A road to where?

The human story is littered with unknown, imperfect, and improbable events.

For thousands of years though, an infinite amount of insignificant events were taking place simultaneously within the circles of our ancestors which coincidentally set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Those insignificant events were stories we told one another – and over time, we got better and better at telling them.

Some of the earliest evidence of such stories took shape around 39,000 BCE when our distant ancestors illustrated pictures of animals and landscapes that made up the world around them on cave walls. We call these pictographs. Over time, these pictographs evolved like the humans who wrote them into something we now call cuneiform, the first written language.

More recently, we may think of storytelling in the form of that new terrible Marvel movie, or quintessential ghost story around a campfire. Maybe it’s a great novel that you just can’t put down. Maybe it’s the song that you play way too loud in your car. No matter the medium, the feeling we get from the inimitable human activity of creating, telling, and digesting stories is an evolutionary oddity that has been invaluable to the survival and success of our species.

Before I continue, I want to point out that in writing this, I’m reminded of a blog I wrote a blog in 2019 titled “Curb your cynicism” that one could point out as being a directly contradictory to the points I’m about to make. Here is that blog:

Curb your cynicism (2019)

I worry that designers may become too cynical. As I doom-scroll through news headlines it would be negligent to deny the constant state chaos we ingest on a daily basis. Regardless of how we react to this perceived state of the world, I believe designers take it particularly hard. We are inherent problem solvers. We tend to gravitate towards things that we want to expose and visually create solutions for. After all, staying current on trends, and reading the news is an important part of what we do.

Climate change, the bleak polarization of our politics, potential nuclear warfare with countries led by nefarious characters all seem to dominate these headlines. Naturally, these are things we should at least want to try to resolve not just as designers (who have limited capacity to affect such things) but as people.

With that being said, amid the chaos there is a lot of good in the world. It’s happening in little pockets all around us. All we have to do is look beyond our screens, and we will find it. As you read this I want you to ask yourself, what was the last thought you had about your future? Was it an optimistic thought? Was it skeptical? Scary? It could be all of those, and every one in between. Make note of that, and understand that it is okay to feel however it is you feel.

Regardless of what lies ahead in our future, through the mundane day-to-day, and the pressure of the anxieties we feel, we must not become overwhelmed with melancholy. We must keep our creative wheels turning. As much as it is our nature to solve problems, it is also our duty to make the world a better place, and inspire the current world we live in. That will keep us going in the right direction, whatever direction that may be.

I wrote then that designers are inherently problem solvers, and that we “…gravitate towards things that we want to expose and visually create solutions for.” For the most part, I still believe that. So looking around at my industry today, I have to ask – what the hell are we doing? What problems are we solving by creating digital tools that replace the human nature of storytelling with algorithms? What problems are we solving by giving the keys of self expression through songwriting, painting, writing, photography and otherwise to a machine? I’m of course talking about the use of artificial intelligence in the creative industry.

Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution led us to this goldilocks period of sorts. This age is abundant with technology, the right amount of arrogance, ignorance, and greed for us to give away the very thing that made us who we are.

Where will this yellow brick road lead us, I wonder?

We need to talk about Jif® 'simply squeeze' peanut butter

During critique, it is helpful know the skills and qualifications of critics because critiques typically take place in an educational, or professional setting. This isn’t really either of those. 

As the topic may suggest, this journal is about peanut butter. I do not have any specific qualifications to speak in-depth about peanut butter per-say, but I am an avid consumer of late-night peanut butter toast. After all, I know enough about research to know that there is only one person who is right about how a product should work; the consumer. 

On second thought, I guess I could argue that this critique has something to do with product design and user experience. The former being an adjacent discipline to which I have two degrees; and the former is what I’ve made my career (user experience design, or UX Design). I should also note that I am by no means writing this in an effort to smear the Jif® name. The only way I want to smear Jif® is onto my Pepperidge Farm Homestyle Oat bread each night. No, I am writing this in an effort to air my grievances and disappointment of a product I thought would greatly improve the user experience when doing something I do several times a week: make peanut butter toast. So there you have it, my cards are on the table. Let’s get to the point. 

We need to talk about Jif® ‘simply squeeze’ peanut butter. 

There are only a few items required when making peanut butter toast. Perhaps that is why it is such a go-to snack for me. It’s easy, fast, healthy and requires very little effort. 

• Toaster

• Bread

• Peanut butter

• Knife

• Plate

The most cumbersome part of the toast making process (for me) is the cleanup. More specifically, the part where I have to wash the peanut butter off of the knife used to scoop and spread the peanut butter with hot, soapy water. As much as I love peanut butter toast, I loathe the smell of hot, soapy peanut butter. Furthermore, peanut butter in its nature is difficult to clean. It’s sticky, thick, and clings onto any object it comes into contact with. It is for this exact reason why I was so elated to see Jif® ‘simply squeeze’ peanut butter at my local Kroger.

“If it works like squeezable jelly, I won’t have to use a knife when making my toast!”, I thought.

Excited about the prospects of minimizing the required steps in my toast making process, I was willing to shell out an extra $0.15 more (100%) per ounce than the traditional Jif® jar. What I hadn’t expected was how this product would be actually work (or how poorly it would work). Operating this technological advancement of the 21st century is as expected. Squeeze the tube and peanut butter comes out. Although admittedly, it took far more effort than I expected to actually make the peanut butter come out of the tube. It felt more like I was squeezing out hardened glue.

Unfortunately, the problem lies with how* the peanut butter comes out. Through the tightly bound, plastic aperture births a tootsie-roll sized peanut butter log nearly a centimeter in diameter that is somehow resistant to melting. Squeezing this peanut butter onto my fresh-from-the-toaster toast creates a dystopian image likely to be found somewhere on a Reddit thread titled “cursed images”.

In order to use this product to properly make peanut butter toast, one still needs to use a knife to spread the peanut butter into the toast. Thus begging the question: what the hell is this good for?

It certainly isn’t good for saving money, or simplifying processes that involve adding peanut butter. It really isn’t good for getting all of your peanut butter out of a container, as it ends up looking like a spent, disheveled tube of peanut butter toothpaste when you try to squeeze out every last cent worth.

I’ve spent the better part of a week conjuring up a list of what this product is actually good for:

Applying peanut butter onto celery. Drawing with peanut butter Using peanut butter in a caulk gun Jif® making ~0.15 more per ounce on peanut butter while eliminating the ability for dads and grandfathers to use their peanut butter jars for nails and orange slice candies.

I sincerely hope this gets the attention of someone at the J. M. Smucker Company, if not only a product designer who can say “but we did the research” and prove me wrong. If it does get the attention of such a high office, do consider a redesign in which the peanut butter is dispensed more so like the 'simply squeeze' jelly, and hopefully allow for a better melting and smearing solution that the current aperture offers.

The end of an era for Dollar Shave Club® iconic branding

Dollar shave club will soon find a lesson learned in visual communication with what (from what I can tell) is a failed rebranding strategy.

Now, I've been a "member" of Dollar Shave Club since 2012, so my attachment to the brand possibly borders on the sentimental, which for disclosure purposes, may hinder my ability to accurately critique this rebrand. With that being said, branding is ultimately judged by what how your consumers, and in this case, "members" perceive your product, so I'll continue.

Dollar Shave Club launched their brand in 2012 with this brilliant viral ad:

What followed the ad was an industry shake-up that had many big corporations in the razor industry trying to follow suit with witty commercials and subscription based packages. It was something these companies couldn't compete with. However, there was something these companies just could not replicate. It was authenticity. It was the initial middle finger to the razor industry that had men and women paying upwards of $30 each time they needed a new blade. This authenticity was reflected in their monthly newspaper, and member spotlight. Most importantly, their authenticity was shown through their visual design.

After over 4 years of success and roughly 3 million monthly subscribers, the company was purchased in Unilever in 2016. Members like myself were worried about price increases and quality control issues when merging with a large corporation like Unilever. Luckily for us , those fears were not realized. In fact, their product line grew, and more diverse branding ensued with the expansion of One Wipe Charlies, Superba! toothpaste, Cologne, Shower supplies, and more.

The fact is, the idea of dollar shave club was rebellious in nature. It was an idea to offer men and women who were holding their middle finger to big razor. The design felt like that, too. It’s quirky branding left a semblance of authenticity, and uniqueness. It was a far cry from what we were used to seeing on the shelves in grocery stories with companies like Gillette, and others with skeuomorphic, clunky, over-masculinized design.

That initial fear of a 2016 corporate takeover was never realized. However, for me it became all too real from the announcement that the club and the entire DSC branding would be getting a "new look" in 2021.

“DSC has evolved over the past 10 years. It’s time our brand reflects that. To help you look and feel your best, we need to do the same.”

Unfortunately what that means for design is that their products will no longer have the authentic, classic look that has represented these rebellious products for almost a decade. To be fair, along with this announcement came a new initiative to push an "omni-channel" approach which ultimately puts DSC on the shelves of major retailers, thus needing the design to appeal to a broader audience. This means these products will no longer be exclusive to those who subscribe to the club.

What remains to be seen is what effect this redesign and omni-channel roll out will have on their products, and their larger customer base. With a similar price point, will this new, generic design fade into the background in a now over saturated market? Are there larger issues to be concerned with outside of a shave club's rebranding strategy?

You bet.