Usually the word commodity is spoken in economic or social theory circles, not design. But over the last few weeks I’ve run into a website, Livebooks that got me thinking in this direction.
To begin, for those of us who haven’t had the teeth pulling experience of a introductory economics class or social theory class, a commodity can be seen as one product is the same as a another, in other words homogeneous, and that businesses and markets that deal with such commodities make profit by producing that commodity cheaper, faster, but without a loss in constancy. Pigs, Mcdonald’s, water, or electricity are good examples of this.
So what does this have to do with "good" design? well, I bring this up because I ran into the site Livebooks.com recently, and if I ever needed an example to show why “good” design is a commodity this is it. I first ran into this service from a classmate’s portfolio website. It was full blown flash but yet fully searchable via search engines, very sleek and in general, “good” as “good” design can be for web design.
What’s actually wrong with this? Well for that classmate of mine absolutely nothing— Hell if I was into flash mania I would jump on this product in 5 seconds. If I was a potential client I would be very impressed, and most likely give this classmate a email. So it’s a score for Livebooks, and a score for that classmate of mine, and a score for potential clients.
So if there's nothing wrong, why devote a whole article post about it? In my opinion it’s because this is what I would call “Artifact Creation.” This is nothing new, in fact I would argue almost all graphic design (and also earlier in our history with the printing/ bookmaking arts) has been “Artifact Creation.” I can say this because the question every designer asks ( if not explicitly then implicitly) is “Does this look good?” It’s the view of a craftsman, and there’s nothing wrong with that— it’s just a narrow measure to decide if something is successful or not. The real issue is that once that question has been answered, like in the case for web design Livebook.com, what’s left to do for the designer? To produce that “good” design cheaper and faster— just like any other commodity like pigs or electricity.
Now there’s no need for the usual designer foot stomping on this manner. The solution to this dilemma is very simple actually ( if you consider it a dilemma in the first place). All you need to do is ask yourself as a designer when evaluating an artifact, along with “does it look good?” also ask “why?” This is important, because this simple shift in question denies the ability for a client to simply say in the case of logo design “We’re a pig farm. I like the color red.” The client has to state what he wants this artifact to do; Increase sales by 5% for that year, get more vendors, increase his brand image to his audience, etc. etc.
And along with that stating of a goal, to truly know if that goal has been achieved, after an artifact is made the designer has to evaluate and respond to the result of that artifact with the client.
Instead of a linear method of working,
Graphic designers begin to work in a circular method.
So, no more one night stands, but instead you’ll have the warm and fuzzy feeling of a long term relationship based on trust.
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