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Nick Eckman
Dr. Ballentine
Multimedia Writing
24 October 2015
Apple Scares Me
No company has seemed to brand itself better than Apple; they have created an
overwhelmingly pervasive fandom that would literally die for one of their products.
Seriously, they’ll die for one of their beloved Apple gizmos. In 2014, instead of allowing
a mugger to drive away with her iPhone, a 15-year-old girl attempted her best action hero
impression and leaped onto the trunk of the car and held on for a few brief moments.
Upon realizing there was a 15-year-old girl version of Ethan Hunt from the Mission
Impossible series latched onto his car, the mugger began to swerve erratically in order to
throw the girl from the vehicle. Unfortunately, the mugger was successful in throwing her
off the car, and the girl died from the resulting injuries (Branson-Potts). Or in a more
recent, less heroic fashion, a man decided he wanted to nominate himself for a coveted
Darwin Award by jumping a fence and entering a restricted area at Cedar Point. The man
had lost his iPhone on the rollercoaster, so he decided he was going to try and search for
it, and the only thing that got in his way was the ton of screaming metal flying toward his
head at close to 60 miles per hour (Reilly).
Apple has always prided themselves on the sleek design of their products.
Everything on their products is supposed to look streamlined, clean, and simple, and
Apple follows the same techniques in marketing their products. As the professionals
behind Marketing Minds put it, “the Apple brand personality is about simplicity and the
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removal of complexity from people's lives; people-driven product design; and about
being a really humanistic company with a heartfelt connection with its customers.” While
other companies may come out with an idea first, Apple has built their company by
finding ways to make things that already exist better, and then connecting with its
customers on a personal level. There is more to Apple’s success than an above average
gadget; they have marketed their products and made them into a status symbol. So after
thinking about Apple’s tremendous success marketing and branding themselves, I decided
to give their website a look and analyze its design.
If I had to guess which company’s website would simultaneously have the
sleekest and most logical design, I would have guessed Apple, and after briefly
navigating their site, it appears that my original assumption may have been correct. Their
website not only looks elegant and smooth, fitting the coveted brand they have made for
themselves, but the design also functions well for its purpose.
Aesthetically, the site is beautiful; it’s clean, it’s smooth, it’s precise, and it’s
simple. The eye is immediately drawn to the picture of the iPhone at the center of the
page. Particularly, the eye is drawn to the center, black iPhone that has an abstract photo
on it, which contains almost all the colors that are used throughout the site: red, gold,
black, and blue. The eye is drawn to this phone in particular because of the intriguing
photo it contains and because it contrasts with the white background of the site
extraordinarily well. The sequence of iPhones at the center of the screen set up the site
perfectly. First of all, the pictures of the four phones are lined up to make it look as if
they were falling. This fits because it takes the readers’ eyes from left to right and down
the page. Besides the layout of the pictures, the colors used in the photos match the colors
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used elsewhere throughout their site. The first phone in the sequence is a crisp white,
with highlights of different shades of silver and gray bordering the phone. This phone
also has an abstract picture shown on its screen that contains every shade of blue from
turquoise to violet. The next phone in the sequence is angled so that the viewer can only
see the matte gold aluminum back of the phone and the beveling along the outside. Along
with the matte gold that predominates the back of the phone, the viewer can also see
highlights of white and the black opening of the camera lens. The third photo of the
sequence is the black phone I described earlier, and the final phone is aligned so that the
viewer can see the rose gold aluminum back, and the side opposite of the gold phone
viewed before. Not only does this design direct the reader’s eye across the screen,
captures the reader’s attention, and foreshadow the colors that will be seen throughout the
site, but it is also a great example of repetition, because the phones go from a front view,
to a back view, to a front view, to a back view. And finally, the images fit with what
Apple is trying to do: get you to buy the phone. While doing all the things mentioned
above, the work also shows the potential customer what the phone looks like and the four
available color options.
Although a lot is happening and a lot is done with the main graphic on the site,
the design does not interfere with the clean, simplistic look of the website as a whole. The
site uses negative space superbly, and because of this, the majority of the colors used are
black and white. Not only does this give a clean, new look, but it is also the best way to
create contrast, because nothing can contrast as well as black font on a white background.
The remainder of colors that are used are primarily seen on the screens of their products,
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and they all stick with the colors of the first design: there is blue and a gradient of colors
from red to gold.
Finally, the site is very easy to navigate, and this happens for many reasons. First
of all and most importantly, everything that should be grouped together is grouped
together. If you want to quickly learn about their most popular new product, the iPhone
6s, everything you need to know can be easily accessed directly below the head graphic.
In fact, everything new is on the home page, and this makes sense for two different
reasons: 1). Apple knows you are most likely visiting their site to see one of their new
products, so they want to make the things you most likely want to see the most easily
accessible, and 2). New products fit with the sites design, which is supposed to look new,
fresh, and crisp. Secondly, the site’s navigation bar at the top of the page is organized
well and makes finding where you need to go very simple. The headers make it clear
where clicking it will take you, and once you follow one, navigating to others is still
simple. The navigation bar also works well because the vast majority of the page is white,
but the bar is black with white font. This contrast makes the bar very noticeable without it
clashing with the design.
In conclusion, Apple has always kind of scared me. I find the way they have
created such a large cult following slightly worrisome, and I see their admittedly brilliant
marketing as subconsciously manipulative. I’ve never truly analyzed any of their
advertisements before this assignment, but just by watching their commercials and seeing
how they display themselves, I recognized that they were horrifyingly good at what they
did. After learning about basic graphic design and analyzing their website, however, I can
now at least pinpoint what makes their static visuals so pleasing to customers. I cannot,
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however, pinpoint what would make it pleasing enough to try and become Jason Bourne
when someone stole my phone, but to each his own, I suppose.
Works Cited
"Apple's Branding Strategy." Marketing Minds. Marketing Minds, n.d. Web. 24 Oct.
2015.
Branson-Potts, Hailey. "15-year-old Girl Killed Trying to Stop IPhone Robbery." LA
Times. Los Angeles Times, 8 July 2014. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.
Reilly, Nicholas. "Man Killed by Rollercoaster after Attempting to Retrieve IPhone."
Metro. Associated Newspapers Limited, 14 Aug. 2015. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.
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