a market of one? or everyone?

mr-lang

the element of style is a great book for anyone who wants to write. i just didn’t expect that it can help a designer as well.

on the last page, e.b. white concludes, “it is now necessary to warn you that your concern for the reader must be pure: you must sympathize with the reader’s plight (most readers are in trouble about half the time) but never seek to know the reader’s wants. your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. start sniffing the air, or glancing at the trend machine, and you are as good as death, although you may make a nice living.”

a fashion designer is not an artist, never mind a writer. but lots of us are too busy pleasing everyone that we forget about the most important one – themselves.

i wonder if helmut lang will disagree.

One response to “a market of one? or everyone?”

  1. So true. One of my favorite quotes (who’s author completely slips my mind and I might butcher right now) says the same thing.

    “I can’t tell you the exact recipe for success. But I can tell you the recipe for failure; trying to please everybody”.

    And the classic motto of marketing that if everybody is your customer than nobody is your customer.

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