We are not creatives. We are not designers. We are problem solvers.
Every once in a while someone says something that makes you want to reach for the bucket. The comment is so loaded with pseudo- intellectual sugar that overdose is instantaneous.
The headline statement here is one such comment. It carries self importance about its person like a student at a sit-in and if you’ve any sense you’ll be walking on by with a shake of your head.
But I see morbid curiosity keeps you here. Quite right too because every criticism of advertising you might have, every design bugbear you hold, all can be answered through that swollen claim.
Advertising and design goes wrong when the creatives and marketeers involved forget that they are problem solvers. Some of them appear to be brand evangelists, others appear to be artists, none of them produce anything like the commercially appropriate work they ought to whilst those millstones hang around their necks.
It’s easy to spot them too. Designs that don’t function as they ought to. Image taking precedence over usability. A complete lack of message.
Watch for them all because in their steely good looks are more bullshit statements than our claim to be problem solvers could ever make.