Good designers are experts at sneaking past dragons
“Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons?” — CS Lewis¹
One still, summer evening as he was cycling along a quiet country road, surrounded by the spectacular scenery of rural Italy, the golden sunlight sparkling off the surface of the lake that had just appeared before him, Robert came to the crest of the hill. His legs, not waiting for a thought to tell them to, stopped peddling. His feet sat motionless, resting atop their pedals. With each turn the wheels of his bicycle rolled slower. Impatient, gravity began to push him forwards. Gently at first. And then less gently. The wheels spun faster. The spokes quickly became invisible. Beneath him the winding road was a blur, but his legs were happily relaxing. He looked across towards the lake below. It was as smooth as glass, totally unperturbed by the cyclist flying towards it. Reflected in the water the sky was as blue as sapphires without a cloud to be seen, but air was rushing through Robert’s hair as though he was hurtling through a hurricane. No matter how hard the wind against his face fought, it was no match for the smile that was burgeoning across it. All his worries had been stolen by the breeze, he was free.
As Robert McCaffrey cycled down that road, nearby his studio in Italy, he knew he’d got it. That was what he was going to make. That feeling with the wind in your hair. That feeling when you are coasting down a hill on your bike and you feel free.
Robert McCaffrey is a designer. Recently he started his own company, McCaffrey, to design some shoes. Our small class of 12 aspiring product designers at art school had the privilege of hearing him come and speak with us. He told us about the journey he has been on with his McCaffrey brand. He had designed shoes before, in fact millions of people have worn sports shoes designed by McCaffrey. He has even designed football boots worn by some of the best footballers in the world. But this was different, this was his company.
What struck me about the way Robert went about designing his shoes, other than the meticulous attention to detail, from the choice of materials to the craftsmen who would make his shoes, was how it started. His idea came to him on his bike, and it was a feeling. It was that story that he wanted to attach to his products. Not just a way to market his shoes, but a design identity. It was the seed that the product grew from, not a marketing idea that grew from the product.
He started by making shoes that wouldn’t be ruined by metal bicycle pedals. They had a hard-wearing pad on the sole that protected them. Then there was the idea of a reflective strip on the back of the shoe that could be folded down when you arrived at work.
There was also the idea of being inspired by leather handlebar tape. Now McCaffrey had experience designing football boots. In the past when they were made from leather, they needed stitching to allow it to move in certain ways. Now they’re made out of synthetic materials and don’t need that, but Robert’s experience gave him an idea. What if the effect of leather handlebar tape could be recreated using the sort of stitching football boots once had?
There are many different prototypes of the shoes, with all sorts of ideas. More of the recent designs, as they’ve become more developed, look more like what you might expect from a shoe. They don’t all have the pads on the bottom, and I’m not sure they all have a reflective strip. But the story is still there, it still inspired all the designs. And the story has helped develop the target user: cyclists.
Robert is currently working on developing a range of wallets, bags and other items that will go alongside his first collection of shoes when they are released. They will all be inspired by the same story of being free when you are cycling.
Stories are incredibly powerful things. CS Lewis certainly thought so. He wrote an essay defending fairy stories against accusations of childishness. That is where the quote from the beginning of this blog comes from, “Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons?” He was talking of the power of stories to get behind our inhibitions. We let stories in. Stories have access to our emotions that cold truth does not. They can sneak past the dragons that guard the depths of our hearts.
“it has the same power: to generalise while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. But at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of ‘commenting on life’, can add to it.”
Stories are useful weapons in a designer’s arsenal. Stories give our products context, and meaning. They make them something more. We can use our products to tell stories, and we can use stories to tell our products. Designer Robert Brunner (Jony Ive’s predecessor at Apple) says this:
“Great design is more than an object: It is an idea. An idea that permeates everything, think iPod or Harley. These are ideas that coalesce into objects and connect deep into people’s souls. This is where great stuff is born.”²
Brunner’s perspective is a valuable one. He doesn’t see the story of a product as something you tag on, something for the marketing team. It is what makes great design. It should be central to the product. That doesn’t weaken the product at all. In fact it makes it better. You can exploit these ideas in marketing, but sneaking past watchful dragons and connecting deep into people’s souls makes products better. iPods and Harleys are both amazing and influential products, because they connect with us on more than just a functional level. People love their Harleys and their iPods. Not just because of marketing, but because through the story they tell they become more than objects.
Stories also allow us a framework with which to build our products. They give us people to design for. And as Lewis says they can even “give us experiences we have never had,” which we need to be able to design for people who aren’t ourselves. We must put ourselves in other people’s shoes if we ever want them to step into the new ones we have designed for them.
Robert McCaffrey’s shoes will be better for the fact that all through his process he has had that thought in mind. Of course looking at his shoes you won’t know that they are inspired by cycling through Italy. But that idea, that story, gives a consistency in his products. I’m not talking here about how to consumer perceives them but how the designer designs them. It is really helpful to have a theme rooted in the ground that you can branch all your ideas from.
But stories can also be used to sell products. My friend Andreas wrote a short and sweet piece on the way brands use stories and how we should be wary of that. He actually wrote about another producer of high-quality, leather cycling accessories: Brooks. Famous for their saddles. This is how he concluded:
“Good stories are engaging and we, by just being people, are very susceptible to them. I think it’s important to be aware of the power of stories and their effect on you, because sellers and manufactures sure are.”³
Now he is certainly right, stories can be used in marketing to sell bad products. We should be careful. We can get caught up in the brands and ideas of first class marketing so much that we settle for second class products. But it’s not always like that. Just because our product comes with added ‘story’ attached doesn’t mean it’s not a good product. Just because stories are sometimes used to dress up ugly products in pretty clothes doesn’t mean they’re always doing that.
Brooks is a great example. The ‘story’ of Brooks isn’t an abstract idea that has been tagged on to their products. It is their products. They are handmade, in the UK, from really high quality leather, with high quality craftsmanship. That’s why people buy Brooks and Brooks know that. Brooks is that. That is Brooks’ idea that ‘connects deep into people’s souls’ as Brunner says. The idea that sneaks past the watchful dragons.
- CS Lewis. “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said,” Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories p 37.
- Robert Brunner. “Design is Too Important to Be Left to the Thinkers”, Fast Company
- Andreas Eliassen. “The Story”, Lets Talk About Design
