A friend of mine, who happens to run a small design agency with his wife, feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of free WordPress themes out there quipped, “This is really the end of web design.”
I was reminded of my friend’s realization when reading Paul Dunay’s Facebook post last week. While I concurred with most of the commenters that Facebook as a platform may be too limiting for business purposes, I agreed with Paul’s underlying premise that investing in costly website design and development nowadays seems more and more like a fool’s errand. As Skittles’ web makeover last month, and Modernista!’s last year demonstrated, the name of the game is no longer web “site,” but web “presence.”
As far as web design goes, I’ve been thinking of it more in terms of orchestration or arrangement than “design” in the traditional sense. It’s no longer an issue of controlling a brand’s image or policing brand standards. Instead, it’s a question of monitoring, coordinating, and wading into ongoing and sometimes divergent streams of “brand activity,” activity that is less and less initiated and undertaken by the brand owner and more and more by the brand consumer.
Around this time last year, design superstar Phillippe Starck made a lot of waves by declaring that “design is dead.” I’m not willing to go quite that far given that “design,” in the sense of “forming or decorating objects and environments to be useful, expressive, and aesthetically pleasing,” seems to be a basic human behavior with us since the caveman days.
What I am willing to suggest is that, from the standpoint of marketing, graphic design (print design, web design, logo design, package design, etc.) is rapidly losing, and to a large extent has already lost, it’s relevance and value. In it’s place, we have the 3 Ps: Platform, Personality, and Presence. The ability to appear almost anywhere at anytime and engage people in a memorable and practical way steadily increases as the ability to project a visual identity into or onto the world dramatically recedes.
Designers need marketers because, at the end of the day, most of the work done by the former is done at the behest of the latter. The question is, given the proliferation of communication options (and I’m not just talking about channels) and the evolution of participative consumer behavior, do marketers really need designers?
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The real differentiator here is good designers vs. great designers. Good designers are now a dime a dozen, and a WordPress theme will normally cut it. However, marketers area always faced with those times when good won’t cut it, and great and talented design really makes a difference.
The problem for designers is that the market for great design just isn’t quite as big as the market for good design.
“What I am willing to suggest is that, from the standpoint of marketing, graphic design (print design, web design, logo design, package design, etc.) is rapidly losing, and to a large extent has already lost, it’s relevance and value.”
Wrong.
As an identity company that creates branded ambassador movements, we have found that fundamentally just about everyone wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves. They want to IDENTIFY. They want to belong. Connect. Reach out. So it’s up to us to co-create that identity. Sometimes the community takes our ideas and run with them (fantastic!) and sometimes we take their ideas and run with them. And that involves insightful, thoughtful design. I don’t see that going away anytime soon, but, in fact, growing.
Great post.
Wow. Just when I was starting to feel good about myself as a designer…
Bull
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Saw the same bull when desktop publishing came around. New tools, same old story. Design is still the best value in being memorable and Wordpress templates are no different than Pagemaker templates.
I’d say it depends on the target market. Major companies depend on designers and branding as a major part of their marketing process. An everyday blogger trying to make a few cents off adsense depends more on their own important content. In this, someone who holds a lot of credibility doesn’t need great design to gain an audience whereas someone just starting out needs that quality presentation to attract the readership. A design blog carries more design credibility than an SEO blog. A business who’s focus is on selling online products depends on a custom presentation and usability to attract customers. A business just trying to throw a phone number and an address out there with some general info may resort to a “free theme” way of doing. There is something to be said about a great logo and branding as well as a company that takes the time and money to customize their site design. Marketing in my eyes is more important than design, but in some markets, they can’t make it very far without a great designer/developer.
What an egregious misunderstanding of what web design is. Or design itself for that matter…
This article seems like Twitter bait with it’s title , the naming dropping (Skittles/Modernista) and controversy (“design is dead”).
Ironic. You’ve almost proven that marketing does need design.
First of all, thanks to everybody for taking the time to comment.
Second of all, I was at pains to make the distinction between design in general, which we find in myriad instances across human cultures, and commercial graphic design as it has been practiced over the last two hundred or so years. I agree with Nate, to a degree, that the importance of graphic design differs based on the business model and any model that prioritizes content will depend less on graphic design, if for no other reason that you can’t control how that content will be consumed. As soon as I’m reading blogs or newspapers or whatever via RSS in a reader, the graphical component becomes immaterial.
Which brings me to the question of “web” design. As soon as people could choose font sizes or disable images via browser preferences, it was clear that web design could not be reduced to graphic design. I tend to think of web design more in functional terms and liken it more to product or industrial design. To that extent the IA, UI, and SEO matter more than the color palette, ornaments, or imagery (the choice and distribution of which was traditionally the bailiwick of the graphic designer).
There’s a lot more to discuss here – the difference between good and great design; the relationship between “identity” and “image” (as opposed to “experience,” for example); and doom-and-gloom laden prophecies of a discipline’s untimely demise – and I will return to those subjects here and elsewhere.
Thanks again for taking the time to read and respond.
“As soon as I’m reading blogs or newspapers or whatever via RSS in a reader, the graphical component becomes immaterial.”
Agreed. Some of my top rss feeds have no design component at all. Just readable font and a standard theme layout. I could care less about the design.
I will admit that I myself have fallen for the “make it look good and put a good marketing strategy to the side for a later day” syndrome. You’ve got to find a balance to maximize your audience.
Let’s not forget either that design is a part of marketing, not the other way around.
i agree with every designer who’s commented on here, as well. marketers DO need great designers, because an average or even a good designer probably won’t guarantee you usability/accessibility which a *great* designer will provide you. there’s a huge and fundamental difference between putting content out there with your typical layout and have it fail W3C, WAI, S508 and whatever have you versus putting up content that’s structured in a way so that it actually aids your readership. in fact, a well-designed site SHOULD become immaterial — sub-consciously, at least — because it means you’re immediately finding all the content you’re looking for and you don’t have to hunt it down in some poorly designed (free?) site/template; the design/layout/functionality of the site has done the grease work for you. you could work with the best marketer on a project but if he/she is working with an inexperienced designer or tweaking templates him/herself, that *million dollar idea* will just have been lost in the clutter of the long tail. it’d be arrogant to say that a designer doesn’t need a marketer; it’s a symbiotic relationship, pure and simple, IMHO.
Thank you very much for sharing this great topic i think “Design Needs Marketing, But Does Marketing NEED Design?” this is good both depend on each other Design need marketing for promote and sell the product online also for marketing we need to create well design site..
I am agree with your view and its really a good topic.
Mike – I very much agree with you that design is absolutely necessary when we are talking about usability. In fact, I used to give a talk on user experience in which that was my main point. If the site is usable, the “user” won’t “experience” it at all – they’ll just be able to do what they want to do.
I work as a designer but while I am at marketings beckoned call … if I didn’t put my two cents in their definition of web design would be a basic BUY NOW button that follows your mouse around. I would expect nothing less from a “Social Media Expert.”
While I appreciate and understand the opinions of all the designers who have commented, there’s definitely bias here.
I think part of the problem is that there are so many “designers” today, and the gateway to become a designer is so, SO easy to overcome that the discrepancies between average and great are getting muddled.
As a marketer, I know (I think) a great designer when I see them, and I know how valuable they are. At the same time, I also know a great Wordpress template when I see it that has enough flexibility that I can still make it impressive enough. As much as we don’t want to admit it, there is a time and place for demanding excellence, and a time and place for “good enough.”
Matt,
Hi! I don’t know if you remember me from when we worked together years go.
I loved your post and the thoughtful discussion that followed.
Regards,
Rahilla
Project Manager, Clearpoint
http://www.clearpointco.com/creative
Even though the Philippe Starck interview Matthew mentions appeared over a year ago, I feel compelled to comment on it since it is still “on topic.”
Over the years I’ve read a lot of media pundits pontificating on the “death” of this or that. “Television will make reading obsolete. Desktop computers and the Internet will destroy television. Mobil devices will kill desktop computers.” Now, apparently, “design” is dead. Right. We’ll see about that.
In my opinion, Philippe Starck engaged in self-indulgent navel gazing when proclaiming, “Everything I have created is absolutely unnecessary. Design, structurally seen, is absolutely void of use . . . Design is really a terrible way to express oneself.”
http://s-nonblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/die-zeit-interview-with-philippe-starck.html
I think Starck’s clients would contest his claim, especially after paying him vast sums of money for his work. And, I’ll bet a lot of the people who bought the stuff he designed actually enjoy using it. If Starck chooses to make an about-face in his thinking, he is more than entitled to do so. Do we have to drink his Kool-Aid? Absolutely not.
I say, bring on more designers. I want to see more beautiful industrial design. For that matter, I want to see more beautifully designed logos, ads, print collateral and web pages. And we will see them. Just as the computer did not bring about the end of paper, neither will any mass-produced design aids or revolutionary changes in communication bring about the end of the need for good design.
Human beings are designers by nature. People may not need design when reading Tweets on their iPhones …. but someone had to design the iPhone, and the package it comes in, and the ad that sell it, and the logo that appears on it. The constant quest to improve our lives precludes a return to the days of buying goods out of wooden barrels and wrapping them in butcher’s paper. Unless Starck is predicting the end of supply and demand, I would say reports of design’s demise are premature.
Starck states, “I want to do something else, but I don’t know what yet. I want to find a new way of expressing myself.” My response is, “Who cares what Mr. Starck wants to do. I don’t.” When it comes down to it, it doesn’t really matter what these doomsayers say. Their prognostications, as always, are irrelevant. The universe will take its course as it should and ultimately prove all of them wrong.
Final (?) comment. Mr. Keerma, I agree that we are all here at the whim of the universe, whose mysterious ways I do not pretend to fathom.
I also agree, as I mentioned in the post, that “design” is a very human behavior and I don’t expect us to stop designing things, scenarios, environments, tools, etc. anytime soon.
In the end, I don’t believe that marketers shouldn’t work with designers or seek out the best that they can find. Instead, I wanted to point out that the historical moment for some forms of graphic design is passing or may have already passed.
I celebrate, appreciate, and honor all forms of human creativity. I believe that the forms people are willing to pay for change and that we are seeing such a change right now.
Design isn’t dead any more than it was when the computer first appeared. The tools are evolving and it has become and will continue to become easier for non-designers to use something like clip art or a Wordpress theme.
But it’s pretty silly to draw line from the kind of developments you mention to design dying off as a profession. Are you really saying that companies will no longer need to have professionally designed logos, ad campaigns, websites, or software applications? Will we no longer need to have books typeset, movie titles designed, or street signs created? Even the Wordpress theme you mention was obviously created…by a designer. As cool as it might sound to pontificate on all-encompassing theories about where culture is headed, you can quickly see how this one doesn’t really lead anywhere.
Really? Web design is dead because there are templates? Who’s designing those templates then?
You jump to conclusions because Phillippe Starck finds no joy in his day job, and continue with: “Platform, Personality, and Presence.” What’s that? Really, marketing flatulence aside, what does that mean? Aside from the vague notion that you need it, can you envision what it is, or where and how it will be employed?
“Designers need marketers because, at the end of the day, most of the work done by the former is done at the behest of the latter.”
No.
Marketers are middlemen in bringing something “to market”. They perpetually exist between point A and B, respectfully walking the tightrope between those who create, and those who buy. A couple of Photoshop lessons will not change that.
Matthew, your assertions about the few areas of design that intersect with marketing are narrow. Graphic designers aren’t just the pimply guys who come to work on skateboards and help you crank out banner ad pollution. They also are also wise enough to protect your brand, from the vulgarity of making your logo too big, to how you can extend it’s scope with the panache it deserves. Or even invent a new one for you.
And those are just the designers you encounter as a marketer. Designers also pick the color of your underwear, decide upon the proportions of the table you eat at, and invent ways to help your paraplegic wife into the shower.
What I am willing to counter-suggest is that even marketers are designers (of a fashion)- in that they “design” routes to bring someone’s product to market. Perhaps immersing yourself in design culture just a little more might improve your perspective.
This is a ridiculous notion. Design will exist as long as people make visual choices. Will the role of “designers” change? Always. The message should not be that design is fading but that the role of a graphic designer is changing… and to that, well, no kidding.
Don’t worry designers, we can all just live off google ads from our free wordpress template sites.
Once a word, “design” for example, gets extended to all human activities (“that’s a nice facial expression you designed”-”that’s a nice crumpled piece of paper you designed – it’s perfect for throwing in the trash!”) it begins to lose it’s meaning. If the word “design” can be applied to the act of deciding the size of a logo as well as the act engineering a bathroom for use by a parapalegic, then what does “design” mean?
It is also possible that some professions disappear. Just ask the medieval copyists (since type-setting was mentioned). I know for a fact that graphic design as a profession is feeling the pinch for a number of different reasons, and it’s not just because people haven’t “immersed themselves in design culture.”
Anyhow, I’m grateful for the lively comments. A lot of food for thought and fodder for future posts!
The fact of the matter is that the act of design can be broadly applied. Even narrowed to graphic design, concerned with the structure and presentation of information, that is still a broad endeavor. Along with what I previously mentioned, as long as people include visual discernment in their decision making, design and even graphic design will have value. Designers may have to move beyond sizing logos as their primary concern, of course, but that’s not really what good design is anyway.
I would think that marketing would be just as vulnerable to the increased access to technology and professional level tools as the design industry is. Just as anyone can get a free wordpress template, can’t they also market themselves through free services such as youtube, facebook, myspace, etc? But then good marketing is more than just deciding what keywords to choose for my google ads… right?
If design is dead, how, will one company distinguish itself from another? All companies on Facebook? I hope all my competition uses Facebook!
It seems things move so fast anymore that just about any service can be obsolete in a few years. It’s pretty scary actually because it takes away the stability and security of a business. I suppose the best thing to do is to keep changing with the world and try to stay a step ahead always. It makes working a lot more challenging, but a challenge can be a good thing.
The topic here seems to be constructed to generate animosity. So let me stir pot. The formal domains of knowledge found in design and marketing are wedged apart with marketing experts claiming ownership of the business intelligence aspect of management or at least a higher level of comprehension of the economic factors at play. But much of this is B-school fluff in the on-going grand processional of insight and command of some collection quantitative analysis methodologies. In addition marketing practices like to lay claim to creativity. Much of this is built up from nostalgia command control strategic thinking and demographic data and out of touch with the way things work now. In practice the bulk of marketing today is applied writing and thinking that parallels the approach of the behavior of sophists who operated in the time of Plato– selling some range of knowledge for a high price. In the case of marketing the data is often regurgitated numbers from Forrester or some other meta-marketing lens for trend finding and seeps out in a sales pitch.
No matter how you slice and dice reality things must be done, and relationships get built. We can continue to pump air into the marketing inner tube that is riddled with holes and attempt to take this construction for an unpleasant spin or we can discover the needs of people that need something constructed, test solutions for this construction and finally provide offerings that have value. The deeper connections of the latter are functions of the design domain and the former of marketing. Words are cheap– stop inflating the value of them.
If journalists, word-smiths, and marketing gurus choose to champion their own delightful pontifications inside a cooked-up granfalloon that are cold left-overs from the high-flyin’ days of advertising …. so be it. The rest of will build for needs from the bottom up and displace the disvalue and disservice provided by B-school thinking. The origins of B-schools started as community service and community organization entities– but have evolved in to greed centered sophist like cults that have now given birth to a deformed economy and have bankrupted many frameworks for small business enterprise and entrepreneurial thinking. Design has had problems with rock-star persona’s but this a small majority tainting the much larger profession, that which is humble, hard-working and undervalued.
In the growing tension between B-school thinking and D-school innovation– I’m sorry to say but he winds have shifted and I don’t think Design need marketing, in the way people do not need cancer. But you may be right– cancer does need people.
“Does Marketing Need Design?”
Let’s ask Peter Arnell and the folks at Tropicana…
Matt Cram – Absolutely agree that marketing, at least certain areas of marketing practice, are equally threatened by technical innovation.
CJ Simon – Very much enjoyed reading your comment. Still, I think the Sophists got a bad rap.
Design is not about “graphics” or visual design of any kind. Design means that a product (be this software or hardware) works and serves its purpose.
This post seems a bit biased towards marketing and dismissive of the real value of design.
If marketers (I am one) would think more about their programs as designing an experience rather than a to-do list their performance would be better and would not think about dismissing design as a way to protect territory.
A great response to this article from @Jesse:
http://think.workatplay.com/content/marketing-needs-design
Bullhockey. It’s wishful thinking on a marketers behalf. I see many template-based SEO and marketing websites that look like confused cookie-cutter messes, and don’t even get me started on the terrible grammar and spelling (what’s next…Do We Need Copywriters?)
Marketers think they can pull brilliant design out of their own hat, due to their insistence that it’s their brilliant ideas that keep all us designers at work.
You want a professional appearance, hire a professional designer. Period. I can imagine if the marketers I work with were left to their own aesthetic devices – company branding image would be in the gutter, along with sales.
Good afternoon. An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
, Raina.
I am from Sweden and bad know English, give true I wrote the following sentence: “Necessary or typical treatments are slowly known with a several insect of reductase, to occur their subject and sustain them for late hair.”
With love