Latest / Design Darlings / Design Brief: Skelly the Skeleton and Finding Whimsy in the Macabre
Transcript
- Allie: Hello, darling. Ro Rich: Hello, darling. Allie: I'm Mally Miller. Ro Rich: I'm Robin Richardson. Happy almost Halloween and welcome. Yes. Allie: Happy almost Halloween. So today for our episode, we're gonna try something a little bit different. We're gonna start a new segment. we're gonna call this a design brief. And it has a it's a pun, it's a double meaning. So a design brief in the design world is basically your instructions for your assignment, right? What are you making? What are you designing? It's the summary of the thing that you are about to design or execute on that a client or your team, creates. But also brief is brief, right? And so we're gonna experiment with having content that's a little bit shorter. to get you curious. we're not gonna do a full deep dive excavation, but we're just gonna hit on just enough. to maybe pique your curiosity and, you know, leave you to go down your own Wikipedia rabbit hole and learn more about some iconic object system or interaction in your daily life. Ro Rich: Yeah, I think of a design brief as like a design bite. we'll keep doing some longer episodes, but we think the short forms will be a more accessible way for you to get a daily dose of delicious design. And then yeah, like you said, you can go research and find out more. So it was almost like a trick or treat. What an appropriate time to do this in October. Allie: Right size, fun size candy. Ro Rich: Yes, not a whole candy, but lots of little ones that you can eat any time you want and not feel as bad about. Allie: Amazing. All right. So what is our what's our design brief topic du jour in the month of Ro Rich: Well Allie: Halloween? Ro Rich: I don't know about you, but when it gets a little bit colder out, I am very excited to grab my favorite skulls and skeletons and things macabre. And I thought that we should talk about a very iconic October object that is only six years old and it's supposed to be kinda spooky, but it's turned out to be kinda like our design friend. Do you wanna take a guess at what that might be? Allie: you mentioned skeleton and then I immediat immediately go to Jack Skeleton. Jack Skeleton from Night Before Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Allie: Christmas. So I'm gonna say the skeleton. Ro Rich: Alright, in particular, it is the Home Depot twelve foot skeleton that Allie: Ooh. Ro Rich: first graced our presence in July of twenty twenty, which was peak pandemic time, really. People went nuts, they sold out really quickly, and they were appearing in yards before we even thought about the Allie: I remember that and that's also to the hype we're all on Instagram and social media and people are just obsessed with these skeletons. No, literally it was like a run on skeletons. They could not keep them Ro Rich: There was, Allie: in stock. Ro Rich: no, they sold out. They absolutely sold out. And so the head of creative for Home Depot thought, you know what? We need 12 foot skeletons. And everyone went, yes. Yes we do. And I don't know about in the DMV, but down here in Florida, people put them up and they just stayed up. They were a Halloween decor and then they all had football jerseys on for football season. And then they were wearing Santa hats. And I felt like those twelve foot skeletons stayed up almost for a year. Allie: we needed joy. We needed whimsy because we were all like you said, we're all trapped in our homes. We're all like facing mortality. And one thing that I think is lovely and macabre about humans is that when faced with especially in like our modern internet culture, when faced with ex existential dread, we love to just like be so unserious and make fun of it. And so, you know These things when you make products, right, you're planning these product delivery cycles, they take years to do. So this skeleton idea was already in production well over like a year before this happened. you could have predicted the timing of this, I'm not gonna say the timing's perfect, 'cause I don't wanna make light of COVID. But Ro Rich: No. Allie: there's a there's a really interesting serendipity to the timing that I think people just wanted some dark release, to find humor in the macabre. Ro Rich: Well, the world was upside down and a lot of people were like, I need something to break the dread. It wasn't a really scary skeleton, even though it was twelve feet tall. So, Allie: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: I mean, what an icon this this friendly skeleton has become. It was Allie: Yeah. Ro Rich: posable, it was kind of goofy, it was like so in your face that instead of it being dreadful, it was just We would like Allie: Yeah. Ro Rich: a giant bone buddy. That is that is what we need. and we put a hat on it. You know. Allie: Yeah. Deb, it's the HOA president's worst nightmare is these skeletons. Just being like, no. I think also too, like we love that was a time where a lot of people were building miniatures, and there's this interesting idea of scale where we both love teeny tiny little things. And then we also Ro Rich: Mm. Allie: love things that like are exaggerated to this heightened scale. So the appeal of it, the the comedy of it, you take a scary thing and one way to make something feel less scary is you distort it, you distort your perception of it, So by taking this scary object and making it either larger than life or teeny tiny, you change your perception of what it is and it it takes on a new sort of emotional meaning. Ro Rich: Well yeah. It was almost like befriending or like taming death, maybe in its own way, because Allie: Yeah. Ro Rich: I mean we c probably can do a ninety second detour through like Memento Mori and Vonitas paintings. Allie: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: because there's a we have a long history of befriending skeletons in its in its own way, in our decor. and Allie: Yeah. Ro Rich: so it's like we bought we bought the skeleton to be our own company. But Allie: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: But there is a history of culturally people having the memento mori, literally the memory of death, like hey, everyone is going to pass. It is a reminder broadly that Allie: Okay. Ro Rich: life is fragile and death is inevitable. It started in Egypt, actually. And so there is symbolism for it. skeletons, clocks, and the hourglass, that life is here, but it's also fleeting. So earthly pursuits won't stay with you when you go. And then Allie: Mm. Ro Rich: the vanitas Latin for emptiness or vanity is derived from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes. Again, hey, this is your reminder that you're gonna pass. The Vanitas paintings were a specific reminder against pride, luxury, the pointlessness of accumulating wealth and power and worldly pleasures. And that was also symbolism of like skulls, rotting flowers. So you had these still life of the Vanitas paintings. That were reminding you Allie: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: of that as well. And it borrowed from the Memento Mori, So so we have had death and skulls around for a long time. And like you said, it's not, you know, obviously there's not a perfect timing, but there is a Like a confluence of events? Allie: Yeah. Yeah. Ro Rich: Boom. they cross each other, in a way that everyone was like, Wow, yeah, we're being surrounded by death. Let's maybe it was a way of befriending it, of taking I don't know, taking some of the scary out of it. Allie: Well, I'm thinking of too the there's a famous print. it's called The Dance of Death by Michael Volg Volgemoot. I'm sure there's the whatever country he was from, there's a correct pronunciation. I think probably Germany. but it's this famous print of all these skeletons dancing that was created during the bubonic plague Ro Rich: Mm. Allie: in Europe. And yeah, it's these skeletons are basically partying and it it's the idea that just Yeah, death is here and let's just in a way welcome it as part of, this experience. I think also too there was a when did they become really trendy? But the famous outfit that the bubonic plague doctors would wear with the big skeletal beak. Yeah, Ro Rich: they look like bird beaks. Yeah. Allie: I think it was this is pre 2020, but there was also those that costume was kind of trendy for a while, Ro Rich: Coming back, it was Allie: like the macabre And you've had in the past few years, I think you've had this, with the show Wednesday took off, the take on the Adams family. mean, Nightmember for Christmas, I don't think it's ever gone out of style. It's always been cool. If you know, you know. Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Allie: But like Jack Skellington. So I think there's we're in this like interesting era where even just I think there's been this resurgence of like kind of pagan rituals and witchy culture and mysticism and I feel like in the past five to ten years we've just become more comfortable with like welcoming in iconography around sort of life and death and mysticism Ro Rich: Well, it's funny because too, no one had ever seen a twelve foot skeleton, so the Allie: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: the novelty of it all was really fun. and then we gave it a wardrobe and put a hat on it. Allie: also too there's this part of I'm just like when I think of these skeletons, I think of suburbia. I don't know, there's something about the the monotony of suburban life. let's add some fun little whimsical element to our yard to show how we're I'm the fun, edgy house. Like I'm the cool house in the neighborhood. Ro Rich: it's almost like National Lampoon decided to do Halloween because there's always been neighbor wars of doing Allie: Right. Ro Rich: decor. But I feel like also in the last, I don't know, maybe five to ten years, maybe his Instagram has become so ubiquitous that you do it for the gram. People have crazy Allie: Yeah. Ro Rich: awesome decor on their front porches and more and more skeletons. And yes, the HOA lady, there's always that story about the lady who's so upset because you have thirty corpses and you're only supposed to have three or whatever whatever the bylaws are. And then how do you store that? Like I think that's part of the reason people left them up because also everyone's like, What is time? What is anything? Who cares? I'm gonna leave this 12 foot skeleton up because that's nothing Allie: Yeah. Ro Rich: matters. Nothing matters, who cares? So I really love that the it was kind of an outlet. and that Halloween decor has I feel like gotten Just more and more more and more fun. It it was like people Allie: Mm. Ro Rich: needed something to do. I think also, with the pandemic. And so people were always doing Halloween decorations, but it felt like why not why not decorate right now? Let's go let's go and do it. So I don't know how you would write this in a design brief. I would love to know what the design brief was for the twelve foot skeleton. Home Depot has been getting better and better at lawn decor for a while. Allie: Yeah. Ro Rich: But that really just really took the cake. That's like that's a classic icon that I don't think is ever gonna go away. Allie: since like let's say, you know, the pink flamingo or the garden gnome, it's hard to like make a splash in lawn decor. is the skeleton our pink flamingo? Ro Rich: Of our time. Allie: is the is the skeleton the twenty first century's pink flamingo? Ro Rich: It might be wow. Allie: Was there did you find any is there any like I'd love to see an interview from the Home Depot creative team. Like are there any is there any like original quote of yeah, two years ago we were in a conference room and we were like, what if we made a 12 foot skeleton? Like I would love to know the origin story of how this idea even came to be. who in the meeting was guys, I got it. I got it. We're making a twelve foot 'cause they could have picked a ghost, a pumpkin, skeleton like who like I wanna see the vision board. I wanna see the ideation session that led to this and then everyone was Hell yeah, we're doing it. We're making the twelve foot skeleton. Ro Rich: Well, and it had to make sense money wise too, right? So when you get your design brief, you have to consider you have opportunities and you have constraints. So it has to fit within a certain budget. It has to be able to ship in a certain size box. So there's all of these things that you have to have a production team, like you said, think about, Allie: Right. Ro Rich: but then there's the vibe side of it where you're like, All right, Allie: The five. Ro Rich: we're how when are we gonna match the vibes with the manufacturing constraints? I think every design brief is that, actually. The design brief is Hear your constraints and hear the vibes. You make it work. Go. And then you have to go make that happen. I wonder. That would be really cool to see how they got there. I wonder if we can find that head of the design and Allie: Ooh. Ro Rich: bring them on our show. The head of design and bring them here. Allie: Vice did a an oral history of the Home Depot twelve foot skeleton. Okay, we'll put this in the show notes. it has a name. Its name was Skelly. Ro Rich: Mm-hmm. Yes. What's his name? Or her excuse Of course it is. Allie: Kelly the skeleton. You know what this kind of reminds me of in a way is, Ro Rich: Mm. Allie: you know, I took a lot of science classes, at one point was pre-med, somehow made my way to design. But, every science lab has some skeleton. And it's just sort of like a common joke of like you have the skeleton and you and it's anatomically correct, So it's not 12 feet. But, you know, you put the lab coat on it and you put maybe a red clown nose or some sunglasses or the cool hip. biology teacher would always dress it up for holidays and So we like taking the macabre Ro Rich: We've always Allie: and making it fun. Ro Rich: We've always made friends with death. Okay, so my nephew who just turned two two days ago, he is obsessed with skeletons and he had he found this miniature one that my other sister had at her house. He would not let it go. And so then Allie: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: my brother in law went and got a big s not a big sk like a regular a six foot skeleton from Home Depot. And my nephew's he has no context for what this thing is. It's laying on the ground, my brother in law is putting it together, my little nephew goes and takes a football like a hat. like a ball cap and puts it on the skeleton's head. And how does he know? Because this looks like nothing he's ever interacted with, but it looks enough Allie: He just knows. Ro Rich: I guess human to him that he was like, You should have a Michigan football hat on. So he put a hat on him and looked at him like, Yeah, uh-huh. So now everything we're getting all these all the skeleton stuff because he's so obsessed and it's adorable. I love it. So yeah, I wanna see pictures. You know what? We should ask people to send us pictures on insta like their best skeleton vibes. I w Allie: yeah, if you have a kooky twelve foot skelly in your yard. Ro Rich: Or any skelly. I have short skeletons on my porch that sit in the rocking chairs and wave at people. Allie: That's nice. Yeah, there's I love that motif of just the old married couple sitting on the porch in their rocking chairs, but they're just skeletons, It's cute, it's sweet. Ro Rich: I have a neighbor that has a skeleton on a paddleboard out in the front yard. I mean, we look listen, there's no limit. Skeletons like fun too. Allie: There's no limit. Well what are our closing Ro Rich: right, my friend. Allie: thoughts? Anything else about Skelly and What does this what does Skelly teach us about design? Ro Rich: I think they reimagined the skeleton kudos to them. Whatever that design brief was, they did it. They made the skeleton larger. They still kept it within a a budget and a manufacturing Allie: Mm-hmm. Ro Rich: thing. So they nailed it. I say ten out of ten Allie: Yeah. I think my takeaway is, when in doubt, your customers and your audience will appreciate Whimsy. cool. Let them Ro Rich: let them have fun. Let them eat cake, let them have fun. Allie: let them have fun. Okay. With that, how should we sign off our our design briefs? Ro Rich: that's a good question. Allie: Keep it brief. keep it sassy, keep it brief. I don't know. Ro Rich: We have to come up with a cool like sign off. Allie: Yeah. You've been briefed. No, that's so stupid. No Ro Rich: Yes, you've been briefed and then there you go. Why not? Porkay no. Allie: No, we can't. We can do that. Well there you go. You've been briefed. Ro Rich: You've been briefed. Allie: Take care. Peace out. Ro Rich: Make good design decisions.