Today I got rid of a bunch of stuff: 2 jackets, some shirts, things I said I would read but never did, music. The world is increasingly influenced by “design”, and I’m no different (you probably aren’t either) and part of that means acquiring content and then pairing it down to the essential (did you catch that, that was a free class in great design).
You might not notice, but the world is being heavily influenced by people who think in shapes, colors and use Adobe Creative Suite. City planners, editors, publishers and marketers are ponying up to the fact that we all hate the trite moral and fully judge books by their covers.
Penguin realizes we’re all judgey, so they redesigned covers to some classics.
The brands, people and things we interact with in real life and in digital life are not aiming to be brands, people and things. They’re aiming to be ideas. They’re aiming to be nothing but symbols that generates a positive feeling in you. In the early days of marketing, when someone like Don Draper actually existed, taglines and explanatory content sold products. In today’s marketing to world, you’re no one if your logo doesn’t stand up on it’s own.
All of Starbucks’ logos have included some text to attract tired consumers to the java and other goods to help them through another day in hell…I mean, the office. This year, the brand realized that they could sell whatever they wanted, breakfast sandwiches, CDs, juice- the two tailed mermaid had such a deep connection with consumers that losing the borders and text around her would mean nothing. Even as a marketer, I assumed I’d feel betrayed by the change in fascia, but I only cared that the barista smiled when he gave me my grande-nonfat-triple-upside-down-caramel macchiato.
Cities like New York are refining roadways by adding express lanes, bike lanes, pedestrian malls and de-trafficking one of the most jammed thoroughfares in the world. Facebook, Twitter and Spotify compete to have the most effective and streamlined user interface (remember when iTunes was genius?). And folks in their late twenties realize that they don’t need jackets in every primary color, they (hopefully) round off on a personal style and aim for quality over quantity.
The Free Dictionary explains the typical way of understanding design: to plan out in systematic, usually graphic form. Step into the future friends, design is more: the process of organizing content and ideas.
Most importantly, the Europeans are great at this, and it’s the American Dream to be better than them.
|DUSHANEOSWALDRAMSAY|
