It's not quite 'doing it' for me.

Having worked with numerous startups in the past and continuing the trend, a thought often crosses our minds, especially during creative presentations, especially when businesses opt out of market research:
Is the person with the final word on weeks of the teams work, blood, sweat and tears qualified to make that final decision? Does he/she have the vision and experience to be able to envision the ripple effects of a creative solution? Can they visualise the next ten years of the brands communication to fully appreciate the snowball effect of the design stance we’re proposing? Or worse still, are they going to ‘vote on this’ and on the basis of what exactly?

Here’s a thought: Would you be able to evaluate a doctors prescription?
The brands we work with hire specialists to formulate, medical experts to devise remedies & recipes for effective treatments, engineers to arrive at solutions for various product/efficiency/usability issues - yet when it comes to branding, everyone believes they are equipped to decide on what will work or won’t.

It’s safe to say in todays over-saturated markets, branding and design is less about ‘aesthetics’ and more about ‘semiotics’. So what is semiotics? To put it simply, semiotics is the understanding of how signs, symbols and visuals are received and interpreted. Semiotics includes ‘linguistic expression’ or ‘semantics’. As designers who specialise in communication, we are able to use our understanding of semiotics and our expertise in visuals to be able to elicit a very specific interpretation of a creative expression. Yes, we do it in the most aesthetically appealing way, but the point here is that there’s an almost exacting reason for why we choose certain colours, fonts, images or illustrations, and place them together in ways that can evoke or elicit a very deliberate reaction.

Then comes the question of ‘disruptive’ design. Consistently resorting to using stereotypical visual mnemonics or commonly understood symbology can often times lead to generic output. In order to break rules or conventions, one needs to understand very intricately what messages are conveyed, with which visual tools, and of course how they work together in tandem - if when put together, they convey something entirely different.

In the words of Dalai Lama XIV, ‘Learn the rules, so you can break them effectively.’ And this is where our expertise of design craft comes in. The more experience one has with these rules, the more one knows their boundaries and at what points they break down. The more one also knows how much they can push them in order to create distinction.

And it is this convergence that designers like ourselves are constantly seeking when designing for brands. Where we’re leveraging what is understood and received correctly, in ways that were never imagined. The precarious balance of convention and innovation. We wish it were simpler - to wake up one morning and pick a colour, pick a pretty illustration, a gorgeously drawn font and go about our work.

It’s natural to go by instinct when evaluating a visual - ‘Do I get it?’, ‘Is is appealing to me?’. ‘Is it doing it for me?’ But should it be ‘doing it for you’?

More often than not, uncertainty like that will end up with directives that push your design agency to go down the path of convention - safe visuals that have been historically ingrained to convey an idea. As a marketeer, a founder or business owner involved in decision-making for design or branding of any sort, tried and tested solutions are always comforting. But safety will not give you that astronomical advantage. Safety can end up being more expensive - because you will need to spend that much more time, money and effort, to aggressively establish your brand as one that is different.

Equally well, radical disruption or ‘creativity’ for the sake of artistic gratification could be confusing to a customer and may not land the right messaging or evoke the reaction the brand wishes to elicit.

A more holistic way to approach it would be make a decision based on a strategic advantage, and not purely on instinct. Ask your design agency to give you their strategic point of view in the context of your product category, it’s present & future state and consumer mindset. Understand the trade-offs. Understand the challenges better.
More importantly, trust their judgement.
Allow for your instinct to exist, but be wary of it taking over decision making.

It’s not pertinent what shade of blue looks better, or which font we like, but about whether a design decision is going to give you an advantage in the minds of consumers, or on the shelf of a cluttered retail store. Can blue convince them you’re better, or of what you stand for? Does blue make you stand out and intrigue the consumer enough to investigate you further? Does blue connote the same values or evoke the feelings that your brand embodies?


It shouldn’t matter if it’s your favourite colour. Or if ‘it’s doing it for you’.