Design Through Magic is a sort of theory I have been pondering for a short while. As I sit at my desk and met out the thankless chores and invigorating victories of my job, I wonder, as many do, about the value of design as it is perceived by my peers. Certainly my two fellow designers understand the full range of value in what we do, but what of the clients, and perhaps more radically, what of our non-designer coworkers?

We are often faced with the unfriendly concept that, to a layperson, design is running software. InDesign and Photoshop and, what’s that other one? Illustrated? Our duty is seen to be pressing buttons and moving a mouse to make logos and type bigger or sometimes smaller at the request of, well, someone. Well any as any good professor will tell you design does not happen on a computer. It happens in your mind and in your heart. So the perception and the reality here do not coexist peacefully. In order to remove this negative view of our role in the workforce, I suggest magic.

Design Through Magic: Magicians May Share Their Secrets With Other Magicians, but Never to Anyone Else.

One mistake we often make is attempting to educate our clients and coworkers on how design works. This has been seen for a very long time as a way to engender trust in our professional relationships. Instead, what it accomplishes is less innocent and more damaging. We are simply educating them enough to make them dangerous. In this way they perceive, much as a first-year design student does, that they understand how design works, and they will thus offer their opinions on how you should solve whatever problem you are faced with. When we as designers reject these often deceptively deadly ideas as base, we damage the relationship. Therefore, this baseline-only understanding of design must be removed from the relationship before it causes harm.

Do not explain your methods or how design works. Simply make it work behind a red curtain and when you reveal it let them gasp in wonder at how incredible your solution is. This is all in the set up. Show them the research, the data, the testing and all of that “real world” first. Then show them the magic. Show them what no-one other than you could have achieved but do not tell them how you achieved it. Let them wonder. Tell them it’s magic.

Of course, it isn’t. Neither is stage magic. It is a carefully choreographed production with extensive rehearsals and behind the scenes work. So you know the magic isn’t real, and I know the magic isn’t real, but the audience, the client, and the coworker can only sit in wonder at a thing they did not think possible until you put it before their eyes. And they will both flatter you and berate you to tell, because that is the behavior we as designers have encouraged until now, but as long as you keep your secrets secret they will value you. You. And through you, design. Because they may no longer know how it works, but they will all know that you do.

Magic Through Design: Making the World Wonder.

The world is real. It is solid. It is absolute. And it knows it. So what then can be said for the human mind’s ability to imagine a world that isn’t? What then can be said for those things that create that wonder inside of us?

Disney, Apple, Nintendo, Taget, and Pixar (okay, Pixar’s a part of Disney now, but their work still towers above all others) come to mind when posing the idea of Magic Through Design. These are companies that create magic with their audiences to an extent greater than most. Anyone who has spent a week on Walt Disney World resort, not venturing into the outside world of Orlando, Florida, and mucking it all up, knows what I am talking about. Magic through design is several things:

1. Magic is a commitment to a higher standard of quality than all others.

This is something all companies like to say. Most actually have a commitment to a higher bottom line. As great as they would like to be, most companies have some a-hole along the food chain that sacrifices quality for budget. Having an actual commitment to greater standards of excellence, even in the face of losing money in the short term, is step one in creating magic. No budget analyst would have ever thought the iPod would be successful at launch based on a $300 price point. And indeed, had it been anything like its competitors, the iPod would have been a colossal failure. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t just better, either. It was immediately the standard by which all others were measured. Apple created a magical product that excited the minds of music-lovers everywhere. But it wasn’t just quality of product that did it.

2. Magic Through Design is Without Limit or Edge or End.

That is to say, you cannot see the cracks. You cannot see behind the stage. Dorothy and her companions in The Wizard of Oz were frightened and terrified of the wizard, right up until Toto pulled back the curtain to reveal the secret. To create magic an experience must be all-encompassing. The iPod revolution gave us iTunes and the iTunes Music Store. All were fantastically designed to create a complete user experience from one end of the spectrum through to the other. Each note followed Rule 1, and no element of the experience was left out. Users were never left to fend for themselves or complete lengthy and tiring challenges. Everything just worked. Seamlessly.

Shopping at Target is a pleasant experience from the parking lot to the checkout aisle. The lanes are wide and comfortable, the lighting bright, the people are friendly and helpful, the products are beautiful and affordable. People are happy to shop there. By contrast, compare that experience to the oppresive, depressive nature of shopping at Wal-Mart.

Consider each detail, each and every angle, and allow for all. And never, ever, show the man behind the curtain.

3. Magic Through Design is Innovative, Always.

Once the audience knows how a trick is performed, they realize the world is absolute again and the wonder fades. But show them something they’ve never seen before and they will wonder again at what is possible.

Sony and Microsoft have invested billions into the next home-videogame console war between Playstation and X-box. They have pushed the graphic and sound and capabilities to the limits of modern technology and created supercomputers more advanced than the world has ever seen. But who cares? Because Nintendo is bringing the fun back into games. Instead of a technological arms race for better graphics and prettier pictures, Nintendo made modest upgrades in that area and leaps and bounds in others. The result is the Nintendo Wii. The system is set to smash the competition this holiday season because they have captured imaginations again. Who on Earth would pay $600 for a Playstation when they could spend $250 on a Nintendo and have fun? Proving Marty Neumier’s theory yet again: When everyone else zigs, zag. Zag enables magic.

4. Magic Through Design Makes People Believe in Magic.

To paraphrase Hugh Jackman’s character near the finale to the film The Prestige, the world is a cold, hard, entirely real place. The magician’s job is to make the audience believe, however fleetingly, that this is not the case. That there is wonder left in the world. To show them something they did not think possible the moment before. Follow rules one through three and you may find yourself here at rule four. The Wii. The iPod. Toy Story. Television. The airplane. The photograph. The light bulb. The wheel.

There is much talk today about capturing an emotional connection with your audience. This is overrated compared to capturing an imaginative connection with them. To wonder with them at what is still possible in this world. Through design this is possible. And that is not to say graphic design. Graphic design is only one part of a larger whole that is Design and through design all things can be possible. Even the impossible ones. The ones people call magic.