4 ms·

When it comes to cost cutting, many times it’s design or marketing that goes first. This is like an applicant ditching the cover letter on their resume when the

When it comes to cost cutting, many times it’s design or marketing that goes first. This is like an applicant ditching the cover letter on their resume when the job market is down: it’s laughably bad timing. I'm so, so sick of this kind of post. Some design guy thinks design guys are not well treated. OK, sure, maybe, why not. Then the guy goes on to say how design is everything. Sometimes the design guy disses the hacker for skimping for a few hundred on design. Other times the design guy insults the hacker's taste. "Design" is not the only part of the business where you design things. In product development you design too. The "design" branch is the one concerned with the design of things that don't change the function of your product, just the appearance. It's makeup. Design, as a verb, is important, but what this guy is talking about, "design" as a branch of business, is really exactly the first place to skimp. Not that skimping in this area will not have its costs. The reason you have to cut costs to begin with implies cutting something that you may need. If you have been running a tight ship, anything you cut will hurt somewhat. It's like starving. After a while, your body starts consuming parts of your organs. It consumes developed skeletal muscles preferentially. Sure they're important -- they wouldn't be there in the first place if they weren't -- but they aren't your liver. You won't die from having your muscles catabolized. People often talk about the other branches and go back and forth over which matters most. "The market is everything." "No, the product -- the product matters the most." I feel these discussions sometimes omit the fact that many areas can be necessary, just like you need several organs to survive. Is your liver more important than your heart? A moot point. You need a market, you need a product, you need to monetize eventually. You can argue that any one of these is essential, and you'd be right. But design? Design is the appendix of a startup. At best, it is the second kidney. Nobody cares what your logo looks like. Nobody cares about the favicon. The buttons don't need to be 2.0. None of these things are very important, and worse, they're not even that hard to do. Making a passable favicon is not that hard, and you can always pimp it if/when you have tons of VC money.

rantfoil 19y ago
> The "design" branch is the one concerned with the design of things that don't change the function of your product, just the appearance. It's makeup. This is where you are pointing out a big problem in most organizations. Design in many organizations is treated as purely visual, when it really shouldn't be. If this is the role of design in your organization, then yes, absolutely, it is expendable. Lipstick. But you don't want lipstick. There's also interaction design / product design. You want someone who can, BEFORE a person even puts a line of code down, understand what the user wants to do and make sure the user experience makes sense in that context, through real user testing and rapid iteration. It's just cheaper to think and change on paper or a whiteboard. Once it's implemented, it is very costly to change. This type of design is not lipstick. It is the process by which a product takes shape... and it is not expendable.
- daniel-cussen 19y ago
  We're talking about different things. The article talks about selling cereal boxes. That's expendable, or at least less vital than other things. In a more general sense, design has its purpose, no question. How do you make something without designing it? Sure design is a big part of making a product, and is the heart of any business. But the article talks about lipstick.
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
wmeredith 19y ago
I'm not a "design-guy" who thinks design guys are not well treated. If you'll notice in the analogy you actually quoted I compared good design to a cover letter. (It's not perfect, but what is?) Obviously if the product (aka the resume) is no good, the best cover letter in the world will not matter. And conversely, if you're product is good enough, you will be able to get away with bad/no design consideration. -Wade
- daniel-cussen 19y ago
  I'm not saying the cover letter is not important. I'd like to have a cover letter whenever possible. I'm saying it's the first place to cut costs. If you only have a few sheets left in the printer, the cover letter is the first thing to go. That's all I'm saying. Design is good to have, but should be one of the first things to cut during hard times. It's going to hurt sales. It will feel like shooting oneself in the foot. Sure it's absence will make hard times harder. If it didn't serve a function in the money-making process, it wouldn't be there in the first place. But there are other parts that are even more important. If a business is in starvation mode, design as it relates to ads and packaging should be one of the first parts to go.

rantfoil 19y ago

> The "design" branch is the one concerned with the design of things that don't change the function of your product, just the appearance. It's makeup. This is where you are pointing out a big problem in most organizations. Design in many organizations is treated as purely visual, when it really shouldn't be. If this is the role of design in your organization, then yes, absolutely, it is expendable. Lipstick. But you don't want lipstick. There's also interaction design / product design. You want someone who can, BEFORE a person even puts a line of code down, understand what the user wants to do and make sure the user experience makes sense in that context, through real user testing and rapid iteration. It's just cheaper to think and change on paper or a whiteboard. Once it's implemented, it is very costly to change. This type of design is not lipstick. It is the process by which a product takes shape... and it is not expendable.

daniel-cussen 19y ago
We're talking about different things. The article talks about selling cereal boxes. That's expendable, or at least less vital than other things. In a more general sense, design has its purpose, no question. How do you make something without designing it? Sure design is a big part of making a product, and is the heart of any business. But the article talks about lipstick.

deleted 19y ago

[deleted]

deleted 19y ago
[deleted]

wmeredith 19y ago

I'm not a "design-guy" who thinks design guys are not well treated. If you'll notice in the analogy you actually quoted I compared good design to a cover letter. (It's not perfect, but what is?) Obviously if the product (aka the resume) is no good, the best cover letter in the world will not matter. And conversely, if you're product is good enough, you will be able to get away with bad/no design consideration. -Wade

daniel-cussen 19y ago
I'm not saying the cover letter is not important. I'd like to have a cover letter whenever possible. I'm saying it's the first place to cut costs. If you only have a few sheets left in the printer, the cover letter is the first thing to go. That's all I'm saying. Design is good to have, but should be one of the first things to cut during hard times. It's going to hurt sales. It will feel like shooting oneself in the foot. Sure it's absence will make hard times harder. If it didn't serve a function in the money-making process, it wouldn't be there in the first place. But there are other parts that are even more important. If a business is in starvation mode, design as it relates to ads and packaging should be one of the first parts to go.