The Frankenstein

I can't believe I let spooky season pass by without writing about The Frankenstein. It's been on my mind lately because I just read Shelley's Frankenstein, and also watched the 1935 Bride of Frankenstein. And I just bought Mary Roach's new book Replaceable You, which is about how we replace our own body parts when needed. Nobody look in my basement right now.

Very often, when you present work, someone will gravitate to one concept, but still like this or that element from another concept. It's good to make this a hard decision because that means you've either given them things to think about that they had not considered, and/or they all make sense in different ways because they each touch on some aspect of the strategy. And a lot of folks have difficulty in deciding which one is really THE most important. So sometimes they will ask for a little of this, and a little of that, or flat out want to mush two options together – The Frankenstein. Can you do that and still make something good – something that's alive?

The answer is yes, but not always. And it depends on two things: 1) strategy and 2) pre-planning.

Strategy

Sometimes, the options presented are three different strategic concepts. In this space, it's very hard to take an element from one concept and put it into another concept because those signifiers are not working toward the same goal. Think of the three options like breakfast, lunch and dinner. It doesn't make sense to try to jam roast beef and potatoes into breakfast*.

However, if the three concepts are expressing the same strategy in three different flavors, this is a space where a Frankenstein might work. In our analogy, these options are all different breakfasts, so adding eggs to your sausage biscuit doesn't sound too bad. This doesn't mean it will be easy, and it doesn't guarantee it will work. But because all the signifiers are more closely related, there's a better chance.

Pre-Planning

Requests for varying degrees of The Frankenstein happen so often that sometimes I think about this when I'm designing. And again, we're talking about three flavors of the same strategy. That could mean using similar shapes or fonts that go together or color palettes that can be interchangeable. If no one asks for The Frankenstein, then great. But if someone does, it's not as big a leap to swap out or combine some of the elements. It's Hans Delbrück, not Abby Normal (see below). The biggest issue is if it adds too many elements, and then you have to edit. Or sometimes you can create rules for when you use this or that. But don't overcomplicate things.

*This is strictly for analogy – I personally often eat dinner leftovers for breakfast.