… it’s the designers who must clean up their act…

Looks good, but let down by the design. You wonder why James Dyson employs his marketing department if they don’t know what their customers want. But the problem for most marketing departments is that they are badly let down by designers.

Having taken part in judging the 2004 Construction Marketing Awards, it was apparent that lazy and incompetent design is still all too common. There were entries for product literature whose design literally made them unusable, others which failed the simplest tests for usability, while some of the websites were designer self-indulgence that would actively work against a client’s business objectives. And these were competition entries.

Thankfully, there were enough good entries to make a shortlist, but while shallow design goes uncriticised, or, worse, unnoticed by the design industry, marketers and business in general will continue to be short-changed by shallow thinking designers.

Have you noticed how poorly designed an Apple PowerBook keyboard is? And how Birds Eye and Waitrose frozen food packaging is pointlessly user-unfriendly?

We should get our own house in order before having a pop at marketing.

Rick Osman

Partner

Highwire

Amersham HP6 5AE