Today, i feel much better about my day-job. Many of our clients are purpose-oriented individuals or organizations who are really trying to make a positive difference in the world. Just now somebody passed around photos of Al Gore on Capitol Hill yesterday, testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the latest information on climate change… and in the photos you can see him projecting our slides.

Warm fuzzies abound.

Also I am very very excited this week to have been given full creative freedom on a presentation I’m designing for a speaker at the upcoming TED conference. (www.ted.com) And lo-and-behold… the subject matter is one that i am DEEPLY committed to; restoring a sense of morals to corporations… the need for people to do what is RIGHT instead of what is profitable.

when i am personally committed to something, it ceases to be “work”

Good times. =)

Anyway I always have to remind people that even though the job title may say “designer” the chances of you being an artist for a living is pretty much slim-to-none… illustrators have that glory but we do not. Our sense of good taste, balance and style are going to be beaten into submission over and over as our clients throw all our good concepts and hard work in the trash in favor of “the safe option”

I have been bitching for years that my job here is less “graphic designer” and more “production designer” because I design only what they tell me (since I’ve vitually given up on selling these people on edgy ideas) and i spend more time layout out content and not “being creative”

After a while my mood began to suffer. I NEEDED to be more creative in my position or I would have to leave. I searched for ways to push the envelope and put more of myself into my work….  I slowly began to try to affect the direction of branding here and before long I came to a startling realization….

Marketing = Problem Solving

The real creative side of your job is going to take place in the 3 hour mind-numbing meetings you will find yourselves in…. in the shower in the morning… in your car on the way to work…  while watching tv at night.

It’s called “Marketing/Communications” for a reason. The constant challenge is to wrap your head around HOW you are going to communicate a given message to a customer…. HOW you are going track market response and effectiveness…. HOW you are going to change people’s general opinion about a dying brand?

Two examples of brilliance that pop to mind are Jack In The Box and Target. In the late 80s Jack In The Box nearly went under when several customers died from ecoli poisoning due to shitty food-handling practices. How does a company regain the public trust? A daunting task, yet they pulled it off by bringing back “Jack”, their old mascot, and airing a commercial in which he blows up a board room of executives and supposedly “takes back control of his restaurant business”…  Somehow they pulled it off and sales are better than ever.

Target was struggling and decided to be the leader instead of the follower… they used crazy tactics like starting word-of-mouth rumors that Target was really pronounced “Tar-Jey” overseas…. creating a buzz that Target was somehow fancy… shortly after that they acquired Mossimo and other dying brands… picked up a few aspiring designer product lines and not only put them on their shelves… but they integrated the design into their entire store. Countertops suddenly matched the products that lined the shelves… they implemented a lighting standard of no less than X lumens-per-square-foot. The days of temp employees being able to bring any old red shirt to work are gone. I used to go into Target around Xmas time and I couldn’t tell who was an employee and who was a customer but now there is a rigid standard… a pantone color for “Target Red” and no leeway on pants color….

How is this marketing? It’s marketing because Marketing = Psychology. People are JOCKING Target these days and it’s exactly because of these changes. Their marketing department spends way less time thinking about creative artsy imagery for ads and more time brainstorming on their next psychological assult on the public.

It’s shady and it’s underhanded but it’s what we do. We control people’s minds. You think you know what is “cool” and “hip” in the world? No… we gave that to you. We decided what is cool and we told you what to think. Jack In The Box and Target both spent YEARS on “guerilla-marketing” to change your opinion of them… We are the REASON you are addicted to buying things. We are the bad guys. Yes it’s true. Anyone actually IN marketing will attest to this. Our job is to be sneaky and influence entire generations… To make you feel inadequate without our product… To make you afraid… To make our name the first word you think of in the right situations…

Where Do You Draw the Line?

The more creative i get to be here at my job, the more evil i seem to become. Today we discussed CAIS certification. it’s something we made up. If you go online and pass a very simple test that demonstrates your ability to use our software, we will send you a silly printed certificate… a sticker for your shop window and a patch for your sleeve. We made that shit up. We made up a status symbol that seperates the average automotive technician from this supposedly new-school higher-tech automotive technician. Then we invaded public schools. We started working with high-school auto shops and now they can train their students on our software under the premise that they will be high-tech and industy-ready when they enter the job market. We say that they will be more valuable and quicker to find a job because they will we be CAIS certified when they leave.

Today, during our 3 hour meeting, I heard someone say “If only we’d gotten in there 5 years ago! The new generation of mechanics out there would all prefer our software and we could leverage that!”

And I began to feel kinda shitty. Because we’re not that different from the companies I flame regularly (like apple)… we are talking about weaseling our way into their schools under the guise of “education” when, in truth, we’re really just promoting the shit out of our product and even trying to “shape” the next generation of our potential customers… That’s what this is all about but do we really have to do it in schools? And is it “bad”? I feel bad about it because I (falsely) still consider schools to be “places of learning” when they are not. They are businesses and they are the brainwashers of our youth. Apple donates a bunch of computers to schools and what happens? The next generation of graduates comes out of school trained on Mac. You know why Mac has become THE standard for graphics and sound? NOT because they are “better for graphics and sound” as most Mac enthusiasts will tell you… (hell the monitor has a few more colors…. less than 20… so what you’re getting 16 million colors on a pc and 16 million and twenty on a Mac? whoop-de-doo) But simply because Apple shaped the market. Somehow apple has become synonymous with education and as dumb as i think it is, it was a brilliant move.

I dunno… what is right? what is wrong? where do you draw the line? I guarantee you you won’t be hearing complaints in the paper about Macs or our software being used in schools…. but you WILL hear about Pepsi or Coca Cola monopolizing the concessions at our public schools and making themselves “The Choice of a New Generation.” Why because you were BETTER? Or because you trained us from a young age?

And I’m not even gonna get into the ROTC programs out there… that’s just the evillest of all evil. My grade-school friend was put into ROTC by his mother because she hoped it would make him more responsible…. the old “military school” fantasy… the truth is she stuck him in a propoganda engine that sold him on being a fucking marine. Is that really what she wanted? I doubt it.