GUT DESIGN

Design as an industry is supremely self-conscious.

Goals, objectives, briefs, research…these are all carefully worked out and tested, and retested and reworked, before any design moves forward to actuality.  So it is interesting to note those times, and there are many, when successful designs just came about without much planning.  This of course was the case before the birth of the data-driven society.  That grand old time when a neat idea became the solution for a problem not yet formulated.

Like Coke, for instance.

Has there ever been a greater synergy of product, name, logo, and package design than the one that evolved for Coca-Cola?  I am holding that classic bottle in my hand and wondering just that.  Everything about it, from the funky script to the unique shape and even the level of carbonation is all one unified message.  The periodic revolts that occur whenever the company tries to change any piece of this prove the case.  Yet this combination was not the result of marketing surveys, focus groups, or even a visionary’s vision.  The design came about through a more haphazard accretion of elements long before the days of metrics and statistics and even before product experts had their say.

Coca-Cola, the drink itself, was invented by an Atlanta pharmacist named John Stith Pemberton.  In common with the other pharmacists of his day, Pemberton came up with his own secret recipes for ailing customers, but his concoctions were so dreadful tasting they had very few takers. Then on May 8, 1886, Pemberton cooked up a dark syrup that, diluted with soda water and spiked with sugar and traces of cocaine (still legal at the time), was actually palatable and energizing.  His business associate Frank Robinson thought up the name Coca-Cola.  No one really knows why.  And it was Robinson who designed the Spenserian calligraphy of the logo and who came up with the first ad slogan for the product: ”Delicious and Refreshing.”  Not bad for a bookkeeper.

The next breakthrough came after Pemberton’s death, when the rights were sold to Asa Candler who formed the Coca-Cola Company in 1892.  The innovation this time was not in the product itself but in the marketing of it.  Candler had the idea of a franchise to sell the syrup to bottlers who would add the soda water themselves.  It was a brilliantly simple strategy except that all the bottlers used their own distinct bottles, which wound up diluting the branding effect.  So a competition was held for a standard bottle.  The contest was won by the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, for a bottle shape that was based on an image of a cola nut found by an office assistant.  Any resemblance to a corseted woman is purely coincidence, according to the lore.  In fact, no one knows who created the actual shape, but in 1915 a patent for it was registered in the name of the company manager, Alexander Samuelson, who is credited as the bottle’s designer.

And there you have it, a series of design decisions by non-designers without the aid of customer surveys and feedback stats.  And while it is true that over the past century both the bottle and the logo and even the formula have changed and evolved, the basic components of the design have always remained in the mix for the simple reason that they just worked.

Appealing to the eye and the touch, graphically distinctive, historical and timeless at the same time.  And all without any master plan.   So have a Coke next time you plan a retreat to tell you what the world needs next.  If only as an inspiration to ignore the rules and follow your gut instead.