Blog Posts

Having a designer, a stranger, attempt to define your business for you can be a jarring prospect. You’re asked to allow an outsider to tell you what’s best for you. To take your medicine and allow them to work their magic by creating something that is meant to encapsulate everything about your company or organization. That’s a concept that’s not all that easy to digest.

The type of paper you choose for a project can make a design sing or fall to the ground in a clumsy, unfortunate mess. It’s as important as any part of the design or the message, and it should never be an afterthought. It’s not something to be thrown into the mix at the last second, or reduced in quality to marginally lower the budget. Paper is a design choice, along with typography, color, form, layout, illustration, photography… all of it. It matters.

Looking through design annuals used to kill me. I repetitively mumbled “Why didn’t I think of that?” as though it were a mantra while flipping through page after page of remarkable work. Any and all work of my own that I was pleased with just moments ago was suddenly discarded as less than. Secondary. Coach class. Expected. Boring. But this other stuff? This stuff in the magazine? That was good. I should be that good. I should be better.

Designers are pretentious. We’re also arrogant. We’re belligerent. We wear black-framed glasses and spike our hair for no other reason than because we’re supposed to. We have a pre-defined sneer for every occasion, and we affix them to our mugs with unabashed pride. We’re ornery, ill-tempered, cantankerous snots with permanently sour attitudes that seep into and corrode everything we do while negatively affecting every person we come into contact with.

That’s a stereotype that’s not totally unfounded, but it’s also not entirely accurate.

The mobile app. It’s sexy. It’s slick. Everybody wants one.

It’s no wonder. When you see the unbelievable success of games like Angry Birds raking in cash by way of millions upon millions of downloads, you’d be a fool not to tap into that market. Right? It’s the new gold rush. It’s the de facto way to make a name for yourself and promote your product to an enormous audience that continues to expand in size every second of the day. It’s not just that you want an app; you need an app. You need one now. RIGHT NOW!

Maybe.

What comes to mind when you see the BP logo? Being “green?” Conservation? A sunflower-shaped beacon of energy that casts its loving rays of nurturing warmth over you, knowing that by filling your car with BP’s syrupy, magical goodness you’re making the world a better place? That you are, in fact, saving the world?

As with many other unfortunate personal shortcomings, procrastination doesn’t truly go away entirely, if I’m honest. It’s a flaw that feels as though it has been nailed to its perch, remaining ever-ready to rear up and strike again at the most inopportune time. Any person who suffers the unpleasantries of endlessly delaying the inevitable can never truly and permanently declare success over their shameful little problem without looking back over their shoulder, wondering if it will eventually make a repeat appearance when they don’t have the time or the inclination to fight it off.

Communication shouldn’t be about the pomp and circumstance surrounding the thing you create. It should instead be about what’s being said. It’s simple, really. No amount of distraction will make something bad into something good. Just as important, an overabundance of noise will often dilute the very thing that you’re trying to convey by drawing attention away from it.

There’s something to be said for drawing inspiration from someone else’s work. It can snap you out of a funk or set you on a new track if your work is beginning to get stale and repetitive.