Is Good Design Good For Business?

An essay series by Josh Ward.

For our Design and Technology course at the Glasgow School of Art we have to prepare a Pecha Kucha presentation (20 slides for 20 seconds each) on a chosen topic.

We must work on a topic where we believe creative thinking and design can make a difference, and so I have looked into the world of business. Considering the question: is good design good for business? I wanted to research this for a couple of reasons:

1. First there is the tension between products that are the best for the user, and products that are best for the shareholders. Does that have to be so? Must we choose between good profits and good products? If not I wanted to find out how.
2. I was also interested in how the structures within companies themselves can be designed in order to best facilitate good creative processes, and therefore make the business more succesful.

All of my thoughts recorded on this blog from the Design & Technology classes have been useful for creating my presentation, but collected below is specific research and thoughts from which I directly compiled my presentation.

But before we start, there are a number of books, articles, radio shows and podcasts that have helped me form my own opinions on this topic. I would like to give special mention to a few of these. Every chapter of Don Norman’s ‘The Design of Everyday Things’ is excellent, but it has a really useful chapter on Design in the World of Business which covers a lot of the practical challenges and difficulties designers face when having to work in the business world. Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery’s ‘Design matters: How great design will make people love your company’ has been hugely helpful in showing how design cannot be allowed to stop at the product but considered in every area of your business. And last but certainly not least: Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc., which is a book I think everyone should read. It gives a wonderful insight into what it takes to build a successful creative organisation from a person who has done exactly that with Pixar.

Hello Moto, Goodbye Moto.

Racing the Zeitgeist: the pressures competition puts on good design.

Why do businesses design things badly on purpose?

As designers we are underselling ourselves.

This essay series is part of a project for a class called Design & Technology at the Glasgow School of Art, helping us to explore how design and creative thinking can make a difference in the world.