Feeling is Everything

Today I reviewed a new explainer video for VocaWorks for design. Something really hit home: the overall emotional feeling is everything. The graphics, layout, voice, presentation, etc… all flows down from one point of emotion, and if that point is wrong, then you can throw everything else in the garbage. I’m going essentially for “exciting growth” and what was conveyed was “frustration”.

When designing software or marketing materials, you want to first really nail the emotion that you want to convey.  Everything else is informed by that. I also don’t think that this basic overall emotion can ever be a negative emotion, at least for a commercial product. Or at least we have to be really careful to ever put negative stuff out there. “Yeah, that’s a bummer” is never a good emotion to put out in the world, either through our own personal interactions or our company messages.