Let's Make Magic, Again

^{Disney's Communicore, proposed Epcot attraction of the 1970's.}

A few days ago day Seth Godin took a swipe at magic. Well, that's not really true. But he did make an interesting comment about its disappearance in our increasingly digital lives. By citing the Arthur C. Clarke quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” he calls out the seeming overpowering of magic by advanced digital technologies...

"So many doors have been opened by technology in the last twenty years that the word “sufficiently” is being stretched. If it happens on a screen (Google automatically guessing what I want next, a social network knowing who my friends are before I tell them) we just assume it’s technology at work. Hard to even imagine magic here."

Another thought. Magic is basically synonymous with technology, flip-side of the same coin even, coexisting before both become understood, mainstreamed and normalized into the mundane. While things like pencils, glasses, phones etc. (and virtually all the other objects we take for granted now) were once earthshaking technologies, some maybe even considered magical, now they're just the regular stuff that surrounds us. As we charge headlong into the future, too many of our present-day technology experiences are designed to behave and resemble these things we're already used to, things that we already regard as mundane. And let's be honest, there's nothing magical about the everyday.

To me that's all we're really talking about, and core to Godin's point (whether it was intended or not) is that stuff doesn't wow us anymore, but that's not really because it's tech or magic. It's ultimately just because he's used to it, its part of the fabric of his life. That stuff, like Google's predictive search, is designed explicitly to disappear, to appear "natural," it's an example of the tyranny of the mundane. What he's missing perhaps, are experiences that are designed to stand out and be extraordinary, remarkable ones that live in the world instead of hiding behind the rest of our lives.

Take Disney for example, if only because they're in the business of magical experiences. The Disney experience is magical because it's otherworldly, and if we start to look at it as normal or mundane it won't be magical anymore… I'd imagine that the hardest thing for Disney to continue doing is both staying ahead of the curve technologically and within the world of the fantastic. Success for them will be as a result of their continued desire and ability to be exemplary, to walk that tightrope between magic and tech in a world that's becoming more open and porous everyday.

Godin says, "No doubt that there will be magic again one day... magic of biotech, say, or quantum string theory, whatever that is. But one reason for our ennui as technology hounds is that we’re missing the feeling that was delivered to us daily for a decade or more. It’s not that there’s no new technology to come (there is, certainly). It’s that many of us can already imagine it."

My sense is that design and business communities are largely doing consumers a disservice. Ultimately, we stay safe within the walls of the familiar and the consumer suffers. It's obviously easier to stay with the tried and true but if we really want to create the unimagined, to make magic, to be loved, we have to take more risks in our collective work. There are few consumers that will feel passion or love, for the safe choice. To create products that people love, rather than just ones that consumers endure, we have to step out from behind the existing paradigms and push forward with intuition and vision. Then we're making magic, again.

As frog's Executive Creative Director, Nick de la Mare leads frog’s cross-disciplinary teams in the pursuit of strategic design solutions across product, service and experience. His work focuses on the convergence of digital and physical media to create branded experiences for Nike, Chase, Disney, Johnson & Johnson, among others. His projects have been recognized by the IDSA, AIGA and others, and published widely.