Teaching everything we know

In the past 10 years, we’ve learnt a thing or two about running a creative business. We’ve succeeded at times, and at other times we’ve failed.

We’ve made some friends, and we’ve even burned some bridges, which have helped us light the way.

Yet, despite all the learnings and connections, rarely do we come across people willing to share their knowledge about how to ‘do’ good business. How to ‘do’ creativity and strategy — or how to blend the two together. Well.

In our industry, businesses can be quite secretive, holding their cards close to their chest, using the mystery of creativity to bargain the highest price and succeed over those pitted against them.

Until recently, we were one of them.

Every business works hard to build their client list, they have spent restless nights finding better ways to build and present brand strategy and win work. They’re not about to share their ideas and refined processes with some young up and comer or internal tier-one company design director.

We are.

Why? Because something changed. We realised something.

Design is open-source.

Design is not exclusive. It’s no longer about celebrated individuals but rather, teams of people coming together from a range of disciplines. Collaborating. Creating and shipping products and services.

Design has changed, and we have too.

Design isn’t simply about the aesthetic. It’s not a coat of paint or an afterthought. It’s about discovery and problem-solving, it’s about creating, and testing, and creating again. It’s about research and collaboration and improving products, services and communications.

It’s about how things work and how the ‘thing’ makes you feel.

It’s about doing things better than before.

According to the design value index, in 10 years, $10,000 invested in design-centric companies yielded returns 228% higher than the same investment in S&P.

This inspires us because we believe businesses can be a force for good, and we know that teaching them how to design better, means we’re helping create meaningful impact.

We can’t change much by delivering services and vanishing into a repeatable mouse-in-wheel working life. To be frank, this bores us.

But we can put a positive dent in the industry we work in and the organisations we work with by sharing our experience in brand strategy, design, digital and communications strategy and then vanishing — so we teach what we know to our clients and our industry alike. Ensuring that organisations can maintain and continually deliver on the value, and our industry skillset grows and thrives as well.

Yes, we are designers, but we’re also problem solvers who care about using design to make a positive difference in the world. Through technology, product development, service innovation, brand development and organisational change.

We want to help organisations embrace design and find better ways of working. Show them how to adopt human-centred design methods to better understand their customers. We want to teach designers to ask better questions and build the best teams.

But most importantly, we want to teach everything we know, so that we keep learning.

The moment we step into a workshop, or consulting session, we’re teaching and learning.

We learn empathy for how different people interact and understand, we learn about better methods of working within our own business and we learn how leaders lead.

But perhaps what’s most valuable is that from all the questions that are thrown at us, we learn about what we don’t yet know.

Lately, we’ve had the opportunity to work with a cross-cultural team to develop a better user experience for a digital information kiosk interface.

We’ve helped a hospital develop a level of self-awareness that has sent ripples of pride throughout their organisation and seen their narrative embraced by all levels of leadership.

We’ve run design thinking workshops with creative and corporate professionals, problem-solving organisational problems as well as career trajectories.

We’ve worked with other creative businesses and entrepreneurs to share our learnings from 20+ years in this industry through 1:1 consulting session, team sessions and online courses in strategy and creative leadership.

IBM CEO Thomas Watson Jr. once famously declared that “good design is good business.”

We’re in the business of good design.

I’m currently working as a Strategist at Tank and have a background in design education and design research.