It’s the guts that matter
We toyed with the idea of starting a blog more than two years ago. We also asked ourselves the following question: “Why would anyone want to hear us pontificate about anything?”
Feeling that there are more than enough pontificators out there already, well…we shelved the idea. Shelved it, not trashed it.
We continued to talk content – to clarify our message – and we came to the conclusion that THAT was what was worth talking about — the message.
As a design communications and branding company, we haven’t succeeded for over 25 years just by being able to make stuff look good. Most of our clients are highly-visible, Fortune 500-types who expect returns on their investments. As charming, cute and endearing as we all are here, the people we work for also expect results, demand results, and will politely “throw your *** out on the street” if you can’t deliver results.
What we fortunately realized early on is that there’s a huge difference between designers and decorators. We also realized, thankfully, that when the doors were closed and nobody was looking, we acted like designers, smelled like designers, thought like…designers. HOT DAMN! We were designers!
By our definition, real designers work with clients to clarify their objectives, to get to the absolute “lowest common denominator” core of what it is they’re trying to achieve. What’s the objective, the goal, the message?
Design from the inside out. Form follows function.
In our field of work, why isn’t this “inside out” methodology employed on all communication materials? Because it’s hard to do, for both creatives and clients. It requires that you put yourself in the position of the recipient of the message, and to ask, and objectively analyze, if this is the clearest, most concise, most comprehensive and easily understood method in which to communicate it. It’s a whole lot easier just to make a cool looking web site, video, print piece, PowerPoint presentation or display. Hey, who cares if it works? How can you actually quantify it anyway?
Know what? Clients always do, eventually. But even they can be temporarily fooled by outer beauty void of anything meaningful on the inside.
We believe that success means doing both – to effectively communicate the message, while simultaneously achieving the branding and image objectives of the company, its products or services.
We’ll update this blog weekly on Mondays and at least once more each week, and it will always reflect our “inside out” thinking in some way, shape or form. We welcome your comments, opinions and the opportunities we may have to learn from you. Thanks for visiting. – BE
Cathy White 03/08/2010
You work as a team….everyone’s eyes and ears see and hear things differently. That allows you to “think outside the box”.