In a new opinion piece published in Transform Magazine, Jocelyne Henri Danet, Group Managing Director at Lonsdale+Partners, raises a question the brand design industry can no longer afford to ignore: why do the agencies behind some of the world’s most enduring brand identities so often remain completely invisible?
When design disappears behind the brand
In fashion, architecture or product design, names carry weight. People seek out a Stella McCartney collection, visit a Tadao Ando building, or buy a product precisely because Jonny Ive was involved. In advertising, it is common — sometimes encouraged — for agencies to be credited alongside their clients. But in brand design, the opposite tends to be true. Visual identities, packaging systems, naming strategies and creative platforms are routinely presented as the sole work of internal teams. Agencies vanish. Sometimes they are even barred from entering the very award ceremonies that celebrate the work they conceived, led and delivered.
The piece also identifies a new and urgent threat. As generative AI tools multiply, they create the illusion that design is just a prompt away — blurring the line between generating a form and building a meaning. “If our industry does not now assert the singularity of its creative act, it will allow a devaluation to take hold that will cost it far more than a few missing credits.”
A call for change
Danet’s challenge to clients is clear and direct: “Work good enough to be deployed is good enough to be signed. Either the work carries the brand for years — and it has an author. Or it is worthless — and it shouldn’t be used. You cannot have it both ways.”
She also points to a more constructive path forward. Clients who do credit their agency partners don’t come out weakened — they come out credible. A partnership claimed jointly is a stronger partnership.
“Brand design shouldn’t be one of the only creative disciplines where successful work becomes anonymous the moment it enters the world.”
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