Disruption in Design’ is a specific act of challenging convention in how a company conveys its key messaging to stakeholders. It’s about designers being channel agnostic when considering how a piece of key information is communicated. It’s about turning normal on its head and considering alternative ways of engaging audiences.

‘Disruption’ or ‘Disruptors’ are overused ‘buzzwords’ that graze in the same paddock as the ‘storytelling’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘innovation’ sheep. It seems that one, some or all are being adopted by communications agencies when describing a unique point of difference. It’s a trend of preaching rather than practicing.

There are two that immediately come to mind – the rebrand for Mozilla and the Steal Banksy campaign for the Art Series Hotel group in Melbourne. Original in idea and unorthodox in approach, both tick the box for me.

Mozilla is a global, nonprofit organisation dedicated to making the web better by creating open source products and open standards — its most well known being the Firefox browser. With London-based Johnson Banks, Mozilla decided to do their rebranding process out in the open, posting their work-in-progress not just for client scrutiny but the public’s as well. Brave.

Art Series Hotels challenged guests to steal a genuine Banksy artwork in a promotion created by Naked Communications to reverse a decline in bookings. The result was an award winning campaign that encouraged guests and visitors to commit a crime. Brilliant!

This is an excerpt from Ligature Journal, to pick up your own copy head to Ligature Journal Issue Four