You say Bullshit I say Brilliant

As we discussed last class, there are those business buzz words that annoy the crap out of most of us designers... and rightly so. They are over inflated and over used "sales" terms which speak generally of everything and specifically of nothing... However, while it's easy to get mired up in the absurdity of these work languages, it's important that we understand them, and yes... even use them. As Amy said in class, you need to speak the language of business to win clients.

There's an important distinction to be made between "bullshit" and "business-speak."
Bullshit is artificial meaning. Bullshit is disrespectful and dysfunctional. There's a difference between speaking a different language to someone (business language), and speaking down to someone (bullshitting.) Having great clients is just as much, if not more so about respect, communication, and relationship buliding as it is the work you produce for them. The minute you feel the urge to bullshit a client is the moment you should step back and analyze that relationship.

There have been times that in critiques or in meetings I've found myself saying something that caught me off guard and kind of impressed me--A rationale that I never had though of before, and while this thinking on your feet explanation may seem like bullshit, it's acually just an extension of those decisions you didn't realize you were making. As Carolyn said, there are intuitive decisions that deigners make based upon what we feel are obvious solutions. I experienced this "bullshit-like" pheonminon just the other day with a client. I was working on the beginnings of an animated e-card. The client and I were discussing the tone and visual style of the piece. When I explained the visual style to her I found myself saying something that I had never really though about before. We were using a charater "Sad Socket"-- a wall socket, and he's surrounded by other appliances, all which cause him to have different reactions because of their demand on his power. I explained that because the other objects didn't have faces, they needed to be highly stylized- like cartoons, so they had a personality, and could relate and interact with sad socket. After these words left my mouth I was slightly impressed. I sounded like I knew what I was talking about. This was not bullshit, It was my honest rationale for choosing the visual style for the piece, I had just never verbalized it before.

This doesn't just happen with clients, it happens in critiques and casual conversations. I find that talking about work often helps to inform my decisions. This is the value of critique and collaboration... and has nothing to do with bullshit.