Comments on Digital Design - A Conversation with Grant Mizell
Joel Erb
- INM: Hi Grant. You’re INM’s resident Account manager, but that’s not exactly what you went to school for.
- Grant Mizell: Actually, I trained for and started my career on the creative side within traditional advertising space, as a Graphic Designer and Art Director.
- INM: Huh. How has that background impacted your job?
- GM: Traditionally, design is all form. The craft is all about how you can visually influence one through imagery. I can use color and typefaces, paired with common experiences and associations, to evoke particular emotions in my audience.
- INM: Wait, you used the word traditionally?
- GM: Digital changes that. Digital engages its audience beyond the visual stimulation. You interact. You go from viewer, to USER. It’s experiential.
- INM: So, you’re saying that design, at least digital design, is more than just the initial work? Even if the design is static, the work in an application changes things?
- GM: Digital design requires form and function to symbiotically enhance one another. Design is used to more intuitively connect and carry the user along a particular path. Function, often a call to specific action, is equally important in meeting the user’s motivations.