Seth Godin has an interesting piece on his blog this morning that makes it seem, again, that Mr. Godin somehow has my brain wiretapped. Simply put, his post points out a universal truth in marketing, "It's all about your audience."

More precisely, he's talking about the fact that homogeny doesn't make things better, because if people understand who they're selling to, they can talk specifically to them. He uses Martha Stewart, John Waters, Thomas Keller and unnamed "Great Graphic Designers" as examples of people who get their audience and create specifically for them.

Of course, I personally enjoy the work of 3 out of the 4 (sorry, Martha) of those examples, so maybe it's just a matter of Seth knowing HIS audience when he wrote this piece, but I tend to agree.

• Thomas Keller doesn't bother with a kids menu (or more accurately, a menu for adults who are cheap, not interested in having an experience centered around astoundingly good food, or can't trust an expert chef to feed them)
• John Waters doesn't bother with trying to make movies for people who can't laugh at the absurd and filthy
• Martha Stewart doesn't bother trying to appeal to, well, me.

That's actually an accidentally great point, because I have no idea why anyone likes or cares about Martha Stewart. But really, that's fine. She's not talking to me. She knows it, I know it, and so neither of us concerns ourselves with the other.

The last of Mr. Godin's examples is, of course, the closest to my heart, but it's also the least specific. Is it because there are just too many, or perhaps because no one knows who the hell we are, that Seth skips naming names for "great graphic designers?"

I think it's perhaps the latter, because unless you're a design nerd you're not going to know who any of these people are or were:

• Saul Bass
• Paul Rand
• Massimo Vignelli
• Herb Lubalin
• Milton Glaser
• Kit Hinrichs
• Seymour Chwast
• and many, many more that I am, shamefully, unable to pull off the top of my head this morning.

To me, of course, there are far too many to name, so I'm going to stop short of going through my library to dig up all the names that deserve to be on that list. Perhaps that was Seth's problem too.

But, all the same, his central point is still, "these people know that it's all about knowing who you are talking to."

I feel like I explain that to people all the time. It's not about what you, or your employees, or your wife, or your kids like. It's about your market. If you don't understand who buys your stuff, then you can't talk to them concisely. It doesn't matter that your favorite color is blue, or that you really like the typeface Papyrus (or Helvetica, as much as it pains me to say it), or that you really love your dog. If these things are irrelevant to your market, then they have no place in your marketing.

Whoa. Freaky how close those two words are. Coincidence? I think not.

It's often said that good design solves problems. That's absolutely true...and the primary problem we're solving most of the time is, "How do we get the people who might buy this thing to pay attention?" followed shortly by, "How do we help them make a decision?" and "How do we create a preference for something they haven't used yet?"

And therein lies my primary comment on Mr. Godin's post. He posits that great graphic designers have good taste, but I would assert that great graphic designers, nay great designers of any discipline, create good taste. We don't just look at what the tribe likes and create something that they will embrace. Very often we create something they will move toward, and sometimes we look at the market, see the potential for a tribe to be formed, and create something that brings them together.