Recently in General Category
A recent event has caused me to reflect about the approaches used by some mass marketers. The other day my inbox was inundated with a number of comments posted to my blog here. The system dutifully informed me of close to one hundred and fifty comments posted in response to some of the musings I've written here. My initial response was sheer joy, thinking that I'd finally written something that had provoked some kind of mass response, until my innate skepticism started to kick in momentarily afterwards.
Recently the question of a designer doing a piece of work that tested the limits of what was tasteful was posed on graphics.com, sadly it never progressed much past its current state, but for myself it posed the question of what exactly is considered to be good or bad taste.
In an effort to define what taste was I looked at a variety of articles and definitions through my library and of course the internet. Not surprisingly, like most philosophical arguments, it's a circuitous and convoluted path, weaving back and forth, one definition relying on another in order to validate its position. Wikipedia.org offers two possible definitions, the first relating to aesthetics and the other to sociology. The commonality between them however, and other references, is that the matter of taste is a matter of culture. Where culture is constructed geographically, socially, institutionally and chronologically.
It's not too often that you run across something that could prove to be memorable to the general public or less often that you get to comment about it. Sadly I can't take credit for the find but can for the commentary.
I participate in a couple of forums here and there related to graphic and web design and every once in a while I encounter a posting that just happens to fire up my amygdala and even more about the amygdala here. You know the ones, they all come off sounding like a snake oil salesman from the old west that promise that if you use a product that they too use you'll be bigger, better, harder and faster than you've ever imagined you could be. My gripe isn't so much with the fact that these individuals are hyping their product but more in their approach.
As rumored Macromedia announced today the release of Studio 8, on August 8. The email I got stating that if I hurry I could get one of a limited number of "Studio" back packs while quantities last if preordered the suite now. I never did understand the reasoning behind preorders like this. Especially in terms of software. Typically I order hardcopies of everything, but with so many software packages offered as a download today it's not like they're going to run out right? But, I digress.
This is a re-exploration of something I’ve brought up before and still feel it needs to be expanded upon.
A number of months ago I was approached by a prospective client to do a project for them. I pitched my presentation, explained how it would help with their overall marketing goals and detailed the main areas of the work required. As these things usually go they eventually asked me about my rate. When this prospect found out what the project would cost them they balked. Their reply to the rate was how could I charge so much when they could get their nephew to do it for almost free.
Once every three to five weeks now for about three years I’ve been receiving these prize notifications from a Canadian magazine publisher. This month I may have won a new car, last month $32,500 and soon, any day now I’ll be getting that check for one million dollars in the mail.
First off let me thank Steve Kapsinow and Chris Dickman for inviting me to participate in the Graphic Design Forum. I’m excited about being invited to contribute my thoughts and ideas to this blog but that’s also tempered with the hope that those ideas are of value to others as well.
