Robert Scoble on design and brands
In a post called “The role of anti-marketing design” Robert Scoble argues that deliberately being ugly has its virtues. His post is worth a read to understand how non-designers often approach design. He also offers up a unique perspective on brands.
For Scoble, “anti-marketing design” is bare-bones design that’s a heartbeat from engineering, and isn’t “pretty”. You just throw it together. His prototypical example is a Canadian dating site that looks like a stripped down body shop, and according to Scoble, has “passionate users.” Heh.
Scoble’s own site is a better case study.
Scoble doesn’t want design to interfere with function. And I totally agree. I think “pretty” sucks, too. But Scoble writes for an audience whose idea of Incunabula is last week’s O’Reilly Radar. They pay a price for literal paradigms.
Regarding brands, he goes on to say:
Why does anti-marketing design work? Well, for one, big companies will never do a site that doesn’t look pretty. Why? Cause of the prevailing belief that great brands need to be beautiful. Look at what corporate branding experts study. Apple. Target. BMW. Everything those guys do is beautiful. Aesthetic. Crafted by committees of ad marketing department experts.
Target?? Please!! Target is Wal-Mart with lipstick. And both BMW and Apple have had their share of design dogs. And “crafted by committee” never creates anything of beauty, or of excellence. “Committees” and “aesthetics” are never on the same page, ever.
Here Scoble seems to be confusing appearance with design, and “looks” with brand value. Great brands do need to be beautiful, but brand beauty is not some refined aesthetic purity breathed down from the white-space deities. It’s a matrix of many different values, some of which include aesthetic appeal, but many more that touch on customer-based qualities such as functionality, usability, simplicity, character, and even virtues like “charm.”
All that said, I read Scoble every day. He’s a large part of the Microsoft brand–often the best part.