"I don't start with a design objective, I start with a communication objective. I feel my project is successful if it communicates what it is supposed to communicate"
About this Quote
Design, in Mike Davidson's framing, is not a gallery wall; it's a message in transit. By rejecting the "design objective" as a starting point, he punctures a whole ecosystem of aesthetic prestige where craft can become an end in itself. The line is quietly polemical: it demotes style from protagonist to supporting actor and elevates the audience from afterthought to judge and jury.
The specificity of "communication objective" matters because it shifts the success metric from internal taste (what designers admire) to external comprehension (what users actually get). It's a writerly instinct smuggled into design thinking: begin with what needs to be understood, felt, or done, then choose the language that makes that happen. In that light, "successful" is less about novelty than fidelity. Did the work deliver the meaning it promised? Did it reduce ambiguity or amplify it on purpose?
Subtext: Davidson is pushing back against the common failure mode of modern creative work, where teams optimize for what looks "designed" instead of what functions as an interface between people and information. It's a critique of performative minimalism, of brand gloss that speaks fluently to other creatives and barely to anyone else.
Contextually, this lands in an era of productized media and UX culture, where "design" became a corporate verb. Davidson's standard is bracingly democratic: the work doesn't win because it impresses; it wins because it lands.
The specificity of "communication objective" matters because it shifts the success metric from internal taste (what designers admire) to external comprehension (what users actually get). It's a writerly instinct smuggled into design thinking: begin with what needs to be understood, felt, or done, then choose the language that makes that happen. In that light, "successful" is less about novelty than fidelity. Did the work deliver the meaning it promised? Did it reduce ambiguity or amplify it on purpose?
Subtext: Davidson is pushing back against the common failure mode of modern creative work, where teams optimize for what looks "designed" instead of what functions as an interface between people and information. It's a critique of performative minimalism, of brand gloss that speaks fluently to other creatives and barely to anyone else.
Contextually, this lands in an era of productized media and UX culture, where "design" became a corporate verb. Davidson's standard is bracingly democratic: the work doesn't win because it impresses; it wins because it lands.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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