Design Doesn't Matter

Provocative, general headline with an overly specific example. I know I'm not the only person who's tired of posts like this. There's a point to be made here--a good point. But it's completely ignored in favor of making a broad, meaningless, eye-catching statement.

Design doesn't matter some of the time. In this case, the aspect of the bottle design we're discussing--the label--is completely irrelevant to the functioning of the product. Its only real purpose is to sell the product. So when the product is ubiquitous enough that you instantly recognize it and want to buy it regardless, then the label design doesn't matter at all.

But when you're trying to get to the point of ubiquity--the point where everyone already knows your product and everyone seeks it out--then design usually does matter. Sometimes it gets trumped by other factors or someone gets lucky. But that doesn't mean design doesn't matter.

I think design and profit margins go hand-in-hand. If you have a low margin business selling something cheap in large volume then design doesn't matter so much. If you want to sell higher margin, boutique, premium goods then design matters more (hence the word "designer").

This reminds me of times I've heard non techie people say that one reason Google got popular because "it just had a weird name." There are tons of weird named websites, but once one gets popular then people think the name sounds nice, familiar and special. Ycombinator's orange and logo seem iconic now, but its the company not the design that does it.

This person mixed up design and style. This bottle is of course designed and I bet it is designed like this on purpose. But to the author's eyes, it doesn't have style. He (as I) lives in a different culture than the manufacturer, so this is probably a cultural clash.

He's right that design sometimes doesnt matter. But most of the time it does, especially if you're trying to break in.