What’s your philosophy of design?
For years, design was seen as merely artistic craft involving intuition and aesthetics. Design was “successful” if it at least captured the attention.
    More recently, design has been elevated to the status of a science involving market research, focus groups, and response tracking. This may benefit both the designer and the client, for it requires that design fulfill specific purposes and focus on clearly defined objectives. But, as with most sciences, it can at times dehumanize the process.
    Graphic design must never become “art for art’s sake” but neither should it be a cold compilation of facts distilled into single solutions. Design needs to be seen as communication.
    Whether your company is a corporation, a publisher, or a small business, your designed materials will benefit when you start with a specific audience, an objective goal, and a defined message. And, as with any communication, it will be more effective when done creatively and aesthetically. Design must hold in equal measure both the objectivity of communicating a message and the creativity and craft of telling a story in order to engage an often disinterested audience.
    Take time to evaluate your own company’s design—not as art, not as science, but as effective communication.

The purpose of this newsletter is to remind, inspire, and invigorate our clients and friends as to the true potential of design when it is used for a clear purpose to communicate. Through subsequent articles we will address such issues as strategy, creativity, and branding.

A case for inconsistency
Identity is often developed in the mind of your audience through consistency in both visual representation and message.
    But when the opportunity arises to target an even smaller segment of your audience, the defining parameters of the target audience must briefly change. Both the message and the design need to speak directly to that new segment.
    Such was the case recently for Wheaton College’s Graduate School. With several new ads planned in upcoming youth conference journals focussing on ministry or missions, the age spread of their target audience became smaller and younger. Also much more was known about the priorities, values and goals of the conference attendees that differentiated this segment from the original broader audience. As a result the look and message of the advertising needed to change; it became edgier and more defiant against the status quo. Consistency was maintained through the types of images and fonts used. But rougher elements, a more earthy color palette and a tilted composition made it less academic, to say the least.
    The resulting two-page spread print ad for Wheaton College showing our redefining of their established branding is shown above.