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?