Some of you may have noticed that Andrew, Colin and I have been plastering our names, photos and faces all over everything we create for Rilli.
Our home page has a photo of us holding a banner and lists our names.
Our blog page (which you are viewing right now) also has our unsightly mugs in the header.
We just got new business cards and, lo and behold, the front of the cards features our faces in Rilli markers.
So what’s the deal? Are we so in love with ourselves that we feel the need stick our names and photos on everything we create? Well, maybe a little. However, there are some less masturbatory reason we are doing this.
It comes down to issues of responsibility and human interaction.
We want to be responsible for the things we design and build. We feel that by strongly aligning ourselves and our personalities with our product, we take more credit. We take credit for the good things and the bad things. If a user is upset about something, they shouldn’t be upset with this smooth faceless system, they should be upset with me, or Colin, or Andrew, or the whole stinkin’ lot of us.
The same should go for positive feelings. People should be feeling good towards us – towards real tangible people, because it is not a faceless system. Every bit of it has been built and planned and designed by people. Why does it have to become this smooth shiny internet entity? It should have faces. And those faces should belong to real people who can take real responsibility. We feel that the more directly the system’s “faces” are associated with us , the harder it is for us to hide behind the company. If something goes wrong, I’m the ass, not Rilli. And that is how we would like our users to think about it too. This also allows us to introducing ourselves in such a way as to invite feedback. Introducing ourselves as real people to our users will hopefully make it easier for them to talk to us and help shape Rilli.
Since Rilli is all about facilitating real world interactions, we are working to make it as human as possible. To this end, we can think of Rilli as a place on the web that you visit. And hopefully your friends visit it as well. So we could compare that to a pub or a bar in real life. Bars have patrons and bars also have a staff. In this case, we are the staff. When you go to a certain establishment all the time, you start to form relationships with the staff. You become a “regular”, they know you and you develop a history with them. This makes the bar very friendly and familiar. Why shouldn’t it be that way with a website? Sure you have your friends that make it familiar, and if you spend time in the feedback forums perhaps you get to know some of the staff, but generally systems work very hard to hide the people working for you and present human free “machine” that is the site.
We will be working our faces and personalities into certain touch points of the site such as notifications, error dialogues and more. We are hoping that these steps will help make Rilli a more human and comfortable environment.
9 Responses
What do you think?
I smell narcacism and ego centric graphic designers who are producing stuff that looks cool but has zero utility beyond operating as a vehicle for branding the authors. Boring and more of the same.
Hey David, thanks for letting us know it came off like that. The feedback that we’re getting from our small group so far is that Rilli is not more of the same. We’re really excited to hear from a larger group of people and to change based on that in the coming months. So, thanks again!
Harsh.
While I agree with David about ego centric designers…to a point of course ; )
I feel that what you guys are doing by unmasking yourselves and taking ownership and responsibility for your actions is really cool and unique.
I think it might come off less narcissistic if you guys lose the bits like “..and also how great we are”, or “handsome devils”. I know you guys and I know how to perceive these blurbs, but not everyone will.
Keep in mind that you haven’t been slaving on this beast just for your own friends.
Fine point, Bern.
For me the branding doesn’t say ‘accelerating about real-life interactions between people’… it says ‘it’s not about you, it’s about us’ and branding has a fraternity tone.
But I like the use of handwriting and pen/pencil editing notes, that suggest it’s not just a keyboard, a human hand has touched this.
I think pictures of you, and your stories, absolutely should be there, but on an About page.
Also - I still don’t know what rilli actually does; how it creates real-life community engagement, or whatever. Suggest that something on the homepage say that.
My 99 cents
Well, we’ll show you what it does real soon : )
Thanks for the feedback.
I think David comes off as a d-bag.
Your argument is pretty solid in defending the choices you guys have made; it’s a cool idea to make Rilli as “human” as possible.
I also appreciate the humour in your “handsome devil” references, etc. Anyone who gets offended when people call themselves handsome and puts their faces on things:
a) are jealous because they aren’t confident enough in themselves to do that and feel that way about themselves
b) need to lighten up!!! it’s funny!! it’s silly!!
You have an audience… the people who don’t get what you’re doing… probably aren’t your audience.
Let the haters hate, but play on playas
xo
Still have no clue what Rilli is, or does, or makes…
From what I’ve read, I don’t see it being different than picking up the telephone and calling your friends.
All in all, this has an aesthetic brand that looks ‘human’ and that’s about it. Agreed, David.
Interesting dialogue happening. Stumbled upon rilli after watching the Vancouver Launch thing.
tracypants, I gather you’re one of their friends?
Sorry but there’s a fundamental problem when you know more about the designers than the actual thing they’re designing. The self-promotion’s pretty transparent (and in my opinion, deterring) and any credible design outfit would let their product speak for itself.
tracypants (and any others who may be close friends) would do well to give them this kind of advice.
Good luck to you guys.