No strong opinions

As a designer, a big part of my job is to take in feedback from stakeholders and clients, balance them with what’s best for the user experience, and then incorporate them into the design with some peer review to create the final product. I’ve been doing this for years now and have gotten the hang of how to best go about it by now. But many times, I feel a lot of pressure (from fellow designers, especially) to have very strong opinions about things that I don’t necessarily feel I need to have one on.

For instance, I’ve had clients tell me that they don’t like the color palette I chose for a particular design. I then explain the process of why I chose it and why it’s appropriate for that specific audience that the product is geared towards. If they still don’t like it, I ask what in particular they don’t like about it. Sometimes, they’ll say things like “it feels too feminine” or “it doesn’t pop enough.” This is all valid, as color perception is a very subjective thing and it is the client’s product, after all. I try my best to convince them why the choices I’ve made as a designer are appropriate, but at the end of the day, it’s their call. And I tend to go with it.

This is where I get a lot of shit from fellow designers. They believe I should’ve stuck to my guns with the original color palette I had. They believe I should’ve stood my ground and fought for it because the client isn’t a designer. They believe I should’ve not backed down and caved in to the client’s demands. But my reaction to this whole thing isn’t as strong. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about the color scheme of the product as a designer, it just means I don’t think it’s a battle worth fighting. After all, the color palette doesn’t make or break the product. If anything, it’s the usefulness of the app and an improper product-market fit that does. Users may be dissatisfied with the color scheme, but it would take some truly horrid colors for them to give up the product and use a competitor’s instead.

I recently had a fellow designer ask me my opinion on a rebrand of a product (it was Burberry’s recent logo update). I said I didn’t have a very strong opinion on it. They gave me a stern look and went “I’d almost respect you more if you did.” I was bewildered by this comment. It’s like they wanted me to love it or hate it. I explained that there’s a totally valid middle ground here where you can appreciate what it is while still not being completely satisfied with the outcome, only to have it fall on deaf ears. I like the fact that it’s a modern evolution of the brand that uses a bold typeface with large counters which greatly improves legibility (especially when viewed on billboards from a distance) with a consistent cap height throughout the whole logo. I dislike the fact that it loses all of its unique heritage and vintage feel that the old logo echoed. I wish that one or more of the letters preserved some form of the emblem that is now completely lost. So I’m overall mixed on it, but I couldn’t help but feel that fellow designers wanted me to either join them on their hate bandwagon to completely crush this redesign or shower it with praise for being the second coming of Jesus.

I find this type of attitude very common in America more than the rest of the world. Individualism is a strong lifestyle here and it seems like everyone has their opinion on things. This is exaggerated to a great degree in any creative profession: art, design, fashion, photography, or writing. It feels like you have to have a very strong opinion on anything you come across in order to develop your own identity and brand about what you like and don’t like. I’m of the opinion that this belief is wrong (ironically enough). I think it’s perfectly acceptable to appreciate both the positive aspects of something while still believing that there’s room for improvement. As a designer, you’re always making compromises between aesthetics and usability, client satisfaction and user experience, your personal tastes versus what’s best for the product, etc. You’re always straddling this line of making tradeoffs while trying not to veer too far off into one direction.

So overall, I don’t have very strong opinions on most things. I’ve gained enough business maturity to realize that most things that make their way out into the world are the result of a long and chaotic process of balancing time, money, resources, creative output, and employee enthusiasm. I can’t expect everything to work perfectly and run efficiently. I also don’t expect everything to fail all the time and have a bar that I expect it to meet, which varies by country, geography, culture, the era we live in, and the people making it. Everything is influenced by something else around it and we end up with a style and belief system that carries forward depending on the evolving tastes and habits of the population. This is a fascinating topic that I spend a lot of time thinking about, and I’ll be sure to follow-up on this with more extended thoughts on it in the future. But for now, I’m perfectly content not having any strong opinions on most things that highly opinionated Americans spend an inordinate amount of time obsessing over and discussing in today’s world.