FIELD NOTES / FOLLOW THE CHOCOLATE
It starts with a wrapper.
A piece of chocolate lands on Lawrence’s desk. Most people would eat it. He studies the wrapper, photographs the colours and announces that this is going to take longer than expected.
The episode begins with an ordinary design observation: packaging is full of decisions about what we notice and how we feel. Colours, textures and familiar shapes can do a lot of work before we have read a single word.
Enter the cat.
A cat appears on the investigation board. The route from the chocolate to the cat is not a straight line. It involves visual associations, an increasingly elaborate diagram and a host who treats every objection as a request for more string.
The fun is in watching the argument gather confidence faster than it gathers evidence. A resemblance becomes a pattern. A pattern becomes an agenda. The cat remains unavailable for comment.
“Look, I’m just asking questions.”LAWRENCE / DESIGN CONSPIRATORS
A palette is not a confession.
The sober version of the story is about how easily a visual connection can feel like an explanation. Designers are particularly good at noticing patterns. Sometimes they are also particularly good at making a convincing slide about them.
This fictional investigation does not establish a hidden plan by any brand. It turns that familiar leap—from “these things look alike” to “these things must be connected”—into a very overcommitted performance.
The evidence is delicious.
Lawrence leaves us with an expanded board, a narrower definition of coincidence and a chocolate bar that is no longer where he left it.
There is a perfectly ordinary explanation for that, too. We are choosing not to investigate it.
Design Conspirators is a satirical series by Designshot. Lawrence’s investigations are fictional. These field notes accompany a preview episode.
