Why I Think Every Designer Should Learn About Business

When I decided to move to the US to study design, I didn’t realize how important my business skills were going to be. In the last few years, as designers started proving how powerful design can be in different companies, the demands on us (designers) started being much broader too. To be effective, designers need to get out of the studios and more fully engage with the people they’re designing for and the organization where they’re doing it.

For many entrepreneurs, having a business idea is not an issue, but selling it is. An amazing product is not a business unless somebody wants to buy it. This week, our team had to show our revenue plan. We spent many weeks working on creating a product that solved a problem, but we didn’t have a clear idea of who was our customer and how we were going to get to them. Our product was finally successful, but like many other entrepreneurs who have not bee funded yet, we didn’t have a solid plan for generating revenue to turn this idea into a business — a big mistake you want to avoid if you’re pitching to a VC. But this is a business problem, not a design problem.

Learning how the business world works, how to be noticed by others, and how to better communicate your ideas is key when you’re making business deals. By preparing yourself for the business world, you’re also working on your ability to effectively communicate across disciplines, which is critical for a designer to influence and have impact in others. Often the language of design is very different from the language of business, and the more you know about these two the less mistakes you will make when turning your product idea into a real and competitive business.

Our team realized that our focus now is not on the product anymore, but in paying sufficient attention to the legal, marketing, and other aspects of the company—specially economics and financials. Business is not all about the product, ultimately it’s about customers. Our job as designers is also to build credibility that can be cashed in to start our business (investors) and to keep offering value to our users (customers.)