Words from a work colleague after my boss brought back tubed meat and tuna from Switzerland. (Yes, we joked about using it as toothpaste.)
Everything about the tubed food seemed and looked disgusting. I use past tense because they finished the tubes. Nothing new to talk about or cringe from now.
However, a bit of wisdom that managed to squeeze itself out of the tubed food talk is this: why is book cover design so lucrative if we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover?
Answer: Because we do anyway.
Apparently if you put dog shit in a tube and make it look presentable by design, my coworker will try it. It’s the truth, really. To some people canned tuna doesn’t make sense, but tubed tuna does. Consider yogurt and gogurt. Consider toothpaste in bottle verses in a container you dip your brush in. Design matters.
The first step in design (or for any effort to impact people) is to know your audience.
The first thing to know about your audience is they will judge a book by its cover; that’s how you get people to try something, consider a service, open a book, read your blog.
My one defense to this truth and favorite aspect of design is you often get more than one chance to make a good first impression. If the book cover doesn’t engage readers to open it up, then redesign the cover. That simple and most people won’t notice.
And my last design tip. Don’t forget the weird. Because there are weird people who will eat tuna out of a tube, and, yes, as disgusting as it is, there are people who could be persuaded to purchase dog shit in a tube. Maybe not eat it, but at least purchase it.
Stay Positive & It’s Actually Sounding Like A Pretty Good Gag Gift To Me
HT to Chip Kidd for being an idol.
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