Holston - The strategic designer : tools and techniques for managing the design process

Several years ago, over dinner with a mentor, I brought up the perennially difficult question of explaining to someone what we designers do for a living. How does one possibly explain design to someone unfamiliar with the discipline, without getting bogged down in an exhaustive, self-referential exercise in futility?

He laughed and began moving his silverware around. He caused his knife to trade places with his fork, then after a moments consideration, returned them to their original positions. He slid his fork a half-inch to his left, then a few nudges north. He straightened his spoon to run exactly parallel to his knife and fork. He moved his water glass a bit to his left, to left-align it precisely with his knife. This, he suggested, is what we do.

In essence, as designers, this IS what we do. We move things about. We consider new combinations, new possibilities. We align one thing with another. We create physical (and psychological, and metaphorical) relationships. We consider size, weight, space, proportion, materiality and so forth. We utilize, knowingly or not, design author Robin Williamss catchy list of principles: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity. We constantly add to the worlds landfills while struggling to improve our visual environments. We do much, in fact, to order, organize, reinterpret, shape and communicate ideas, information and space.

Yet, we continue to struggle to communicate what exactly we do, and why it is of value and significance. In particular, we struggle to communicate the value of design to the business community. Our professional organization, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, has devoted many hours and resources over the past several years to address just this. Yet too often, designers perceive business as fundamentally foreign to our way of thinking, while business leaders are often reluctant to credit the role design plays in their own success. We can hardly fail to acknowledge each others presence, yet we often find ourselves without a clue as to how to join forces, how to find common ground and share notes. Business we tend to think of as a left-brain activity, while certainly design belongs to the right. Yet, we need both sides, working together, to function effectively. Designers stand to benefit immensely from strengthening their business acumen, while business people only increase their chances of success by thinking more like designers.

How then, to bring both sides together, to build bridges, to encourage a mutually beneficial dialogue and collaboration? It just so happens we share a language. That language is process, as Dave Holston makes clear in the pages that follow. Both designers and business people have their own ways of doing things, particular processes and procedures for solving problems and achieving results. Yet, we share many principles in common.

In both the worlds of business and design, as in many other walks of life, repetition is a key element of success. What distinguishes the professional from the amateur, first and foremost, are degrees of skill, discipline, and experience that enable someone to repeat a process as a means of obtaining a desired result, again and again. In areas of practice such as business, medicine and food preparation, repetition and predictability are essential. Creativity and experimentation are perhaps emphasized more strongly and more often in the field of design, yet here, too, on closer inspection, we see the importance of repetition and process. Here, too, we can see the essential role that process and repetition play in producing success.