Design isn’t just for graphic designers and marketing gurus. If you’re good at design, you’ll succeed in ways you never thought possible. Business professionals: we live in age where there is no excuse to not be more design-conscious. And it has never been more important that you become so now.
All of us–every single one of us humans–is sucked into the lure of great design. It’s a futile attempt to argue that you aren’t persuaded, influenced, motivated, excited, affected, or even occasionally duped by things that look and feel pretty. We all are. We buy clothes, use products, click on websites, watch movies, eat deliciously unhealthy junk, visit tourist destinations, take classes, read books, peruse fliers and brochures, etc. in large part because something we saw spoke to our inner soul—or our unconscious brain. Some visual detail—whether witnessed consciously or not—didn’t just tell us we needed to buy that swanky fresh t-shirt or indulge in that new Red Velvet Oreo or even pause to read that article; some detail emotionally charged us and even brain-chemically tweaked us to the point where we, at some level, said to ourselves, “yep. This matters to me. So I’m going to engage with it.”
In some way design affects all of us all of the time. If you’ve ever used a potato peeler that made your hand hurt, you were affected by design. If you’ve ever missed a turn because you couldn’t tell which road your GPS demanded you to turn on, you were affected by design. If you’ve ever complained your back hurt after sitting in the same chair all day; if you’ve ever been frustrated because an airport was difficult to navigate; if you’ve ever given up reading a document because there was too much text; shoot, if you’ve ever clicked on the wrong link on the DMV’s homepage–you’ve been affected by design.
Everything around us–the clocks on our walls, the Post-Its in our drawers, the cell phones in our pockets, the websites in front of us–has been designed. Most of things, of course, were designed intentionally, by designers, with users in mind. But…even stuff that wasn’t intentional was still designed. By someone. Somewhere.
Think of how many emails you’ve already scanned this morning without reading every word. Someone, the sender of that email, designed it. If they weren’t consciously thinking about the design, though, they probably didn’t reach you how they hoped. Their design was ineffective. Every time you create something for someone else, you’re designing it. But if you’re not conscious of the design choices you’re making, you may be encouraging them to ignore it, gloss over it, be turned off by it, or, even worse, be offended by it.
Truth is, our brains are wired to pay attention to certain things and ignore others. Research has shown, for example, that we remember pictures far, far better than words (it’s not even close if you compare the two). If you have ever had to create a PowerPoint, then this is an important design nugget to keep in mind: include more pictures than text if you want people to remember what you said! This is the case for all humans, in all cultures. Consider these universal human facts:
- Our brains are drawn to colors, highlighted information, and even icons.
- We remember logos with shapes better than logos with text (although text can become a visual shape/design as well, if used well).
- We pay attention to human faces, danger, food, sex, and blinking or moving objects more than we pay attention to other things.
- When faces are bigger in a picture and we see less body, we interpret intellectualism, personality, and character; when more of a person’s body is shown, however, we interpret physical health and sensuality.
- It’s possible that nearly 8% of all men with European ancestry may have some form of color blindness.
- Most people in Western cultures have been trained from the earliest stages of brain development to read top-to-bottom, left to right.
- Low contrast in colors hurts people’s eyes; the higher the contrast, the easier it is to read something.
- Our brains fill in visual gaps that don’t actually exist.
- If two or more things are close together, we automatically assume they are related. The farther apart two things are, the more we assume they’re not related.
- People don’t read ALL CAPS as quickly as they do text in sentence case.
- People naturally want information to be chunked and organized. If it’s not, they’ll get bored or frustrated.
Why does all of this matter? Because most of us in our professions create information in some capacity on a regular basis. We create data visualizations; presentation slide decks; instructions; sales reports; emails; fliers; announcements; handouts; web pages; advertisements; social media posts; you name it. We live in an age where we create stuff. And…we’re also surrounded by it. If we don’t design the information in a way that it will speak to people, then the information becomes lost in a world of information clutter, particularly in the workplace.
Consider, for example, that the average office employee receives roughly 40 emails per day, with that number rising even higher for managers and business owners. Forty! That equates to over 11,000 emails in a year. But…most people don’t actually read all of those. They skim, scan, and delete many. If your email is going to get read–and if the most important part of your email will be noted and understood, you have to design it so that it will grab the right attention.
And guess how long the average recruiter looks at resumes? Six seconds! Within six seconds, they are making judgments about whether or not you’re qualified. They’re clearly not reading the entire resume in six seconds. Rather, they’re looking at what is bold, what is big, and what stands out. They’re looking at the design. If the design doesn’t grab them quickly, they toss the resume.
One more, for good measure: guess how long the average person will stay on your website that they come to it from a Google search? 10 – 20 seconds. If there isn’t a clear value proposition placed in an area that speaks to the visitor, they leave. And they completely forget about you and your web page.
Combatting information overload isn’t easy but the single most effective way to start is with design. Recognizing that most people you communicate to–whether in a formal presentation, through a flier or advertisement, in an email, in a report, or some other method—are overloaded with information; you must require you to rethink how they will likely access it. And this will require you to be a designer at heart.
Now, that may sound intimidating. But don’t fret too much. While there are hundreds of design principles you can (and I highly recommend you should) learn over time, the reality is that you probably already know more about design than you think you do. It really starts with awareness.
I’ve learned that, if I want to get a bunch of people I’ve never met before excited about a topic they didn’t realize they felt passionate about, I just casually throw out a question about their big box store of choice:
“So, which do you like better, Target or Walmart?”
And you know…much of the response comes back to some comment about the design of the two stores. You can probably already imagine what most people say. Target. Probably by a 9 – 1 margin. People like target because it “feels” cleaner; they like the “warmth” of the red; it’s less “cluttered”; the layout is easier to “find” stuff; and on and on. If you begin thinking about what you like (or don’t like) about certain things in your own workplace–PowerPoints that were awesome (or not); announcements that were easy to follow (or not); brochures that made you want to join a cause (or didn’t); and so forth, you’ll likely come up with a pretty good list of things you already know work better for you. You can improve the way you highlight text or include images. You can improve which font choices you make. You can fix the way you organize information in order of priority.
We live in an age that requires you to think not just about the content you create, but the design of the information. If you don’t, chances are pretty good your information–and by association, you—will be far less influential.