To inform OR delight?
Commercial art has been the focus of my life for over twenty years. I’ve owned and run five companies, all of which have been deliberately rooted in design as a foundational discipline. A traditional identity and print firm. A progressive motion graphics house. A general practice design firm. A firm focused on design for luxury and lifestyle brands. And, today, a multidisciplinary branding agency. In each of these firms, writing has been essential.
Pointing out that most everything produced by a creative agency requires writing—and therefore endorsing it as an essential offering—may seem obvious. But it isn’t, not entirely.
Clients hire creative agencies for a variety of assignments. There are times when these assignments can be identified as clearly in the field of advertising, design, or interactive. In such cases the competition tends to be other firms within the same field. In the majority of situations, though, client assignments span two or more of these fields, rendering the black lines in between a blurry shade of grey … and exposing the mortal flaw in the way design firms think about writing.
Somehow, design firms have come to consider writing not as what it clearly is—the natural and necessary counterpart to design—but as a secondary activity not worthy of the same status as design. There is ample evidence of this position; it took thirty eight years for the largest, most famous design firm on the planet to hire a writer at the partner level; and none of the prominent design competitions recognize writing, either as a category or component.
As someone who has stood astride design and writing for an entire career, I cannot help but wonder why?
The easy and instinctive reply is that writing is viewed by design firms as similar to photography or illustration. Neither are required on a daily basis in a design firm, nor are they needed for every project. As a result, photographers and illustrators are hired on an ad hoc basis. In addition to being cost-efficient, this has the benefit of allowing these resources to be chosen for their particular style. Which is the point at which this line of thinking falters when applied to writers.
The reality is that writers who practice in the commercial arts are the same as graphic designers: they do not develop a specific perceptible style. They are comfortably and purposefully applicable across a range of scenarios. Certainly, they might have an approach that becomes familiar, or a level of quality that can be identified. But like their graphic design peers their role is to develop work in the style of the client, not themselves. It truly is the verbal counterpart to visual design.
Certainly, there are areas within design that can be pure visual exercises—identity design and packaging come to mind as examples. Of the design firms I am aware of, though, I can think of only one that has a portfolio (almost) devoid of the written word. This fact makes it problematic to take the position that writing doesn’t matter at least as much as graphic design.
The fact that writers do not enjoy an equal presence with designers throughout the industry sends a clear message to the client audience that writing is valued less than design, that the design industry deviates from advertising and interactive agencies in their valuation of writing as necessary to the success of a brand. I believe clients disagree with this position: in the age of content, they have declared writing to be essential.
