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Dark Design Firm Secrets that clients have always wanted to know

How many times have you gone to a designer to get a bunch of concepts created and how often have you thought “Damn! I could have done this myself!”?  It happened during my first freelance gig when I was 15. A textiles mill wanted a logo and after about 60 variations (student enthusiasm!) I presented my delightfully minimal and subtracted logo consisting of 3 wobbly lines. The fucker said “I could have drawn these three lines myself!” and actually kept the logo and booted me out.

So, are these designers actually worth it? Aren’t they just people who you go to for aesthetic opinions? Aren’t you the one who adds business logic to their miserable scrawls (and boy, do they wail!) when they present it to you? Well, here are all those answers boyo and some of them are pretty cocked. So don’t say I didn’t warn you.

What is Design?
Commonsense. Yeah. Pretty much common sense mostly. I could say design is a complex process that consists of an understanding of gestalt and it’s effects on perception, an understanding of cultural  trends, a close alignment to the real world business or operational needs and is a direct anchor to specific aesthetic experiences. It’s all true, however, here’s a simpler way of saying it.

a. An understanding of gestalt and it’s effects on perception
Even babies understand how shapes and forms communicate. Becase you have commissioned a logo, you are looking at it as an object, a checklist of core values perhaps, but not as a sensory experience. You cannot because you’ve already thought it. But me, i’m different. As a designer I’ve trained myself to look at the world differently. It’s my job to manipulate people with sensory stimuli, because I’ve had years of experience in knowing what stimuli pushes which button. To me it is common sense.

b. An understanding of cultural  trends
Who do you think dictates what is fashionable this season in mens wear, or which colour palette or beat rules the waves? Designers of all types chart global trends in fashion, music, films, graphics, street culture and more. Why chart trends? It’s the oldest social phenomenon. The joneses next door, peer mirroring thing. We’re all bloody monkeys. So, unless you’re sitting there charting trends like me, you’ve joined the party at the bumpy side of Roger’s Bell Curve.

c. A close alignment to the real world business or operational needs
If you still think designers are those bearded nuts, with touchy feely nonsensical ideas about brands and who’s crap you have to listen to because your CEO is a closet painter, then you’re so busted! We still have our beards, but a good designer will give your marketing team a run for their money. Design schools actually have guest lecturers who give out lessons in marketing and budgeting in advertising y’know. And then there’s the fact that every canny designer knows to hit the Nielsen website at least once a week and especially before meetings with certain puffy clients.

So,if it’s all common sense, why the dog and pony show?

Aha. I’m glad you asked. Before you understand why designers act like Santas’ with elves during presentations, you have first understand what happened during the ‘design-process‘. See, no matter what anyone says there is no such thing as a design process. It’s just an term used in retrospect to explain the duration during which the concepts evolved. Trying to replicate the damn thing is useless. So, the designer was sitting there, exhausted from reading all that source and reference material staring at that stain on his bathroom door, when BAM! he sees a form and it all makes perfect sense. He runs back and sketches it. It works. He quickly runs it past a mental checklist. Reflects business, scalable, cohesive, pratical…etc.) Once he’s sure, he commits it to paper.

When it’s time to present it he knows that if he ever told you that he came up with the concept while taking a shit, you’re likely going to take a second opinion. Therefore those endless slides on value research, forum testing, connection with aesthetic ratios in nature and a whole lot of other crap like this. What’re you going to say? It looks like you did it while you’re taking a shit? Cough up that last payment bro. This is how it is.

Wait, my designer doesn’t say stuff like this.
I know. Any ideas on how you’re going to resolve that? Huh? anything?

Need Investment Advice – Try Onemint

This ain’t no design post. Just some friendly advice. I love that guy over at Onemint and you should too. He’s got his head firmly on his shoulders.

Morton’s Fork in a Court hearing!

I discovered a nice little story on Wikipedia, where a judge from the US court of appeals shoots down an appeal from the Burroughs household!

“One might perhaps have expected the plaintiffs to contend directly, in light of the issues in this lawsuit, that the 1981 film is based on the book. However, by mounting an indirect attack, in which the major premise is that the 1932 film is based on the book, plaintiffs apparently hoped to impale MGM with a ‘Morton’s Fork’: either the 1981 film followed the 1932 film, thereby infringing the book, or the 1981 film did not follow the 1932 film, thereby breaching the 1931 Agreement. Even if plaintiffs’ major premise were sound, which our discussion in the text … demonstrates it is not, MGM was not necessarily forced into the dilemma that plaintiffs seek to create. Since the standard by which we judge the similarity of film to book is not the same standard by which we must judge the similarity between the two films … the Fork is flawed by the fact that its tines are not true opposites. Thus the possibility remained that for its new remake MGM could eliminate the arguably infringing elements of the 1932 film in a way that did not substantially alter the story, thereby complying with both the copyright law and the 1931 Agreement. As it happens, this may have been the course MGM followed. Most of the specific incidents in the 1932 film that plaintiffs claim were taken from the book, i.e., Holt’s killing of the ape, Tarzan’s killing of the lion with a stranglehold, and Holt’s asking Jane if she can use a gun, are not in the 1981 film.”