If Nature Didn’t Make It, a Designer Did.
For the next three minutes it takes to read this post, let’s press pause to give a little credit where credit is due.
Hi!
Okay, now that you have your attention, consider those underappreciated design nuggets you encounter that sprinkle a bit of joy into otherwise pedestrian tasks like brushing your teeth, driving your car or grabbing a snack to begin your day. Chances are there’s a fun, useful or at the very least not completely terrible logo, character or package design that’s part of the mix. It’s time to give them–and their anonymous creators—a mental high-five for doing all they do for you.
After all the mindful introspection (if that’s still a thing), pay your buddies Elliot and Todd some mind and listen to our podcast episode on Unsung Logos, the kind you’re unlikely to see featured in hoity-toity design publications. The kind that, if they were people, would have most certainly met Mike Rowe by now.
Hi!
All this logo talk got us thinking we might as well also be talking about the people whose hard work (and lack of understanding the typical rules of “good design”) brought these underappreciated beauties to life: printers making the packaging, sign crafters super-sizing the work, truck drivers advertising these gems on the road, sales clerks helping spread the good word and the housekeeping staffs in our hotels all play an important role. There’s only a slim chance they’d show up as a cover story in Hoi Polloi Digest (if that were a thing...and we wish it were) but they help deliver some joy every day. They too are unsung.
Back in 2007 when the world was captivated by new media, smarty-pants marketing researchers at a company called Yankelovich (not named after Weird Al; we checked) estimated we’re exposed to about 5,000 brand messages a day. (We’ll save you some time. That’s 208 per hour or almost 3.5 per minute. And that’s if you never go to sleep.) Ah, the good ol’ days. Consider back then, Twitter had mere thousands of users compared to its 330 million opinion sprayers today (duck!). Facebook was still only on campuses with a mere 30 million users compared to its current network of 2.7 billion great aunts and people you never spoke to in high school. Put all that together and we’re exposed to a really big bunch of stuff!
Now you know why we suggested you take that breather.
The uncomfortable truth is that most of the things people are exposed to each and every day are forgotten. As designers, that’s not really the response we’d like for our hard work, but hey, that’s the reality. Like other professionals, we do it because we want to do the best job possible even if the only thanks we get is people voting with their dollars. And we love it when logos created for a basic purpose go above and beyond the call to not only deliver for the task they were created to do, but can also include a little happiness to boot.
So the next time you grab that cup of joe in your hotel room—or the shirt you need to change into after spilling your coffee—take a quiet moment to recognize the anonymous person or team that helped make your time together a reality.
P.S. If you like this talk of simple yet beautiful things, check out our post, Bargain Icons.