Apple has proven that beauty doesn't just work. She also sells. By combining design and technology, Apple has evolved from a niche brand for enthusiasts to one of the most expensive companies. And after such a success, many began to follow her example, copy her steps and improve the design of their products. But you can not beat them.




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The design of most of the products we spend time with — smartphones, tablets, laptops, and software that comes with them — was originally developed by Apple, or at least influenced by the ideas of this company. And thanks to Apple, which created the App Store, the lion’s share of the software industry is forced to use Apple-approved design to survive.

Today, user expectations for design and aesthetics are higher than ever. And in the future, products will increasingly compete in the field of emotions resulting from a thoughtful, pleasant design. As a designer, I welcome such attention to design. I look at the screen of my laptop, and the icons look like candy. I smoothly switch from one application to another, receiving a lot of pleasure from a well-developed transition process. The visual appeal of technology is not commensurate with what was even 10 years ago. When working with a computer, there was a feeling that you were sneaking through a maze in a corn field. No confidence in what you find around the next corner, until you finally find a way to do something right.



But it turned out that the advantages that gave us the attention of developers to design, to the improvement of the visual component, have their price. In our worship of design and marketing from companies like Apple, we, the creators, have forgotten about an even more effective way to present our ideas to the world. Assessing the effect of beauty in product design, we decided that we would get the same result if we concentrated on the visual component in our brand messages. I have seen companies spend tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars improving their websites, email templates and advertising layouts, and spend only a few hours on text content. Trying to create the perfect visual image, we can lose sight of the most important part of the message: History.

Give priority to content, not style

We also somehow fell into the trap of beautiful design. A year ago, we developed two versions of letters for distribution.



In the first case, we followed the principles of creating a good letter design:

1. Not too much text.
2. Big attractive picture.
3. A clear call to action.

The second version was created with a different calculation. We wrote a letter as if telling a story to a friend. All three rules are violated here:

1. The letter is long.
2. Before the call to action in the text scattered 11 links.
3. The call itself is hiding at the very end.

Here are the results we got:



Despite the fact that our “less beautiful” letter violated many rules, a longer version of the story brought almost three times more transitions. Although we sent letters only to members of our community, most of whom could prefer a characteristic approach with a focus on history, the results reinforced our assumption that beauty is not always preferable. And that being real (for example, telling your story as if you are talking to a friend) may be much more important than it seems to us.

Pixar lesson: it's not about animation, it's about history

The advantage of a well-told story is confirmed by many other examples in the most diverse areas of creativity. In 1995, Pixar released Toy Story , the first full-length film made using computer animation. The success was deafening, and the studio instantly became famous throughout the world. Curiously, George Lucas sold his stake in Pixar before the end of Toy Story , and the company almost went bankrupt. Ironically, Steve Jobs's investment saved her. Leaders of the film industry believed that viewers are unlikely to appreciate the animated full-length film. But they underestimated the power of history.

Although the animation was the main feature of the film, the Pixar team understood that their success depends entirely on whether they can tell a good story. Here is what co-founders, Ed Catmull, wrote about the creative process in the company:

“All your efforts to create an artistic component and improve the picture do not matter if you don’t get the right story.”

To date, 8 out of 16 full-cars Pixar won an Oscar in the category "Best Animated Film." At the same time, each of their films was among the top ten at box office on the results of the year. No other studio has ever come close to such results. Telling a good story — through a letter, film, or any other channel — creates a connection with the audience. Thereby you win the attention leading to trust, so - to sales. As aptly noticed in Pixar, if you have a good story, then the visual component may not be perfect. But the converse is not always true.

Let's look at the ten most expensive films in history , the average cost of which was $ 274 million.



Their average user rating of Rotten Tomatoes is about 59%. The best result for Rapunzel: A Tangled Story , created jointly by Disney and Pixar - 90%. At the same time, the average cost of Pixar films is $ 145 million , and their average rating among viewers and critics is 89%.

	Average budget	Average rating for Rotten Tomatoes
Pixar	$ 145 million	89%
top 10	$ 274 million	59%

Add to this the following: if you analyze the criticism of films from the Top 10, then you rarely find any mention that it was the quality of the animation or special effects that made you put a bad mark.

Usually criticize the stories told in these films:

"... these Pirates stranded a rambling plot and a nonstop squall of noisy action scenes" - Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Shores

“... too many characters are mixed up with too many incomprehensible plot lines” - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

"Although John Carter looks amazing and provides a lot of thrill, but it turned out to be somehow inconsistent, and sometimes behaves incomprehensibly and inappropriate way." - John Carter

"... a dark whirlwind of action on the basis of special effects" - Batman vs. Superman

Many producers have spent large budgets to create the same visually appealing films like Pixar, but have not taken care of the quality stories. Yes, we can do something beautiful. But if the story is not up to par, then everything else will not matter.

Why beauty is not always crucial (especially today)

One cannot rely on beauty alone in the design of the product, or in telling the story. A well-designed message must first of all tell a good story. As we saw in the example of letters, the story itself can compensate for many design flaws. You don’t have to have Apple’s marketing budget (this year’s $ 1.2 billion), or the same compelling design ideas. Sometimes the beauty of "like Apple" - not the best way to offer your story to the audience. Sometimes it even hurts the cause.

In a recently published article, researchers from the University of Northern California at Charlotte examined the drawbacks of “excess beauty”. For example, according to a 1975 study, people tend to avoid a beautiful woman coming to meet them. Similar behavior was observed when viewing photos in user profiles on the OKCupid dating site . Men with an "average" appearance received more messages than those who looked "most attractive" in the photographs. According to researchers, this behavior is due to the fact that external attractiveness expresses strength. Therefore, on a subconscious level, people feel the need to respect the attractive person more, and therefore prefer to keep their distance.

These results show that beauty can have a negative effect. If something looks too beautiful, then it may be perceived as less accessible, distancing you from people to whom you want to be closer. For example, representatives of the American Eagle apparel company noted sales growth after they stopped retouching photos of models advertising their clothes. Excessive beauty can be considered as part of a sales strategy. But although we may be attracted by something beautiful, we will also have a strong dislike for selling it to us. And this hostility is increasing.

Thanks to the worldwide network and all sorts of online services, we have access to an abundance of information, and we are faced with a lot of negativity. For example, on Rotten Tomatoes, 4 out of 10 top-rated documentaries are about injustice or corruption. All of them were shot after 2005.



Every smartphone has become a media device. Stories spread very quickly. And despite the fact that there are many good things in the world, stories about corruption and mistrust float up because they attract our attention.



Trust today is at an all-time low. According to the USA Today survey conducted in 2013 , two thirds of Americans are suspicious of other people. In 1972, this figure was twice as low. We have become extremely sensitive to nonsense. We are increasingly lacking confidence in everything, including beauty. It is perceived as another layer of falsehood, which causes people to have a sense of corruption.

As one of the authors of the above mentioned study said: “If you are influenced by attractiveness, then it can manage your experience and interaction with the world.” Exactly. If we pay too much attention to the visual appeal of our message, then people are likely to be dissatisfied with our history.

More information, less attention

In addition to our natural rejection of corruption, we are increasingly tired of the fact that a lot of things are trying to grab our attention. In the last decade, the world has largely moved to online. We are attacked everywhere by smart messages. From billboards we can turn away, the TV / radio can be turned off. But modern messages are related to our communication tools. And they come from people we trust. Facebook Twitter. Email. Telephones Laptops. Tablets. From everywhere fly notifications. Messages are cheap, effective and easy to send. With this access to information, we have two options: either try to consume all incoming data (which is impossible), or filter (that is, do not pay attention to many things).



We can not digest everything, and therefore have become experts on filtering. Filtering all sorts of rubbish. Filtering everything that looks undeserving of trust, or has the slightest hint of an attempted sale. As the singer Rihanna said :

“My fans instantly recognize hack. I can't fool them. ”

Our consciousness has really transformed in order to be able to cope with information overload. Recently, Microsoft conducted a study in Canada and found that since 2000, the duration of our attention span has decreased from 12 seconds to 8. This is less than that of goldfish - they have 9 seconds. This is a manifestation of general fatigue. We were forced to become experts to identify lazhi. Advertising and marketing are improving their methods, and we are learning to better filter. Resist. This is an arms race. And it may give the impression that we are doomed to lose as creators. That nobody will be interested in what we want to say to the world. But we are not doomed. There is a simple solution to the problem.

The solution is simple and you already know what to do.

When you see a letter from a friend, “Hello, let's sit somewhere on Monday. How are you? ”, Then it goes through all your filters. Even if the text has a lot of flaws: there are no capital letters, not enough punctuation marks. But the letter seizes your attention, and you respond to it first. Why? It comes from someone you trust, and it plays a huge role. In addition, this letter is from a person. Not from the car. There are no unusual headlines, pictures or words, so you feel safe. You do not play with. You can weaken protection for a second.

There are many reasons why you do not need beauty to feel connected to people. The most watched video on Beyonce’s Youtube channel is her “7/11” song. There are many other, much better shot videos. But most often people watch the shot with low quality "7/11".



Kelly Starrett is a physiotherapist and trainer whose fitness videos are hugely popular. At the same time, most of the commercials were shot on a smartphone in his garage, without using professional equipment.



Sometimes a daughter accidentally hits his frame in his video, there are “errors” of editing. Kelly could have cut all these flaws, but precisely because of their presence, I feel a connection with him. Thanks to these “mistakes”, I feel that Kelly is a man, and he is not trying to sell me anything. As if he was one of my friends, he shot something in his garage and sent me a look. He has children, a dog, in the garage is all sorts of junk. The video quality is low, without beautiful editing. But at the same time it is one of the best fitness training that I have seen. They have the essence. So I trust Kelly. If I need fitness tips, I’ll first look at his channel. When he wrote the book, I bought it.

Maybe, if Beyonce and Kelly used professional equipment for shooting, the number of views would increase. But it is the nature of the shooting that partly makes this video attractive. It creates a sense of accessibility and proximity to the viewer. The same approach is used when writing letters comedian Louis C. Kay . He makes up the text for the newsletter, as if he wrote it to you. Sometimes there are typos and errors. They don't care about me. On the contrary, they even like it. I feel that Louis is just talking to me the way he talks to his friend.

Example:



We once again make sure that the content of the story is more important than the form. We do not need beauty to feel our connection with people. When we feel that someone is behaving naturally with us, the natural desire of our brain to resist the influence of others weakens.

Your message needs sincerity. Your unique way to share your message, with all its flaws and flaws.





Sincerity is not a synonym for beauty. Sincerity means truth. It means no bullshit. Of course, for some things beauty matters, but this is not the only thing that connects people and your message.

If you want to be trusted. Gave you attention. Maybe once bought from you. The best way is to remove all barriers from your message. To make it sound like you are talking to a friend. Like a message sent by some man. Because to feel the connection with “some person” is much easier than with a corporation. In sincerity is power. It is easy. And we all already know how to use it. Just sometimes we need a reminder that being sincere is normal. Even in business. Especially in business.

When thinking about your company, imagine it as a person. A brand should look like a person, not a company. A website, a letter, a tweet, an advertisement, whatever - must come from a person. Because it is.

You may think that you need to use characteristic terminology to look like a "market leader." Or you can assume that you have to control your words so as not to hurt your partner, investor or client. It happens that the laws or policies of a company that are beyond your control require you not to say what you really want to say. But the closer to what you want, the better your message will cause a sense of interconnection. I know how difficult it is to get rid of the stationery and business expressions in messages, because we were taught to think that a professional should look appropriately. I started by writing drafts of any company news in the form of posts for Facebook.



The context of writing a message directly to Facebook somehow switches my brain and makes me write like a friend.
Sometimes you can overdo the message, because the tool you use to write makes you feel like the stakes are higher than they really are. As if someone is whispering to your brain: “Hey, this is important, because you write your WordPress in the backend, be careful.” It kills your personality.

Try to simplify the situation. Write your important business messages using the same tools with which you communicate with friends and family. I assure you, your individuality will trample from all cracks. Speak to the world as if you were telling a friend about your company. If you are too formal just because it works for someone, then you will sound like everyone else, and you will simply be filtered out. We are all humans. Even inside office suits.

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This is wonderful if you are doing something beautiful. But beauty alone is not enough; it must go hand in hand with sincerity. And if you need to choose between making it more beautiful, or making the message more sincere, choose the second. Without history you have nothing. Without a story, people will look through you, even if you spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on the beautiful story.

It is better to demonstrate your imperfection than false perfection. Today, more than ever, people expect a direct connection from you. All sorts of platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. are guided by this. Despite the shortcomings of the world permeated with interconnections, these interrelations provide a unique opportunity to share our beliefs with a huge number of people. Never before in human history has it been so easy to tell your story to so many right people.

Maybe you think that to create an effect you need something beautiful, but it is not. Sincerity is much stronger. Sincerity is available. She makes us feel connected to other people. The most beautiful thing you can do is to be sincere.