Mad Men, RIP

No spoiler alerts here. Just grabbing an opportunity to shamelessly piggyback on the series finale of Mad Men, one of the most popular TV shows of recent years. It was a series that chronicled the changes in the world and in human relationships through the lens of advertising agencies in the middle part of the last century.

It also painted such a vivid picture of the past of advertising that it brought the present of advertising into sharper focus.

The advertising world of the early Don Draper era was dominated by men, yes, but also by a lot of client-focused strategy and messaging, where design and the thinking that underlies it were more of an afterthought. Indeed, copywriters often created the ads and "slipped them under the door" to designers to make them pretty. It was an industry in its infancy, or at least its toddlerhood, still figuring out what all its extremities were for.

Then came Bill Bernbach and the creative revolution he helped usher in. Suddenly, design was not an afterthought at all but an equal partner in the creative process. The concept of creative teams gained credence, with copywriters and art directors working together to craft advertising that was more visual -- even if copy dominant -- and that managed to be both smarter and more entertaining than the advertising of the earlier eras.

Fast forward to today, and we see the effects of another shift. In the last 10 years or so, we have moved rapidly into the age of design. Far from an afterthought and not even any longer just an equal partner, design today increasingly takes a leading role.

And that's great for consumers. Design has always been concerned first and foremost with the experience of the person on the other end -- with the intersection of form and function. It's been rooted in observance of and respect for human interaction. How do people actually use the product or service? How does their experience shape how they feel about the brand? What is that experience actually like? By focusing on questions like these, advertising that is centered on design thinking is almost invariably more relevant.

A bit of an alien world to Don Draper. But one ideally suited to all of the rest of us.