Tell me a story

A few days ago we had our tenth contemporary design culture. This class was all about the art of storytelling in design and its importance. Story telling starts from the moment you touch pen to paper when design anything, it tells what inspires you, what made you come up with your idea and even the whole process of turning that idea into a product or system. Even though I might not have realised it I use story telling as a designer all of the time and throughout my projects. Simply through the use of process books, I record everything I do be it my research, my successes and often my many mistakes but it all adds up to what you came up with every mistake you make and everything you might try is a key factor in shaping your design and if you can tell that in a story it gives a sense of quality to a product and can show that sincere time and effort went into it. Even when the design of a product is complete the story telling carries all the way on through the advertising and the selling. A sales pitch to a company often requires a really good story to be told in order to sell the product and get investors. They have to believe that your product is worthwhile and that with will succeed this is often done through storey telling which is the best way to inspire belief and create a desire for your work. A great example of this was shown to us in class in a scene from madmen where the main character from madmen don draper convinces a group of businessmen to invest in the Kodiak carousel by showing them a slideshow of different pictures from his past and creating a sense of walking down memory lane which would bring you close to buying one yourself. Maybe the product is great or maybe quite the opposite but the deliverance and presentation of storytelling is what really inspires someone to purchase your product and believe that what they are buying is of the highest quality.

Being Irish its embedded into our culture that we are born natural story tellers shaped by our stories of myths and focloir. Perhaps this gives us an advantage over designers from many other countries and gives us the edge from incorporating this into our design from the earliest of stages. For me a feel that when someone can deliver a story from where their product comes from and how they got to the idea at hand, it gives a sense of quality and in today’s wold people are becoming to appreciate quality far more.