Design Matters

The June edition of Fast Company has some excellent articles on the "Masters of Design".
You'll have to buy the magazine to read all the articles, but the TOC can be found here.

Business and "news" magazines don't usually devote much space to Design, so it was a nice surprise to see it as a central theme. As companies look for more ways to differentiate themselves, they are finally starting to come around on the importance of Design and "thinking like designers" in running their businesses and creating products and services.

I was at that particular AIGA conference referenced in the opening paragraph in their write-up and it was a meeting that left some people wondering if design and "designing" could save business while saving itself. I won't go into all the details, but it appeared that design was turning the corner. The message they were delivering was that designers do more than just make things look good and should be getting involved in "serious" projects and making a difference.

The importance of design, whether it be industrial, graphic or any other, is the effect on the final product. With knowledgeable designers included earlier in the process (the beginning is a nice place to start), success is more likely than just handing someone a design spec to follow (this goes for other types of "non-business" contributors also).

I hope we see more emphasis placed on the difference design can make as more companies elevate it out of the basement and into the boardroom.