WHISK

Karachi, Pakistan - Summer 2006

The bilboards were supposed to have come down by now. Instead, we’re celebrating life in a shopping cart, in big letters on a green field, and amir’s filling his shopping cart with giant TV’s and telling us this is how to earn spiritual freedom. Doesn’t this offend anyone? 30 new channels on TV, radio stations popping up every other month, no one has anything to say about this new philosophy towards life.

If I break it down, its fairly well-designed - not too loud or garish, it still gets your attention. Nice colors, well branded, but it tells me I am less than successful, less than fulfilled, certainly profoundly unhappy because I don’t have the power to spend.

There is a clear distinction between the brain that comes up with the tag line and the marketeer that defines strategy. Is the designer anywhere in between? Or is she a random extra, there to dress up the words, and add visuals and graphics after all the hard work has already been done? If not, if the designer is more than that, does she even consider the reaction to the final output? Remember, she needs to know about the words, the message, not the design - the colors and fonts and space is easy - what are you communicating? And if the message is incidental, if its someone else’s headache (as is the case in most agencies here), how are you designing with any truth? How are you selecting your colors and fonts, and use of space? Shouldn’t each element reflect the message? Reinforce, subliminally add and intensify? Because if its just a matter of continuing the standard brand, any computer software can do that, any halfway decent photographer can do that. What are you contributing?

The bilboard is offensive - more importantly, it diminishes the role of the designer to a computer operator. If you know the software, then, you can call yourself a designer. There is no need to think, to define, to craft or create. It’s all been done before, just regurgitate, reshuffle and deal.