Subjectivity vs. Objectivity

This is the written script of Halftime, episode 59 of the Makers of Sport® podcast. Halftime was a short show on the off weeks between interviews where I wrote and read on topics in professionalism, entrepreneurship and business for creatives in sport. The episode aired December 8, 2015; the audio is on SoundCloud and the show notes live at makersofsport.com. The show's opening and closing announcements are trimmed here.

Every single day, each of us make decisions and have opinions on things are specific to our own personal taste. Whether it’s listening to a certain style of music, drinking your coffee a certain way or choosing your personal style of clothing. Our taste is our ability to like and/or dislike certain things. It is also our ability to discern what is of high quality and what isn’t.

The way in which we view the world, is a direct reflection of our taste. Some people like cheap beer, others like craft beer. One looks down upon the other thinking to themselves “that person has bad taste”.

Designers tend to have a higher level of taste than most. In fact, it is my belief (albeit narcissistic), that most people simply do no have good taste when it comes to visual matters. Somehow since our childhood, creativity is pushed out of us and we begin to view the world through a different lens. The majority of people tend to develop a bad habit of mediocrity when it comes to what things look like.

The designer in me makes me a perfectionist at many things. I have a passion and personal discernment for order. Order of letters and typefaces, spacing of items both physical and digital. It is a bit obsessive compulsive, really.

Recently, I put Christmas lights up outside with my family. It drives me nuts that the lights are not exactly evenly spaced, but based on the physical limitations of having to move back a distance to view the overall composition, and then moving in to space out the lights up close. My wife (who luckily for me doesn’t listen to this podcast) thinks it looks fine. But I don’t like fine. I like perfect. Perfectly spaced and perfect order.

Famous graphic designer and movie title designer, Saul Bass once said

“I want everything we do to be beautiful. I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything, or that the client thinks it’s worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.”

The late Massimo Vignielli once stated “The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design."

I think this how many designers end up approaching life and careers. The problem is in business, when people hire creatives, taste becomes a subjective measure. Their tastes almost never match our own and the inherit debate begins, do we create for them and their tastes or do we use our, most of the times better, taste to create.

Obviously we should do the latter if we can, it is our job to make the world a more beautiful place and to bring order to the visual aesthetic of the world. But the issue at hand is more in the way that we use our taste create for those that hire us (if we are performing services for others).

Enter subjectivity vs. objectivity. Many people the world through our own subjective lens. Subjective judgments are based on or influence personal feelings, tastes or opinions.

Any time a professional sports team or college athletic program rebrands, a spectrum of comments typically ensue ranging from those that like the new visuals and those that do not, with oftentimes the ones that do not spewing vitriolic and unhelpful rhetoric based on their own personal opinions. Opinions that ill-informed and based on their own bad taste. What they never take into account are the legions of stakeholders involved in a project of this magnitude. Or the actual goals that were put forth in the beginning of the creative process.

A proper design project should be approached objectively. Which is to be not in influenced by personal opinions or feelings, but to be influenced by matter of fact. Art is subjective. Art speaks to people in its own way, in their own language, and their own a static. Design however, should be objective. They're always goals that need to be achieved. Perhaps those goals are to revitalize a Fanbase in the wake of many losing seasons, perhaps they are to re-create a new feeling of excitement for a team that has had a history of negative moments such as the Los Angeles Clippers.

Too many times when designers are working on projects, we get into the debate about who's personal visual static is better. Whose opinion is better, who's subjective taste as more weight. In almost every case when that is the debate, the client will win this argument. Simply because they are paying. But, it shouldn't really be an argument at all. And objectives solution should be reached based on research, data, interviews, experimentation, conceptualizing, and understanding the demographic one is creating for.

Of course there are things from an actual execution perspective that should be defaulted to when it comes to a designers a static versus a clients aesthetic. Things like good kerning in typography, good composition, consistent spacing, and A cohesion of visual elements. These are technicalities that cannot really be argued against. One cannot simply state that the kerning is off or that they do not like the kerning when there's basically one solution, proper kerning or improper kerning based on the need for readability, size of the words, and contrast of other typefaces.

But aside from those areas, all of our better personal tastes should be presented to clients in a way that is based on the research that we conducted. Being objective means that we used our personal tastes to execute, but not to come up with the solution. The solution should always be reached for an objective lens. In the case but solutions are reached through an objective lens, it is nearly impossible to argue subjectively.

Let's take color usage for example. Colors are typically selected based on some form of representation of a part of the strategy of a brand. And example of this and sports context is the recent introduction of cream into the Milwaukee Bucks brand identity. Milwaukee, Wisconsin is known as the cream city because of their cheese and cream production. The tertiary color was introduced based on the faded bricks of the city and some of those facilities. This is something that comes from a historical context that cannot be argued. One cannot simply say I do not like the cream color if they want to really pay homage to the city. It is objective. One can however disagree on the execution of parts of the identity in regards to spacing, or whether A proper typeface was chosen that conveys a particular feeling.

Typography conveys feelings. A typeface projects a personality. If you take for example a person walking on the street in a three-piece suit, versus a person that is in flip-flops and shorts and a T-shirt, you typically have already made some judgment on the two people. This is just human nature. Typography does the same thing. It evokes feeling and and allows us to judge something based on what it makes us feel like. This is designed as well. If you think about comparing a brand identity for sports team versus a brand identity for a child's toy brand. That you broke two separate feelings. In the objective thing to do when approaching those two design projects is to create knowing that the demographic will look at these things subjectively through their own lives. This is why research on demographics is very important. This is also why it is very tough to judge and identity based on our own subjective feelings when we are not fans of a particular team. Or from a particular market.

We should look at all projects in the design world from an objective lens. We should try to think about what the goals were before making our subjective judgment. Human nature is for us to always make an initial subjective opinion. But typically, once we take some time to do research and look further into a project, we can make a more objective judgment based on what we have found.

In all projects that you're working on, you should create through an objective lens. You should do market and demographic research. You should not designed for a clients personal aesthetic. It is not our job to please a client because they like a particular color. It is our job to please their demographic. And in reality, it should be their job to please their demographic. If we perform the proper research we can point to it in the instance that a debate ensues based on subjectivity.

Keep this in mind as you continue to create for clients or even for customers or fans. Use your talents, personal knowledge, and personal visit was thetic to do the technical things like produce proper kerning, composition, etc. However, use research and data to develop the actual strategy behind the concept so that you can point to that as reasons why you made the decisions that you made. And not simply that "you liked it". Winning a debate based on I like it versus they like it, is never productive.