Gaining Information

I agree with Marshall McLuhan when he says “The Medium is the Message”. When diving further into his thoughts on this topic, one such thought really stuck with me. He said that movies require little work on a person’s part to understand what is being conveyed but in comparison to a simple comic, one must really concentrate and put forth a conscious effort to get the information. The engagement factor for a movie compared to a comic is little and people walk away from the movie with the “information”.

I remember one time in my office, someone brought in a comic from one of those daily calendars. After having many people look at this comic, no one could figure out the meaning of this comic and we all walked away from this lacking the information the designer intended us to gain.

The comic designer failed to portray the information to the consumer. This exemplifies McLuhan’s theories that the medium is indeed the message. As designers, we need to be ultra aware of how we portray our information to the consumer. With so much technology and means of broadcast, we must be extremely conscious of our actions and take the time to research and develop the best medium to portray our message. McLuhan once said “When a thing is current, it creates currency.” Making ideas current and relative is part of our jobs as designers that is sometimes overlooked. If a consumer interacts with our work, whether it be a website, printed piece or a short film, if they walk away gaining no new information and knowledge, then we fail as a designer.