Design talk with Steve Kelsey: Bubbles burst, but good design always soars

Anyone in fingertip-touch with reality can see right through them and yet they always fascinate. Bubble economies are precisely the same, in every conceivable way, and, just like bubbles, while we gaze on in childlike wonder suddenly they disappear, leaving behind faint traces of a sticky mess and, as we all know to our regret, a very large bill that we are expected to pay.

There are those among us that believe a designer's job is to produce bubbles, and lots of them. Fortunately for the designer this is not an arduous task. All it takes is a small amount of concentration once a day and the ability to blow air for rather longer. Some designers have become celebrities by practising this 'skill'. Uncritical people, including some designers, believe this is all these creatives are good for. They subscribe to the myth that all a designer has to do is produce something shiny, perfectly formed and with a fascinating surface.

For a while bubbles seem to work. Some brands seem to appear out of nowhere, expand to fill the number one slot for a while before evaporating. Anyone remember clear Pepsi?

Or Heinz Green Tomato Ketchup? These are just two brand bubbles that burst before they reached their first birthday.

Bubble brands and bubble economies are both driven by the same mix of greed, a need for a quick fix and the cynical belief that you and I are gullible to the point of stupidity. They will attract the easily pleased and for their brief moment of glory they will fascinate, then they will be gone. Forever.

Design is not about bubbles, it is about work. It's about making real things work harder for less, about resolving intractable problems of manufacture, about getting your hands dirty beside the engineers and coming up with something once believed to be impossible. It is about finding out what people really want and need – even when they are not clear about what that might be.

It is about delivering real value that will continue to grow because it is based on solving real problems.

Real design, and the real brands that use it well, just like the real economy, survive the idiocy of bubbles.

Steve Kelsey is partner at PI Group. Send comments for Steve to packagingnews.editorial@haymarket.com