The design community has been in a tizzy since Marissa Mayer shared the shallow design process that led to the new Yahoo logo. Over a weekend, Marissa personally rolled up her sleeves to micromanage the logo design with a small team.
The whole approach was pilloried by a number of designers, including a very funny piece from Oliver Reichenstein: “Logo, Bullshit & Co., Inc.” He included the anecdote of Marissa’s decision to poll Yahoo employees on what should go into the logo.
“Design by polling. Great idea! Next she should try the same with Yahoo’s server architecture. Ask everyone about the best server configuration and then put together a brief for the system administrators. Why not? We all use the web, and know how to load and save and stuff. Everybody is a designer, so if we ask n people, the quality of the logo increases by factor n. Right?”
The Yahoo logo story reveals a common misconception about design in general — that design is a discipline anyone can do. Marissa wrote about Adobe Illustrator: “I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous:)”
As role of design in branding becomes ever more vital, it is increasingly important for marketers to learn how to work with designers. We need to value the years of experience that go into being a designer.
Just because we know a little Photoshop or Illustrator does not make us designers. Only by respecting designers can we get to the best design.
(Marketoonist Tuesday: I’m giving away a signed print of this week’s cartoon. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post by 5:00 PST on Tuesday. Thanks!)
Here’s another cartoon (from 2006) about working with designers.
cybearDJM says
A few years ago, my team had to design a flyer… As usual, we proposed 3 different designs to help the customer (PC reseller), who had no idea what he wanted, decide the potential creative focus… none was successful… 2 more… nope… exhausted, at the end of the day, I did in 5 minutes a very ugly design, flashy colors, cheap childish images… It was a great success and we had to push the whole campaign across the country in newspapers… without putting our name on it…
Sincerely
DJM
Arun Prabhu says
Replace design with innovation, or even better, open innovation, and the story and cartoon works as well if not better!
N says
Oh, man! I feel soo bad for our ad agencies now… We’ve done at least half of that bad creative criticism throughout the years! And that was trying to respect their professional opinion… They are saints! Haha.
CML says
As a copywriter, this rings true for my field as well! But I feel for my designer teammates…it’s a frustration in the industry. Everyone’s a designer (and writer).
@euonymous says
I have the greatest respect for designers. Big time. This may be because I am so artistically challenged I have a hard time playing Hangman, but nonetheless… all of my software company’s artwork was done by Howie Green Design in Boston and I can’t say enough good things about how imaginative and helpful Howie has always been. My most embarrassing designer story resembles one of your “bad client” cartoons: my software company had a product something like Java that would run on different platforms without needing to be compiled on a dozen different UNIX machines. Because the technical expert was from South Dakota we named the product Lakota, which is the native language of the Sioux Indians. So dear Howie was doing a logo character for the product and kept coming up with great, colorful drawings of American Indians, but somehow I kept saying no. I finally realized that my mentally-burned-in concept of how an American Indian should look was… wait for it… Sitting Bull! Oops. Things went smoother after we figured that out. And he eventually did forgive me. I think. (He still has two of our old character logos up on his website.)
JC says
There are also times when the designer needs to listen and learn from the person who knows marketing, messages, and image management. Too often I’ve been in meetings with designers who miss the mark entirely because they enjoy doing something edgy or worse, going off the identify of the product or organization. It’s a collaboration that would benefit from both parties listening and learning how to express their ideas and reactions with clarity and reasoning.
Jordan says
AGREED on that last sentence! It’s a collaboration for sure, and you have to go in with zero bias, otherwise, it’s just a mess. And both sides need to have respect.
A designer will generally (or a good one) will know image managment better though. As a designer, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sent out low quality work (like using a cell phone photo for a tradeshow banner that is 10’x10′, or having to place items outside of the safe zone, but marketing doesn’t care about technicalities, they just want it done.) Laugh was on them when it came back looking like a Tetris game though lol!
Well…until marketing blames it on the designer cause were just the monkey’s doing the work :/
mruehle says
@cybearDJM – And how did the campaign do? Did it crash and burn or was it a success? Did you ask? Without knowing that, it’s hard to judge whether ‘cheap and flashy’ may not have been the correct way to go… I understand and accept that there are lots of ill-informed or wrong-headed clients out there, but believe me there are designers who don’t seem to ‘get’ their role in the process either. And there are designers who don’t seem to be able to clearly convey the idea behind their approach, or who are so wedded to a particular concept that they just don’t want to give it up. I am working with a designer right now who just *won’t* read the brief.
name says
That said, Ms. Meyer seems to have simply re-invented a version of Optima and thinks this is somehow breakthrough. Very sad.
Scott says
I subscribe to email newsletters on many subjects – such as this Marketoons newsletter – and somehow think I know a little bit more about marketing. Just enough to be dangerous as you say.
In the context of marketing, as in tax and law and medicine, training and experience is needed to expose the complicated inter-relationships beneath the surface.
An article on Brain Pickings discusses how the internet is making us smarter –
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/09/13/clive-thompson-smarter-than-you-think/
It is certainly making us think we are smarter …..
Glenn says
Success can breed overconfidence. For example, you may be very successful in your profession, however,that does not make you an expert in the professions that support it. For example, I’ve seen doctors who are extremely talented in their specialties believe that that talent also applies to marketing and Human Resources. The result, as gifted as they are at practicing medicine, they are horrible at practicing marketing, HR, management and other professions. Their very success in their field blinds them when they enter other fields.
AdamD says
The micro-manager CEO is sometimes lauded, sometimes lambasted. It’s surely reasonable to call out Mayer for the uninspired logo, but I can certainly see a situation where she’d get accolades for incredible attention to detail. There are numerous stories of Steve Jobs’ micro-management. One of my favorites is calling a Googler on a Sunday about the search giant’s iPhone app logo. With Mayer, is the problem that she tried at all or just that she didn’t hit the mark?
Bill Carlson says
Thanks to JC and mruehle for pointing out the one-sided nature of the claim “it is increasingly important for marketers to learn how to work with designers.” Kind of weary of broad-brush claims like that as well as the fact that marketing seems to always be the one needing to learn how to work better with… sales, creative, .
I have had the pleasure of working with talented creative resources who understand business and marketing and the role of creative in the mix. Also worked with those who “know exactly what I am going to do” before the client meeting is even over with — which can happen how, exactly? Absent any market/consumer insight, competitive research and the other inputs to the process…
Criticize the Yahoo logo process all you want, but there’s no way to know if some other design would have been “better” without determining how that would be measured. Even the article points out that the logo is one of 1000 factors so the negative feedback about process is a little like me complaining about how the Chicago Bears gave up 30 points — even though they scored 31 and won the game.
Margarsa says
Im gonna go be the devils friend and go for the marketing managers that actually take some time to do a good brief and debrief and processes inside the agency that do not guarantee a good debrief to designers or creatives. Having as a result a creative that does not match the needs of the client and time that gets lost because they have to rework. In a desperate need to gain time, they tend to do these kinds of things. They’ve got pressure, deadlines and bosses too. The above mentioned is not the same situation as Marissa´s in Yahoo, in this case this was micromanagement at its best but some other times its the other way around.
John Miglautsch says
Nike used a student designer, paid her $35. Walmart saved money by shortening their name from Walton’s Mart and going with san-serif. The world seems to appreciate design, but like icing on the cake… it cannot hide the taste of poor baking. I can show you hundreds of high quality design logos of failed companies. So many of the world’s largest corporations have the simplest renditions of their name.
Cory Brookes says
“Only by respecting designers can we get to the best design.” Amen to that, Tom. Thanks
JanineHeff says
In all my years of working with designers, this is the most cringe-worthy story I’ve ever heard!
It’s appalling for all of the reasons Oliver Reichenstein so eloquently stated and then some.
For all you designers and non designers out there, here’s a little song someone sent me years
ago that sums up such an unprofessional process. Paste in your browser and have a listen.
http://www.underconsideration.com/MaketheLogoBigger.mp3
SR says
I own a calculator, but I don’t claim to be an accountant. I know enough to know that it’s not my thing. For me, math and spreadsheets are a necessary evil, not something I want to dabble in for fun.
However, it’s certainly true that many people think of themselves as designers just because they have access to some tools of the art.
Maybe it’s because design is just plain more fun than accounting. Maybe it’s because there’s enough bad design out there to make most people think, “Heck, even I could do that—I think I’ll take a whack at it!”
Whatever the reasons, we can probably be assured of more cringe-inducing design for years to come.
Sarah says
I’ve been on both sides of the client/agency spectrum. Marketing isn’t a democracy; I’ve never believed everyone should have input, otherwise you get mud. Why would a CEO get in the weeds and micromanaging the logo development? Doesn’t seem like the right place for a CEO to spend his or her time. Furthermore, why do so many folks think changing the logo is the sign of great changes to come? You have to fix your product or service first, changing the logo is just window dressing.
Dano says
As a professional designed for the last 3+ decades, it’s frustrating to see someone play “font roulette” and think they’re a designer. I’ve seen too many efforts that looked more like gaudy circus posters than professional work. This woman is treating her logo the same way she’s treating Yahoo’s Groups. She doesn’t understand them, but she’ll mess with them until she ruins them and drives those who provide her site content away. She won’t have a professional logo or anyone for advertisers to sell to, but then again, it appears she’d rather be a fashion model anyway.
Tyler says
You see the same issue working with clients on radio ads (and I’d assume other disciplines.) They all listen to the radio and hear the hundreds of ineffective commercials, so they feel theirs should sound just like the rest. Unfortunately that means they get the same results as the rest. Then its radio’s fault the commercial didn’t work
Charli says
I wonder if this is why the Yahoo Groups “upgrade” is such a piece of crap? In one complaint thread alone there are over 5,000 complaints and there are more pages on various sites. Yahoo took a GREAT system and threw it down the stairs creating havoc for moderators and members alike. Good thing she wasn’t on the Titanic or she’d have drilled holes in the lifeboats!
The problems are bad enough for the members without disabilities but for those who are disabled and who relied on Yahoo Groups for support and a lifeline it has been worse. The blind can’t use their adaptive tools with NEO. Peoples private information has been outed and who knows what else.
Yahoo Helps sites are swamped with complaints. In the Bugs section there are over 2,000 complaint threads. http://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/209451-us-groups/category/67137-defects-or-bugs
But Moderators and users alike are fighting back. Just go to http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/modsandmembers/ to see what the goals are.
Sean says
It is always reassuring to tell yourself that nobody can do what you do because you’re a trained professional who’s studied hard and knows all the right ways to do things. It always stings when someone comes out and “pretends” they know how to do your job. This is true in all industries. I get riled up when new user-friendly engines, architectures and APIs come out and claim “anybody can do programming and game development.” But at the end of the day… sometimes they can. There are amateurs making plenty of quick bucks in mobile and facebook games because they can and they’re willing to ship the good-enough product because they, like their audience, don’t appreciate the subtleties of “superior” content.
It’s always worth remembering that your customers are not people in the upper echelons of the field who can appreciate the difference between a ~perfect~ execution and a ~moderately inferior~ execution. Customers are generally laymen who simply want a decent product that serves its function, be it number crunching, brand communication, or catching mice. To whit, my team recently demo’d a prototype to potential customers who thought it was so fully developed that they wanted to buy it immediately. Our designers have another month or so of design polish requests queued up for when the developers actually finish the core features. We’re all taking a small step back to consider possible compromises and just how well what we want to ship aligns with what our customers will appreciate.
Be proud of your work, yes, but when someone thinks they can do it as well as you can, it doesn’t hurt to withhold the scoffing and even get a little paranoid. If you’re right, they’ll fail, and you’ll be better off having not expended energy on them, but if you’re wrong, they’ve just upended your business model and you may be the last to realize it and catch back up.
Angie Schottmuller (@aschottmuller) says
Spot on, Tom! I look forward to hanging this cartoon in our office …right next to Matt Inman’s “How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell” poster. Ha!
I feel a little bad for Marissa getting slammed, since it takes a lot of courage to openly share processes and results in a world of critics. On the other hand, it couldn’t be a better case study for breakthrough enlightenment. I certainly have lots of clients that should read this! 😉 With any task that requires a well developed technical skill set — whether it’s design, social media, or even household plumbing — this is a good reminder for us all to seek and take direction from actual experts in the field.
“Pride leads to conflict; those who take advice are wise.” – Proverbs 13:10
Todd Troha says
Just like any profession, there are more talented designers and less talented designers. I’ve had the opportunity to work with both groups and I’ve found out that success comes down to one thing – a well thought out and written creative brief.
If any designer fails to deliver, the marketing person needs to give a hard look at the written direction provided to the designer. Does the creative brief really delineate the strategic direction? Did you even provide a written creative brief? If you don’t like what you see, the next corrective step is not to art direct. The next step is to revamp the brief and let the designers respond to that.
Judge the creative work on whether it delivers against the creative brief, not “I like it,” because designers truly are talented people who are better at it than you. Respect.
Mads Gorm Larsen says
It’s not about aesthetics or how much Photoshop and Illustrator you know, in my experience that is actually a mistake that most designers make. The real problem is not the aesthetics of the new logo, but that Yahoo! no longer stands for anything. What is Yahoo? When you answer that, you can figure out what the logo should look like. Focus on the brand strategy, and not on the design.
/Mads Gorm
chris says
The 2006 cartoon is a great coupling with the newer one. So so true. I think designers often come across as pretentious when the opposite is usually the case. I’ve had to deal with all the points made here in my 5 years out of uni at least twice. Its a frustrating process as many of the examples given are reversed exclusively for designers, I still have no idea why. Mr Reichenstein’s article makes a good analogy: You wouldnt ask for everyones opinion on a server configuration would you?!
The best description for Marissa Mayer would be to borrow a phrase from Alan Sugars Apprentice show in the UK: ‘you have got a clue, not a bloody clue’. I hope my journey into the world of entrepreneurs doesnt turn me into someone who thinks setting up a small spreadsheet makes me a great businessman!
Graham says
re: “Brand Camp”. Well there was this one time … I was more or less an account manager for a design exercise for a tv network’s promo design. Our top notch designers kept attending meetings with the network and presenting design amendments based on the previous meeting. Our conversations matched pretty closely the objections and suggestions mentioned in this cartoon. At each meeting there was always an additional “critic” until the whole promotions department was present, everyone having a different “idea”. At this thankfully final meeting the network CD said, “I don’t like the way the images seem to be reflecting on the frame around the monitor.” We began attempting to explain the physics of light and reflection and the fact it was their own monitor but we knew it was time to call it quits and pass them the invoice. That’s why this cartoon for me would be much funnier if it weren’t so awfully true to life.
Mitesh says
I think, her intent could be to make everyone feel part of the “transition” a stronger reason since Yahoo stats were falling. (search and otherwise)
I wouldn’t be amused if she did the same for say Yahoo’s new UI/UX…she is trying to breath life into Yahoo (common!!)