What is your brand image?
This weekend I decided to catch up on my geek news and watch the co-interview of Steven Jobs and Bill Gates. With in the first few minutes of the video I realized just how each of these men’s companies is the personification of the respective founder. Bill Gates is completely nerdy, he looks like a nerd, walks like a nerd and really talks like a nerd. By nerd I mean you can see his social awkwardness and udder lack of “cool.” Windows has struggled with this for a long time. Jobs on the other hand was smooth, elegant, and well constructed. This falls in line with the general publics view of Apple.
What if we extend this thought process of the product being a personification of the founder to Linux? Will it hold true?
I think it does. Linux is created by thousands of people, from thousands of cultures. Some are nerds and others are collected and smooth. The beauty is when you get to know Linux you can see that it is much the same way. It allows each user to easily make it there own, thus fitting to anyone and everyone. Some of the products on Linux are really nerdy and lack elegance. Others are extremely well designed and constructed.
Now perhaps this idea should extend to one more place. If you had a company/product and this idea where to hold true for you. What would your product/companies image be like? What would be your user experience?