You see it everywhere, absolutely everywhere: rough-and-ready brush lettering or something like it. It’s proudly imperfect and knowingly naive.

Brush lettering has long existed as a contrast to the mechanical perfection of type, of manufactured letters. But these new roughly wrought creations are distinct from the skilfully writtten, neo-calligraphic styles that commercial sign makers introduced us to.

The durability of this phenomenon is somewhere between that of a major historical shift like Modernism and a trending hashtag, A movement? Not in the sense that future histories of design will recognise. Major arts movements were new ideas, championed by charismatic leaders, underpinned by a philosophy that responded to political, technological or economic shifts that were the air.

Modern movements are media-fed, and so faster to peak, ebb, die and be reborn after a time. They start life as styles, arising from anonymous mavens in urban sub-cultures, who may achieve glamour and fame once in a while, like Banksy who now justifies that name in a rather different way. For a phenomenon to survive, is not enough being visually new. Nor will its intellectual underpinnings suffice—such as protest, or the acknowledgement of new technologies. It must have universality, and claim that it can be applied to any situation, medium and art. Modernism is one such style, movement and phenomenon.

To explain why the shaggy lettering phenomenon thrives, we need to understand the emotional realm it occupies. Like great stories, ideas that satisfy emotions can be infinitely repeated without losing appeal.

To explain why the shaggy lettering phenomenon thrives, we need to understand the emotional realm it occupies.

Shaggy lettering’s thriving, as a look into its deep design might lead us to speculate, is because It encodes an ethos. It is associated with the expression of certain categories of ideas that are in the air; you might call it a global mood. It cannot be called a pure style, for it cannot be blindly applied like paint without an eye to the message it is helping to propel.

Expressing certain sentiments slakes a particular thirst. It satisfies an emotional requirement for a global community linked by shared notions, call it a mood. Here’s a speculation of what that mood is, and thus, what its deep design is built on.

Consider its deliberate imperfection; its texture and materiality (inky, splashy and brushy), which can be seen as a fact of life for the sender of the message, or carefully preserved to manipulate the emotions of the receiver. At an elementary level these attributes signal speed of execution and extreme economy of means—improvising to quickly make do with what is around.

Consider its deliberate imperfection; its texture and materiality (inky, splashy and brushy), which can be seen as a fact of life for the sender of the message, or carefully preserved to manipulate the emotions of the receiver.

This economy also signals vulnerability, and instantly destroys distance; it appeals to our instinct to defend the weak. In the new democracy, be an old school authority at your own peril. Status has lost its status, these brushed glyphs seem to say. Better to ask, what do you think?

Economy, vulnerability and immediacy are properties are most true of, and thus most valuable to groups such as makers of organic or local foods, who use this economy of means to signal authenticity (why else deliberately signal roughness?) and difference from the establishment. When there’s a good vulnerability going, can brands be far behind?

Protest is another; we only need to see these awkward letters to know that what they say is urgent and deeply felt.

I believe local tradesmen and protest banners were the progenitors of this lettering, refreshed by graffiti, and the thick marker. It is an irony that in many countries protestors now carry mass made, laser-printed banners. What a betrayal.

Such authenticity and immediacy are transferable outside these domains. Protest comes with a certain strength and a strong sense of personal agency: we can make a difference, but I can too. I need few resources to do so. Join a challenge, do something, try a hack: the fix is in, and it’s cheap and simple, in Steven Levitt’s words. Sincerity trumps nuance and careful consideration. Nuance is the sophistry of elites anyway; like complexity, a smokescreen erected by the Very Impotent Persons. Victory to the Visceral!

This personal agency is best supported on social media, where I can tap out easy outrage or make common cause with a band almost costlessly, where accusation is simple and refutation complex. Political correctness is now pop-correctness. I stand opposite experts or authorities, ready to tear them down if I have the social clout.

Not that social clout and expertise are necessarily mutually exclusive, but I’ll take the expert with the higher twitter engagement. I’ll go with this doctor’s views over another because his twitter feed is eagerly cheered and his skin looks great; ok, he has an MD too. Peer-viewed beats peer-reviewed. Whose peers? Mine!

Don’t think I’m right? Well, I’ll just pick up a really fat brush, dip it in a bucket of paint, and…then let’s see.

____________________

First published in a slightly modified form ‘By My Own Hand’ in Business Standard, 4 August, in Deep Design, a fortnightly column by Itu Chaudhuri.

The post By My Own Hand appeared first on ICD | Blog.

The uber-construct in the modern liking business is personality, or the attribution of human psycho-social traits to non-human things. It’s the most-used framework to understand and structure liking. But it was not always so.

Modernity

Tools for thinking about liking are understandably limited to ancient, if evolving, canons of proportion and form. These tend to treat humans as alike: indeed, for much of time, people were differentiated mainly through social roles: home, family, and occupation.

So the appreciation of individual differences in a high-resolution way, and their becoming a subject of analysis may well be a feature of modernity itself, wrought by manufacturing, marketing, and organised work on the one hand, and the evolution of psychology on the other. Starting about 1950, according to one widely used periodisation, marketing introduced the concept of a customer’s lifetime value, and thus the need to build a relationship, opening the door to a subjective understanding of the consumer.

Just like a man

Personality’s uber status comes from its popularity. It is instinctively understood by the lay person, partly because imbuing things with human form and psychology is innate: we do it to gods, aliens and cars. Yet it can be dissected by the expert with pedantic detail.

The key to its usage is that it can be applied to abstractions such as products, communications or brands as well as describe the person using or consuming them. In most versions of the technique, the thing’s personality traits (like bold, tenacious and witty) can be matched to similar profiles, presuming an attraction of likes. This is the first theory of marketing that is also a theory of liking.

Personality has its deniers who insist it’s a fiction, or at best an artefact of popularity and function. Yet it does have an empirical existence, even for the most rational. In an experiment by Kapferer, doctors were willing to describe the personalities of medicines with multiple traits. Analysis of trait data showed that drugs with higher scores for some traits (like dynamism or, interestingly, creativity) were more often prescribed than low scorers on the same traits. Conversely, those that rated high on ‘cold’ and ‘hard’ were prescribed less.

But predicting the traits to match correctly is not an easy task, as the example above shows. People may not be attracted to likes; they may instead be looking to fill gaps in their lives, just as a confused person seeks clarity and security rather than more options. It’s one thing to say that we can match personalities, but our audience may be very disparate and their behaviour driven by context and circumstance.

Do this

So a more durable way to look at this is to use personality not for pure attraction by matched traits, but to render the ideal ‘sender’ of the message as a credible source of the benefit being pursued.

use personality not for pure attraction by matched traits, but to render the ideal ‘sender’ of the message as a credible source of the benefit being pursued.

Those seeming arch-rationalists, the computer and software industry were quick to see that interfaces with human-like objects were better understood and worked better. From birth, the Macintosh has sported a distinct folksily-human personality to support its ease-of-use promise. It too anthropomorphised the Mac giving it a face which continues today with a hat-tip to Picasso. At its unveiling, the Mac spoke, thanking Steve Jobs, “who’s been like a father to me.” Microsoft’s assistants like most early robots were humanoid.

Thousand words, but hazy picture

One of the attractions of personality as a framework is that the human character provides a catalogue of thousands of traits. Or at least, words for them: this is the so-called lexical hypothesis which proposes that traits important to us must have words for them. This problem of plenty is tackled with factor analysis, a statistical technique to reduce them to a handful of master traits, with several lesser traits supporting each.

Here the problems begin. A trait-word can be located under several master traits, as their meaning changes with context. Worse, some industries centre around favourite traits: Kapferer points out that computer brands, cluster around advanced or clever, and ice creams are sensuous. Neither are strictly personality terms, but are functional or physical traits. Next, cultural lenses can get in the way. A Millward Brown paper, which uses a trait inventory system based on ancient archetypes, found that the iPhone’s traits added up to it being a ‘seductress’ in the UK and a ‘dreamer’ in Japan. In India, Deep Design finds all brands want to be ‘friendly and approachable’.

Cultural lenses can get in the way. A Millward Brown paper, found that the iPhone’s traits added up to it being a ‘seductress’ in the UK and a ‘dreamer’ in Japan. In India, Deep Design finds all brands want to be ‘friendly and approachable’.

And it just keeps rolling along

Despite practical and theoretical problems (for example can the identity concept encompass identity, or must it be the other way around?) personality seems indestructible. Celebrity marketing seems eternal: we can see an intuitive fit with the brand, without needing to agree on the list words that attach to the personality and to the brand.

Maybe it will take a new idea like machine learning to make the old one of personality really hum. Digital marketing can deliver different versions of the same campaign to selected users; one test demonstrated 20% more ‘buy’ clicks with individual targeting based on user’s scores on the Big Five, currently the most validated personality model. What’s of note is that software can infer personality on the fly, typing the user in context as he surfs…

Scary? Relax, it’s me, the friendly, human social media machine.

____________________

First published in a slightly modified form ‘Personality, the uber-construct in the modern ‘liking’ business’ in Business Standard, 19 August, in Deep Design, a fortnightly column by Itu Chaudhuri.

The post Personality, the uber-construct in the modern ‘liking’ business appeared first on ICD | Blog.

It was a film-maker friend on the phone.

“I’m making a film,” he said, “on a new script that’s been developed for the Wancho language, spoken in Arunachal Pradesh. Right up your street.”

Perhaps my friend was referring to my interest in typeface design? But my friend, aware of the distinction between the script (a way of writing) and typefaces (their printed form), went on, “The script itself has never been professionally examined. So I thought you might want to. Or is it linguists who look at such things?”.

I replied that I wasn’t aware of anyone who evaluated scripts, perhaps because they are handed down to us, and shaped by the same evolutionary processes that shape languages. (Imagine giving a Devanagari a B-).

Scripts, are handed down to us, and shaped by the same evolutionary processes that shape languages…

But to a designer, a synthetically developed script like Wancho presents a fascinating opportunity to develop criteria for evaluation. For instance, if ease of learning is an objective, we might ask of a modern script to represent related sounds with similar shapes (not significantly implemented in Wancho, as I found out). There could be others.

Design starts with why: why Wancho needs a script at all. I asked — and that’s when the penny dropped. The rest of this column is mainly about what I didn’t tell him, and a little of what I did.

The Wancho are a hill tribe, related to the Naga. About 50000 people speak Wancho, one of tens of Tibeto-Burman languages that dot the north-east and surrounds; none has a script. Wancho now does, thanks to the 11-year labours of Banwang Losu, a Wancho teacher.

The Wancho script, it was explained, is needed to capture Wancho’s phonetic peculiarities. The script, once established, would help preserve the entirely oral traditions (lore, prayer, song) of the Wancho and save the language from extinction.

But Wancho is unwritten, not for want of a script but for want of a culture of literacy. Such little Wancho as is written relies on Devanagari and Latin. Latin, an alphabetic script, serves, with small modifications, nearly all European, South American and modern African languages. And Arabic with local modifications has done duty for centuries, for 60+ languages. Phonetic functionality is moot: pronunciation is taught, written conventions learnt.

But the Wancho script is an original work, not a modification. Its need to exist comes from an assertion of Wancho’s membership among the comity of languages. In a uniquely modern moment, it has, since its inception in 2014, gained a typeface, designed by Anurag Gautam, a student at the National Institute of Design (NID); an animated primer on YouTube (by the first Wancho animator, Wangdan Wampan, also from NID) and a book by Losu on the same subject available on Amazon. In an instant, the Wancho language becomes, at least to its own users, more important than others in its neighborhood.

Wancho is an invention, but entirely synthetic and does not claim to be derived from antiquity. Yet it shares some of the same motivations with ‘invented traditions’, an idea popularised by E. J. Hobsbawm and T.O. Ranger. Their best known example is the invention of a Scottish ‘highland’ tradition: the adoption of the kilt, till then worn by farmers, as aristocratic wear, appropriately styled and accessorised. Along with bagpipers and the assignment of tartan weaves to aristocratic clans (rather than just regions) a visual toolbox became available to construct and give a visual face to a Scottish national identity. As a parallel, imagine the male Punjab government ministers turning out in Bhangra costume as if it were the way it always was.

Wancho is an invention, but entirely synthetic and does not claim to be derived from antiquity. Yet it shares some of the same motivations with ‘invented traditions’

The marketing significance of this invented tradition is immense. It enabled the promotion of ‘authentically traditional Scottish products, like its whisky which rose to prominence around the same time (the 18th and 19th centuries). The ‘rougher liquors of Scotland’ were promoted as the libation of choice of England’s aristocrats, perhaps sped along by Queen Victoria’s love for Scottish fashion.

the invention of a Scottish ‘highland’ tradition: the adoption of the kilt… Along with bagpipers and the assignment of tartan weaves…a visual toolbox to construct and give a visual face to a Scottish national identity.

Marketers love invented traditions: many sorts of mass-market food and alcohol products among others, pretend to some form of tradition, however spurious. Consumption rituals are often invented, and grown, by coopting what some consumers do and teaching it to the rest: drinking Corona beer requires the piece of lime wedged into its neck (Tastes better? Sure. All rituals enhance consumption). Don’t ever wash, or mend your Levi’s (creating a market for faux-distressed jeans). Even major religions coopt and re-make traditions.

Marketers love invented traditions: many sorts of mass-market food and alcohol products among others, pretend to some form of tradition, however spurious.

Paradoxically, all traditions are invented (and re-invented) at some point of time. If the Wancho script beats the odds and survives, it will become a tradition in twenty years. No other script seems to have managed the feat in this century. Well, not quite: Klingon, the fictional language of the Klingon people in the Star Trek movies of the 1970s and 80s was invented with a vocabulary and a grammar to give realism to the dialogue. Fans have extended it become a spoken language, complete with songs, poetry, and a script, even a language institute.

Like with Klingon, the written script is a particularly potent library of symbols—letters—around which the community can cohere and belong everyday, whether the language is fictional or real. Eventually it’s about an identity more than the survival of a language. The historian Benedict Anderson argues that modern nationhood has much to do with the merger of print technology and capitalism: the rise and standardisation of a local language, in all its uses.

Identity is a master-concept in design, marketing, politics and culture. Identities are not simply national, ethnic or linguistic: ‘authentic Corona drinker’ is a tag I can add on top. Modernity seems to compel the formation of these temporary and multiple identities, to re-balance a felt lack or anxiety; it seems to show them up in its complex and furious stride. Visual symbols buttress identity; so we attach ourselves to symbols, collecting, burnishing and drawing meaning from them.

Modernity seems to compel the formation of these temporary and multiple identities…Visual symbols buttress identity; so we attach ourselves to symbols…

The post The Language of Identity appeared first on ICD | Blog.

Brands place a premium on attention, firing images and words shaped into messages to inform and persuade. Indeed, we live amidst a war for our attention, an exquisitely perishable wisp that lives in the now.

But like breath, attention is a quick burning fuel that enables the flow of communication but does not add to its stock: exhale, and nothing is stored. While thieving attention can change behaviour temporarily—quick, here!—more sustainable is a stock of deep meaning. It’s a layered, mysterious lode which reduces our need to chase ever smaller amounts of attention with ever greater resources.

The focus on what brands “wear, say and do”, a popular heuristic, leaves out what the brand or product “is”, an objective, unalterable, and irreducible factual residue that outlasts the messages put out by attention-capturing armies. Provenance, for example, can be overriding: Made in Germany is ‘German’ and therefore a high-spec engineering product.

The focus on what brands “wear, say and do”, a popular heuristic, leaves out what the brand or product “is”

Deep Design’s interest is in the visual atom of this “is”, not least because it falls on designers to shape. I call it Physique: the mental imprint of a thing’s physical image, as a sensory perception (and sight trumps the other senses). The impact of physique is automatic. It precedes, escapes and even governs conscious thought. We sense it before we ‘read’ the thing, treating it as the most reliable indicator of its attributes, whether on a shelf or on a street.

The impact of physique is automatic. It precedes, escapes and even governs conscious thought. We sense it before we ‘read’ the thing

An example is race, which if experiments are believed, still shows up as racism in modern-day US: respondents consistently took a fraction of a second longer to tag faces, choosing between opposites (e.g. dangerous or harmless) when they were African American.

Physique creates stored meaning, or what we call an image, that can be exploited later. I’d wager a new Rs 2000 note that some of demonetisation’s approval ratings are because it targets cash, which is the physique of black money.

The Automobile Story

Physique isn’t simply an image stored like a photograph. It’s the attributes that it implies that stick, and can cast a long shadow on the brand. I’d speculate that Mahindra, whose roots are in steel, succeeded with jeeps and tractors, which register as industrial, rectangular, tough and boxy. SUVs, in physique terms are gentrified jeeps, and found acceptance, but in passenger cars and two wheelers, expect a long haul. Maruti’s iconic small car is burned deeply into memory; did it make the brand’s journey to larger models that much harder? The sales of Swift Dzire, a very compact sedan, overtook its little Alto to become a top seller only in 2014.

Physique need not be only visual: sound and smell can be exploited. Iodex (of old) and Dettol are two great brands whose signature smells signal their potency. Dettol retained a not identical, but clinical smell, and successfully extended into bathing soap. Iodex has sacrificed its smell (was it iodine, we wondered?), its dark, stain-prone unguent and thus its mystique; it has lost itself in a sea of similarity.

Louis Cheskin, Sensation Transference

In the 1940s, the pioneering researcher Louis Cheskin famously demonstrated in an experiment that housewives liked a meal cooked with margarine (then considered to not taste like butter), but coloured yellow, as much as one cooked in butter. Cheskin called this phenomenon ‘sensation transference’. An early proponent of the unconscious influence of form and colour, Cheskin’s elaborate empirical methods had wide success, from packaging to cars (such as predicting the failure of Ford’s Edsel on the basis of design alone).

Personal and Commercial Packaging

Naked form trumps clothes, but clothes can matter. Gandhi and Castro are two popular leaders whose clothes became part of their physique, and defined them: one pacifist, one militaristic. It helped build an aura that proved hard for detractors to attack, and seems to have given supporters the faith to ignore disconfirming evidence.

The commercial form of clothes, of course, packaging. Packaging research is starting to accept that the structural shape is as important as colour (the default no 1 in packaging). Consumers rely on it to perceive hard-to-spot product attributes, more than graphics. But the influence of physique on packaging should not be understood as simple differentiation or attractiveness. This is not to discount the effect of physique on those two parameters: surely the success of Toblerone chocolate owes much to its unique physique, especially for children.

Similarly, elongated packs look bigger than their more squat equivalents even when they pack the same volume of product, and consumers tend to prefer the taller ones even after they know that they aren’t getting more for their money. Natural cork stoppers on wine bottles ‘improve’ the wine, as does the correct glassware for reasons real and imaginary. Yet that’s not the true, subterranean power of physique.

Eventually, physique in packaging unlocks the clue to personality, that near-human relationship consumers can sense in the brands they love. Marmite’s round bottle tells a maternal tale more effectively than an advertisement. Its physique slips into your mind, unnoticed, to do its work.

physique in packaging unlocks the clue to personality, that near-human relationship consumers can sense in the brands they love.

The role of a brand’s ‘wear’ is to reinforce unalterable, favourable prior facts such as provenance and founding inspiration (which may have its own physique). Deep Design has discussed in an earlier column the success of Patanjali’s product line, underpinned by Baba Ramdev, who brings a unalterable, unfakeable physique to bear on his personal brand. Several consumers I talked to saw Patanjali’s gauche packaging as signalling an economical price. Others saw in it a lack of artifice, “not being an MNC” and by inference, a sort of authenticity.

Physique matters. Paradoxically, the more we take it for granted, or somehow look past it, the more insidious its power.

Physique matters. Paradoxically, the more we take it for granted, or somehow look past it, the more insidious its power. When we think we see it, we may talk about its attractiveness or lack thereof, rather than its primacy and the power of its imprint. We need to look deep.

The post Hidden In Plain View: Physique appeared first on ICD | Blog.

“I refuse to add to the chorus,” said DOPE, as the the Designer Of Practically Everything was known to his colleagues, “dissing the Rs 2000 note’s design. Instead, let’s treat it as an occasion to ask explore what design means.”

I looked sadly at the new Rs 2000 note my newspaper had sent for the interview. We sat in a bare, brightly daylit room, whose walls were covered with a jungle of cardboard shapes, and unrecognisable sketches made with fat markers.

There are as many definitions of design as there are animals, he insisted, and it’s continually evolving. And as with natural evolution, all definitions of design co-exist, said the DOPE, watching a linear drawing of something come to life on his laptop screen. Just as bacteria, fish and humans coexist, and even feed off each other. None is superior: all thrive.

There are as many definitions of design as there are animals, and it’s continually evolving. And as with natural evolution, all definitions of design co-exist.

Let’s use this Rs 2000 note, he said, much to my relief, to illustrate how design has evolved. He held it up to the table lamp and peered at it through a small lens.

For many people, design is decoration. This was its dominant 19th century meaning, produced by artists, artisans and ‘makers’ of all kinds in two or three dimensions. This note has several kinds of ornamentation, as though different artists were at play; older notes show a more grace and coherence.

Design is persuasion. The market and media explosions of the 20th century created design as persuasion, to sell goods, lifestyles and even ideas (join the war effort, for example).

Design is product. Industrial design extended desire to appliances and automobiles. It also made us conscious of progress, of how things work, and introduced new materials into our lives. A currency note, said, DOPE, must be durable and easy to handle, especially by ATMs (and not need lakhs of them to be re-calibrated, unless there’s a devious design there). It must be difficult to manufacture, on budget, and include an array of visible and hidden security features.

Design is discourse. As Art began to respond more consciously to the changed world of the 20th century, and ideology became the bridge between the arts and design. Constructivism, futurism and and other intellectual movements left their impress on design, unleashing a series of assertions on what design ought to be, for the first time.

International modernism, a mid 20th century bloom, called for a universal, rational approach to form. A doctrinaire modernist might give primacy to the universality of the banking function, with a clear, highly legible (in all light conditions) design, equally at home in India, or Germany. Even the Rs 2000 note could have done with numerals positioned and sized consistently with older notes, or provided a better way for the future.

Post-modernists might see a kind of imperialism in this ‘narrative’ of universal functionality. They might also argue that Gandhi’s image is a fraud perpetrated by power, advertising morality in the face of a corruption: off with his portrait.

Design is brand. In this age of commercial symbolism, this Rs 2000 note design under-represents the national brand; and second, offers an out-of-touch, backward projection of India. The Mangalyaan may have replaced dams and kisans, but the note’s design hardly projects capability or confidence. It suffers from all the gaudy, verbose clutter that we have come to expect, so what’s new?

In this age of commercial symbolism, this Rs 2000 note design under-represents the national brand; and second, offers an out-of-touch, backward projection of India.

These perspectives, said DOPE, sneaking a quick look at a dancing line on his laptop, are overlapping and simultaneous. They are not exhaustive: we can see design as culture, for example. But note that each of these is concerned with form, physical or visual.

Two relatively recent perspectives promise to transform that.

Design is experience. Experience designers (like UX designers) seek to map money’s journey from bank branch to wallet to exit, from the user’s point of view. But beyond this, she may muse on the experience of payment, physically or electronically, making it smoother. She might even ponder the ATM, and collaborate with a product designer to re-work it. Demonetisation as an experience? Sure, though her compulsion to prototype solutions with real users might be the deal breaker! DOPE chuckled for a minute at this.

Finally, design is thinking. Attracting interest lately is the designer’s ability to deal with incomplete information, and tackle complex situations by creative experimentation, and learning from failures. It aims to think beyond products, about systems, creating a pure problem solving process.

If such a designer thought about a cashless future, she might muse that electronic payments might not reach remote areas for some years. In the interim, imagine local-area cash, valid only in a specific off-network area and bankable in designated machines.

Perhaps the sheer mobility of cash makes it king. Networks fail unpredictably; a small bribe needs to be paid to a cop; a pushcart vegetable seller might have lost his card terminal. Maybe ATMs could dispense ‘temporary’ cash with 3-day validity, introducing friction as a solution to discourage cash.

Could this friction could be physical, giving cash a less convenient form? Maybe notes should occupy space proportional to their value. Imagine a 10,000 rupee note as thick as a sandwich, or as big as a tabloid page.

Psychological issues may obstruct a perfectly electronic world. Cash is a natural, visual means of relating to money; dashboards are not. Alternative visualisations of money may be needed to counter cognitive blindness.

Psychological issues may obstruct a perfectly electronic world. Cash is a natural, visual means of relating to money; dashboards are not.

Such apparently whacky alternatives frame the problem in productive ways, break the rut of the past, and eventually lead to previously unimaginable, working solutions that move us from an existing situation to a preferred one.

The post The Currency of Design appeared first on ICD | Blog.

“The 20th century was the Age of advertising,“ said the Undisputed Strategic Panjandrum, known with awe as USP, “right up to the Great Shift or the digitisation of everything.”

Digital advertising? I asked. Not quite, said the USP kindly.

We sat in his penthouse, piled high with books standing in counterpoint to the housing towers outside. On one pile sat our glasses: whisky for me, sparkling water for the famously teetotal advertising-marketing legend from the late Age. He took a slow sip and began.

In the Age, USP intoned, great brands were built by advertising. It delivered a consistent message, dramatised by an emotional connect, ideally with a claim of product difference. It created a personality you could ‘sense’, and also registered a distinct brand identity—logos, taglines, colours—and packaging, so consumers could recall it at the shop, and ka-Ching!, said USP, dropping an ice-cube into his glass.

In the Age, great brands were built by advertising. It delivered a consistent message, dramatised by an emotional connect.

A certain resistance to, and even distrust of advertising, said the USP, is putting the focus back on the product or service itself. But for some, it was always thus. Take banks, whose brand rests more on the quality of its customer relationships and the service than anything else.

Remember those nationalised banks with their dreary offices? Gandhiji, on the wall, saying “the customer is the purpose of our business”, while account holders queued up before officious, unhelpful staff. Though the odd genial branch manager did help, if you knew one.

A certain resistance and even distrust of advertising, is putting the focus back on the product or service itself.

The Great Shift wasn’t so much the crawling ‘computerisation’ of banks from the 1980s but the entry of private banks after 1994. The new big bank brands of today were built on polite service and pleasant branches, but crucially, on the convenience and empowerment offered by better technology (account statements on demand!), which changed consumer banking.

The biggest of these, web-based banking, has made for many more satisfied customers, at the cost of a reduced relationship with the human and physical elements that make up a brand.

web-based banking, has made for many more satisfied customers, at the cost of a reduced relationship with the human and physical elements that make up a brand.

So much so that many customers find dealing with people less desirable (and some remember old bank staff fondly). In part, it’s because your ‘relationship manager’ also pushes ‘products’, and so seems less of a banker. The mobile app has accelerated the shift, forcing extreme simplicity and giving the ultimate in granular, transactional satisfaction—human-free.

There’s a science to this, called user experience, or UX, a white-hot profession at the moment. These people build journey maps, and study how people figure out what to do, in very fine detail. How to invisibly lead them to their goals, while keeping them informed, re-assured—and thus, happy. Less is better; and anticipating what the user will want next, is best. And to do it all with a certain charm.

What this means, said USP, is that this software driven experience, is the vehicle of service, and thus the relationship that we have with it. One can say that UX is the brand. Branding? Now there’s an app for that.

One can say that UX is the brand. Branding? Now there’s an app for that.

There’s a great opportunity for brands like banks, to build themselves around superb interactions. But UX goes beyond digital and so should banks. My favourite mall is a pleasure to park in, with thoughtful, quality signage, clear visibility and all the details that let me effortlessly navigate it with assurance, convenience and even pleasure. It makes it likelier I’ll shop there.

Everything else ought to support this app-like UX, said USP, whether web sites, bank branches, staff behaviour and even advertising. While several banks have designed their web/app UX well, none has let it into the brand’s core.

While several banks have designed their web/app UX well, none has let it into the brand’s core.

Banks’ home pages still lead with advertising imagery and messaging, with interchangeable, well-worn themes. If your bank “cares for family prosperity”, let the interaction itself demonstrate it, in a few clicks. An interaction is, well, just that! You can ‘talk’ to the customer to learn and fulfil his needs. It’s salesmanship in clicks.

The best banks already have the best experiences, but there’s a lot of room for them, and follower brands, to be the fastest mover who will win in the medium term at least.

In the long run though, there are limitations. First, the logic of UX will lead to the same ‘best’ UX for all banks, which can (and should) be copied. In an ultimate, theoretical sense, UX isn’t strategic, but a moving horizon, an operational imperative that all brands must move towards.

In the long run though, there are limitations. The logic of UX will lead to the same ‘best’ UX for all banks.

Second, personality and differentiation, two pillars of the Age, are hard to own, because banking is so transactional. So where, asked USP, raising two thick eyebrows, will preference arise from, and what will you creative types do? I hid behind a raised glass.

The answer, said USP, is in the axioms of UX. Brands should sense and respond to what people want (or yearn) to do, rather than be sources of one-sided, static messaging. Interaction is about what the brand and customer can do together, not about what the brand says. The pervasiveness of the mobile is a huge gift-—not just for its reach, or to glean data. But to integrate the experience. Join up the mobile UX to the branch visit and the staff interactions.

Brands should sense and respond to what people want, rather than be sources of one-sided, static messaging. It should be about what the brand and customer can do together, not about what the brand says.

Ultimately these experiences will develop into a story, or a concept that forms through community consensus about a company’s journey and destination. Google has set out to organise, simplify (or own) the world’s information (or the world itself). Harley Davidson’s HOGs (Harley Owners Groups) license a sort of communal freedom.

These ideas are rooted in culture, in different ways. Even when they advertise! Culture means it’s back to people; just like it always was. Perhaps it’s time to bring back the genial brand manager and see where that goes?

And enough of USP, he said, draining his glass with an air of finality. I took my first sip of whisky and let it sink in.

The post Brand Is UX, Or Something Like That appeared first on ICD | Blog.

“The Nobel Committee has won the Bob Dylan Prize,” announced the Always Contrarian Everyman, or ACE, a lapsed academic I’d been introduced to by mutual friends, to help with some research on communications planning.

“Only,” he continued, “that It gave it to itself, of course.” He checked my features to ensure that the inversion had registered, peering through a pair of slightly-too-large glasses with white frames. ACE seemed to belong in the fashionable organic-desserts-only place, a haunt of the swish and the learned, waving at passers-by. Clearly, no Everyman.

Whether Dylan deserved it has been noisily over-analysed, he said—both on grounds of scope (are songs poetry?) and merit (is Dylan Whitman?). But what it means remains under-analysed.

The focus on Dylan, he went on, blinds us from spotting the real gainer: the Nobel Prize brand. (Stop wincing, ACE said, it is a brand). By giving Dylan the prize, the Nobel has taken itself into drawing rooms, hostels and the twitterscape. It has gifted itself a popular relevance not available to it before.

The focus on Dylan, blinds us from spotting the real gainer: the Nobel Prize brand… It has gifted itself a popular relevance not available to it before.

The Nobel follows a line of mighty brands that have bent low to kiss the feet of the popular. The Nobel’s relevance has always derived from authority, its own and others’. Even the Peace Prize’s popular recipients have been yoked to structures of authority; Mother Teresa was canonised by the world’s most powerful religious organisation.

What we might be approaching is the twilight of authority as a way of marketing in its broad sense. But first, let’s look at the Deep Design of authority. Start with the flavours it comes in, ACE continued, propping up the menu like a little blackboard, the ingredients of its authority, and what each tastes like.

What we might be approaching is the twilight of authority as a way of marketing in its broad sense.

At one end of the spectrum are obedience, and then loyalty, which may be demanded, enjoined on us, or enforced by governments and religious bodies like the Vatican church. Yet the papacy has softened: we have a People’s Pope, who loves football, poses for selfies and is soft on homosexuality, abortions and divorce.

But move along the spectrum, and loyalty segues into trust—the kind sought to be induced by more modern entities informally underwritten by government. Public universities and banks are examples, as are railways and airlines.

So are the Olympics and the Nobel. Until 1956, the Games logos reveal an officious face, much like government insignia. From 1960 to 1988 they are broadly modernist and contemporary, and take a celebratory leap from 1992.

The 2012 logo is a frontal challenge to the Olympics’ high-minded ideals, giving it a participative, inclusive face. These visual changes are not fashion, said ACE (stretching a leg to reveal jeans with open hems, finished with elegant white loafers, no socks).

After privatisation, universities have become more like branded corporations, competing for custom. Their identities, long ignored, now find utterance, and are now sculpted to market admissions, to suggest that university is a place to be enjoyed.

After privatisation, universities have become more like branded corporations, competing for custom

Look at the identities of the newest banks, which are searching for their place on the spectrum between solidity and assurance at one end and an extreme friendliness on the other. A case in point is the infrastructure finance and bank company IDFC which sports, in its own words, an ‘un-bank’ identity.

Finally, modern corporation and product brands are a third category, said ACE, his fingers bracketing the menu’s Gateaux section. Its authority is the most subtle.

It derives from the technological revolution of the 20th century, which harnessed electricity, gave us time-saving appliances, telecommunication, television, automobiles and computing. It’s also coterminous with the modern Olympics and the Nobel, a prize set up by a maker of munitions to recognise useful sciences (and Peace, naturally).

These brands spoke with a gentle authority, carrying the implicit assurance that you were in good hands: drive to work, punch in, work hard, and return to a home cleaned by vacuum technology and advanced detergents. It was ‘scientific’ and reassuring, and spoke through mass media.

But the modern corporation’s certainties are under attack.

Big tobacco, Big Soda and Big Food have been rigorously and popularly questioned, and found wanting on transparency and responsibility. Big Finance caused mass destruction in 2008; Wall Street has been occupied. The nudge-wink consensus on Iraq has been disowned.

Big tobacco, Big Soda and Big Food have been rigorously and popularly questioned, and found wanting on transparency and responsibility.

The enlightened new corporation strives for a softer voice. Unilever’s old ‘twin towers’ logo typifies the earlier ideal, solid, imposing, technological and certain. Its new one from 2004 is as relaxed as a spa: happily fragmented, fluid and loving it.

The enlightened new corporation strives for a softer voice.

Further, social media makes it hard to control the conversation, as distinct from the one-way messaging that advertising provided. True as it is, the rise of social media, and digitisation more broadly, is the handiest explanation, but not a sole driver.

The maturing and commodification of manufactured products and services, and greater public scrutiny will make the projection of authority less tenable. Multiculturalism ,and mobility, and the mingling of Asia and Africa into the developed world may be gradually softening Anglo-Saxon confidence.

The maturing and commodification, and greater public scrutiny will make the projection of authority less tenable.

However, reversals do occur. The 1997 British Airways rebrand included a tailfin theme called Utopia featuring ‘ethnic‘ art. It was a step too far: Margaret Thatcher covered the tailfin of the presented model with a paper napkin: ”We fly flags, not these awful things”. By 2001, the Union Jack was back.

Scores of possible drives resist the powerful consensus that governments, business and mass media construct and maintain. Eventually, they beget anxieties among groups of dissenters who may feel threatened or disaffected by unstoppable, slow but seismic economic shifts.

For example, such anxieties may drive Trump’s supporters to find resonance in his egregious misstatements, as long as he channels their fury onto Hillary Clinton, the Yale Law graduate and Washington technocrat with Wall Street connections who personifies their fears.

Communicators everywhere, whether they are governments and their wards, or businesses will need to adjust their mindset, and this will find an echo in the voice they use. To paraphrase Kipling, it may be wiser to cultivate the common touch than walk with kings.

It may be wiser to cultivate the common touch than walk with kings.

It’s a more democratic world, said ACE, spooning some single-estate cacao reduction onto his plate, where Bob Dylan can keep the Nobel in suspense by his silence. Delicious! he said.

The post Nobel, Dylan and the twilight of authority appeared first on ICD | Blog.

“The trouble with you creative fellows,” said VSOP (Very Superior Old Person), “is that you think brand only means advertising, or synthesising emotions to sell your widgets.”

I’d sought advice on Brand India for an article, and sat across chutney sandwiches and coffee in the understated lounge of the lushly landscaped International Information Centre. I protested that no, I didn’t think so, and wasn’t in advertising. But VSOP, a retired bureaucrat of Great Standing, and known to be “an acquired taste”, was in spate.

My colleagues in government, VSOP went on, weren’t, or aren’t, so different from you. For them too, branding means campaigns for some Yojana or other, but nothing wrong with that, I suppose.

Like Brand India, I said brightly, hoping to get him back on subject.

Brand India, said VSOP, is all very well as an externally directed concept to drive investment, exports and tourism, but what about its citizen-facing form? It should be not about advertisements, but about advertising product excellence through government. And rational.

I interrupted him to reveal my confusion. Not advertisements, but advertising? About product?

Consider, said VSOP, India as a very large service brand, with three service verticals: legislative, judiciary and executive, and with subsidiary brands known as states. This brand’s, or organisation’s goals are cohesion, competence and assurance. Assurance implies that functioning well includes being seen to do so.

A uniform is functional, symbolic and emotional at once

Being seen to do so, repeated VSOP, holding a sandwich like a triangular icon, is branding, in its most fundamental sense. It flows from the concept of kingdoms, through their armies and monopoly of power, muted into modern executive authority, including central banks and mints.

An army’s systems of visible marking—signs, ranks, uniforms—are not separate from its operative processes and culture. Each enables the other. It’s the ultimate branded organisation. A uniform is functional, symbolic and emotional at once: an officer is said to disgrace or honour his vardi.

Not quite uniforms, said VSOP, but similar in effect would be a visual identity and communications standard, for governmental Brand India, and all its organisations and services. Citizens should know who is in charge, with certainty, and what they can expect.

Suppose, said VSOP patiently, you were to implement such a standard, what would you see?

An authentic sign makes its owner more visible, and thus accountable.

Small, everyday examples would be proof of percolation. The hand-painted ‘On Government Duty’, sign on a government vehicle conveys improvisation, not competence. So is the sign bearing my MP’s name, on the street outside my residence: is it mandated, or is this my MP’s legislative impunity? Parliamentary branding would make it clear. An unmistakable and unfakeable sign, or none.

Subtle effects flow from this. An authentic sign makes its owner more visible, and thus accountable. Isn’t this basic to branding? VSOP looked up, waiting for me to disagree, and continued.

Courts would have standardised, distinct, high quality identification signs outside, and inside, standardised directional signage. Airports rely on standard “walkthroughs” and signage, so why not all government offices that deal with public traffic?A system of visual identity needs logic and consistency to be read and function better.

All ministries use the Ashokan four-lion national symbol, but look at the meaningless variations in lettering, proportion and arrangement! Ministries would have one identity, as would their organisations. All their publications would fall under a typology, with systematised design and content guidelines, suited to each purpose. They would be appealing, bright, illustrated, plentiful and recognisable.

My colleague TN Seshan once compared an election to a disorderly wedding hall. Ministry websites too—where do I begin? And each one needs to be learnt like a new language.

State symbols use the national emblem idiosyncratically

Ministry websites would have clear zones, such as for the ministry’s priorities (under the government of the day), citizen services, and for businesses and other audiences. So too for programmes, departments, and organisations. How to get an appointment, where to park. They would have an identical architecture. And look approachable and be mobile friendly.

The best part would be, said VSOP dropping his voice conspiratorially, that some missing pieces would get implemented just because they were required to be communicated.

State symbols use the national emblem idiosyncratically. Some look like ministries, some dispense with the emblem, and some look like royal crests. My symbols would follow a scheme that allows for regional expression within a national structure. A federal design! (this made VSOP chuckle at his own words).

Forms would be simplified, standardised and made usable. Software would automate their production for those not yet online. Why not allow downloads or even sell them in post offices or shops till then? Symmetrical to the Right to Information, is the government’s Duty to Communicate as a part of its definition of excellence. It takes, and shows, commitment, and the ability to conceive, plan and orchestrate.  Government excels at these—when it wants to.

My geek grandson, calls this UX (user experience) for government. I like that: citizen experience, however partial. And software can enable, centralise and even fool-proof a lot of this. Political will, do you say? We have a strong PM, an enthusiastic and skilled communicator, which is perhaps his strongest suit(VSOP said it like this). A small department under the PMO would cover every limb of government, and three years would be enough to make a huge dent.

And what about officers and their behaviour towards the public, I asked. Codes, and training?

At this, VSOP turned his gaze to the fountains playing outside, and a long silence followed.

This article first appeared in the 16th July issue of Business Standard under the column ‘Deep Design’ by Itu Chaudhuri.

The post We, the Undersigned appeared first on ICD | Blog.

The election symbols of India, part of the democratic tumult since 1952, provide a fascinating view into this process. Their special circumstances, at first glance, seem quite hostile to symbols becoming brand elements.

Political parties do not design symbols, or truly own them. Eligible parties choose them (or apply to do so) from a library of hundreds of simplistic linear drawings of everyday household objects and animals, under conditions set by the Election Commission (EC). Its purely functional aim is to ensure that illiterate voters can identify their party on an EVM button, and in this sense an election symbol is more like an icon than an expression of identity.

we read into the symbol what we read of the organisation, and vice-versa, in a meaning-making cycle.

The paramountcy of these functional considerations turns these crude drawings into de facto party symbols, for the national parties who are allowed to reserve them (unlike state parties, which share them with parties in other states).

Yet, even in this allotment raj, meanings form. Eventually, we read into the symbol what we read of the organisation, and vice-versa, in a meaning-making cycle. Symbol and party make each other. National parties exercise choice at the time of adoption, and learn to manage and even exploit their symbols in different ways. How?

Symbol and party make each other

Even EC’s everyday-objects regime has sensible exceptions. The Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India-Marxist CPI(M) have internationally-derived communist symbols, acknowledging their pre-existence and distinctive politics. Highly recognisable, but easy to mix up, so presumably it takes committed voters or cadres to get the right buttons pressed. The CPI(M) symbol has less detail, but it restores the hammer and the star, the latter perhaps a nod to its internationalism and a further left position than the CPI’s.

In 1977, the Congress chose its third symbol: the open hand. It is the only body part allowed by EC and was first used, with a different rendering (left), by the All India Forward Bloc (Ruikar) in 1952 and thus allows comparative comment.

As a sign, the hand has great antiquity. And extreme generality

As a sign, the hand has great antiquity. And extreme generality: to connote, it must combine with either an object (such as a hammer) or a gesture (a fist, for example) to trigger a code (proletarian protest, in this example). Its current rendering, with fingers pressed together, may evoke the blessing gesture seen in representations of gods and holy men.

Barring this faint signal, the hand’s open-endedness is its most important property. Its pre-eminence from 1947 to 1977 meant that it did not have to specify its distinctiveness. Its flexibility can, in losing times, make it look like it’s being positioned by the competition. The Congress idea, whatever it is at the time, is visible mainly by contrast, like its secularism stands out most against Sangh/Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Hindutva.

In ways subtle and unsubtle, the symbols of the Bahujan Samaj Party and BJP have more religious content.

Like the hand, the lotus also has antiquity and multiple associations within specifically Asian traditions; BJP ownership makes it more overtly religious. It is pitch-perfect for BJP formulation of “cultural nationalism”, as it can foster a broadly Hindu air while averting the charge of overt religiosity (how could it, as the national flower?).

In BSP’s hands the elephant connotes power over its other popular or ancient associations.

BSP’s elephant too has positive associations for Buddhists, its original constituency, and for the Hindus it now seeks to address. In BSP’s earlier, more aggressive days, the elephant coded a new, unrelenting demographic force, not the placid animal children love. But what marks it out is Mayawati’s investment in the symbol by shrewd, if blatant, assertion of power and Dalit pride, via the Elephant Park, a monument to herself, the founder, and a triumphal regiment of elephants. In BSP’s hands the elephant connotes power over its other popular or ancient associations.

At the state level, the Shiva Sena’s bow and arrow (shared by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha in Jharkhand) eerily mirrors its perpetual militancy against non Marathis, the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) broom has been rightly hailed as ingenious crusader branding. While both parties can only reserve them when EC recognises them as national, there’s more to being a national party.

National party symbols reflect their adoption of big, cloud-like ideas, with fuzzy edges.

National party symbols reflect their adoption of big, cloud-like ideas, with fuzzy edges. This is a necessity of national governance, the politics of which must balance a dizzyingly complex array of interests and constituents. Neither corruption, nor even local government can be AAP’s ticket to national government, nor can parochialism for the Sena. I predict that both these symbols will be dropped if these parties progress to being national contenders.

The world’s greatest election shows the strength of an ultimately human urge. Symbols may be born arbitrary, but with a little care, all but the sickliest will thrive, for we are meaning-making machines, as much as tool-making apes.

This article first appeared in the 2nd July issue of Business Standard under the column ‘Deep Design’ by Itu Chaudhuri.

The post Making Sense of Election Symbols appeared first on ICD | Blog.