Take a look around. What do you see? Apart from the obvious expanse of the crowd, one would come across signages, billboards, monograms, vivid shapes, and a wide colour palette. What do you feel when you see them? Can you connect with them? Are they trying to tell you something?
Just the way a writer’s words would communicate with us in the similar sense design language too speaks to us. Through its unique guiding principles, a good design language infuses an identity to a product. The fluidity of the design for any package or a product triggers an inquisitive interest in the minds of a consumer. It often happens that we walk into a supermarket and in spite of having a shopping list we tend to buy a thing or two extras. Ever wondered why that happened? It happens because the aesthetics of a well put together package simply appeals to us and we make the purchase.
So, what is this noise about design language? Were we not doing well without it? In all honesty we were never short of design language. Nature itself presents to us with a plethora of myriad artistic descriptions which have been captivating our minds since ages. We simply have taken cue from that and have applied that philosophy to the industry of Branding and Advertising. The importance of design language is felt especially when it weaves a common thread into each product and the experience that its bound to. A well packaged product will bring a brand to life and establish a foundation which is necessary as it provides a link or a continuity between each product. It invokes consistency which makes it easy for consumers to not just understand products but also appreciate it.
Needless to say, design language is a very important tool of business communication. It is an important strategy as it involves expressing key information through visual design. Colours, monograms, content and symbols become synonymous to many brands like the apple sign for Apple or the yellow window of National Geographic. Design language and visual arts yield the power to make brands iconic. It helps in setting a brand apart from the ordinary and helps in conveying a message of credibility and professionalism.
The past years have seen a mushroom growth of startups and the industry of brand design has seen an exponential growth. There is an insane demand for clean designs and attention-grabbing packaging. Some might play the devil’s advocate and say “It is the quality of the product that matters.” or ‘What is the need of such sudden unnecessary cosmetic approaches?” Ironically, you will find such critics minutely studying well packaged products in a corner aisle of a supermarket in a deep pensive thought, trying to answer the inevitable… To be or not be.
