So I’m selling a hotdog, and you’re selling a hotdog. To get a competitive edge, I brand my hotdog—I give it an effective name, a sexy new look and tailor it to a specific market. It’s effective and it’s selling.

So sales are up and people are buying. But are they buying because hotdog A is better than hotdog B? Or are they buying because they think that hotdog A is better than hotdog B?

I once read in Jim Aitchison’s book, “Cutting-edge Advertising,” that brands should not look for a unique selling proposition(USP)  because there’s no such thing—products are mostly all the same. Instead, we should look for an emotional selling proposition (ESP) which is mainly what Nike is doing to Adidas—selling the positive emotions people derive from Nike (the Just do it spirit.) rather than the products themselves.

But isn’t that simply trickery? Or is that deception a positive one that adds value to people’s lives?

If there’s anything in ted.com that I can never forget, it’s how a speaker described Jim Collins‘ response to the question, “What should I do in my life?”

He said, “Visualize three circles intersecting each other like a Venn diagram. On the first one is the question, ‘What am I good at (talents & skills)?’ The second one, ‘What do I love? (passion)’ and the last and often overlooked one, ‘How do I get people to pay me for it? (sustainability)’ The answer to the question is where these three circles intersect.”

Basically, what Jim is saying is that you should find your strengths, see if you will enjoy using your skills, (it doesn’t mean that if you’re a good floor scrubber, you’d want to do it for the rest of your life.) and make sure that you can make a decent living out of it.

The reason why I’m getting tired of design is that it no longer answers my question #2 and question #3. My passion for the field has dwindled and long-term sustainability questions have made me think twice.

***

On the question of Passion

Design is a very important part of my life as most of my thinking is based on the question of good design. I do believe that design can push humanity forward through promoting critical thinking and delivering lasting impact on our lives. The chair I’m sitting on right now or the computer screen I’m facing are all products of good design.

But good graphic design doesn’t necessarily translate into good design.

The way I see it, graphic design is a secondary form of a design, meaning that it only becomes useful when used to power-up a strong idea. Graphic design in itself is not anything special without a powerful idea that it will build upon. Its most important job is to communicate other people’s ideas.

Let’s say a researcher designs and invents a cure for cancer (a very strong idea,) a graphic designer’s job should be to create an identity system that makes sure that people understand the cure and be assured of its safety (secondary design.) So, the idea is the cure for cancer, and graphic design exists only to assist that idea. In such a case, graphic design is good design.

But what if Mr. X designs an absurdity such as a mucus-flavored condom, and pays graphic designer Y a million dollars to promote that idea. Graphic designer Y will prostitute himself for the compensation to sell the mucus idea through masterful kerning, color use and photographs. In such a case, is graphic design still good design? If it helped sell something useless, aren’t graphic designers just wasting their time?

That is where my main frustration with graphic design lies. Too few people are creating strong ideas, and too many people are trying to help people sell ideas, mostly stupid ones.

Drive around the city and check out all the billboards and ads slammed at our eyes every time we look to the sky. Doesn’t it seem crazy to you that designers and ad agencies are continually being paid millions to sell different ice cream flavors, fastfood, softdrinks and so many useless things.

As a designer, you may retort, “Oh, but they’re not following the rules of good graphic design. They don’t use a grid, they don’t follow typographic rules.” But will being a good graphic designer even matter if the original idea in itself is worthless?

***

On the question of Sustainability

Looking at graphic design as a whole, I see a future of highly skilled and underpaid designers.

As graphic design is gaining massive popularity, education is getting better and better especially with free blogs and online resources. This will of course create a huge pool of extremely skilled, confident designers who will never allow themselves to participate in crowdsourcing and other “devaluing” forms of design.

With crowdsourcing, 3rd world outsourcing and the development of products such as the Kindle, the whole industry is quickly evolving and the old ways of graphic design are slowly dissipating.

If the popularity of design continually grows and the demand for it does not, I can just imagine how graphic design might just one day turn into another typical, corporate white collar job. It’s a possibility.

***

One last thing—I’d like to share a quote I got from Bob Sutton, “Strong opinions, weakly held.” It basically says that the wise will stand by and be firm with their opinions and beliefs; but when facts and proofs show that they’re wrong, they should learn to let go. I’ve invested years and a ton of money on studying graphic design, but when the facts and truths that are revealing themselves to me are showing me that this may not be the right path for me, then maybe its time to try something new and let go.

At least for now, I’d like to stop being a designer professionally and experiment with several ideas I have at hand. It’s an exciting, and possibly penniless future ahead.

Take the case of the strapline:

It’s a cool and composed challenge. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really say anything to you.

But what if you put a powerful symbol just above it. Read the rest of this entry…

As unmanly as it sounds, I do love animals and I sure as hell wouldn’t want to have any of my pets kidnapped. But as much as I feel for the owner of this digital poster who lost his shih tzu, I just find it so hard to take him seriously.

He’s really serious about using the word, dognapping. He’s telling us that the dog’s name is Porntip? (HAHAHAHA!) Plus, he used a photo of Porntip with a googly-eyed, post-orgasmic smile that’s basically saying, “Yay, it’s fun being dognapped!”

Moreover, look at the actual page and read the write-up.

I don’t even have to comment on the typeface use to say that this is how bad design can really screw up the message you want to give out.

Seriously though, if this is for real, I do hope he finds his dog.

Glad to see old companies I loved keep up with the times.

The most delicious panda bears in the world.

Here’s the new Meiji Logo from Brand New.

Old vs. New

Personally, I think it’s a huge improvement. The old logo was some obscure, fat, Bodoni-like font that had figures blown out of proportion and whacked out spacing. The new one does have some issues with kerning (the “eiji” needs to be loosen up a bit to compensate for the fat m and e) and letter weights (the “m” is a bit too heavy), but it’s sexy, Asian and will definitely look good on my Hello Panda.

James and Rose have been running a family convenience store for twenty years. They’re not rich, but they’ve been able to feed themselves properly through the small business. Then comes in a few billion-dollar corporate bullies who shamelessly erect a supermall beside their place. James and Rose lose their business.

My heart goes out to James and Rose; but in the end, it’s no surprise they died since they’re not providing enough value to their customers. Apparently, corporate bullies innovate more and give people a better reason to patronize them.

That’s just the way the the rest of the non-design world works—the one who is most valuable, survives.

It happens everyday to people who’ve stopped pushing themselves forward and looking at people’s needs. It happens people who’re too obstinate and self-obsessed with pushing their own ideas and telling others they’re so special and that corporate giants shouldn’t be bullying them because they claim to be providing more value.

In comes the “Kill the Kindle,” video I saw over the article, “What Book Designers think about the Amazon Kindle.”

Yes, the Amazon Kindle will be killing some designers. It will hurt the design industry. But let’s try to stop being spoiled brats and try looking at what the rest of the book-reading world sees.

The Kindle is an amazingly convenient device that will save millions of people time and money. And if the Kindle sells, it simply means that this convenience is more valuable than a fancy book cover or well-set type in a book. If the Kindle sells, designers will lose opportunities; but there will be newer ones that will sprout because of the new need created by Amazon’s flagship reader.

It’s really as simple as Amazon providing more value than book designers.

Why is it that we whine and complain so much about being bullied by Crowdspring or Amazon (who’re “destroying” the industry) when we don’t give a shit about a million other small businesses who’ve also been dying because they’re being “bullied by corporate giants?”

Why do we go to McDonalds and not some obscure Mom and Pop eatery down the road? Why do we hang-out in Starbucks when it’s bullying some small coffeeshop next door.

Don’t we behave in the same way that book-readers are when they’re planning to buy a Kindle?

The graphic design industry is simply one of many that makes the world go round. We’re not that special, so let’s not act like spoiled brats.

Is it just me or does Starbucks looks like it’s in real, big trouble?

Photo by Carbon NYC

There have been a lot of buzz and theories over the past two years how Starbucks is in really big trouble. Persistent Starbucks doomsday articles like, “Starbucks to close 300 more stores and lay-off 6700 workers,” have been flooding the news.

Not seeing the actual closing of stores and mass layoffs, I’ve always wondered, are any of these true?

To my surprise, my speculations were confirmed this year with successive panic moves that the guys at Starbucks have been doing. Here they are:

1. 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea

Last July, Starbucks announced their opening of a non-Starbucks coffee shop owned by them. It’s basically a Starbucks without the pretentious, corporate atmosphere—laptops, business suits and caffeine-dependent office men—that Starbucks is now known for. Here are the differences with their new 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea (from Perez-fox):

Coffee served at 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea is roasted in small batches and brewed within days of roasting. (Coffee served at Starbucks is roasted in mega-huge industrial machines and could be months before it is brewed in-store.)

Espresso served at 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea is drawn from a classic La Marzocco machine and baristas will add latte art flair to drinks. (Starbucks uses automated espresso machines and baristas are too busy to add latte art touches to espresso drinks.)

Passion for coffee oozes at 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea. Limited-edition roasts are served through single-serving low-tech brewers (pour-over, press pots) or a high-tech brewer (Clover). (Starbucks uses large-scale brewers to mass brew gallons at a time.)

Pastries served at 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea are from a local bakery. Baked daily and delivered daily. (Starbucks sells lots of “thaw and serve” pastries baked in far-off places that are then frozen, packed, and shipped to stores for serving days later.)

Ambiance at 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea will be warm, welcoming, eclectic, and subtle. (Ambiance at nearly every Starbucks is uniformly clean, cold, and sterile.)

An interesting tidbit is how Starbucks wanted to reinforce their “neighborhood coffeehouse” experience with the domain, www.streetlevelcoffee.com. Also noteworthy is the fact that the website itself looks homemade—it looks as if it was done by a teenager who knew how to do a little html.

I thought it was a pretty good idea branding-wise, but some don’t.

2. Starbucks Ice Cream

I thought they’d end sounding their alarms with 15th Avenue, but they went through with another brand extension—Starbucks Ice Cream!

Again, this isn’t a totally bad idea for me. Since, their iced products aren’t so far from Ice Cream and it’s not difficult to imagine their coffee flavors translated from Ventis to pints, it’ll be quite easy to convert their coffee fans to Ice Cream too.

Considering the state of their brand, I don’t mind this product extension.

3. Via, Instant Coffee!

Just a few weeks ago, Starbucks now announced the release of their instant coffee line. Doesn’t sound too bad, right?

It was okay until Laura Ries blogged about Starbucks and showed this image of their brand promise:

It's as good as the original!

With this message, what they’re visibly telling people is: “Our instant coffee tastes as good as our original Brewed Coffee.” But in the minds of the consumers, this could potentially translate to, “We’ve been ripping you off all this time! We’re frauds!”

To further promote this claim, they held taste tests that pitted the instant coffee against the original to prove that people won’t be able to tell the difference. Insane. They will be definitely hurting their coffeehouses if they’re gonna make this instant coffee big.

A Counter-argument

As much as I want to tell them how stupid they are, they aren’t. Stupid people can’t make a coffee chain grow to that scale. So, I’ve wondered if there’s some sort of catch, or an ingenius strategy hiding behind this seemingly obvious death trap.

One strong argument from a commenter in Ries’ blog is that it’s just like how the instant coffee isn’t necessarily that cheap compared to their brewed. There is a chance that this may actually maximize profit by possibly losing some coffeehouse customers and converting them to instant coffee addicts who will buy even more.

Another one would be that Starbucks could still be riding on the “coffeehouse experience” it spearheaded and popularized. Because the experience of drinking coffee at home is still different than actually staying in Starbucks and sipping it in that specific atmosphere, instant coffee wouldn’t necessarily be killing brewed coffee.

What would Starbucks do?

It’s funny to think how hundreds of books were published to show how great Starbucks is as they changed the way people drink coffee. Millions of businesses before always looked to Starbucks as a model to how you build a good brand. The beginnings of Starbucks is still one of the best case studies for brand experience.

Ironically today, the world is watching them fall apart.

So please, Starbucks, show us what you got and give us another case study to talk about and remember for the rest of our coffee-drinking lives.

As I’ve said in my previous controversial blog post, Team Manila  has made itself known as the design company that makes nationalistic shirts that sell like fishballs.

Then followed a plethora of nationalistic shirts that went viral crazy. You’ve seen hundreds of Multiply stores with national shirts. You’ve seen Collezione’s My Pilipinas shirts with the printed Philippine map ala Lacoste. And today, I saw a friend of mine, Mark Gosingtian, do a Philippine statement shirt in response to the disaster that struck our country.

As I am writing this message, the shirt has recorded 1621 notes. That’s a huge, huge number considering how relatively small the Filipino blogging community is. (In the mean time, check out his blog and order a shirt! )

The Collezione My Pilipinas Shirt

Mark's Hero Shirt. From top to bottom: Saab Magalona, Tricia Gosingtian, Mark Gosingtian

But the question I want to pose today is not a question of morality but that of productivity. Are these shirt campaigns going somewhere or are they all in vain?

Tell it with some T-shirts

We don’t need to be rocket scientists to know that we want to say something when we wear something.

There are of course, subconscious factors affecting the way we clothe ourselves, and I will not talk about these because I’m not an expert in that field. But what I want to talk about is the obvious. I want to point out the conscious and deliberate part of clothing.

Church people have Jesus dangling all over their bodies. Whores have their nipples almost slipping out of their shirts. Environmentalists will try their best to have trees, panda bears and the recycle symbol printed on their shirts. Rockstars will have a skull, guitar and some demons somewhere hidden.

The Obvious Message

These nationalistic shirts are living testimonies that we have a nation hungry for a Philippine brand. We have millions waiting for a flaming horseshoe that will burn the words, “Pinoy ako,” to their bare butts.

We don’t want to belong to a group of random people living together and screwing each other. We want a nation and we want to be damn proud of it.

The Problem

I had a crush on a blockmate before. She had a very nice body, dressed herself extremely well with noticeable signature clothing and looked like a princess. When I approached her, all of it changed. If you’re thinking she had a rotten attitude, that’s not it. My problem was that she had a rotten smell. (Mmm. I can still remember the odour…)

The shirts are good as they’re hot and reaching thousands, but at the same time, they’re only making us look good without fixing what’s inside. Although we’re gaining a sense of nationalism from them, to what end does this nationalism lead to when our very core as a nation is ambiguous?

What use is nationalism when we don’t have a nation?

The Challenge

Shirts and other nationalistic movements have been successful in creating a desire to have a nation. They’ve been extremely successful in increasing awareness that we, as a country, have to have our own brand. That’s a good thing.

But first, we have to take a step back and look deep into our nation and ask, “What does it truly mean to be a Filipino? What will make us proud to be Filipinos? What do we want to be known for in the global community?”

Then take a step ahead and challenge ourselves, ‘How do we translate the desire these T-shirts have created to real, productive action?”

You’ve probably been loitering around facebook and probably stumbled upon this disturbing image:

Thanks a lot Manny!

As many you guys have said, while so many people are suffering from Ondoy, Villar had the right mind to proclaim himself a savior of the typhoon victims by shamelessly plastering his name over a styro meal.

Some argue that it could’ve been an enemy of Villar who did this—and I believe that’s possible. But what’s really, really interesting is that people are choosing to believe that he did it.

Why? Read the rest of this entry…

Disclaimer: This is a completely personal post has nothing to do with design or branding.

An 18-year old Filipino construction worker saves 30 people in exchange for his own life. After anticipating a huge wave coming from the river, Muelmar Magallanes rushed through the whole neighborhood, one-by-one saving people until his energy left him and was swept away by the current.

I am deeply moved by the acts of Muelmar Magallanes who has been branded a hero. People all over the world are praising him because he sacrificed his life for others.

But were his acts that truly a sacrifice? Or were they acts of a higher value?

“Any action that a man undertakes for the benefit of those he loves is not a sacrifice if, in the hierarchy of his values, in the total context of the choices open to him, it achieves that which is of greatest personal (and rational) importance to him. ” —Ayn Rand

Rand, one of my favorite authors, has been a strong advocate of the thought that sacrifice is for the weak-willed. Before you react however, try to understand how her definition of sacrifice is different from what we commonly believe it to be.

“Sacrifice could be proper only for those who have nothing to sacrifice—no values, no standards, no judgment—those whose desires are irrational whims, blindly conceived and lightly surrendered. For a man of moral stature, whose desires are born of rational values, sacrifice is the surrender of the right to the wrong, of the good to the evil.”

To put it into proper context, let me paint two situations.

Situation 1: Juan is a 30 year old office worker who supports an alcoholic brother, a lazy sister and a good-for-nothing dad who gambles all day. 80% of what he earns goes to his family. At the end of the day, he consoles himself by saying that he’s “sacrificing” for a greater good.

The reason why Rand points out that sacrifice is an evil is because of situations like that of Juan. When a person sacrifices (in Juan’s situation) why does the person receiving the sacrifice have to do it at the expense of Juan? What right does Juan’s family have to say that they deserve the Juan’s hardwork more than Juan? Is it because Juan earns more than them and that it’s for the greater good that he has to sacrifice for the others? Does he have to place his future’s financial safety in jeopardy by virtue of “family ties?”

In situation one, the concept of sacrifice becomes completely distorted that instead of becoming a value, it becomes an excuse. Does the line, “Hindi mo ba kaya magsakripisyo para sa akin?” sound familiar? People are using sacrifice to get what they want at the expense of another person’s happiness.

Situation 2: Muelmar loves his family and the neighborhood more than anything else in the world. He loves them so much that he places their lives at a higher value than that of his. His sacrifice stems from the fact that he has a value system that he understands and embraces fully—even if it costs him his life.

Contrast the first to the second situation. In Juan’s case, his acts of “good” stem from pity and a lack of self-understanding. He helps his family because religion and society dictate him to do so. On the other hand, Muelmar’s actions are based on real values—love, justice, human life. He sacrificed because he accepts that there are greater and more important things in the world than his life.

These ideas may be difficult to swallow the first time around as they seem to be anti-religion. To a certain extent, they are. Christianity dictates that everyone, including undeserving people should be helped and we should all be willing to sacrifice ourselves for others. However, if that sacrifice comes at the expense of our own happiness and well-being, shouldn’t we start questioning ourselves? Is it fair to us if we’re living lives we don’t want for the sake of others?

(Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against altruism and charity because these people have placed the lives of others as the most important in their lives. But what of everyone else?)

Although it might be hard, true sacrifice generates a sense of fulfillment. On the other hand, the false type drains you and leaves you weaker day by day. Let’s ask ourselves today, are we sacrificing right?