Want to Better Serve Your Clients? Become Them.

As a designer for brands, starting my own product company gave me a dose of humility— and it changed the way I relate to clients.

- DAVID PALMER

I thought I understood my clients’ needs. Then I started doing the same work as them—and realized how much I had to learn. It was humbling, but it also made me better at my job. Back in 2001, I cofounded an agency called Love, which designs brands, packaging, communications campaigns, and experiences for the likes of Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker, and Guinness. Over the years, we've come up with a lot of ideas that never saw the light of day; we called them “urchins”—wily ideas without a home. So in 2020, we launched Urchin Spirits, with hopes of filling “fat niches” in the spirits market—or underserved segments with low barriers to entry, but significant growth potential.

But pretty quickly, we realized there were a lot of external factors affecting our clients’ decisions that we'd never had to worry about as designers.

For example, we came in with a distinct vision for our first product, an Irish whiskey-based liquor we'd named Lucky Sod. We wanted it to look short, stubby, and heavy (which meant thicker glass at the bottom), and to top it with a cork stopper instead of a screw cap to help it feel distinct and premium.