The video below was sent around the office and, for me, got me thinking about how we see and how we judge design.

It’s about 4 minutes long. After you’ve had a look and, if you’re still around, join in a discussion below. I’d love to hear your thoughts

The video is clearly very well put together. It reflects a designer’s attempt to realign the Innocent Drinks website. Check out the short post on Think Vitamin here.

Alone, however, the designs and the video cause a problem for me. When we are presented with stunning visuals we tend to focus on the aesthetics rather than the substance. Non-designers don’t know how to judge design unless given a framework to do so I’m not patronising here nor am I saying that designers possess a gift or talent that others don’t.

Arguably, non designers don’t possess a visual vocabulary as to why a design doesn’t work for them. Hence you’ll hear that the design “doesn’t pop” or “doesn’t breathe”, at which designers will snigger, only later to complain how clients don’t get the value of design.

You’ll hear similar responses in an art gallery. ”Rothko? This is fucking crap, they’re just big dark squares, I could have done that when I was five”. Except you couldn’t. Sure, you probably could have painted dark squares. But you were missing a couple of things. Context and meaning for starters and articulation too. Articulating the context and meaning are as important as the deliverables. Those big dark squares.

Rather than fan the debate, if it’s still burning, on art versus design I’d like to focus on the shortcomings not on the design in the video, but on how that design was communicated.

I’d like to argue that the new design is, in fact, not necessarily designed any better than the current design.

Where’s the intent?

I don’t see any framing of the problem. What problems does the current design have that need to be solved?

Where’s the reasoning?

I see decisions being made in the context of the tool, but not within the context of the problem being solved. One decision is being visibly thrown out in place of another. That’s part of the design process, exploring possibilities.

But what’s missing is the why. Why is one direction is chosen in place of another (not on granular design elements, who’d want to be a designer if you had to justify the minutiae of every decision).

Brand extensions.

Innocent have been extending their brand (like Porsche did with their Cayenne or Apple did with music or a phone) and the new design does not reflect this.

Whether brand extension is a good idea is not for a designer to decide, at least not in isolation. It’s much bigger than that.

Perhaps Innocent should focus on smoothies. On the other hand, maybe they’re on the right track tapping into heathy living and eating and how their other products align with that strategy.

Designers, stay in your box.

It’s clearly better visual design (a better grid, for example), but that is only one aspect of design and by focusing on a sexy deliverable, we only serve to keep designers, even the best ones, in their box.

Design is how it works, not just how it looks.

Ultimately, I think we, as designers, need to get better at facilitating design critique and, consequently, defending our own designs (including me, I’m one of the worst offenders here).

Before we do that, we need to get better at framing the problem and then articulating how our design process, not just our deliverable solves that problem.

Design isn’t just a deliverable, it’s a process