It seems every other week, a web designer tells me the jig is up, my days as a print designer are numbered. Didn't you hear? About this thing called the internets? It's going to make print design obsolete. Some days, amid facebook and twitter and the increasing amount of time I spend online, I worry they're right.
We buy books from Amazon, music from iTunes and everything else on eBay – all without once speaking to another human being. We entrust our identities and finances to brands; PayPal has our credit cards, Google our email and Facebook our personal information. No eye contact, no handshake – it’s a bit flaky sometimes but we still trust.
So what does this have to do with design? Actually, as it turns out, quite a bit.
The entrepreneur who picks a logo off the shelf to use, solely because it appeals to himself or herself, is more likely to fail in business than the entrepreneur that engages in a full design process. This isn't just because self-reflection can sometimes be a smokey mirror. A full design process can be defined many ways, but for this post, lets say it is is one with research, symmetrical communication between the organization and its stakeholders, and sound design thinking with evaluation. Designers know the value of the design - but how can this value be articulated and understood by those outside of the industry? How do you define the value of design?
