed outcome. That’s a huge opportunity. It’s certainly not going to go away.”

If you’d like to hear from Vince Frost himself, and many brilliant thinkers like him including Cindy Gallop, David Godsman (chief digital officer, Coca-Cola Company) and Tim Urban (Creator, Wait But Why), get your tickets to Adobe Symposium in Sydney on August 15-16.

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Adobe Symposium OzHarvest Vince Frost