I wrote a little thread on my personal BlueSky account the other day, giving little bits of logo design advice. As you may have gathered, I do like sharing my knowledge with others, helping them on their journey to either becoming better Graphic Designers themselves, or simply making better design choices in their business or creative venture.
So, I was talking about things like Scalability, Versatility and the like, a few tests you need to run your logo through to make sure it's fit for purpose, all stuff you can read about in this previous newsletter here, and while it was generally well received, and both thoughtful and funny conversation was had around the thread, there was a voice who did not agree, saying they simply designed with what looked good, without taking into account any of the things I said were necessary for good logo design.
And that got me thinking.
What actually IS design?
Because in my mind, if you're not taking into account the use-cases and requirements, then you're not creating design. You're making art. And boy, that is not a bad thing at all. I adore art, and all it has done for the world and the people on it. But Design and Art are not synonymous.
When you make art, you're putting a piece of your soul into the piece. You're making choices based on what you want to give, what you want people to feel when they see it. It's emotion and aesthetic. It's a conversation, where you present your vulnerable self to the world.
When you make design, it should be a completely different school of thought. You're responding to the needs of people, the end users who are going to be seeing and interacting with your design. It's less of a conversation and more of an instruction. A distillation of a message.
Think about the Fire Exit sign. The intention of a fire exit sign is that, in the event of a fire, people know the best route to safety. If that were designed with no regard for the intention, choosing instead to go down the route of aesthetics and what looks best: people would die because it failed. Now this is an extreme case, but it can be mapped onto every other Design in the world.
If you do not design with intention: your design will fail. That failure may not be as extreme as people trapped in a burning building, but it may mean people think less of whatever product or service you are designing for, or your marketing may not spread as far as it could. Your big event or product will flop, or not hit as hard as it could, if your design is not intentional. This is why so much of the design process is focused on the pre-production. Speaking with the client, drawing up a brief together, market research and moodboarding. Preparation and intent not only produces clearer, more communicative design, it produces better design.
And this stretches into basically every kind of communication. If you're not working with intent, you're not going to succeed to the levels you could do. Now this can go too far in the other direction, with all of your messaging feeling stilted and broken and too corporate, but don't swing too far in the other direction. Everything needs to be considered, not just looking good.
I said it in that previous blog post, and I’ll say it again here, you have to plan your route before you drive, or you’ll just get lost.
