Nobody Wants to Pay for Simple
Maybe the worst thing a designer (or anyone charging for their work) can hear is, "Well, even I could have done that." The implication being, "Your effort isn't worth my money." I've heard that in the past about my own work, and I heard it again in a meeting last week in which I was defending another designer's work. And this attitude gets to the heart of one of corporate America's worst attitudes:
Nobody Wants to Pay for Simple.
If a company engages a consulting firm for millions of dollars, the board doesn't want a simple solution that they could have come up with themselves—or worse, that they already knew.
We all remember the military consultant's solution for Afghanistan, right?
When it comes to design and presentation, I believe in simple and uncluttered (remember, it's information that we're communicating, and information is most often best communicated simply.) But, engaging the services of a presentation designer when he or she is charging by the hour or the day, can get expensive—especially if content is being simultaneously written and rewritten while the designer is on the clock. As a result, there often is an inclination to want a heavily designed, Photoshopped and complex presentation—something the paying client most certainly could not have done themselves. They want their money's worth in visual glitz, even if the visual glitz runs counter to good communication.
It's no coincidence that some of the most effective and lasting works of art and design are remarkably simple. Take Milton Glaser's I Love NY logo. After the American Flag itself, it's probably the most iconic American branding ever created. But can't you just picture the meeting at which this was first unveiled... "That's it? I could have done that." Yes, Mr. New York Tourism board member, you could have.But you didn't.
Or how about arguably the most famous music in the history of film—John Williams' theme for Jaws. It's only two frickin' notes. You can almost hear the studio executive screaming, "We're paying him how much? My kid's piano teacher could have composed that!" Well, yes, his kid's piano teacher could have composed that, perhaps. But the piano teacher would not have the skill and knowledge to know that less was more in this case, to know how to practice restraint and to be capable of much, much more complexity if the situation called for it.
There's an apocryphal story about a woman approaching Picasso in the park and asking him to draw a portrait of her. Picasso quickly sketches the woman and hands the portrait to her. "That will be $5,000," he says. The woman is indignant. "But it only took you 5 minutes!" To which Picasso replies, "No, madam. It took me all my life."
But even if you don't have a Picasso's lifetime of experience, it still does not mean that simpler is not better and ultimately more informed and effective. Take Maya Lin. She was an undergraduate architecture student in 1981 when she designed what I consider one of the most perfect pieces of art of the last century: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Unlike the above examples, the controversies over and objections to the memorial are well documented (and partially racist to boot), but from a purely artistic perspective, this too was something that "Even I could have done." But Lin was the one to actually do it, and to say, "It's okay, simple is appropriate." (Although there is actually more symbolism than meets the eye.) And to be fair to the selection committee, the Memorial design was the result of a blind and completely open competition, so the committee did choose her design over many others that were probably much more "complicated."
Any memorial design is fraught with the horrors of design and decision by committee, and so I'm amazed that Lin's work made it to fruition. As a counterexample, take the recently completed WWII Memorial on the Mall in DC. Many will disagree, but for me it is one of the most underwhelming monuments in Washington. There is so much embedded symbolism addressing so many interests that "simple" is the last word that comes to mind when viewing it—if one can view the entirety of it at all, except by helicopter. This is most certainly a monument that "I could not have done." But the lack of simplicity means that it will never stand on a par with the Washington, Lincoln and Vietnam Memorials.
What's the takeaway? Remember your ultimate goal—don't let your checkbook dictate the end product.
Sometimes it takes a designer to assure you that simple is good—as was probably the case with Milton Glaser's logo. And sometimes you don't need that designer at all. If your name is Gino and you're opening up a pizza shop, you don't need to pay a branding firm to tell you that "Gino's Pizza" is probably a good name (if that's the direction you want to go in.) Similarly, if you have the skills to find a powerful image and the discipline to use only a few words, you probably don't need a designer to put those together as an effective presentation slide.
Believe it or not, I'm thrilled any time a client sends back to me a new version of a presentation with a half dozen newly added slides already designed according to my established look. Usually, they'll say, "I just followed what you already set up in the rest of the deck, but feel free to make it better since I'm not a designer..." I might be able to tweak things here or there, but 9 times out of 10, they've already done what I would have. In those cases, yes, you could have done that. And more importantly, you did.
