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Imagine surfing the web and finding a site that looks and behaves exactly like yours...the one you spent a lot of time and a lot of money designing and building. Your web site has been stolen! How did this happen and what can you do?
The emphasis of design has undergone a major change since I first entered the communications business several decades ago. In the 70s, 80s and throughout much of the 90s, when you talked design in marketing, most people were referring to graphic design. At that time, the emphasis for designers that were well respected and admired by their industry peers was doing something that was distinctive, eye-catching, and helped define a brand look and feel.
One of the main goals of advertising, and designers that were associated with the marketing function, was to create relevant attention for their clients’ companies, products and services. The tools of the marketing trade at that time — including design — only allowed one way communication, and marketing practitioners were often left to interpret the results of their efforts through the complicated and time-consuming sieve of research and extensive account planning activities.
Several years ago, I recall reading some good advice about advertising concepts: Try making the point first with a billboard idea. A billboard forces you to economize your thought process and to really focus on the essence of the idea. A recent Fast Company article highlights a book with the same type of advice for planning and problem-solving: Put it on a napkin first.
For the last several years, I taught an advertising class as an adjunct professor at Concordia College. It was a rewarding experience. As part of my class requirements last year, students were to start and maintain a blog. One of those students was a promising and bright designer by the name of Christopher Nuernberger. His blog was entitled ”Shades of Gray” and he is still blogging today under the same title about a year after his graduation.
In fact, if you are just starting out in design, marketing, or communications, Christopher’s thoughts and insights might be especially helpful for you. Many of his posts deal with the challenges of getting started in the business, and he is writing this from the relevant viewpoint of his own personal perspective. I heard from Chris recently, and he now has a great job and many regular blog readers. Good job, Christopher.
Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple, delivered a presentation at the SXSW conference this last week in Austin, Texas that provided a glimpse into that company’s wildly successful design methodology. One of the insights he revealed was a 10 to 3 to 1 process that Apple designers must follow. Helen Walters is at SXSW blogging for Business Week’s Tech Beat and this is how she described 10 to 3 to 1:
“Apple designers come up with 10 entirely different mock ups of any new feature. Not, Lopp said, ‘seven in order to make three look good’, which seems to be a fairly standard practice elsewhere. They’ll take ten, and give themselves room to design without restriction. Later they whittle that number to three, spend more months on those three and then finally end up with one strong decision.”