“Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.”—John B.L. Soule

In 1851, Indiana newspaper writer John Soule’s advice became the mantra of discovery and prosperity among nineteenth-century Americans. Go forward and seek opportunity. Go West. Surely an exciting time to pioneer, much of the West was uncharted, with vast stretches of unclaimed territory.

The business of design now enjoys a similar window of opportunity, for designers to stake their claim and fortune.

Throughout the economy, brand design firms are helping clients explore areas of market growth and opportunity. Innovative products and preferred services are being defined and developed by the principles of design—concentrating value in the time consumers spend with a brand through the user-centered balance of form, fit and function. From the smart form factor of OXO kitchen products, to the delightful simplicity of Netflix, to oversized viewing windows on the new Boeing 787, design has become a driving force of business.

Consumers generally have enough “stuff,” they simply don’t have enough time. Design is fundamentally about concentrating value in time—making experiences more pleasing, intuitive, delightful and efficient. Consumers have immensely rewarded companies whose design of products and services respect the quality of time they spend interacting.

As with the pioneers of the American West, the new frontier of design will reward those with multiple skills, resolve and resourcefulness.

While design has become more important to business, business has become more adept at design. Rising above the semi-private reserve of visual artists, our broadening field is attracting accomplished engineers, developers, modelers, strategists, technicians and marketers, coupling business and design disciplines to imagine new things in new ways.

Faced with the need to differentiate their brands, business leaders have become more empathetic to users of their products and services. With mounting competitive pressure, design is a means to distinguish the products and services that drive revenues, margin and growth.

Within leading companies, gross margin is considered a team sport—and every division is being asked to play. For greater numbers of companies, design has been rotated into the starting offense. Look around: Samsung. Caterpillar. Philips. Steelcase. Callison. International Trucks. Puma. As a consequence, designers are asked to adopt the playbook of business, the rigor of strategy, the role of research and accountability for performance.

Unfortunately, while business has quickened its adoption of design, quite a few designers remain somewhat cool to business. In fact, business schools appear to be teaching design faster than design schools are teaching business.

Many old-guard defenders of the trade regard design primarily as a set of skills—something scarce and precious that has to be conserved and protected. At the same time, the abundance of graphic design graduates has seemingly made beautiful the new average, and turned visual executions of “luxury” into lazy, aesthetic clichés.

Design must be viewed in a context broader than its artifacts, as the concerns of design—including perspective, user-centrism, empathy, elegance, simplicity and disruptive thinking—help businesses challenge the conventions that keep their brands stiflingly the same. Only by framing design in the context of its contribution to business can we avoid having design become further commoditized.

This means design can’t settle on its traditions. Design can’t simply stay put. Design must get up and move.

Moving “northwest”
From global advertising agencies to small design shops, the pathway to a creative engagement with clients is well rutted:

• The client develops a brand strategy—the promise of value and the difference it will make to the market.

• A business plan is developed, aligning the human, financial and physical resources around the execution of that promise.

• A brand concept is developed, what Seattle-based art director Frank Clark calls “a governing principle and plan for expressing a strategy, using words and images in an engaging or inspiring way.”

• A design, the creative articulation of that concept, is developed.

• Design management practices and visual standards are adopted, assuring the consistent execution of the creative.

• Design devolves to production, assuring materials meet required specifications, for time, cost and quality.

• Design is distributed, through printed materials, built environments and electronic media.

When placed in sequential order, we see that the upstream has traditionally been the domain of the business “suits,” and downstream, the domain of "creatives."

As design has become a pillar of business strategy, design factors are being considered well before the traditional starting-point for a creative project. Business-minded clients have become more interested in design, therefore more involved, and will continue to have an increasing influence on the conditions in the middle. In fact, most upstream innovations in business today stem from “design thinking,” even though many of the people doing it have never been identified as “designers.”

For designers willing to embrace this shift, that’s a very good thing.