The age old debate or struggle between the planner and the designer. The planner highlights the good parts of a product, but the designer is concerned with what the product is or how their design looks. In a recent debate (heated and involved pushing and shoving) between myself (a marketer) and a good friend (a designer), we found we looked at a product or brand in different ways. So how did this come about?

For a recent project for another friend we were asked to come up with a marketing communications strategy through to the brand identity. So after a long period of brainstorming we came up with a concept that related to the theme of the brand and the message they wanted to push. All good in the hood so far…

Now we are at a stage where I the marketer wants to push the main message but this conflicts with the creative freedom of the design concept. The idea involves photography and we are explaining the concept with an image… from a design perspective this looks best minimal and slick, you don’t need to ram it down their throat. From a marketing perspective we want as many people as possible to ‘get it’ and relate to it… which in this instance causes friction between design and purpose (which is to sell the product). So my argument would be ‘what is design if it has no purpose’? On the other side the answer to this would be ‘it is communicating the message but why not let the person discover what it is?’.

I guess us as marketers would feel a little uneasy if people had to think and work it out before realising the message. Does this not go against what the whole point of it is?

No conclusion can really be made as both opinions have their merits… I would say though marketers look at design in an outwards fashion but the designer would look at a design they are creating from an inwards perspective. They want it to look ‘cool’ but the marketers want it to reap results. ‘Make the logo bigger’ are words that come out of the marketing persons mouth… with an answer of ‘But it will look SH** then!?’ from the designer. Who is right?