Social Capital is like Graphic Design - it matters.

It’s a Lot Like Graphic Design

9. April 2009 by Craig Peters

I was at a big conference in Boston this week (CHI 2009). At the opening-night banquet I sat with a bunch of graduate students from the University of Michigan’s School of Information. They mentioned something that got me thinking: graphic design is a lot like Social Capital.

There’s a student competition every year for undergrads and grads from around the globe. This year’s focus was on sustainability. You could read about TreasureHunter: A System to Increase the Reuse of Local Used Goods and eXtend: Reducing E-Waste Through Redistribution of Local IT Resources, to name a couple.

One of the organizers of the competition went around and gave feedback on the posters. One thing that seemed to make an impression on the students that I was sitting with — and what spurred this blog post — was that the organizer paid significant attention the graphic design of the posters.

Hmmm. Isn’t graphic design about how the posters look, not the ideas? Isn’t that about how flashy or “dressed up” they are? Isn’t that superficial? You might even be thinking, “That’s BS. He shouldn’t be caught up in the visual design. It should be about the ideas and the concepts, not how pretty they are!”

But that’s unrealistic and it denies how humans perceive information. Here’s part of wikipedia’s entry on “graphic design” - my emphasis added:

The term graphic design can refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines which focus on visual communication and presentation. Various methods are used to create and combine symbols, images and/or words to create a visual representation of ideas and messages.

If you have better graphic design, your ideas and messages are going to be represented better. It’s just that simple. I could give countless examples of great graphic design that helps people make decisions, get their jobs done, and sell more products, but I think you get the point. Of course your ideas matter. They matter a lot. But if you’re not getting them across effectively, you’re missing out. And others are missing out, too.

People fall into the same trap with Social Capital. When told that the way you present yourself makes a significant difference, they say, “That’s BS. My prospective employer shouldn’t be caught up with my attire or who pays for lunch. It should be about my resume, experience, and intelligence, not the clothes I wear or the restaurant I pick!”

Please don’t be this silly or stubborn. It’s simply not the way the world works.