The Substance of Style
January 17, 2012 Filed in: Design as
Strategy
This
morning during a networking event, I asked the audience
if any of them had ever purchased a bottle of wine
because they liked the look of the label. As I
predicted, over half of the people in attendance raised
their hand indicating that they had. Needless to say,
this made me smile and I then proclaimed “that, my
friends, is the power of design.”
Often when we think of design, it’s easy to dismiss it as the frosting on the cake or the pretty wrappings on the package. We may not feel that it is necessary — that the substance of what is being offered should matter more than the style in which it is being presented. After all, we have been conditioned by decades of “don’t judge a book by its cover” and “beauty is only skin deep” thinking. Those adages may have seemed true two or three decades ago, but today we live in an age of heightened aesthetic. It is very unlikely that we will ever go back to the days of brown paper packages and generic black and white food labels. Design is simply too important.
So what exactly is happening in our brains when we select one product over another based on what it looks like? Quite simply, we are making a series of assumptions based on what we know. Let’s go back and use the wine label as an example. We may not know a lot about wine, how it is made or what characteristics make one wine better than another. What we do know is that humans are generally pretty consistent in their behavior. If the owner of the winery has taken considerable care in selecting the perfect label for the bottles, isn’t it safe to assume that the same care and consideration was taken in selecting what has been put inside?
Design evokes a feeling (either good or bad) and your audience’s gut instincts will guide them to respond accordingly. So what is your design sense saying about you?
Often when we think of design, it’s easy to dismiss it as the frosting on the cake or the pretty wrappings on the package. We may not feel that it is necessary — that the substance of what is being offered should matter more than the style in which it is being presented. After all, we have been conditioned by decades of “don’t judge a book by its cover” and “beauty is only skin deep” thinking. Those adages may have seemed true two or three decades ago, but today we live in an age of heightened aesthetic. It is very unlikely that we will ever go back to the days of brown paper packages and generic black and white food labels. Design is simply too important.
So what exactly is happening in our brains when we select one product over another based on what it looks like? Quite simply, we are making a series of assumptions based on what we know. Let’s go back and use the wine label as an example. We may not know a lot about wine, how it is made or what characteristics make one wine better than another. What we do know is that humans are generally pretty consistent in their behavior. If the owner of the winery has taken considerable care in selecting the perfect label for the bottles, isn’t it safe to assume that the same care and consideration was taken in selecting what has been put inside?
Design evokes a feeling (either good or bad) and your audience’s gut instincts will guide them to respond accordingly. So what is your design sense saying about you?
A Thousand Little Things
January 04, 2012 Filed in: Work &
Progress
When I
look back at 2011, it was nothing short of being an
incredible year in terms of personal growth. Life is
like that sometimes. We have those moments in time
where everything seems to click for us. I don’t mean
click in the sense that everything happens the way we
want it to. I mean “click” in the sense that the
answers we are looking for somehow present themselves
and we are able to move forward and make significant
progress. That’s how 2011 was for me.
If you recall, last year at this time I posted a blog entitled “F-bombing the F-words” and I seriously took my resolution to heart. Every day this past year, even if I only thought about FEAR and FAILURE for a fraction of a second, I corrected my thinking and continued my pursuit for answers. And sure enough, even when I wasn’t completely certain that the direction I was taking was always the right one, the determination to continue moving forward was enough to sustain me until the next piece of the puzzle fell into place.
I realize now that honoring my 2011 new year’s resolution wasn’t about conquering fear and failure in one fell swoop. There was no moment of realization or major battle I had won. Instead, it was about addressing a thousand little things everyday with the audacity and conviction of becoming better and smarter than I was the day before. And trust me, the little things do matter. They quickly add up to very big things — good and bad. And like it or not, we are the result and culmination of what we do every day. No matter what obstacles we face or excuses we use for doing less than our best, our habits define us. We begin the process of changing those habits when we become mindful of the (seemingly unimportant) thousand little decisions we make each day. The devil (or the divinity) is always in the details.
If you recall, last year at this time I posted a blog entitled “F-bombing the F-words” and I seriously took my resolution to heart. Every day this past year, even if I only thought about FEAR and FAILURE for a fraction of a second, I corrected my thinking and continued my pursuit for answers. And sure enough, even when I wasn’t completely certain that the direction I was taking was always the right one, the determination to continue moving forward was enough to sustain me until the next piece of the puzzle fell into place.
I realize now that honoring my 2011 new year’s resolution wasn’t about conquering fear and failure in one fell swoop. There was no moment of realization or major battle I had won. Instead, it was about addressing a thousand little things everyday with the audacity and conviction of becoming better and smarter than I was the day before. And trust me, the little things do matter. They quickly add up to very big things — good and bad. And like it or not, we are the result and culmination of what we do every day. No matter what obstacles we face or excuses we use for doing less than our best, our habits define us. We begin the process of changing those habits when we become mindful of the (seemingly unimportant) thousand little decisions we make each day. The devil (or the divinity) is always in the details.