6. Design is a force multiplier.
You’ve got to love it.
Think of any brand you love. When you see something from that brand, the one thing that shines through consistently is that the love of the creator is apparent. They’ve built the love into it, into the DNA of the thing and into every expression of it. It’s right there.
This is the power of design. It’s not a trick to make someone notice. The reason why is built into everything about it.
Attention. Please.
As we’ve said, the first step to getting someone to take an interest in your thing is getting them to notice it.
And that’s hard to do. Because we know that, whatever your creation does, the people you want to attract are all doing something else about that now. No one is going around with a need entirely unfulfilled, waiting around for someone to create some way to solve it.
Everyone is already doing something else. And what’s worse, and even more frustrating: Even if their current solution is mediocre, people are mostly unwilling to consider something new.
Ridiculous, right? But if you think about it, it makes sense. There are just too many things we all have to do every day for us to consider alternatives. We default to what we have now, not because we’re delighted with how it works but because it’s generally not worth the trouble to investigate alternatives. We’d never have time to do anything else.
So we shrug and accept suboptimal solutions because it’s easier than checking out something new. Until the new thing becomes impossible to ignore.