I started to work as a package designer of fast moving consumer goods since the last one and half year. When I got into this side of visual design, I was almost certain that I had made a HUGE mistake. Why are these people so stuck up about making things look good? Why do some of the packaging devoid of depth and meaning? What is “desirable” packaging? I entered the package design industry with my own pre-conceived notion about what is “good design”, which I associated primarily with problem solving. I attended design reviews with clients where the decision-making was being made on “I think I like this one better than the other” comments, not knowing why. I attended user research where people displayed strong liking or disliking towards the same package! How come? And in all this, how can a designer justify what he or she was doing based on a given design brief? (see next post) Where does one start?
Being new to this industry, I had many questions and found no clear answers. That’s when I saw Don Norman’s book - “Emotional Design” in bookstore one evening on my way from work. I was intrigued by those two words “Emotion and Design” put together, side by side. This has got to be it. Along with Willi Kuntz's essay (see the posts below), this book helped put things in perspective with great clarity.
Here’s an excerpt from Emotional Design :
Human responses to the everyday things of the world are complex, determined by wide variety of factors. Some of these are outside the person, controlled by designer and manufacturer, or by advertising and such things as brand image. And some come from within, from your own private experiences. Each of the three levels of design —visceral, behavioral, and reflective — plays its part in shaping your experience. Each is as important as the others, but each requires a different approach by the designer.
Visceral Design
Visceral Design is what nature does. We humans evolved to co-exist in the environment of other human beings, animals, plants, landscapes, weather, and other natural phenomenon. As a result we are exquisitely tuned to receive powerful emotional and signals from the environment that get interpreted automatically at the visceral level. Thus, the colorful plumage on male birds were selectively enhanced through the evolutionary process to be maximally attractive to female birds — as, in turn, where the preferences of female birds so as to discriminate better among male plumages. It's an iterative, co-adaptive process, each animal adapting over many generations to serve the other. A similar process occours between male and females of other species, between co-adaptive life forms across species, and even between animals and plants.
Fruits and flowers provide and excellent example of the co-evolution of plants and animals. Nature's evolutionary process made flowers to be attractive to birds and bees, the better to spread their pollen, and fruits to be attractive to primates and other animals, th e better to spread their seeds. Fruits and flowers tend to be symmetrical, rounded, smooth, pleasant to touch, and colorful. Flowers have pleasant odors, and most fruits taste sweet, the better to attract animals and people who eat them and then spread the seeds, whether by spitting pr defecation. In this co-evolution of design, the plants change so as to attract animals, while the animals change so as to become attracted to the plants and fruits. The human love of sweet tastes and smells and of bright, highly saturated colors probably derives from this co-evolution of mutual dependence between people and plants.
The human preference for faces and bodies that are symmetrical presumably reflects section of the fittest; non-symmetrical bodies probably are the results of some deficiency in the genes or the maturing process. Humans select for size, color appearance, and what you are biologically disposed to think of as attractive derives from these considerations. Sure, culture plays a role, so that, for example, some cultures prefer fat people, others thin; but even within those cultures there is an agreement on what is and what is not attractive, even if too thin or too fat for specific likes.
When we perceive something as "pretty", that judgment comes directly from the visceral level. In the world of design, "pretty" is generally frowned upon, denounced as petty, trite, or lacking depth and substance — but thats the designers reflective level speaking (clearly trying to overcome an immediate visceral attraction). Because designers want their colleagues to recognize them as imaginative, creative and deep, making something "pretty" or "cute" or "fun" is not well accepted. But there is a place in our lives for such things, even if they are simple.
Adult humans like to explore far beyond the basics, biologically wired-in preferences. Thus, although bitter tastes are viscerally disliked (presumably because many poisons are bitter), adults have learned to eat and drink numerous bitter things, even to prefer them. This is "acquired taste", so called because people have had to learn to overcome their natural inclination to dislike them. So, too, with crowded, busy spaces, or noisy ones, and discordant, non harmonic music, sometimes with irregular beats: all things that at viscerally negative, but that can be reflectively positive.
The principles underlying visceral design are wired in, consistent across people and cultures. If you design according to these rules, your design will always be attractive, even if somewhat simple. If you design for the sophisticated, for the reflective level, your design can readily become dates because this level is sensitive to cultural differences, trends in fashion, and continual fluctuation. Today’s sophistication runs the risk of becoming tomorrow’s discard. Great designs, like great art and literature, can break the rules and survive forever, but only a few are gifted to be great.
At the visceral level, physical features – look, feel, and sound – dominate. This, a master chef concentrates on presentation, arranging food artfully on a plate. Here good graphics, cleanliness and beauty play a role. Make the car door feel firm and produce a pleasant chunking sound as it closes. Make the exhaust of Harley Davidson motorcycle have a unique, powerful rumble. Make the body sleek, sexy and inviting, such as the classic 1961 Jaguar roadster. Yes, we love sensuous curves, sleek surfaces, and solid sturdy objects. Because visceral design is about initial reactions, it can be studied quiet simply by putting people in front of a design and waiting for reactions. In the best of circumstances, the visceral reaction to appearance works so well that people take one look and say “I want it”. Then they might ask, “what does it do?” and last, “And how much does it cost?”. This is the reaction the visceral designer strives for, and it can work.
Effective visceral design requires the skills of the visual and graphical artist and the industrial designer. Shape and form matter. The physical feel and texture of the material matter. Heft matters. Visceral design is all about emotional impact. It has to feel good, look good. Sensuality and sexuality plays a role. This is a major role of “point of presence” displays in stores, in brochures, in advertisements, and in other enticements that emphasize appearance. These may be a stores only chance of getting the customer, for many a product is purchased on looks alone. Similarly, otherwise highly rated products maybe turned down if they do no appeal to the aesthetics sense of the potential buyer.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If an immediate attraction is visceral, what goes deeper than that? Here, the book talks about the reflective side of design:
Attractiveness is a visceral phenomenon - the response is entirely to the surface look of an object. Beauty comes from the reflective level. Beauty looks below the surface. Beauty comes from conscious reflection and experince. It is influenced by knowledge, learning and culture. Objects that are unattractive on the surface can give pleasure. Discordant music, for example, can be beautiful. Ugly art can be beautiful.
(...)
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