designfail

I asked Cassie today "how do you design for a world that doesn't understand design?"

Her head expoloded.

While I was cleaning up the gooey mess that used to be my friend and co-worker (it's Chinatown) I thought to myself, what do I mean by 'design' anyway? 

Of all the definitions on the web, I think this is my favourite thusfar:

The purposeful or inventive arrangement of parts or details

It's the 'purposeful' and 'inventive' aspect that I like. Design in advertising is about more than just adding colours that people like or imitating slogans that have worked in the past. Design, from a communications perspective--which as far as I'm concerned is what 'marketing' aspires to--is about creating meaning and providing a platform for ideas. The quality of the idea is important, to be sure, but even the best ideas need a little help now and then getting heard because, despite the apparent lack of design out there it's still a caccophony. 

Think about birds: Song to communicate over distance, to demark territory or announce food; Display to attract a mate, confuse a predator, or fascinate documentary film makers.  Millions of years of evolution weeds out bad design and leaves us with stuff like this...