�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.

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.

www.openmanifesto.net.au