/blog/hello-world 3 min read
A few months ago I was chatting with a brand director who asked me, “which brands do you like?”. What the fuck I hate all brands, was all I could think, and why I hated them. Same with software design: my mind jumps straight to interfaces that frustrate rather than empower.
Later, I wondered: do I even like design?
I can still remember being a kid, my mother driving us through the dark to some stranger’s house that seemed like a huge lit up white mansion to me, buying a secondhand PlayStation off him. Taking it home and spending hours with Tomb Raider and Gran Turismo. That grey box with that perfect startup sound. I still feel something when I think about it.
I remember a watch shop in Davenport Square, a mall near where we lived, I used to visit just to look. There was this Casio. Greyish black, digital, waterproof, with an incredible blue backlight you could turn on to see in the dark. I was obsessed with it. When my mom finally bought it for me, I’d lie in bed at night when I was meant to be asleep, pressing the button over and over, just watching that blue glow. A simple watch doing one simple thing, and it brought me so much joy.
I remember wandering around my dad’s office during school holidays while he worked. He had these big old Macintosh computers, drum scanners, light boxes for checking photo negatives. I’d mess around in Photoshop having absolutely no idea what I was doing, just fascinated by what could happen on the screen. And always just wanting to play Prince of Persia.
Later, discovering I could customise my Myspace page, changing background images and CSS, embedding my favourite songs. It felt like expression. Like I could show something of myself through software.
So yes, I have emotional connections to these weird abstract things called brands. Core memories tied to technology and design. I can’t deny that. But in that conversation with the brand director those emotions were so hidden I couldn’t access them to share them.
Yes, I am skeptical of most brands because I see how they leverage this loyalty. Association with a brand mostly benefits the brand. How does being loyal to a company actually benefit the person? I see brands lean on emotional connection as an extraction tool, not a value-add. And that bothers me.
Both things are true. I have genuine connections to PlayStation and Apple and Casio and whatever else shaped my childhood relationship with technology. And I think brand loyalty is largely a mechanism for extracting value from people.
This blog is me trying to sit with that tension. To think more deeply about what I actually care about in design. The visual craft, what it means to have a voice, the potential for design within product-led organisations. To process thoughts that don’t fit neatly into case studies.
I’ll probably be my own most frequent reader. But if you want to come along, you’re welcome.