I’ve always found perspectives a fascinating topic. That nothing is “something” in its entirety because everyone gives a different interpretation to things.
For example, a chocolate cake is not “delicious”. That’s not its intrinsic quality. If it were, it would be perceived by everyone as that. But there will be people who find it mediocre or even disgusting when they try it.
That song you love and can have on replay all day, guess what? It’s not a “good” song really, because if that was the essence of it, then everyone would perceive it that way.
Based on our perspective, we give things qualities, but that doesn’t mean that they are actually how we perceive them.
Am I explaining myself so far?
If we connect this Buddhist philosophy to design, we can say that when you create a brand, you’re not just creating that brand, but you’re actually creating multiple brands. The brand exists in millions of ways by being interpreted in different forms in the heads of each user who interacts with it.
In a way, each person co-creates that brand with you.
Brand = Perception
Our job as designers is to use visual tools to delimit a user’s perception of the brand. A brand is not always going to mean the same thing to everyone, but that’s fine as long as we keep users within the parameters of benefits we want to project.
P.S.
Under my perspective, chocolate cake is delicious and the song “Bigmouth Strikes Again — The Smiths” is good.
