Design, Art, and Advertising
This month, the San Francisco chapter of the Interaction Design Association is hosting a talk about interaction design and advertising. My initial reaction was one of horror―not because I hate advertising (I don’t), but because I feel there is a crucial difference between design and advetising, and it is the same difference as between art and design, and that is intent.
I want to note that this is not advertising bashing. I appreciate a good ad as much as anyone, and know advertising is an important part of the product ecosystem, as well as helps fund products themselves. I also realize many talented people make their living doing advertising, and this is no critique of them.
At its core, however, advertising is about two things: making consumers aware of a product, and convincing them to purchase/use said product. It is about about what can be gotten from the consumer, using their wants and needs to make a product desirable. As noted above: this isn’t a bad thing, just the reality.
Design, however, is about what can be done for the user. It is a service, really. How can I make this person’s life easier, more efficient, better? Advertising promises this, design has to deliver on it. The reason for doing design is different than the reason for doing advertising. Design doesn’t just use customer needs for gain (although profit is assuredly a by-product of doing design well), but tries to address them for the user’s benefit.
The same is true of art. Art is about conveying a personal message. Its intent is not to convince or serve its “customers,” but can be about confronting them, or comforting them, or any number of other messages.
So, yes, I do feel a design association is the wrong place to discuss advertising, just as it is the wrong place to discuss art (except in how the tools of both could be used to make better products). Even if it looks like two professionals are doing the same thing (making a Flash movie, for instance), the intent for making that movie could be completely different, and that makes all the difference.
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9 Comments
Well said, Dan. The intent defines whether something is art, advertising, or design. They all serve a common master: the person it’s aimed to influence.
I think selling is hard to separate from Design. In the ideal world, Design’s primary goal would be to improve lives. Features are added to products to enable them to sell, even though in reality people might not need them. But, then again, maybe that’s why we need to separate design and selling.
An area where the two might have common ground is in branding. Products communicate messages, much like advertising and creating specific qualities in the product can help create/strengthen the idea of the brand. Maybe advertising can help us think about how to communicate those qualities?
“Design, however, is about what can be done for the user.”
I’m not sure I agree with this. I think great design is about understanding user needs and business needs, and creating something which delivers on both (with inevitable trade-offs).
Just like great design, great advertising can expose us to things we find delightful and useful. Misleading advertising can get us to buy stuff we don’t need. But design can be as misleading as advertising. We often buy things with no advertising interaction, only to regret the purchase later. We were sold on the design.
“Design, however, is about what can be done for the user.”
I find it very interesting that you see design as inherently user-centered. Design has always only implied intentionality to me, or giving something form. Yes, this frequently means granting the user value as a result, but it’s never seemed to me that design required that the user benefit in any way.
In my mind this is why we always end up modifying the word in order to provide context: industrial design, graphic design, visual design, web design, interaction design, interior design, etc.
I have to admit that my understanding of the history of design as both concept and practice is woefully incomplete, so I’d love to hear if my understanding of the word has any historical validity, or if I’m just reacting (badly?) to the way I’ve seen the word “design” used around me.
If we think about Herb Simon’s paraphrased and broad definition of design as turning an undesirable situation into a desirable one, I don’t see how design could be anything but about addressing user needs, even if it is a user of one. The other adjectives (visual, industrial, interaction) to me simply note the medium (and methods) the solution has taken.
I can understand your horror, although I like hearing about other disciplines – in fact, I think it’s imperative to hear about what other folks to in order to make ourselves better instead of designing in our our silos.
And in some ways, boundaries blur – and we have all find use in that. Example: This is a fantastic ad, but it’s not selling a product to buy, just advocating for a political message – here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk9IxALSfxs&feature=player_embedded I can’t watch that ad without starting to cry, and those in advertising at least to have that kind of lasting effect. For UXers, we don’t get to integrate emotion into what we produce; I’ve never had the message from a Web site I’ve built include that kind of powerful emotion.
One of the reasons why I adore Mad Men is because it’s helped me view advertising in a new light. Before I was fiercely against the discipline and only saw its evils; growing older, I see that things have their roles. This scene (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus) definitely shows the poetics of the practice that we don’t think of when we’re uncomfortable with advertising. Granted, it’s fiction, and stylized, but it does show us how advertising has understood the role of emotional connection – something much of design has to still institutionalize (or at least the people writing up the project timelines).
Maybe it’s a practicality – have a design and advertising talk at a neutral location, or cosponsored by orgs from both disciplines to ease issues of ethics and to make the cross-discipline talk easier.
As both an artist and a designer, I’m happy to see someone who shares my point of view. I struggle with the “line” that separates the two disciplines all the time, but in the end, it’s my intent that makes what I do either art, or design. Even though I do both, there’s is a clear difference between the two. And just as it annoys me when designers call themselves artists, I can understand where you’re coming from.
Great article.
I saw your post over on IxDA and the debate it sparked over there, wanted to read more on your blog. I’m planning to attend the talk because I’m interested in both the ID and advertising worlds, and want to understand where they meet… and where they don’t meet.
While I think you’re right on saying that design is about what you can do for the user and advertising is about what you can get from the user, those two ideas don’t need to necessarily exist in separate worlds.
On one hand, I’m thinking of the interactive advertisements that I see when watching TV shows online. Sometimes an advertisement can be educational and useful (or even just entertaining) but the interaction design must be solid in order for the advertisement to be valuable to either end of the equation.
As our lives become more and more devoured by digital media, thinking of advertising without the minds of interaction design is as scary to me as perhaps the concept of the two merging is to you. I want an interaction designer in charge of the advertising that is going to show up on my mobile phone, where the screen real estate is so small. I want an interaction designer to make an advertisement that is useful to me, the user, and makes me trust a brand because I like their advertisement. After all, advertisements are becoming more and more products within themselves. Thus, advertising is become more about what you can do for the user, and why the user should spend time interacting with your advertisement.
Dan,
(pre-script) I understand I am being terribly abstract here but at the risk of sounding like an idiot, here goes.
Maybe the opportunity lies in design rethinking the experience of advertising, maybe in conjunction with the product. What if the design artifact is pliable, as defined by Stolterman and Lowgren – an artifact that supports exploration, and an attempt to articulate a design direction away from rigidness? What if the designer designs ads as part of the overall experience to the user, thereby allowing more exploration.
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