Melbourne Mayor, and self-confessed MC Hammer fan, Robert Doyle’s comments that a conscious decision was made to hire an international branding firm over local designers, because he “wanted the best product and this is not the kind of work that is actually done very widely” (the Age 23/07/09) is an indictment on himself, and unfortunately the Australian graphic design industry.

Cr Doyle, by saying this, exposes himself as not only ignorant of the local design industry – an industry with an enviable international reputation – but also exposes the kind of cultural inferiority complex that infects many of the decision-makers in this country. If he had bothered to look in either the phone book, or visited the Australian Graphic Design Association website, he would have found hundreds of capable designers that actually specialize in branding right here in Victoria.

But this decision also points to a failure by the Australian graphic design profession in the way it represents itself to the community. Australian graphic design is an almost invisible industry. It seems the only time we ever hear about graphic design in the press is when somebody gets wind of how much something has cost, or they don’t like the look of something that is in the public eye. Apart from the odd story in the press about how internationally acclaimed designer Stephen Banham hates the typeface Helvetica (and quite rightly so – it was designed for road signs) our industry hardly rates a mention (and thank God for Stephen or we’d have no press coverage).

More worrying is that graphic design is still viewed by many as something that is not worth spending money on. Jack Davis, president of Ratepayers Victoria, thinks the spending on the new logo is exorbitant, asking ‘Is it made of gold?’ (the Age 23/07/09). $148,000 is not a lot of money, especially if the design stands the test of time, which in design years is about 20 years tops – an investment of just $7,400 a year. How this is countered is up to the design industry, and those who create the design briefs and, might I add, the design budgets – the Cr Doyles of this land.

I’m just glad Cr Doyle’s not in state politics anymore, or we could be sending even more money overseas for projects best handled right here in Victoria by our own, internationally acclaimed local talent.

‘Coles can be saved, branding experts believe.’

This headline appeared in The Age business section, on Saturday October 27th 2007. All praise be to the brand experts I thought to myself. Well, actually I lie. It was more a feeling of incredulity at such a preposterous statement. Everyone knows that if something stinks, you can’t get rid of the smell by gift-wrapping it. I read on…

‘Coles can be revived with some intensive surgery.’

The brand experts’ operating theatre is more about theatre than operating. Changing the branding is not a surgical procedure, more like adding a prosthetic limb to help it hobble along.

The article continued in much the same way.

‘What retailers have is space where they can talk to you, have conversations with you, engage with you, inspire you.’

The last thing I want is to be ‘engaged with’ when I am buying a 12 roll pack of loo paper.

We designers are great at talking crap. Many of us believe our own crap. And, unfortunately many in our industry believe that spinning crap is what we are being paid to do.

It is precisely this kind of design industry propaganda that undermines our industry. How can anyone view what we do in a professional light when design practitioners make such ridiculous claims? (Proven in this case by the fact that the brand experts did not save Coles, rather a corporate takeover by Wesfarmers).

As designers we are in the business of creating propaganda. We help to present things in a deliciously palatable way, regardless of whether they are bad, bland or bull.

Designers are often told by their clients what to do and how to do it. But, if you were to hire a plumber, I doubt you would tell him where to lay the pipes. Unlike a good plumbing job – where toilets flush, showers flow and pipes drain – there is no clear evidence provided to clients to show that a design will work.

Rather than providing spin, we should be providing evidence that a design works. How do we do this? By demonstrating that the intended user can read the design, navigate their way through it, and act appropriately on the information it provides – for example, using the information on a medicine label to take the right dose, using warnings on a toy box to buy a suitable product for a child under 3, using a bill to find out when to pay, using signage to find the maternity section, and so on. If designers focussed on developing design solutions that not only looked good, but were usable and functional, perhaps less propaganda would be needed. Unfortunately, many of us have nothing more than aesthetic arguments to support what we do at the design stage, resulting in the kind of terrible dross we see peddled by the brand experts in The Age article. And, as long as clients stay hooked on the rain dance rather than the actual rain, we will continue to see more of the same.

We are also in the habit of continually re-branding ourselves: commercial artists became graphic artists, who became graphic designers, who became communication designers, corporate identity specialists, branding experts, wayfinders, and information architects. People could be forgiven for not knowing what industry we are actually in.

Interestingly, architects do not feel the need to change their industry title every 5-10 years. This speaks volumes about the difference in the level of professionalism and professional standing that exists within the community for these two disciplines. It doesn’t need to be this way. A move to a performance-based approach would not only improve the standing of designers, but make them more accountable for what they do and say.

It makes me cringe when I read statements, like this one from the brand experts in The Age article, describing the supermarket experience:

‘It’s the sense of having a shopping trip where you know you will come out stimulated, instead of having fulfilled that core and ticked the items on the list.’

The article features a full colour photo of the brand experts, who look like they have never set foot in a supermarket in their lives.

Fortunately for all of us, Douglas Adams had a solution 20 years ago for those among us who undermine our industry. In the final installment of his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy novels, the Golgafrinchams round up all of their designers, hair dressers, documentary filmmakers, governmental bureaucrats and other vacuous inhabitants and trick them into leaving their planet, shipping them off in Ark Fleet Ships programmed to crash-land on a distant planet so they can never return. If only…

This article appeared in Open manifesto {4}, Australia’s leading design publication and brainchild of Kevin Finn. openmanifesto.net

When I talk to people about what I do, the first thing that they identify as being ‘information design’ is forms design. While being one of the areas we specialise in, we are relieved to say that its not ALL we do.

Forms enable organisations to obtain the information they need to understand their customers better, collect details for sales, tax returns or insurance claims, or register information for an event. Without forms, many businesses simply could not function.

Forms are often the single most important piece of design for businesses, yet they are often the poor (design-budget) cousin of promotional design and branding. To create effective forms takes time and money. Perhaps its because they aren’t that glamorous, and our emotional associations with them are so poor.

There’s something about forms. No matter what their purpose most people hate them. My wife and I even hated filling out our forms for the baby bonus – despite the guarantee of $5000 at the end of it. It starts with the “Rudd-ish” look and feel of most forms – appearing to be very busy, but aesthetically bland. The detached language used subsequently compounds this odious impression.

People are both wary and tired of giving away their personal details. How often are we asked to provide our name and address? It’s like having the same conversation over and over again – boring and tedious. And, giving away our personal information to someone that engages us with scant interest and in some instances lack of respect is difficult to come at.

We have conducted extensive testing of forms through a number of projects. As is our design practice, we begin by testing the existing form design before developing a new design. Testing has shown that people have difficulty navigating their way through most forms (i.e. the sequencing of the form questions was not clear, or easy to follow), instructions did not make sense, explanations did not explain things and language was too detached in tone. As a result, errors and omissions of data in required fields are rife. Consultation with our clients also revealed that in some cases these forms-related problems resulted in loss of business, additional spending on continuous form redesign and printing, plus huge expenses for call centres and form processing staff.

It does not need to be like that.

We have employed a number of strategic design and writing features in our forms design to improve the form experience for both form fillers and processors. These have been based on extensive testing, and detailed scoping of an organisations processes. We touch on some of these solutions in the form project descriptions.

IIID VISION PLUS CONFERENCE, AUSTRIA

In June last year I attended the 12th Vision Plus IIID Conference in Austria. The four day conference was held in a small alpine village called Schwarzenburg. The village is set amongst the most lush green hills and breathtakingly beautiful mountains I have ever seen – the kind of place where you’d imagine Heidi eating cheese, or Arnie pumping iron.

Speakers from the international design community with a specific interest in information design were invited. The title of this year’s conference was Information Design – Achieving Measurable Results. I submitted a synopsis and was excited to be asked to give a 40 minute presentation.

My presentation was the first session on the second morning of the conference. After a 30 hour journey and more than a touch of jetlag, I was glad I wasn’t presenting on the first morning as I may have been the first person to ever fall asleep during their own paper.

Using examples from my studio’s professional projects I discussed how measuring a design’s performance can improve the design process and deliver superior design outcomes. (You can read a full outline of my presentation in the ‘articles and comment’ section of this site.)

My presentation was well received – I received invitations to visit Coventry, Reading and Santiago Universities, requests for contributions to overseas design journals, and the possibility of working with overseas studios on project work. It was exciting to see how much the work I have been doing was valued by my international peers – information design is a lonely world in Australia. But, enough about me.

Papers at the conference discussed how and to what extent we can measure the success of design, how the role and impact of design can be quantified, the techniques and technologies that can be used to obtain measurable results, and how designers are building these into their projects.

Projects discussed covered the whole gamut of information design – from signage and wayfinding systems to the more complex representation of financial and health communications. Highlights for me were :

• José Allard’s typeface design for Santiago’s transport system based on the hand-painted typography of Chiles personalised buses (each bus driver tended to make his bus all his own, at least visually) showed that even under the crushing conformity of modernisation, individual expression – albeit standardised – still has a place and a very loud voice.

• Krzystof Lenk’s students’ work from Rhode Island School of Design based on Harper’s Magazine’s Annual Index – a page of statistical data on American society – where various statistics were represented in an immediate and visual way.

• Paul Stiff’s discussion of rudimentary wayfinding maps – an ephemeral collection of hand-drawn notes, maps and diagrams on pieces of scrap paper, napkins and on the back of cards – that demonstrated that in everday life most people create both cognitive and tangible aids for navigating.

• Meeting and talking with the amazing people from this industry that are doing such interesting work all over the world.

It was obvious from the conference that there are many differing views and levels of competency in the design industry when it comes to measuring design. While some speakers expressed concern over the difficulty of measuring design, others including myself, demonstrated that not only is the measuring of a design’s performance a straightforward process, but is also a key stage or component of any design process that achieves the best outcomes for our clients, and more importantly for the users of the designs we produce.

I learned a lot from this conference and hope to bring some of this inspiration to my projects here in Australia.

A colleague of mine forwarded a URL for an article in the New York Times about an exciting and innovative typeface that has been developed in the states to improve their traffic road signs. It is well worth the read and shows what can be achieved with some talent and persistance. Exciting and clever stuff! Take a look.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/magazine/12fonts-t.html?th&emc=th