The Power of Design

AUTHOR STEVE BANNISTER

Article 6 in a Series of 6
In the January 2007 issue, Steve Bannister provided an overview of five key trends that will affect people and businesses in the year ahead. These trends were: Global Greening, The Flow of Philanthropy, Connecting the World, Information vs. Knowledge, and The Power of Design.

In this issue, Steve talks about the role of design in everyday living.

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Many people tend to think of design simply in terms of ideas such as high fashion, architecture and the visual arts. However, design goes far beyond these concepts to permeate everyone’s daily lives.

“Design does not just mean the aesthetic, a finishing touch to make something look better. Rather it’s about design-led thinking–a more complex, collaborative and integrated approach to producing the very best products and services with a meaningful point of difference.” ~ www.betterbydesign.org.nz

Design is evident in everything we do: It is essential in such things as building our homes, creating our modes of transportation and developing efficient means of communication. John Heskett, a Professor of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, demonstrates the versatility of the word “design” by frequently using the following sentence in his presentations:

“Design is to design a design to produce a design.”

Successful companies looking to differentiate themselves from the competition seriously address each of these levels of design.

The Designing Trend

This article is the last of a series of five trend-setting articles, which focused on Global Greening, Philanthropy, Web 2.0 and Information vs. Knowledge. It is fitting that the last of these articles relates to the one topic that envelops all of the other four; namely design. Design has greatly affected each of the aforementioned topics in the following manner:

Global Greening: The combination of a universal desire to save the planet and the advancement of technology to aid in this endeavour has precipitated a huge number of environmental design initiatives.

Philanthropy: Giving, with the aid of technology, has never been easier. Designing the interfaces for this to occur has never been more important.

Web 2.0: The social-networking boom has created a do-it-yourself design phenomenon. Everyone is a photographer, graphic artist, published author, etc. and everyone has a direct and immediate (and sometimes powerful) say in how companies design their products and services (via blogs, MySpace, Second Life, Facebook, etc.).

Information vs. Knowledge: It only makes sense that design plays a crucial role in the attainment and dissemination of information.