Beauty is good business. ✎ By Wayne K. Spear

Yesterday I had a business meeting with Apple. On my way to the meeting, I rode the subway next to a woman who was reading the Bible on her iPad.

There are bibles on iPads, but no iPads in the Bible.

If Jesus had known about iPads, he would have used them as metaphors, because they are integral to our lives. There would be at least one good apple story that didn’t involve a serpent.

An iPad is the size of a sheet of paper, a magazine, and a human face. It’s light and sleek and beautiful. It’s aesthetically pleasing, to the eye and to the touch.

Apple didn’t invent the tablet. Years earlier, when it was first introduced, people mocked and ridiculed the idea of a keyboard-less computer.

The tablet was not a laptop, or a Palm Pilot, or a Pocket PC, or a BlackBerry. So the experts scoffed.

When Apple introduced its tablet, they scoffed again.

And then they tried it, and the scoffing stopped.

Whatever your product, your service, your labor, or your mission, aesthetics matter. Bernadette Jiwa says that “marketing is, and always has been, a transfer of emotion. It’s about changing how people feel and, in turn, helping them to fall in love with something.”

How do you make someone fall in love with something?

By seducing them with beauty, poetry, thoughtful design, attention to detail, excellence.

What does your customer feel in the presence of your product? How thoroughly have you thought through the experience of your client, from the moment before they have even opened the door?

Remember: we judge books by covers. That’s why I hire pros to design them.

Apple has created an aesthetic and applied it to every detail of every interaction. The simple and sleek brushed-chrome-and-white surfaces of their boardroom look like an iPad.

Seduce your audience with beauty. Make them fall in love with something. Until you have, your work is unfinished.