The perfect little black dress?

Last week I said that you can classify almost all popular design today into four categories: timeless, retro, grunge, bleeding edge or high tech. Bu what do those style mean and what message do they convey to your clients?

Today I want to look at the first and most classic style of all, timeless design, and what it really means and how it fits into the supermarket of design before us.

Before I do that let’s take a look at something familiar to all of us. Ladies, all of you probably own something you call the perfect black dress, for the guys imagine the perfect white oxford shirt. It’s a mythical thing really but it’s your best friend. It’s something that you feel awesome in. It goes with almost any occasion. It can be counted on.

Now I’m going to borrow from the guys example for a moment. Guys, you all have that shirt in your closet, crisply pressed and hanging ready. Do you even have the perfect tie that always goes with it. It’s a classic right, timeless?

Go check out your dad’s closet. If he still has it, pull out his 20 year old perfect white oxford. Would you were it to the next office party? But it’s timeless right?

Timeless doesn’t mean that it never needs to be updated. Cuts change, collars grow or shrink, buttons are replaced. It’s happened to us all, we’ve reached for the thing that we thought was timeless and realized that it’s gone out of style, not the little black dress or the white oxford but at least the one we have.

Design is similar to this. There is a style that will not fade but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be updated.

One company that I think does a great job of this is Coca-Cola. That font based logo with the long tail has been there for 20 years. Sure they tried something different but just like new Coke it went away in favor of Coke Classic. They have a timeless logo, but they’ve changed the dressing and the elements around it to keep it cutting edge.

What does that say to us? It says,”We’re consistent and we aren’t changing, always Coca-Cola, but we’re also young, fresh and still cool.”

Now think of another company, Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo is a result of a merger between California-based Wells Fargo & Co. and Minneapolis-based Norwest Corporation in 1998. The new company chose to keep the name Wells Fargo, to capitalize on the 150-year history of the nationally-recognized Wells Fargo name and its trademark stagecoach.

They are banking on the credibility that 150 years of financial service gives them. People every day allow them to carry millions of dollars of their money.

Their logo and trademark, however outdated modern design may claim it to be, conveys that message. To them being outdated is an asset, it means, “We’ve been here, and we’ll be here.”

So are there any characteristics of a timeless design? I think there may be a few. First, they are almost always text based in simple fonts, many times a serif font. This allows background, graphical ornaments and icons to move around them without altering them. They are also usually done in primary colors. Pastels, bold colors, muted colors seem to come and go. Primary colors seem to never be the most popular but they always exist. Lastly, they seem to only consist of very basic shapes if any, i.e. circle, square, etc..

At the end of this series we’ll talk about each of the styles and who they apply to and how they might be able to strengthen your overall design package.