All the World’s a Stage

Like many designers, I cut my teeth early on designing brochures, t-shirts, and shitty logos for friends, school projects, and neighborhood events, using pirated totally legal software.

That’s where my journey diverges from most designers. You see, I used my design skills to pay my way through undergrad and grad school for opera. Yeah…definitely not the traditional pathway. This led to years in parallel careers with one foot in Adobe software and the other foot on a theater stage.

Nowadays, it’s rare that I’m performing, but I still find myself pulling from the same toolset when thinking through and planning out design projects.

For a singer, the craft goes beyond knowing how to use your lungs and a bunch of tiny muscles in your neck to fill a concert hall with sound. The equally important part comes down to storytelling.

For a performance to succeed, the performer needs to know who the audience is, what they expect, and what you want them to leave with. Do you want them to get warm fuzzy feelings of familiarity? Do you want them to escape their daily life for a moment of catharsis? Do you want them to leave with a deeper level of understanding or inspiration? To put it plainly…how do you want them to feel?

A concert performance is not just a random collection of songs, but an entirely designed experience.

Whether planning a concert, recital, or salon series, the performer has a series of questions to consider.

• The emotional journey.
• The audience in the room.
• The pacing of the show.
• How it begins and how it ends.

You consider the tools at your disposal and determine what fits the occasion best.

• Would an overture help set the emotional tone and allude to what’s to come?
• Does this need to be divided into several acts for the audience to better grasp the story arc?
• Does the audience need an intermission to prevent them from disengaging too soon?
• Has the arc earned their trust to allow you to take them outside of their comfort zone?
• How do you stick the landing?
• Is an encore necessary to thank the audience and extend the connection beyond formalities?

All of these are valuable tools. When you know what type of environment you want to create, you can choose which tools to employ to gain the audience’s trust and to guide them along your intended journey. This is where much of the creative journey lies. Knowing the tools you have at your disposal and when to employ each one to achieve the intended outcome.

A musical mentor of mine once said to me, “The audience remembers three things: what you started with, what you ended with, and how you made them feel in between.”

Today, I still find these concepts incredibly useful as I think through user journeys, layouts, copywriting, and interfaces. I’m still crafting an experience. I’m still engaging with how an audience feels and what they take away from the experience.

I just happen to be doing it at a much lower volume.

Scott is a digital design director at FoxFuel Creative. He'll provide you with seven pages on how to make the best cup of coffee but only one sentence on his impressive music career.