Ross Floate

Over the years, you start to notice patterns when working with different types of organisations. You notice the similarities and differences between organisations in different markets, in varying sectors, and with different personalities.

The Australian not-for-profit sector (and in this I include charities, foundations, as well as public-sector hospitals) is a very strange beast indeed. A large number of organisations compete for both funding (private donations and government allocations) and attention in what is a very small marketplace. Additionally, a large number of organisations compete in the same general areas. Breast Cancer is a prime example of a cause that has a large number of organisations dedicated to it.

From a communications perspective, this is a challenge unlike that faced by most businesses. Businesses generally have a product or service to sell, and that product or service can be in some way market tested. People can work out which vendor is the best through purchase, or trial and error. They can talk to other buyers with good or bad experiences. They can find out about results. I’m not saying that communications in the corporate sector is an easy game — it isn’t — but at least marketers and communicators have something concrete to work with. The same cannot be said for much of the not-for-profit sector.

That means if you want to succeed –– I mean really succeed — in the not for profit sector, your communications need to be exceptional. In Australia, charities need to establish as quickly as possible why they are the best and only choice for money and attention in that particular sector. Charities need to focus a large part of their messaging to establishing both their raison d’etre and their (obvious) primacy in their niche.

The short way of putting this is simple: if you’re asking for money, you have to establish exactly why you’re worth it, and why you’re patently the best. If you don’t, someone more aggressive is going to do it. And there’s not enough money or attention to go around.

I’ll add that they shouldn’t be designing for designers, either. Whether words, images, design or engineering, the key is, as you say, creating a spark. They’re all tools — it’s how they’re used to convey meaning.

Agreed. At the core of all communications disciplines, there’s a rather simple and fundamental question that that practitioners need to ask themselves.

“A person is going to read this. How do they feel and what do they think now, and how do I want them to feel and what do I want them to think after they have read this designed piece?”

The web’s push toward standardisation and towards templates means that designers think this is a question that gets asked once per website. Worse, this mindset is creeping into places where there’s not even any excuse for it - like print design. And that seriously concerns me.

I’ve been around web design since the start of the web. I became despondent with the state of web design in the late 90s and gave up on it almost entirely around 2002.

I was sick of the fact that the tools, technologies and standards continued to provide a less-nuanced toolkit for designers to work with. I was sick of the state of flux around workflow. And I was tired of the relative immaturity of the industry as a whole.

Recent years have changed most (but not all) of that. Technologies and platforms exist that allow designers, writers and editors to create rich and compelling experiences for readers. We’ve got all the tools at our disposal.

And in some ways, I’m more despondent than ever.

As web design has become more and more specialised, I worry that designers have started adopting the mindset of engineers. Instead of constantly thinking about the best way to convey an idea – the best way to create a spark in the mind of a reader – I see designers simply working out how to force ‘content’ into templates.

It’s not our role to make engineers happy. Our role is to use our specialised skills to convey ideas and foster understanding. There should be considerable tension between the engineer’s demands for efficiency, and our constant push for effectiveness.

If something you’ve designed loses nothing by being viewed in an RSS reader, or by being scraped into Instapaper, then you’re simply not doing your job.

Edit: Yep, I get the light irony in writing this for reading Tumblr.