Deer in the City

July 30th, 2008 by John Rhea

So…Friday night, in my own socially hip way (as in not so), I spent the evening watching a sci-fi show, then stayed up late (after my wife and son were in bed) to pay some bills. Just before midnight, I decided to take the two block trip to the mailbox to make sure those bills got off on time and my credit report stayed nice and shiny (For you Firefly fans: yes, that kind of shiny).

So, I walked out the front door of our building and around the side to cut across the back lawn on my way to the mailbox. Pretty much as I entered the back yard, a deer crossed my path. Now I don’t live in a rural area, I live in the nation’s capital. Not near it, in it. Washington DC. The Seat of Power. The Capital. District of “We-apparently-have-Deer” Columbia.

I tried to document this occasion with a picture of said deer using my stellar 1 megapixel (excuse me, 1.3 megapixel) camera phone. Lets just say the results were the kind of thing they use to prove aliens exist. So I photoshopped a deer into a city street so you could see an over-exaggerated version of what I saw.

After I watched the deer trounce through some lawns and wonder further down the road into the urban jungle – I continued on my walk to the mail box. All the while, I waited for a stag to run out of the shadows and maul me for looking at his doe (or for poring concrete and asphalt all over his natural habitat, whichever seemed appropriate to him at the time). Finally, I reached the safety of the mailbox and deposited my letters.

Once there, I happened to see a passing police officer, apparently on a similar nighttime errand to the mailbox and flagged down her car. I clearly and eloquently explained the situation, “Uhhh, Deer! Over there!” She then calmly and politely extracted further information from me: The deer was alive and as far as I could tell unhurt. Unfortunately, she explained that there was nothing she could do, due to the lateness of the hour and the fact that animal control would only come out if the animal was dead or hurt. I thanked her for her time, and she continued on her way to the mailbox.

This story got me thinking about design and how to grab people’s attention. If you can bring a streak of the wild to the domestic you’ll grab the attention of anyone watching.

What does that mean? Well, it’s different for every design and in many cases it’s more of a feeling than a hard and fast rule, but every good design should take some risk. It should have something wild and untamed, something that grabs your attention and cannot be categorized.

It is a tenuous balance, however, for if the design is too wild then it could easily go astray and miss the target audience. The converse is also just as bad. If the design is too “corporate” or safe then it will not interest or, worst of all, will bore the audience and turn them off to the product or message. It’s important to keep your design balanced so that it interests and engages the audience.

So, take your lessons from the deer and push toward something a bit more wild in your designs and campaigns because, if you succeed in striking that perfect balance, there won’t be a thing the style police can do.

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