Here’s an interesting analysis of the 2016 Presidential Campaign logos, by Sagi Naviv, designer and partner at the branding agency Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv.
Let me know what you think.
About a week back, in the post on Micromanagement, I was pointing out that design, unlike art, isn’t about the designer expressing him/herself through visual elements, but about conveying a specific message to the specific audience with the clear purpose to motivate a specific action.
A few years back John O’Nolan, wrote an interesting article covering a few differences between art and design.
“Perhaps the most fundamental difference between art and design that we can all agree on is their purposes.
Typically, the process of creating a work of art starts with nothing, a blank canvas. A work of art stems from a view or opinion or feeling that the artist holds within him or herself.
They create the art to share that feeling with others, to allow the viewers to relate to it, learn from it or be inspired by it.
The most renowned (and successful) works of art today are those that establish the strongest emotional bond between the artist and their audience.
By contrast, when a designer sets out to create a new piece, they almost always have a fixed starting point, whether a message, an image, an idea or an action.
The designer’s job isn’t to invent something new, but to communicate something that already exists, for a purpose.
That purpose is almost always to motivate the audience to do something: buy a product, use a service, visit a location, learn certain information. The most successful designs are those that most effectively communicate their message and motivate their consumers to carry out a task.”
You can read the full article here.
And as a bonus John made some really cool wallpapers on the same theme. You can download them here.
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I know we just saw each other like a few hours ago, and this might seem a bit random, but knowing how you never really understand what it is that I do, I thought about writing some letters to you, to explain. Yes, again… I know I’ve already told you so many times, but I feel like I need to explain again, when you keep asking me to just “add some text on a picture”, when creating posters.
So in these letters, I’m going to explain step by step what I do, and why is it important. But in order for you to understand what I do for companies, you first need to know the meaning of a few terms like “brand”, “branding”, “brand strategy”, “brand identity”, and the difference between them. So in this letter I’m going to explain to you what a brand is.
I know you’ve heard of it before, and I know you used it before, but I don’t think you know exactly what it means. Some people think a brand is a logo, or the design of any other deliverable, or even the company itself. The truth is, a brand may be influenced by all of these but in reality, it’s none of them.
A brand is an opinion, a perception. The perception people (customers and potential customers) have about your product or service. It is like some sort of reputation that preceeds you. And obviously this reputation can be a positive one or a negative one. So…the more people know about this reputation of yours, and the more positive it is, the bigger the brand you have.
And the really magical thing about a brand is that it sells for you. People will recommend your services to their friends and they will talk enthusiastically about you, and their friends will even be thankful for it. And all this for free. You don’t have to pay anyone to talk about you. They’ll do it for free if their perception about you is good.
It’s brilliant, isn’t it? At least as long as the perception is positive. If the perception is negative, it obviously means no sales. The good thing about it, is that this perception can be influenced and eventually changed.
But we are going to talk more about the way this perception can be changed and what influences it, in the next letter. Until then, be well!
Sincerely,
Your son
“Can I have that colour a little bit darker? Oh and the logo bigger. And maybe the text aligned to the left.”
For some of you this may sound familiar. For others it won’t. In any case it has a name. It is called “micromanagement”, and it means trying to control every detail of an activity to such a degree that it causes problems. In design, it happens when clients try to control details like colours, fonts and shapes.
It usually occurs because people tend to have this general understanding that design is about aesthetics, like art, and obviously everyone thinks they are entitled to an opinion on aesthetics. It’s understandable really why it happens, as design is firstly visual.
What people don’t usually understand is that design, unlike art, isn’t subjective and debatable. The visual part of design isn’t about the designer’s artistic expression. It is simply about the client’s customers. A design doesn’t look a certain way because the designer wanted it to look that way and because that’s what the designer likes.
Every design solution should be about what the customer wants and likes, and therefore the visual result is the “message” of the client, conveyed to the customer. Design’s aesthetics are the result of solving some communication problems between clients and customers. And so, every detail of the solution adds to the conveyance of the “message”. Altering these details may alter the objective itself.
Personal opinions and tastes have no place in the design profession. Although feedback is part of the design process, feedback’s purpose in the process isn’t about understanding the client’s taste better in order to create something they like. Feedback’s purpose in design is to gain clarity and focus on the “message” that should be conveyed, and the way it should be, in case the designer drifts away from the objective.
Clients managing details in a design solution, increases the risk of drifting so much away of what the customer wants, that the solution may be completely compromised.
In the end, for both the designers and clients out there, bare in mind that design is customer-oriented, and that’s how it should remain. Make decisions based on the objectives and the expected reaction you’d want the customers to have, not on personal tastes and opinions.
Image source: http://static.sportskeeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/chess-1427831819-2352632.jpg
Just bare with me for a moment, this won’t be about me. It will be about the work I do, though.
As I was saying, I’m a graphic designer. And no, I don’t spend my time doing cool stuff in Photoshop, although, for some of you this may be what you think of, when you hear the word “designer”. What I actually do, is finding ways to translate messages into visual language.
Design is a language. And as any language, its purpose is to be a bridge between individuals. An instrument of communication. It is supposed to create understanding and clarity. This obviously will mean a lot more than using a few tools in Photoshop. It means understanding the message, understanding the recipient, and finding ways to translate that message effectively. It involves extensive research, strategy, some drawing, and finally using softwares like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
I, the designer, don’t work for you, the client. I work for your customers. Truly. I may be hired by you, but I work for your customers, for their satisfaction, and on their money too (as the customers are the ones that buy your products and services).
Design means partnering with you, the client, in order to serve the customer needs. It ultimately means working together toward a common goal – creating better experiences for the customer.
What do you think? Have you thought about the design profession from this perspective?
I’ve recently stumbled upon an interesting article on colour and it’s power to change our behaviour, written by London-based Studio Jubilee.
You can read it here.
Let me know what you think.
I was recently working on a project for a client, and after showing the initial sollution, the client abruptly said “I dont like it!”, with no other explanation following.
The reason of sharing with you this story, is to portray how feedback could alter the design process, and relationship between a designer and a client. Design’s main purpose is communication between products or services and potential customers, so it’s quite ironic how communication itself can be the reason for not achieving the desired result in a project. If design’s purpose is communication (or it should be), then the designer is acting merely as a translator between the client and his customers. This is why feedback shouldn’t be so blunt and dismissive. Because as much as the client may not see or understand it, ideally, it always has a reason behind it. Of course, it is the designer’s job to explain the story behind it, and a good designer always has a reason based in the design brief for doing something.
This is why the client, ideally, should give feedback based on the initially outlined objective (the message that should be communicated and the way it should be communicated) and as little as possible based on personal tastes. The feedback should be detailed and contain as much information as possible for the designer to actually be able to produce a result that is efficient in it’s purpose to the customer, and agreable by the client.
In conclusion, design is serving a third party (the customer), and should be aimed for that purpose. Unnecessary frustrations between clients and designers usually just spoil the end result.
How did you manage to avoid frustrations with a client or designer?
Career Journal 