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Ask HN: How do I persuade my designer that a character is useful
Hi guys, we are a couple of friends building a product. I'm the so called 'leader', and I'm having the following problem -
I'm a huge fan of Github and Travis CI design. I just love the characters and the way they help the marketing of the product. I have a great idea of a character that fits the purpose of the product. The problem is that the designer doesn't like having a character in the logo as it is 'too childish' .Of course, I mentioned we can use it in email marketing etc.In my opinion having the character in the logo is crucial to the marketing. How do I persuade her that we must do this? What are the pros and cons to having a character? In short... can you compare the success of top products who feature a character in their logo and top products which do not. e.g which one maximizes the probability of a 'unicorn'.
- admax88q 9y ago> In short... can you compare the success of top products who feature a character in their logo and top products which do not. e.g which one maximizes the probability of a 'unicorn'. Why don't you do your own research to compare the success of products with and without a character in their logos.
- interdrift 9y agoYou can't answer a question with a question. I'm interested in how people generally feel about it.
- raverbashing 9y agoHow about you listen to the specialist you hired for this specific purpose? You can have a character, just not as part of the logo
- nik736 9y agoMaybe you shouldn't persuade her but listen to the expert you hired?
- interdrift 9y agoIMO great products come with mutual agreement.
- adambratt 9y agoHow many of these companies were successful because of a character in their logo? http://fortune.com/unicorns/ http://fortune.com/unicorns/
- rubbingalcohol 9y agoYou're not a designer, so come off it.
- anthony_franco 9y agoAsk your customers how they'd feel about a character in the logo, they're a better audience to poll. And if you don't have customers to ask, then that should be your #1 priority instead of worrying about your logo. Github launched and worried about their octocat way, way later.
- interdrift 9y agoGreat! Thank you!
- wavefunction 9y agoI don't even know how to approach this question. There are grammatical typos. The poster appears to have little professional experience in an area they're attempting to get reinforcing opinions for their stance from HN for, and the entire question seems both shallow, stupid and ridiculous. Someone with apparently no experience in branding or marketing wants to override their experienced colleague and thinks it's going to mean the difference between a 'unicorn' and a... moderately successful company?
- interdrift 9y agoYou are currently not adding any value to my question and I did not force you to answer.
- skylark 9y agoThere was actually significant value there, but I fear you're going to do what the other poster suggested, flex your position of power and drop the "disagree/commit" line on one of your friends to get your way. You came here looking for validation, but what you really need to do is focus on the things that actually matter and trust your team to make the best decisions they can. At the very least you might still have friends a few months from now.
- interdrift 9y agoWe are taking decisions as a team and I don't see how friendship matters while you design something.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- meagher 9y agoTL;DR: You don't have to convince the designer of anything---you can "disagree and commit" and spend time on other decisions. Maybe some help: > Third, use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus, it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?” By the time you’re at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you’ll probably get a quick yes. > Consider how much slower this decision cycle would have been if the team had actually had to convince me rather than simply get my commitment. From Jeff Bezos' Annual Letter (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312517120198/d373368dex991.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000119312517...)
- interdrift 9y agoThanks, your answer is great!
- anigbrowl 9y agoUgh. Added to my list of 'manipulation tactics to be on the lookout for.'
- zuck9 9y agoI'd love to see the whole list, do you have it written down?
- anigbrowl 9y agoYou won't get me to hand it over that easily XD Seriously though, I think a lot of sales and leadership skills are unethical forms of manipulation. By this I mean covert or implicit triggers to change behavior. I'm fine with bargaining strategies, even aggressive ones - I don't enjoy bargaining but it's honestly self-interested conflict, if you see what I mean. Where it stops being ethical is in the deliberate use of ambiguity to create informational asymmetry. In the example above, I'm very wary of propositions like 'we need to move on, will you take a gamble with me on this?' What exactly does the proposition of a gamble mean here? It has implications of win and loss, but the sense of urgency and the lack of clarity could mean that if the gamble is a win the proponent will take all the credit, whereas if it's a loss I'll be blamed for not having spotted the pitfalls. Of course you can't infer too much from a single example out of context, but the idea of 'privatizing the gains and socializing the losses' is sadly widespread and I have encountered many decision-makers who seem to operate on such a principle. Of course it's natural to want to take a decision and move on rather than get bogged down in many situations. When I'm in charge I like to do this by saying 'I want X, if it doesn't work I'll take responsibility and we'll do Y instead.' Obviously not a brilliant business strategy from many people's point of view :-)
- anigbrowl 9y agoWell how are we supposed to assess this without knowing anything about your product or target demographic? Will it be used by quirky individual geeks, or are you aiming at market position in an established industry or...? If you're offering funeral services, for example, even the world's cutest cartoon skeleton might not be an appropriate logo element. Your HN bia says 'builds software for chemical diagnosis' - sounds like your target demo is doctors and hospitals but I'm just guessing. I presume you wish to be different from other firms competing in the same market, but different isn't always better. In short... can you compare the success of top products who feature a character in their logo and top products which do not. e.g which one maximizes the probability of a 'unicorn'. I could...what are you offering in return? Right now it sounds like you want other people to do stuff for you for free so you can get what you want, which isn't a very compelling come-on. That might be why everyone is taking your designer's side instead of yours, hm?
- interdrift 9y agoMaybe 'unicorn' wasn't the correct word, how many of the products you absolutely love feature a character in their logo? Yes, it does depend on the context but you can consider the context to be as appropriate as octocat is to github.
- anigbrowl 9y agoI don't want to be rude to you but you're trying to get validation for your opinion from social media to win an argument, which is rather immature. This is disrespectful to your designer.
- interdrift 9y agoNot really, I want to understand how a lot of smart people feel about a conflicting topic. There's no right or wrong in the situation, there's optimal and suboptimal.
- jotux 9y ago
- erulabs 9y agoSingle biggest problem in the startup world is the "founder's vision". You either do or do not need a designer. If you know better, don't hire a designer. If you don't know better, hire a designer. Now, since you _already have a designer_... How about let them do their job and if there is poor response or if the employee is twiddling their thumbs at some point you can ask them to make the version you want. I have long since lost track of the number of times a small startup, which finally got some funding, hired experienced senior employees at the request of their investors and proceeded to ignore everything those new employees recommended. This applies to everything from design to devops to running the reception desk.
- dllthomas 9y agoClearly, the probability of a unicorn is maximized by putting a unicorn in the logo. Boom. Unicorn. Probability 1.
- interdrift 9y agoNailed it.
- neuronexmachina 9y agoIf this is the sort of thing you're worrying about as a "leader," you're going to have a bad time.
- interdrift 9y agoWhy?
- neuronexmachina 9y agoTo be honest, your post sets off a number of red flags: micromanaging, second-guessing employees in their area of expertise, and asking "how do I become a unicorn". You should take this as a cautionary tale: http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/2/10898762/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-logo-redesign-self-discovery http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/2/10898762/uber-ceo-travis-ka... > Kalanick is not a designer... Yet he refused to entrust the rebranding process to someone else. This was an unusual decision, on his part. When overhauling the identify of their company, most CEOs hire experts—branding agencies that specialize in translating corporate values into fonts and colors—or assign the task to an in-house design team. Not Kalanick. For the past three years, he’s worked alongside Uber design director Shalim Amin and a dozen-or-so other folks, hammering out ideas from a poorly ventilated space they call the War Room. Along the way, he studied up on concepts ranging from kerning to color palettes. "I didn’t know any of this stuff," says Kalanick. "I just knew it was important, and so I wanted it to be good."
- interdrift 9y agoOkay, that makes sense to me. Thanks
- tabeth 9y agoIt doesn't matter. Don't you have better things to be doing?
- interdrift 9y agoDoing what I believe is the correct thing to be doing now.
- suresk 9y agoI don't know that any hard data exists on this because, frankly, it seems kind of silly. Plenty of companies have been incredibly successful without any sort of character as part of their branding (Uber, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple - to name just a few) and there are plenty of "characters" in the graveyards of internet startups. Sure, some successful ones may stand out to you, but is it because the characters sold the product, or is it because the product itself was so good that you got a lot of exposure to the characters? It doesn't seem like design/marketing is your area of expertise, yet you are trying to push someone who is more experienced in that area to follow your vision, which you don't really have any good validation for (hence the reason you are asking here) - that doesn't seem like very good leadership to me. You are still building a product - is it worth expending this much time, energy, and conflict with your designer over something that most of us think is pretty trivial? Is your product in a good enough state that you have the luxury of fighting over something like this?
- true_religion 9y agoTwitter has the bird.
- suresk 9y agoIsn't that more of a logo than a character? I'm not really sure where you draw the line, but it doesn't feel like the bird has been much more than a logo for Twitter.
- true_religion 9y agoAt many points in its evolution, Twitter's logo was very cartoonish [1]. Third party companies often seized on this to make the bird even more of a character on their websites. People would also often reference the bird, because of the connection that birds "tweet". I can't say if they used the bird extensively in their documentation and backend tools, but that's where it's more likely to have been playfully included since their frontend was always pretty simple and to the point. [1] https://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/larger/public/field/image/2016/05/twitter-logo-evolution-01.jpg?itok=sE51Fnhu https://www.imore.com/sites/imore.com/files/styles/larger/pu...