“The eyes don’t lie.”

There is a scene from Sergio Leone’s masterpiece ‘Once Upon A Time In America’, a scene devoid of any dialogue, where an elderly Robert De Niro visits his old stomping ground and we see him looking through a hole in the wall into another room. From the other side of the wall, for almost a minute, all we can see are his eyes. And his eyes tell us everything we need to know. Eyes filled with floods of memories, melancholy, heartbreak, sadness, love – remembering an innocent moment of curiosity from his childhood. I’ve thought about this scene recently, because after a year of masks and multiple video meetings, we have all become experts in the absence of body language – we have all had to rely on looking into each other’s eyes to get at the truth. So when our Head of Design Donya Davis shared the concept for our id rebrand, it really struck me how such a simple motif, an eye, can convey all there is to know about us - our team’s diverse lived-through experiences and perspectives - and our line of work. Not being a designer myself, I’ve quickly learnt how different Design is to Art. And it all comes down to the eyes. A designer has multiple sets of eyes on the process – client and account teams’ viewpoints and perspectives, messages that need to be conveyed or intimated. Subjective points of view and different beliefs that need to be negotiated and solved. And all that before the design has even reached the gaze of the intended audience. And when we show a first draft to a client, you know immediately where you stand , because the eyes don’t lie.

An artist need only worry about one set of eyes. Their own. And yet with everyone staring at them, a designer also has to try and stay true to their own ideas, beliefs, and vision in order to create something that not only works, but is memorable.

Like the best art, the best design still draws you in, leaves you wanting to know more, and most importantly – it leaves you curious.

And that is exactly what our id team strives for – while treading that fine balance between Design and Art, ultimately our job is to create curiosity.