Keeping the creative juices flowing TEXT: FRANK VAN LIESHOUT | PHOTOS: WISEFOOLS
Combining creative flair with technical nous, Wisefools serves its clients with sophisticated branding and a smart digital experience. Set up in the city of Ghent some 12 years ago, Wisefools is the brainchild of Pieter Langeraert and Dries Van haver. While Pieter took up creative responsibilities, Dries focused more on strategy and technical design. “This is how we came up with the name Wisefools,” Pieter explains. “It expresses the field of tension between the rational and the emotional, the two ingredients you need to create effective communication in the online and offline environment.” Today, they have focused their activities on branding identity, branding acti22 | Issue 69 | September 2019
vation, and the digital experience. “The most important part of branding is finding and defining the essence of a brand, a company or a product and translating this into a design expressing its DNA,” Pieter explains. “So it’s not just a logo, a font and a colour, but also an idea, a message and a way of life. For the user, it should be a unique digital and physical experience.”
DNA Supported by the digital developers at sister company Cabinet C, Wisefools’ multidisciplinary team of strategists, creatives, UX specialists and copywriters develop the brand identity and translate this into a complete experience. This includes website design, social campaigns and advertising, but it also stretches into the
physical domain. “We like to be involved not only in branding a client’s website and social presence, but also support their activities in the real world: for instance, by branding their events or offices,” Pieter explains. “Quite often, we see businesses where these two worlds are disconnected, where one party develops their online presence, and another their offline branding. The result is that part of their DNA gets lost in the process.” Although Wisefools is in the driving seat during the branding process, effective branding is always the result of close collaboration between the agency and the client. “It’s a co-creative process,” Pieter explains. “We need the client to find out about the brand, and to ask them questions to make sure the brand’s positioning