Aesthetics communicate value and
design shapes the experience.

What Works

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What works…

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Start with the end in mind

When you know what you want to make happen, when you have a clear picture in your mind you are in the strongest place to set about making it happen. As a designer that’s all you really need to know from a client. Your design skills as a communicator, a planner and shaper of human experience kick in and reveal the possibilities and strategies for getting there.

Why start working with a design consultant rather than a marketing consultant or a public relations professional? Advertising, Marketing, Public Relations, Graphic Design and Branding are all disciplines that are hard to define and for many, including start-ups, differentiating between them is daunting. Where do you begin? Where do you spend your money to get the biggest bang for your buck.

All of the business critical disciplines fall under marketing and each has a different purpose. I find these quick definitions help understand them better.

Advertising is about creating Awareness to drive sales

PR is about creating Engagement to manage reputation

Design is about creating Affection to cultivate a relationship with the customer

It sounds like design is the least important and maybe the last consideration. Don’t you want everyone to know your name? Be able to rhyme it off first? Yes, if you are a global brand competing to dominate the space. But what if you are not? Engagement is definitely up there and, it’s measurable. This means you can justify paying for it because you can track it. How many likes or comments did you get? Press coverage driving traffic to your website. These are good no? Absolutely! So why bother with affection? What does it mean if your audience likes you? Can you measure it? I doubt it. So why does it matter?

For me, affection matters first. Why drive someone to buy something if the experience of it is disappointing. Why try and engage if you have you have no depth at the end of it all? If I like someone, I feel there is a connection, an affinity. If I feel an affinity with them it means that I will trust them. When I trust them I will interact, work with them or do business with them. I will naturally prefer them to others – those I don’t like and those I don’t know. Inevitably, they’ll win my loyalty.

This does not diminish the importance of the other disciplines. All of them work together to benefit a business. I’m just considering where to start.

Design for bubsiness often starts with a mark. A logo. A Brand. But often businesses aren’t thinking of what that mark needs to do beyond looking good.

“The greatest role for an identity or trademark is to make the viewer feel well intended or affectionate towards what it represents.” —Milton Glaser

So how do you go about creating affection?

This is what interests me. This is where design comes to the fore — because it tackles human connection, understanding and relationship through empathy and emotion. These are intangible. They involve the subliminal, the intuitive, the metaphorical more than the logical.  I mentioned somewhere else on this site – on websites page – that personality and character are key to connecting with your audience. They are what you have to work with to create affection. But you don’t have a person. All you have are words and pictures. But if pictures can speak a thousand words and words can change your understanding or experience you have all you need.

All the logic in the world won’t persuade a person to like you if you can’t first make them smile/relate. And for that —  things have to hit some very special notes. That’s where design comes in, because to achieve this, you need to rely almost entirely on intuition – artistic and creative abilities. Then you take a leap, latch onto what feels right and use your skills and experience to turn that feeling into something tangible.

Take another look at your brand mark and consider it through this lens. Does is help create affection or does it leave the viewer cold?

Why can’t you rely on logic or past results?

In design, unlike the other disciplines, you cannot rely on what is logical or on what has worked for others if you want results. Think about it in terms of your friends. Just because someone new repeats something your oldest friend said that made you smile, doesn’t mean you will smile and become friends with the new person. On the contrary, you will feel their words are contrived and insincere. You will probably be very suspicious of them. And, if you feel they are trying to manipulate you, you will even feel resentful towards them. (There is a brilliant lecture by David Snowden PhD that, among many other brilliant scientific observations, explains why looking to past successes doesn’t correlate with future success 33.27 mins CLICK HERE)

Imperfection is human.

Personality is not about perfection but it is about consistency. It’s also about authenticity and empathy. Being real and being honest. Then you stand a chance at standing out and at really connecting. So what does it take? Business owners, unlike YouTubers, can’t spend their days talking to their audience directly. That’s what your branding, website, social media, collateral etc is supposed to do for you. It’s supposed to communicate for you because you can’t be there in person. The challenge is to make sure that all communication channels have a consistent personality – look, feel, voice and tone. What’s the easiest way to lose this? too many cooks.

Find someone that “gets you.”

Find someone to work with that “get’s you.” Some one that can intuitively pick up and translate your unique character and personality and breath it through your business communications. Create the content, pictures and words that convey who you are and what you stand for in ways that resonate with your audiences.

Some clients think I can read their minds they trust that what I do will be exactly right for them. Irrespective of sector or specialism, design is about intuition and connection. Trust who you are is what matters most to your business and find the designer who can tap into that and help you expand and translate that into your brand.

How do you know if you have found the right person for the job?

It’s not as hard as you think. You have to start with choosing someone you like. Ha! Isn’t it ironic that affection is the prerequisite condition necessary to achieve the outcome of affection. If you are already working with someone you like then all you need to do is redefine the objective.

Acknowledgements

Once again, I have Milton to thank for teaching me about the relationship between design and affection. He articulates it well in this little 2014 interview where he is annoyed at Florence’s attempt to brand itself without first understanding what the purpose of branding is.

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“It’s impossible to choose from a thousand anything” Milton Glaser Interview (left). The Paradox of Choice. I have a book by this title by Barry Schwartz, but I haven’t read it yet. I suspect that this episode of Brain Games covers what’s important. In my work, I prefer to work on one solution and then, if I am wrong, it is still the most efficient and safest way to get to right.

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