The great divide: marketers & designers
In the words of my old boss “marketers and designers speak a different language”
This never really made sense to me until I took on a recent contract.
I developed a site for a company and when the site was reviewed by the marketing people every single comment made was that THEIR logo was to small, that THEIR brand should be promoted more, that the point of the site was to increase THEIR brand awareness.
On the other hand, when designers reviewed the site I heard things like “that font is unreadable”, “that wording might confuse PEOPLE”, and “PEOPLE wont notice that button”.
My point is: We all want to make money and get our names out there. The difference being that a marketer’s strategy is to sell their product because everyone has heard of their product (whether it’s good or bad), while a designer’s strategy is to sell their product because the product is actually appealing, and is actually useful, which should lead all the happy customers to tell their friends about your product so that you don’t have to.
A Marketer’s bottom line is: CONVINCE THEM.
A Designer’s bottom line is MAKE IT APPEALING, MAKE IT USEFUL.
Obviously myself being a designer, I am in favor of that latter approach to making the ching-ching, the $$$, the scrilla, the moolah.
Luckily I think we’re already in a paradigm shift towards more people adopting the latter way of thinking. This will lead to better products, that people are ACTUALLY HAPPY WITH.
Woot. Enough said.