Hocus Pocus?
I don't even know where to begin. In the last few weeks I've been struggling to clearly define the big bad wolf that seems to hold the heart and soul of design in it's grasp. I've identified certain features of the wolf that appear to hinder us from pursuing our God-given passion in our work—advertising, marketing, agencies, corporations, management, clients and profit.
A recent post on Speak Up by Marissa Kraxberger titled Designing for Deception jolted me. In it she says that "as designers, we play a large part in this game of deception. We create in order to influence opinions, attitudes, and behavior. Our power to communicate is then strategically used by the government and the media to control society's thoughts and opinions." There's another term for creating to influence opinions, attitudes and behavior—witchcraft. Let me explain.
We all have the stereotypical understanding of witchcraft—little old ladies in black, casting spells, stirring cauldrons, reading palms and pricking voodoo dolls. These practices are blatantly witchcraft. What I'm talking about is anything we do in design to manipulate or control people's attitudes, emotions or actions. This spirit of control and manipulation is witchcraft. When design is used by the government to control people, we call it propaganda. When design is used by businesses to control people we advertising. Either way this spirit of manipulation and control is witchcraft.
I had a client not too long ago that continually asked me to place certain marketing phrases over and over in her online newsletter because she knew these phrases created a desire to purchase her service. You're probably familiar with and turned off by these blatantly manipulative phrases like: "Buy now," "Don't miss," "Take advantage," "Hurry," "Limited time," "Last chance" etc. Though designers are often forced by clients and marketers to include manipulative phases in a design, we don't like it at all.
You're also familiar with design that revolves around "target market research". You know, using focus groups, secondary research and the like to determine what the customers spoken and unspoken needs are and then crafting the design around that understanding in order to elicit a certain response from the customer. I've done this with client projects (including one I'm working on now), and the technique works quite well. Is this also manipulation and control or just "well informed" design? I'm still debating.
Lately I've felt an even more subtle way design is being used by the big bad wolf for manipulation: design as the new "competitive business edge". I think designers are flattered because businesses are finally paying attention to designers and telling them how important they are to the company. Just look at Target, which regularly hires well known designers like Michael Graves to design everything from garbage cans to clocks. Design has been written up in Fast Company more times than I can count and has even been the cover feature. Business has a crush on design.
Don't be fooled designers. I think what business is really saying is that the old methods of control and manipulation of consumers won't work. Now they are going to use design itself as a means to control people's buying habits. That's why you see Michael Graves teapot at Target or Chrysler's CEO speaking at the Pratt Institute. They're just using design, as they use advertising, to serve the god of money and profit. When the culture becomes saturated with design, the wolf will look for another little red riding hood to control and eat. Our culture is saturated with advertising and people are numb to its manipulative ways. The wolf has found a new crush. Design as a "competitive edge" is nothing more than design as a means to control and influence people against their will. It is design as witchcraft, and I'm just as guilty of participating as anyone else.
A recent post on Speak Up by Marissa Kraxberger titled Designing for Deception jolted me. In it she says that "as designers, we play a large part in this game of deception. We create in order to influence opinions, attitudes, and behavior. Our power to communicate is then strategically used by the government and the media to control society's thoughts and opinions." There's another term for creating to influence opinions, attitudes and behavior—witchcraft. Let me explain.
We all have the stereotypical understanding of witchcraft—little old ladies in black, casting spells, stirring cauldrons, reading palms and pricking voodoo dolls. These practices are blatantly witchcraft. What I'm talking about is anything we do in design to manipulate or control people's attitudes, emotions or actions. This spirit of control and manipulation is witchcraft. When design is used by the government to control people, we call it propaganda. When design is used by businesses to control people we advertising. Either way this spirit of manipulation and control is witchcraft.
I had a client not too long ago that continually asked me to place certain marketing phrases over and over in her online newsletter because she knew these phrases created a desire to purchase her service. You're probably familiar with and turned off by these blatantly manipulative phrases like: "Buy now," "Don't miss," "Take advantage," "Hurry," "Limited time," "Last chance" etc. Though designers are often forced by clients and marketers to include manipulative phases in a design, we don't like it at all.
You're also familiar with design that revolves around "target market research". You know, using focus groups, secondary research and the like to determine what the customers spoken and unspoken needs are and then crafting the design around that understanding in order to elicit a certain response from the customer. I've done this with client projects (including one I'm working on now), and the technique works quite well. Is this also manipulation and control or just "well informed" design? I'm still debating.
Lately I've felt an even more subtle way design is being used by the big bad wolf for manipulation: design as the new "competitive business edge". I think designers are flattered because businesses are finally paying attention to designers and telling them how important they are to the company. Just look at Target, which regularly hires well known designers like Michael Graves to design everything from garbage cans to clocks. Design has been written up in Fast Company more times than I can count and has even been the cover feature. Business has a crush on design.
Don't be fooled designers. I think what business is really saying is that the old methods of control and manipulation of consumers won't work. Now they are going to use design itself as a means to control people's buying habits. That's why you see Michael Graves teapot at Target or Chrysler's CEO speaking at the Pratt Institute. They're just using design, as they use advertising, to serve the god of money and profit. When the culture becomes saturated with design, the wolf will look for another little red riding hood to control and eat. Our culture is saturated with advertising and people are numb to its manipulative ways. The wolf has found a new crush. Design as a "competitive edge" is nothing more than design as a means to control and influence people against their will. It is design as witchcraft, and I'm just as guilty of participating as anyone else.
posted by fivemcclungs at 10:47 AM
7 Comments:
First my disclaimer: I'm not a designer, but I am a consumer. Your post made me think of the new book by Seth Godin, All Marketers Are Liars. According to Godin, successful marketers are telling a story -- and it's one we, as consumers, want to hear. (See the blog and info about the book here: http://blog.sethgodin.silkblogs.com/ )
I agree with Godin that this is not necessarily a bad thing . . . certainly not akin to your comparison of the use of design to witchcraft. I think the use of design is more about finding out what people want and giving it to them. That's definitely part of marketing (as I see it).
And yes, what people want will probably change again in the future. And designers and marketers will change their approaches in response.
But, that's just one girl's opinion.
Thanks Paughnee for the book recommendation. I've not heard of it, but it sounds interesting.
I debated for a while even publishing this post. Very extreme. But I thought, why not? While writing I realized that all the attention design is getting from business is only skin deep. I'm not sure designers realize that. We've been marginalized for so long and left to "make things look pretty" or "make them cool" that when we finally to get the attention the craft deserves, I'm not sure it is for the right reasons. My sense is that business designs in one color...green.
This idea of advertising as witchcraft or the backstage manipulation of our fears by the Wolf are closer to reality than metaphor - maybe that's why you felt, perhaps, second thoughts about putting it out, Frank. Because it's not far from the truth.
I used to think that Advertising just sold products. Remember how, in Alfred Hitchcock's "North By Northwest" Cary Grant as the ill-fated advertising guy says, "advertising isn't lying. It's expedient exaggeration".
Well, it's gone beyond just that now. It's a steady stream of outrages and lost freedoms that are mainstreamed, misdirected,and confused, posing as our excessively crude culture.
The question is: who do you serve?
Henry Gossage opened one of his articles with this:
"Is advertising worth saving? From an economic point of view I don't think that most of it is. From an aesthetic point of view I'm damn sure it's not; it is thoughtless, boring, and there is simply too much of it."
[The Book of Gossage, ©1995]
The folks I work with share this point of view. Not all who are in advertising enjoy opening a pile of junkmail when they come in from work either. The agency I work for runs a clean ship. They work hard and rely on creativity to present consumers with a different choice.
But what I hate more that bad advertising and piles of junk mail on my stoop, is what happens when folks blame the advertising industry on the whole for the problems we all face in our culture. What happens next is that while the scapegoat runs for the hills, the masses overlook their own inablility to make good choices and educated decisions with their money and the use of their buying power.
Several years ago, I bought a car for my wife. Turned out it was a very sour lemon. I now subscribe to Consumer Reports and do research to guard myself against making poor buying decisions in any case. We found other ways to protect ourselves better as consumers and refuse to trust just anyone with our hard-earned resources. Why? Because we grew tired of making poor buying decisions - decisions based on impulse, greed or ignorance.
While there may be cases where manipulative tactics are used (i.e. subliminal messages, focus groups psych serices, etc.) those folks aren't doing advertising.
Merriam-webster defines advertising as:
1 : to make something known to : NOTIFY
2 a : to make publicly and generally known b : to announce publicly especially by a printed notice or a broadcast c : to call public attention to especially by emphasizing desirable qualities so as to arouse a desire to buy or patronize [taken from www.m-w.com. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary copyright © 2005 by Merriam-Webster, Incorporated]
The folks I've met in the ten years I have been working in the advertising industry are good because they hate most of what is being done. And the ones that hate what is being done aren't looking to witchcraft to help them do it better.
I'll be the first to laud the creativity in advertising. In fact, my interest in design was picqued through highly creative advertisements. What I appreciate most about good ads is their ability to connect people with concepts and ideas in a very small amount of time. It just seems that the connecting tends to be like strings on a puppet vice free connections of the heart. Folks are getting more savvy about advertisement, which is good. But why they need to be savvy and discerning seems to point to an underlying force in advertising as we now know it that goes beyond "notify" to "arouse a desire to buy."
Check out the entry for Advertising in Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising
Here David Olgilvy quotes Gossage saying, "Advertising, in its non-commercial guise, is a powerful educational tool capable of reaching and motivating large audiences. Advertising justifies its existence when used in the public interest - it is much too powerful a tool to use solely for commercial purposes."
So, maybe we are to the old "advertising isn't witchcraft, only the people who use it" debate? Thoughts.
I think so. And I think its a deadend debate that only puts in a bad light an industry that manages to do that well enough all on its own.
There are many things in our world that in and of themselves are not evil. But in the hands of evil doers, those things can do a lot of damage. It is one more responsibility we have as graphic designers to see to it that the power we weild is handled appropriately and used responsibly. I am not certain, but I think that is one of the main ideas behind the conception of groups like the AIGA and the Graphic Artists Guild.
(Check out the 1st coupla chapters of the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines - I can't say I agree with everything I have read here, but so we don't think our concern is something completely new.)
Those organizations exist to offer accountability and assist in maintaining a higher standard of conduct and ethics in our industry.
I do think this line of discussion is a bit of a tagent to discovering the heart and soul of design though. I mean, props to Gossage and Olgilvy, but if I were looking to the advertising industry of today to speak clearly to the purpose of or the heart and soul of design, would I look for a website like this? Rehashing the past, most of which we were too young to be a part of in the first place, is kinda like kicking the dead horse, now, ya know?
I believe we have yet to discover the true calling and purpose of the graphic arts in their fullness. And thats, something I would love to be a part of. So what do you think the true purpose of graphic design is? What does it's heart and soul looks like?
(For the record though, I appreciate your concern. I will do my best not to be used. I will only purchase the Michael Graves trashcan simply because I love the irony of his magnanomous design holding my sons dirty diaper.)
Good thoughts Jonathan. I've got a post almost done where I'll explain why this advertising issue keeps cropping up when we're supposed to be focused on discovering the heart and soul of design.
On a side note, I just can't think of anything funnier today than my son's dirty diaper in a Michael Graves garbage can. I read an interview with Mr. Graves not too long ago where he was admitted to the hospital for a serious illness. His most startling thought was not that he might die, but that he might die in such a forsaken design wasteland that is a hospital. Everything was so ugly. He'd probably like to know that his trash can is being put to such practical use.
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