I would love to have seen the work you are talking about and read the survey you gave. Without it, it seems almost too abstract to comment on. Based on my understanding of what you are saying, though, I strongly disagree.

I think it is unfair to create a category called the Wal-Mart/Nascar crowd. Yes, this consumer group exists, but I don’t think that this group would have a different response to your survey than a Target/Barnes & Noble sample or some group that might be perceived as “higher class.” The truth is that the majority of ALL people in ALL classifications aren’t going to be sophisticated in their understanding of design and the visual language. That is ok! That is why we have jobs. We design because we are more sensitive to those things. That is a skill, not something that makes us less qualified than the end users. It isn’t our job to dumb down everything to a level that insults the viewer’s intelligence. Maybe they don’t fully understand design, but that doesn’t mean that their lives aren’t improved by it!

Designers are experts. Think of it in terms of another field. Does a doctor simplify a surgical procedure just because the patient doesn’t understand how their heart works? Does an architect make buildings out of Kleenex just because the client has a runny nose? Our job, no our responsibility as designers is to improve life through design. When a client asks for something bad it is our job to educate them, not to bend over backwards because they don’t get it. If we rely on people that don’t understand design to dictate how things are created, our most valuable asset is destroyed!

Another question: How many “Wal-Mart consumers” own an iPod? Do they have to understand design to appreciate it? Could the iPod have been created based on surveys given to focus groups of any kind? I think not.

Wow. Adrian, you certainly feel strongly for something that is “almost too abstract to comment on.”

I find it silly to suggest that the “Walmart crowd” would not respond any different to a design than those that fall into the “Target crowd.”

And certainly doctors shouldn’t dumb down surgery to my level, but have you been to a doctor that begins by asking you how you feel, what you feel, where you feel it? That sounds pretty close to a focus group to me. And the dozens of tests that can be done (X-ray, MRI, etc.) seem to me to fall into the category of “research.” I hope he uses that research to inform his “expert” opinion and diagnosis.

Engaging the users in the design process, and in particular the Industrial design process is a common practice… especially when designing for people that don’t share much in common with you.

If Apple were to design a product for the aging, do you think they could rely only on the ingeniuty and assumptions of their design team? Not fully, they’d at some point (or several) have to engage the audience, see what is needed and then go from there. There are times when we as designers need more insight into our audience, because they are foreign.

My experience has been that “expertise” often doesn’t breed empathy. But empathy has the potential to breed insight and clearer vision.

This is particularly interesting to me, especially since my company has several products that has NASCAR branding on them… and we are trying to get into wal-mart.

Put up the examples and your research info!

Also, I love the questions you’ve asked. Certainly something to think about…

I don’t know if this will be of any interest or not… but I just noticed that Oprah today is going to be about the topic of “Class In America”. It will cover why class matters and why we should care. Also, “The three unspoken things that reveal your class.”

Greg, If you can’t understand the appeal and reality of Oprah, then you have no hope of communicating with the average American. Maybe check out Oprah every once in a while so you will learn how to communicate with a large percentage of women in this country (and even Mississippi I would assume) … or you can continue to insult people that just offer a bit of useful information.

Greg, Sorry that I misunderstood you. It is easy to get offended/offend when we are without our non-verbal communication. Now, back on subject …

…yeah. Again, my apologies to the Nascar and Walmart crowd. And Greg, I think you are right on about the continuum. None of this stuff is clearly defined. As a designer I often am more interested in the oddities of research than the median. Give me a rootin’ tootin’ redneck Nascar fan and let me see if I can connect with them over a more “normal” mundane Walmart shopper.

I think that was one thing that struck me in this was how different mine and other designers opinions and perceptions were from the “non-designers.” Because the non-designers were not on the fringe of humanity. They were normal, people… except my brother.

I do want to kind of skirt around the actual logo and research, as it is still taking shape. And I’m not sure I’ve got the kahonas to subject myself to a blog critique… especially on this project. For the mean time, I think there is lots to discuss in all this.

First, how simple it is to do a simple inquiry/survey that can make a mundane project a bit more fascinating.

Second, the gap between designer and audience… how can we be creative to cross that divide?

Third, I like this whole idea of “trickle-down” design versus “socialist” design. I have a bad taste for Reaganomics… too much time in Seattle. And living in Canada now, may have put a little socialism in my system.

I find myself coming back to the continuums Paul first proposed, and maybe being a little more comfortable with them, as long as we all agree that we are probably all somewhere in the middle. Hopefully no one is so dense to be way out on the extreme left or right… although I’d bet their designs would be awesome, terrifying, but awesome.

Bennett and Suz, Sorry if I offended you, too. I just thought it was funny that first person to get offended had to do with Oprah instead of Nascar. I actually did watch the Oprah - Betsy tivo’ed it. Actually pretty interesting.

Clint, I am starting to get nervous when words like “socialist” are brought into the discussion and it gets broken down to “right and left.” I will just leave that alone, bucause I don’t think good design has much to do with political points of view just like I don’t think that design should change depending on a class of people.

Let me put this way: If anything can cross the lines of class, politics, religion, age, sex, etc. it is DESIGN! Do research, yes. Understand the problem, yes. But don’t intentionally create bad design because you think the audience isn’t capable of appreciating good design! Give your audience some credit. Again, I think of the iPod. There is a reason there isn’t a Nascar edition: because it is good design by itself. It doesn’t need to be changed for every different class of people. Good design is going to break down the barriers that you are trying to reinforce with your research! If the design reminds me of the fact that I am poor, how can that be a good thing? Frankly, I find that offensive. Good design should be universal. At least that is what we should be striving for.

So you created a crappy logo. Who hasn’t? So your client chose the logo you didn’t want them to. That happens all the time. In the end, I think that rationalizing bad design does more harm than good.

Adrian, I don’t think just because socialist and “trickle-down” originated as political terms doesn’t mean we can’t use them to illustrate or discuss design. I use them to illustrate different ways of thinking about how we approach design… what Paul called our “base philosophies”. They kind of amuse me, but if they are a hinderance to you we can stop using them here.

I would make one modification about your statement on design crossing the classes. I’d suggest that “visual communication” is one of the basic parts of life.

Research has nothing to do with reinforcing barriers. It is an attempt to get a better understanding of how people see things differently. Categorizing them is just a necessary evil to help us design for a diverse public. I think Greg touches on this nicely.

Here’s a quote from Richard Saul Wurman: “While it might be more challenging to communicate abstract ideas with concrete words, it is not impossible. In fact, you can almost always move your messages closer to the concrete.”

Again, one of the points this little expirement made to me, was that sometimes what I think is concrete to my audience actually isn’t.

Good design is rarely if ever universal. The iPod is a terrific design for its audience (middle class 10-30 somethings with a desire to be distinguished from the crowd?). But it is irrelevant to much of society… the deaf (unless we’ve fixed the closed captioning issue), my grandma, the poor, my brother. That doesn’t take anything away from the iPod, but it certainly isn’t universal design.

Another example of how difficult universal design is: curbs on streets are good designs to protect pedestrians, but they are a near impossibility and even with ramps are extremely limiting for those that only have wheelchair access.

My problem isn’t that the logo I designed is something that is fairly mundane and pedestrian, but that I am NOT so sure it isn’t a good design solution. That kind of caught me off-guard. I began to wonder if some of my “better” designs would actually be poor visual communications… make sense? If they were perceived as the wrong price bracket by those that it was targetted towards, then they certainly would be poor visual communications.

A final note, it’s not very inviting to share “crappy” work if it has already been evaluated without being seen.

A couple thoughts that build off of Clint and Greg’s writings:

This thought: “I began to wonder if some of my “better” designs would actually be poor visual communications… make sense? If they were perceived as the wrong price bracket by those that it was targetted towards, then they certainly would be poor visual communications” - as well as Greg’s discussion of the way some of the design notes featured in Target’s products and other design-oriented retail marketing both focus on a very particular aspect of the acquiration and reception of design: price-point.

I was just discussing the Bauhaus and the Arts & Crafts movement with my students, and almost inevitably when you talk about those two pivot-points in design they bring you to a spoken (or maybe unspoken) capitalist coda: both of them made a stirring attempt to bring artistry and fine design into the hands of “the people” and both movements resulted in things that were accessible primarily to the monied upper classes.

Greg’s experience speaks positively of the steady progress of overtly designed things into markets that are “common” - of designed goods reaching the mass that mass production always promised to address. As Target has realized many of the dreams that the industrially linked practices of the Bauhaus initiated, the fruits of design ARE reaching your grandma, your brother, your neighbor, etc. (it delights me to no end to think about the reactions that my Grandma, mother, and other family members have had when they step into overt design marketplaces like IKEA or Target - it viscerally proves how much the wit and ingenuity of designers really does strike and attract an audience)

What I think we’re also wrestling with in this discussion, however, is our comfort as designers, i.e. consumers who are intentionally on the look-out for the exceptions, the spikes in the data, and the rarer instances of “purer design & art” that strike our eyes and minds, as we see many of the hallmarks of what we once appreciated trickling to other eyes and audiences. It could be that we’re simply uncomfortable with design not fitting into our own molds.

It also reminds me of the many times when I’ve had friends and relations talk about how “even five minutes of something you might do would be better than a couple hours of what I’d attempt as a design” - it always produces a warm, designerly glow in my mind / heart, but it also reminds me regularly that design solutions we might take fully for granted or dismiss as pretty simple / pretty base level still have an audience out there. Those seeing even the glimmers of design’s touch in a Wal-Mart one day could as easily be those who are struck hard enough to seek out more and better design in months or years after that initial experience.

I feel it is very much to our merit, however, to ensure that we don’t also coldly reinforce the marketing stereotype that design always equals more expense for the recipient - we have the means to realize fully the ideals and goals of people like William Morris, Walter Gropius, or any number of those influenced by them and hoping to bring design to all levels of society. Let’s make sure that profit doesn’t become the ultimate determinate of where our craft has its impact.

Apparently the iPod design is too universal. I’m sure that if you look hard enough, you will probably find a Nascar “skin” for your iPod as well.

Extreme? (I can almost hear the echo from our podcast.) I guess, but you won’t hear any apologies from me about that. Your link to Target’s American flag iPod skin is hilarious, by the way. I pray that they haven’t sold more than ten of those; my faith in humanity hangs in the balance.

“If this were completely true, the star burst would have never been invented.”
If I had a time machine, I would go back in time and slap the person who invented the star burst. I despise the star burst with every fiber of my being. There is no bigger insult to a consumer than a star burst. From a design perspective, they are a cop out. They should only be used by used car salesmen and people who need to shout at their customers because they fear an honest human voice will expose the villainy of their true intentions. The only redeeming quality of a star burst is that it is an immediate que to the consumer that they can safely throw the valueless item in the garbage without reading a single word of it. So actually, they are kind of a time saving device.

Nate, I pretty much agree with everything you said.

“Is it our duty as designers to get them ‘stuff’ that is better-designed?” Absolutely. It is our duty and our moral obligation. That doesn’t mean everything has to look like it was designed by Apple. Like Nate says, it should be well executed. I think Target’s products fit that description. Wal-Mart doesn’t. I haven’t studied enough Nascar design to make a judgement. I suppose Clint and my disagreement comes down to different interpretations of what “well executed” means.

My apologies Adrian, this is a little snotty but I think important to remember:

World Population = 6.5 Billion iPods sold worldwide = less than 50 Million

Even if every iPod was sold to a unique individual only 0.77% of the world population has an iPod. That takes nothing away from the exceptional design of the iPod. It is an exceptional design, but honestly, it really is only meant for a section of the world. I don’t know the target audience, but there is one. I honestly haven’t seen anyone over their mid-40’s with one.

Maybe what we really need to be discussing is what makes “good design”? Or “how can design make the world better?”

I’d say as a designer my objective is first communication, and that I get there through the process of design and the medium of the visual. Communication is not opposite of aesthetics, but Aesthetics does not equal communication.

So if by “good design” we mean something that gains recognition within our industry by publication or award, I’d say that’s a good sign, but not the measuring stick of good design. Sometimes good design is measured more by reduced errors on a form, or increased use of condoms among the sexually active. Certainly aesthetics is important in all of these areas, but it does not always reflect the success of the artefact.

And maybe, just maybe sometimes aesthetics has little impact on successful communication. For instance if we offset printed beautifully designed “out of order” signs and hung them next to the coin deposit of vending machines, I’d guess that they would perform no better than a torn peice of notebook paper with a scribbled “out of order” statement hung in the same place. And when considering the cost and time of the offset version, I’d actually say it is bad design despite of the fact that it is beautiful.

I need to credit my Professor Jorge Frascara and his book Communication Design: Principles, Methods and Practice for some of this terminology and the example.

I think we do agree. And I like the elements you put into that definition.

I also think we agree on the assessment of Walmart, although I might add that I think their negative impact on society might go a deeper than just bad design. Organizations like wakeupwallmart.com are ramping up their attacks on Walmart for passing many of their expected business expenses such as basic medical care on to taxpayers, while reaping corportate benefits.

If Walmart finds bad design pays, it does nothing to take away the need or the importance of good design. Walmart and other retailers may also find or believe that quality products, good service, and convenience aren’t moneymakers either. Certainly nothing I want to run my business or life on.

Adrian you have made me think about my client and question whether or not I am offering the best of design to them. And I’m still not sure I have the right answer. But I do feel that it is never wrong to gain clearer understanding of who we are trying to talk to and finding out how our design actually (not theoretically in our own heads) speaks to them.

Seems like I just can’t stay away from this thread, really! Glad to see that some of the consideration of the continuum is percolating underneath the whole discussion, and just to respond to some of Adrian’s concern about continuums forcing an acceptance of one end point while rejecting the opposite, I’d argue that only happens once you’ve gotten or nearly gotten out to those end points on the scale.

Continuums allow for that beautiful range of moderation and sliding in between two given ends, and I’ve always found that the slide between them is what really generates the majority of the field. I suspect that the voices that call from the two poles of a continuum often sound the most firm, fixed, and emphatic because they also have the purest shades of black and white to them and contradict one another with the starkest contrasts.

To split our hairs even further in the overall discussion, it seems we also need to distinguish several distinct stipulations being made with one shared piece of language: design.

We pursue the practice of design

We examine the function of design

We assess the aesthetic success or failure of a given design

We seek to bring these three related concerns together into a single pursuit that we are willing to continue exploring.

It’s my sense that the majority of the arguments related to design as a practice of communication often lean the most heavily on concerns of design practice and on the functionality of a given design, with aesthetics sometimes entering the ring (though there are plenty of examples of things that are fairly anti-aesthetic that are stunning as functional elements and great tales of design practice - something like the staple/stapler comes to mind in this regard: it functions effectively for its intended purpose, was an awfully innovative realization of a design process, but might not really raise most aesthetic pulses).

When it comes to the aesthetics of design, I think we’ll find that most often some association with price point tends to enter the ring (or where it is most often asserted onto designed goods) - something decently non-functional which could have been the product of a labored, difficult, and ultimately disappointing design process, could still succeed remarkably in its aesthetics and be offered for a high dollar price. Somehow my mind drifts fairly readily to something like a Delorian in this discussion…we’ll see if that opens aesthetic debates about the merits or demerits of that design…

There’s little doubt that much marketing and selling is dramatically overconcerned about the “look” of the thing vs. the thing itself, and that a focus on aesthetic concerns can tread pretty heavily over concerns of function and process. Markets are differentiated by companies in order to better understand and establish their sales venues - design aesthetics and process are made a key portion of the cost to deliver a product into a given market arena, like it or not…

I’m reminded of a fascinating story a designer acquaintence of mine in Philadelphia told at one point - her small design practice had created a multi-page annual report for a school in the city to convey recent developments in both the finance and the educational goals of the school. It was really a fairly low-budget project which she and her designers worked very cleverly to make the most of - 1 or 2-color interior printing used smartly and then covered with an appealing, but still lower dollar cover stock with a 1-color print. The whole piece was topped off by cheap #2 pencils that were available in bulk for practically nothing imprinted with the school’s name and then Japanese bound onto the spine of the booklets.

If memory serves, there were probably just over 500 of the books printed, so not even a big print run - a remarkable success story in terms of the functionality of the piece, the smoothness and savviness of the design process, and even in terms of the aesthetics of the final piece. It looked great, ran well, and fit comfortably within the allotted budget.

Case closed, right?

Unfortunately, not really…

Simultaneous with the printing of these annual reports there remained an ongoing public struggle between many parents who were sending their children to the school and the school administration over budgetary concerns - how tuition money was being spent and whether those paying it really felt they / their children were seeing the benefits of that funding.

The designer / head of the small firm was watching television one evening and saw a news segment focusing on several especially contentious PTA meetings that were taking place at the school, and in the midst of one video segment from one of the meetings she watched a parent stand up in the audience holding one of the booklets she directed and helped to design. While shaking it furiously over the heads of the audience, this parent proceeded to lambast the administration for “wasting valuable tuition dollars on glossy annual reports” when their children weren’t getting the attention those dollars were intended to pay for…

Needless to say, the designer’s jaw dropped a little lower at the turn of events…

We can’t deny that we have helped to craft and create the understanding that well-crafted, aesthetically pleasing design is something that has great value to it in a number of regards - it is simply unfortunate that this so closely translates into price-tag equations as well.

“their customers would think that it looks too expensive”

Matthew, that is a seductive argument, but it is wrong and dangerous. It is not a benefit to the customer to perceive something as cheap. The price of a product is NEVER hidden from the customer. It is always clearly marked. In addition to price tags, all stores use the term “merchandising” to give additional clues to the customer about cost and value. At the point of purchase the customer should be reassured that what they are buying has quality and value. Anyone can read a price tag, designing something to look “cheap” is an insult and a disservice to the customer.

The woman in Paul’s example doesn’t understand design. It is unfortunate that she can’t recognize that design has improved her life, but that is nevertheless the TRUTH. The fact that she doesn’t understand the design of the annual report doesn’t make her any less deserving of design’s benefits. That is the point. The Wal-Mart crowd doesn’t understand design, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve good design. It is our job to improve life - not dumb everything down to a primitive level.

There is no additional cost to design something well especially if you are already making considerable effort to make it look intentionally cheap. If an item is perceived as expensive, that is a good thing for the customer because it makes them see value in what they are purchasing.

Great story Paul. I’ve had similar experiences working with non-profits. There have been several times that my client and I have decided to print on uncoated paper that was more expensive than coated, which dictated running on more expensive presses with UV dried inks to eliminate dot gain… only because it was perceived as more conservative and financially responsible.

I’ve also had the priveledge of designing a couple of catalogs for non-profit donations and even attended a direct marketing Catalog conference a couple of years ago… Adrian, this would make your skin crawl. It gets interesting when you realize that layout is going to be initially dictated by a mathematical equation formulated to predict the sales of each item and cross-references price points to create spreads that produce X amount of dollars per square inch of paper. Unfortunately, not every catalog can afford to produce beautiful visuals like Patagonia.

Adrian, I think you are right in part, but I think you simplify the human mind when you say “if an item is perceived as expensive, that is a good thing for the customer because it makes them see value inwhat they are purchasing.” Take for example one survey participant (just a hint, Nate should know who I am talking about) When this participant filled out the survey he did something interesting. One question I asked was what kind of automobile brand would each of the three prototypes represent. I also had them rank those same prototypes on a seven point scale of budget luxury. This disoriented consumer ranked prototype C as a 6 of 7, which is pretty luxurious… and he compared the same prototype to… get this, Oldsmobile! On the other hand, his lowest scoring prototype was rated as a 4, so middle of the road between budget and luxury, and he compared it to Honda!

Now in my book, I’d put Oldsmobile at about a 2 and Honda at about a 4. This was not the only occurance where I was shocked at how the non-designers ranked the brands… often it appeared their rankings were more reflective of 1970 than today. I just think that when we design for some audiences, we encounter some residue of the mind that would astonish us if we could understand it.

Although I agree with our objective being to improve life, I’m not sure that at times we need to give our audience more consideration… this does not automatically constitute dumbing down or bad design… it can just be designing for a foreign culture.

If I am reading correctly, designers chose the particular design, seeing it as upscale. The ‘NASCAR crowd’ selected the same design as communicating economy.

It seems that the groups are maybe mapping their preferred value-priorities onto the empty container of the neutral (evidently appealing) design?

Perhaps a ‘good design’ reaches out to its intended audience and simply confirms to them the value system they already hold?

PS: And, isn’t the ability to hit both groups with what they want to perceive kind of a home run?

Adrian,

As you’ve already observed, the price is NOT always clearly marked. Perhaps, I was unclear in my examples, but as Bennett keyed into, I was thinking of the grocery and pharmeceutical aisles at Walmart, stocked and maintained by minimum wage employees. I don’t expect the product I am looking for to be in the right place, it would be expecting too much. The price won’t be on the package, as that way when Walmart squeezes another nickel out of their supplier, they can drop the price. Producing a design that “At the point of purchase the customer should be reassured that what they are buying has quality and value” could be confusing and deterimental to the customer.

I never said that the Walmart crowd doesn’t deserve good design, I just stated that it is hard to create good design that reads as economical. If the parent in Paul’s example doen’t understand that the annual report was produced economically, is that her fault or the designer’s?

I’m also going to go back to Clint’s comments about underestimating / overestimating the perceptual biases of an audience - I think it’s extremely easy for us as designers to forget that our aesthetic biases are often further towards the edge of trends and style notes (probably well ahead of them in many markets) that most of the rest of the populus may either:

A. Not have any awareness of

B. Not have any relationship with / to

C. Possibly learn to appreciate / respond to later

The notion of certain audience pockets being biased towards or against more design refinement shouldn’t strike any of us as a major surprise, simply audience areas that we have to decide whether we’re willing to orient our design towards.

You can actually thank or blame much earlier design history for the larger audience tendency to dismiss cleaner, likely more Swiss School-oriented designs as being “upper class”, “cold”, “sterile”, etc., etc. as far as the many terms that seem to conjure easily along with that aesthetic - Swiss design on American soil became quickly bundled up with the International School of architecture and the modernist arts movements, all of which became classed with a very moneyed population and much of which was pushed towards a level of abstraction that most citizens were either simply unacquainted with or downright resistant to.

Those that supported it often paid for it, and the societal divisions that accompanied its entry into the American scene have yet to completely leave its side.

Trained eyes are trained eyes, and while we can often hope that others might equally learn to appreciate and respond to our design proclivities, it doesn’t take much time teaching to recognize that learning is a far more gradual process than we might wish.

While the pure truth of design might indicate that anything can and should benefit from the rigors of finely tuned / finely crafted visual design, the muddier truth of working with / for the populus often reveals that many won’t yet welcome this medication at a full / undiluted dose.

Design is as fluid and flowing as wal-mart; it’s just been around longer starting on the cave walls and continuing on the bath-room stalls of wall mart. the nascar/wal-mart crowd may not know who alan fletcher was but has sure seen the fruition of his creativity - the bright bold colors of nascar with it’s 200+mph chest pounding excitement compiments perfectly with the fletcher/rand suave & smart way of ‘going down the track of creativity’.