Last Thursday, I attended a talk by designer Debbie Millman, who is currently the AIGA president, and so many other great things.
I’ve enjoyed her design-themed online radio show “Design Matters with Debbie Millman” for many years, and I was excited to see her in person and listen to one of her insightful and articulate lectures. I thought she was going to promote her new book, which I was all ready to purchase that evening and probably get it signed. But there were no books or book-signing in sight, and the topic of the evening turned out to be about branding, which ironically, I wasn’t expecting.
What was more surprising was that within the first few minutes of the lecture, you realize that this is part-a history (and pre-history) lesson, part-brain studies, part-branding, with just a dash of visual design. I thought it would be a slideshow of her work or something, but looking back, if you’re familiar with Debbie’s radio show, it makes total sense. And I think it is ultimately better than showing a bunch of pretty slides, unless you’re Sagmeister, maybe.
After the quick anthropological/history/science lesson, Debbie broke down the timeline of branding into five waves (I’m sure I’m butchering the summary and actual year of her lecture, but I’m pulling this from memory):
- Brand as consistency (1875-1920)
- Brand as safety (1920-1965)
- Brand as status (1965-1985)
- Brand as experience (1985-2000)
- Brand as social connection (2000-present)
The new nugget that I got from the lecture, that I’m still wrapping my head around, is the last wave, about brand as social connection. In all of the first four waves, I can complete the sentence that starts with “I choose Coca Cola because…” by describing the qualities in the four waves:
- Consistency: “… I know I’m getting the same taste with every can.”
- Safety: “… I know this product is not (relatively) harmful to my body.”
- Satus: “… I am a certain type of person if I consume this.”
- Experience: “… I feel a certain way when I consume this.”
But with brand as “social connection,” even if I cannot use Coke as an example and I have to use virtual networks like Facebook and Twitter, I cannot really complete the sentence “I choose Facebook (as opposed to Twitter or MySpace) because…” with a reason that doesn’t clump all of these entities as just “I want to connect to others via the cyberspace.”
I suppose I choose Facebook for certain social interactions over LinkedIn for relatively obvious reasons, but does that qualify for its own branding “wave”? Isn’t there a larger, more general branding trend or wave out there in the physical world?
In any case, it was nice to finally see Debbie Millman in person, and I wish I can see her speak again, hopefully with all the other well-known designers within AIGA together in one place, so I can get all designer star-struck.
Flush.
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 12:19 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
[...] a few hours last week, I managed to return to the land of graphic design and AIGA when I attended a lecture by Debbie Millman at Adobe SF about Why We Buy and Why We Brand. It was a nice step-back look at [...]