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Most of us have now heard the song “United Breaks Guitars”. I don’t want to rehash what’s being written about this song everywhere on the web and in the papers, but it deserves a quick mention here because the story is relevant to corporate communications. Corporate culture is useless if employees are made to follow policy at the cost of being human and compassionate, and using their own judgment. Dave Carroll of the Sons of Maxwell has humbled a large corporation by being honest and funny rather than angry and vindictive when United Airlines broke his guitar. And the world responds to someone who is real, and who is communicating something meaningful in an entertaining way.

Here’s the full story.

Here’s the song.

And let’s hope Dave Carroll’s music will sell like hotcakes from all this unexpected exposure.

And, we must add with a small tinge of irrational patriotic pride, Dave and his brother Don are Canadian.

The prevailing notion about design seems to be that it is always subservient to marketing, but that is absolutely not the case. Communication is the overarching discipline. Both graphic design and marketing fall under communications. Graphic design often works in conjunction with marketing, or serves marketing purposes. However, sometimes design itself IS the product, and marketing then serves design.

As designers, we have done a good job of selling our skills as valuable business assets. Companies understand the value of a strong logo, a well-organized, attractive website, and professional-looking brochures.

But it is time to remember that design has many functions. Here are some of them:

• to inform and educate (e.g. airport signage, medical diagrams, books)
• to convince (e.g. advertisements, pamphlets for a company or product — this is when design becomes aligned with marketing)
• to improve everyday life (e.g. product design such as a better dishwasher or a better spoon)
• to decorate (e.g. a poster designed as a keepsake rather than purely as information)
• as graphic art (e.g. designers like Marian Bantjes, Rick Valicenti, and Stefan Sagmeister have demonstrated this)
• as a science (e.g. font design which is based on legibility criteria, visual proportions, as well as style)
• to entertain and amuse (e.g. cartoons and comics)
• to fight for a cause (e.g. Käthe Kollwitz’s social justice posters, or Diego Rivera’s murals)

As Paul Rand, the designer of many famous logos (for IBM, UPS and ABC) said: “To design is much more than simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit; it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse.”

Just as an exercise, I’d like to figure out what it is we designers really really want in a client, and what clients really really want in a designer. Parts of this list are going to come easily, others not. Here’s my attempt: more »

I’ve long disliked the word “branding” altogether. I hope it goes out of date soon, in fact I believe it already has. At best, it just has too much of a ring of singed flesh and lowing cattle to it. At worst, it smacks of brainwashing an unsuspecting consumer. more »

We love our clients dearly. They provide interesting work and ultimately, cheese on the table for us. And most of the time, projects go well because we do our best to communicate progress to our clients clearly. We also value their perspective, and 97.6% of the time we receive thoughtful feedback on our work. A true collaborative effort is always our goal. more »