Fierce

I think I’d be remiss not to mention the out-of-control meme that is this Project Runway’s Christian Siriano uttering the word “FIERCE” every other sentence.

I’ve been reading up a lot of brand development and marketing lately and this is just another example in a long line of society’s obsessions over pop-culture catch phrases. Remember Coca-Cola’s “Catch the Wave!”, Nike’s “Just Do It.”, or even Austin Powers’ “Yeah baby!”

Now that we’re well into the era of personal brand development, people are establishing their own catch phrases, voluntarily or not. The producers of Project Runway obviously knew they had a hit on their hands when the spunky Siriano sent in his audition tape to the show, and boy did they do a great job exploiting the hell out of him.

What does your ‘brand’ say about you? What does mine say about me? While we might not all have awesome t-shirt designs made in recognition of our one-liners, it’s certainly an interesting age to live in.

More and more people are taking on more work with their free time, occupying it with freelancing of all sorts, including photography, blogging (ahem) or video podcasting (ahem ahem), and whether you like it or not, you’re establishing a brand for yourself in pursuing all these efforts. So what are you going to do with that?

April 25, 2008 | Filed Under Writing | Leave a Comment

First Impressions: Package and Product Info Design

Seagate FreeAgent

Seagate’s new external hard drive line, FreeAgent, has caught my eye more than once in newspaper ads and in stores. Not only is the design of the hard drive itself beautiful, but the product packaging goes leaps and bounds ahead of its competition. Apparently their instructions and quick start guide [via 37signals] inside the box maintain that standard. Is this important to the customer? Absolutely.

This is something that Apple seemingly pulls off effortlessly, but there’s a lot to be said for those first impressions. The first encounter a customer has with the product in the store is with its packaging, and this follows all the way through from pre-purchase, to post-purchase. If you give people something to get excited about opening and digging into, it’s only going to enhance the shopping experience, and make them come back for more. Not only that, but with the dead-simple package design, quick start guides and other documentation, it can take away a lot of the complexity that comes with the initial introduction to a new product. (particularly with gadgets and technology-oriented products that can often confuse new buyers)

As someone in the info development and design field, I can tell you that this is something that companies are increasingly paying a lot of attention to. At the same time, it’s also something they’re struggling with. It’s a matter of getting the right people in the kitchen. As a general rule, I’d say that the only role that developers/engineers of a product should play in package design should be an advisory one. Marketing and media design folks should be at the forefront, maintaining consistency but also clarity, while still getting across the essential information and brand identity.

It will be interesting to see how companies get in on this relatively new and untapped frontier, and what they can do to differentiate themselves from the competition. After all, there can only be so many minimalist white or black boxes on the shelf before everything starts looking vanilla.