[Sigia-l] "Does Good Design Equal Dollars and Sense?"

[Listera]

"Eric Reiss" wrote:

> In my experience, the larger the company, the more likely they are to
> have hired a professional creative team to create a comprehensive
> design guide. 

Which doesn't necessarily guarantee good design. Just a few months ago, the
creative director of a very large company showed me a thick printout of a
corporate design guideline done by an outside "professional creative team"
during the dotcom era for a princely sum. Apparently nobody knew that it
even existed and the director found it online almost by accident. It was
mostly template work and fillers; really embarrassing.

> Hopefully, the designers will reflect the client's corporate culture in their
> work. They always claim to have done so when justifying their ideas, but this
> isn't always the case.

Excellent observation.

> Moreover, designers are often called in to create a framework that
> will inspire changes to an existing culture. (Message from new CEO:
> this tired old reactive company has to rejoin the market-driven
> world. Give me something dynamic and exciting!)

The reality is that it's even more likely the CEO will ask for something
like what the other guy is doing. Witness the slew of TV commercials closely
patterned after Apple's Switch campaign (Hello, Ameritrade :-), even by
Apple's direct competitors. We are driven by fads, both in technology and in
culture as well.

----
Ziya

A sufficiently well-prepared demo is indistinguishable from magic.