Diageo’s design chief on delivering ‘adaptable’ consistency

For Diageo, distinctiveness is the “number one thing” the drinks giant strives for across all its work.

That distinctiveness comes from tapping into what global design director Jeremy Lindley calls “brand truths”. Even when it comes to creating a new asset or dialling up an existing one, the design team start by looking at the brand itself.

“We’re not making stuff up,” Lindley says. “We’re finding things in the brand truth and then once you’ve identified the assets that are distinctive, then we’ll use those prominently and consistently.”

If you just leave everything the same forever, it can start to feel dated and almost start to feel like wallpaper with consumers.

Jeremy Lindley, Diageo

Design is a broad discipline and while pack design is obviously a huge part, it doesn’t end there. Diageo owns more than 200 brands, including premium Scotch whisky Johnnie Walker, Guinness and luxury tequila brand Don Julio. Lindley’s team has scope within those brands to show up in retail and hospitality, as well as the company’s “brand homes” such as the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin and Johnnie Walker’s Princes Street experience in Edinburgh.

The team also helps design what Lindley terms “brand worlds”.

“It’s the visual architecture or the visual system the brand works in,” he explains.

While Lindley doesn’t work directly on advertising, the brand worlds are highly influential on any communication and promotional work.

“We view design as a binding or glue. It drives the consistency that means things get recognised and associated with the brand,” he says.

Avoiding becoming ‘wallpaper’

While one of Lindley’s primary roles as design director is creating brand worlds that in turn drive consistency and distinctiveness, that doesn’t mean everything must stay the same.

The business aims to combine consistency and adaptability in its design principles. Diageo wants to facilitate creativity, while not taking away the things that make brands like Guinness stand out.

“That starts with understanding consumers’ memory structures,” says Lindley. “So, what do consumers actually understand about the brand and remember about the brand?”

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Key brand assets are a vital part of those memory structures. For example, Johnnie Walker’s square bottle, angled label and striding man are all “hardwired” into consumers’ memories.

While those hardwired brand assets are powerful drivers of success, Lindley recognises the need for these not to become stale or fade into the background.

“If you just leave everything the same forever, it can start to feel dated and almost start to feel like wallpaper with consumers,” he says. “We also understand the importance of flexibility and of creativity within those structures.”

A classic example dates back 15 years ago, when Diageo’s design team worked with artist Jasper Goodall to create a new version of Johnnie Walker’s striding man, in the artist’s signature style.

This model of using existing assets and working within those to drive creativity can drive some of the best designs, Lindley explains.

“It’s within those structures that are recognisable, but then you play with them and are creative with them,” he says.

Homing in on brand truths

By its nature, the role of the design team is extremely collaborative. Indeed, Lindley explains he has direct decision-making power over fairly little.

“It’s a highly collaborative role. It’s a very collaborative business. So when we’re developing a new design or a new design scheme, we’ll always be leading the thinking with global brand teams and with the lead markets as well,” he says.

While collaborative decision-making is central at Diageo, not every market can be involved in discussions, so therefore the business works to “cascade” new design work through the organisation and make sure it resonates everywhere.

The heart of what we’re doing in design is we’re searching for the truth.

Jeremy Lindley, Diageo

However, when there is momentum behind a good idea, people in the organisation get behind it quickly, Lindley notes.

“There’s a bit of a culture in Diageo, which is that great ideas have a tendency to get executed,” he says. Conversations moving quickly indicate when the team has landed on something “powerful”.

What makes a design idea powerful is when is has a “ring of truth” for the brand, Lindley adds.

What that means is looking within the brand itself to drive design ideas, whether that be for a new project or dialling up existing design choices.

“The heart of what we’re doing in design is we’re searching for the truth,” Lindley states. “We’re finding brand truths that are going to be interesting and relevant to consumers, that’ll form the heart of an idea for the brand.”

The design team also doesn’t pursue new projects on a whim. There’s no principle that says every certain number of years, the team has to do a re-design, for example. Instead, Lindley’s team will seek to be consumer-led, intervening to make brands resonate better with their audience, rather than pursuing tasks for their own sake.

“I’ll be honest and say, a lot of the time when someone is having a conversation with us and saying ‘I think we need to do a packaging redesign’, for example, our first port of call is to say: ‘Let’s really check if we do,’” he says.

Diageo is a strong believer in design done right and for the right reasons is a driver of distinctiveness, consumer preference and, ultimately, brand growth.

“We’ve got a huge catalogue of design projects where we can say, look, we’ve got very clear proof here that when you do the right design job, you can boost brand sales,” Lindley adds.

Designing premium brands

Premiumisation has long been a core focus for Diageo, which recently underlined its commitment to the luxury sector. Last year the business launched the Diageo Luxury Group, bringing its super-premium offerings into one business unit.

From brand homes and experiences, to products themselves, design obviously plays a huge role in driving premium perceptions.

Lindley and the design team are also tasked with ensuring the company drives forward its sustainability agenda. He doesn’t see sustainability and premium as necessitating a trade-off.

“We always to aim for the triple win, so we’re always looking for something that’s better for consumers, that is better from a carbon and a sustainability perspective, and can hopefully generate cost savings for us,” he says. “You can’t always achieve all three, but you always start with aiming at those.”

An example of a “triple win” is Johnnie Walker Blue Label Ultra, a super-premium, limited edition whisky in the brand’s lightest-ever bottle.

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“In our category, generally speaking, the more expensive the product is, the heavier,” Lindley explains.

Heavy weight glass takes more energy to create and is harder to recycle, meaning thinner, lighter glass is better from a sustainability point of view.

“The thought behind Ultra was to say, can we flip that paradigm? So instead of luxury being the heaviest, could luxury be the lightest and the most delicate? And we tried to put beauty into it,” he states.

Another area where Lindley is thinking about the future of luxury and super-premium is around generative AI. He is generally positive about the impact the technology will have on design, explaining he doesn’t see it as a “threat”.

While he is “excited” about the impact AI can have during early research in the design process, Lindley also sees limitations to its reach.

“The craft and attention to detail that we put into design is a reflection of the craft and attention to detail we put into the making of our liquids, which are amazing, and you feel that human touch. So, I don’t think AI will ever take over the whole process,” he states.

“We’re a premium and luxury business. Especially when you get to luxury, that is what people are paying for. That is what they value.”