131 - Designing For Designers

What this episode covers

Is all designers really just for designers? Subscribe: ITUNES | ANDROID | STITCHER | RSS FEED Music and links from this episode Outsiders in Nome by Mystery Mammal Route of the Old West Convicts by Fields Ohio Arrythmia/ a lost battalion of conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off Empire State out of the moon into vacant Ohio factories by The Fucked Up Beat Line-by-line notes You've already seen the title of this episode Design isn't for designers It's a controversial viewpoint And one I want to explore in a little more depth Designers deep down know that design not only isn't for designers It SHOULDN'T be for designers But still, we design things that only designers would get This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess MUSIC As I said I'm presenting a controversial topic I think lots of designers will see this episode and think Well, I don't design things for designers But, I think you're wrong Often we all design clever logos Clever websites or clever bits of design And all that stuff, the majority of it only designers will get or appreciate Take the classic example, the FedEx logo How many times have you explained this logo to a non designer to show how clever and deep design can be? Non designers don't look at things like we do They don't look at the leading of a paragraph Or the kerning in a word They don't look at something and think it could have done with more space Or the colours are wrong Or even that the apostrophe is used incorrectly These are all things we care about as designers And rightly so, of course rightly so But the point I'm getting to Is that lots of this extra detail Beyond the stuff like proper spacing, leading and kerning Is all stuff a non designer won't even comprehend So why do we bother? If 90% of the intended target audience won't get that clever thing you did with that logo, Why did you bother? Now this is as much of a question directed at myself as it is at you Designers bother with those extra bits for lots of reasons But the main reason I think is pride It's my job as a designer to do the best job I can possibly do And that often means going far and above what a normal person would to care about something that most people won't see or even appreciate It's a little bit like Steve Job's stories about his dad, Paul Jobs He tells stories of his dad being a craftsman. And having the ability to make anything But no matter what he made, he never cut any corners Even when he made a chest of drawers, he refused to use a poorer quality wood for the back of the drawers that nobody would ever see And he'd always pay as much attention to the back of a fence as he did the front, the bit that most people would see That's a desire to do a good job It's a pride in your work And that's why designers do what they do, and why I do what I do It's why most of my work never gets seen by anybody, And why I draw 300 logos in my sketchbook before I even get to a computer Designing those little bits for designers is exactly the same thing It's build in little Easter eggs into my design work, especially branding and logo work It's something fun to discover And it's like painting the back of a cabinet Most people will never ever see it But that's ok, im cool with that I do it for that one person That one person who stumbles across that little nice touch And when they spot it They smile And they feel a little bit warm inside Because they discovered something most people won't discover. That's what those extras are for And I live for those MUSIC This was AADA and I'm Craig Burgess Music featured in this episode was Outsiders in Nome by Mystery Mammal Route of the Old West Convicts by Fields Ohio Arrythmia/ a lost battalion of conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off Empire State out of the moon into vacant Ohio factories by The Fucked Up Beat For a line by line rundown... /ep131 If you want more...