The astute, and somewhat absent, author of this blog will be appearing tomorrow at the First Annual Portfolio Workshop/Student Professional Day at the offices of Gannet/USA Today in McClean, Virginia. Besides lending his own views on the profession that is design, he will be moderating the morning photography breakout session. More information about the event can be found at the Focus on Design web site.

and this one, takes a modern approach contrasted with a classic serif typeface.

Now, we'll wait and see which way the client wants to go.

Above is the old Dannon packaging. And below is the new 'yogurt' package, next to the old one which had more blue and less brightness.

While it may be hard to judge here, I honestly believe the original packaging was stronger on the shelf. I find the packaging with more white seems to get lost, hard to find, even if I know exactly where to look.

Now with any identity change, it's really difficult to critique accurately without the creative brief. I've got no idea what research, if any, drove these changes. And in some ways, while I prefer a smily face to a overdone swoosh, this smile comes with questions. And it's positioning with the white space above it is a bit visually disconcerting. And I'm not even sure the new type treatment is much better than the old. But maybe it's just that smiles are becoming the next design trend and we should all keep an eye out.

In his NYT Op-Ed today, Nicholas Kristof expands beyond this one story to really reach to the heart of the matter. A matter that should be on the agenda of next month's meeting between Mr. Bush and General Musharraf of Pakistan. (You know him, he leads our so-called partner against terrorism. )

So rather than spend more time reading about the everyday mundane workings of middle-class America, take a look at what's going on outside our borders. Add your voice to the cause and hope that maybe, just maybe, the chorus will be loud enough to make change happen.

And it is a great cause, if you are in the neighborhood.

Having spent the last six and a half years working in-house for financial services companies, I have seen many sides of the relationship between design and American management. One things that’s clear is that management sees design as a service rather than a collaborator to the business process, thus the value of design is frequently discounted. (If you are, in terms of the P&L, just an expense you’re not valuable). Too often I’ve been told it isn’t important for design to be in initial marketing project meetings with a client. Important enough for the writer to be there but not a designer? As I don’t agree with this at all, I’ve had to push my way into these meetings and, personally, I’m a little exhausted from what’s become essentially a solo effort.

When I started with my current firm, design was considered an important part of our business strategy. There was a sound business rationale provided any time our team pushed beyond the “given standards” and developed solutions more applicable to the needs of our business line and its goals. The key was that this relationship was with our branding group in London. While I haven’t measured the ROI of our efforts, circumventing the perceived design illiteracy of American management proved a worthy effort. The most rewarding example was our divisions’ pocket folder redesign.

The comp was sent to London for approval. The approver of materials was about to reject it (for being out of standards despite our business rationale) when the global head of branding saw it, read our rationale and thought it worked and approved it for us. More importantly, our team no longer had to send London our designs for approval. We had earned their respect as designers who understood the needs of the business and could be expected to create work that met those needs.

When I moved to the institutional channel (my retail team was wiped out by a merger), things changed. London was out of the picture and all the decision makers were US executives. I had to become not only a design educator to upper management, including our head of marketing, but even to my own boss. My mission to “sell” the power of design internally has been a two-year project.

A couple of weeks ago the ignorance of design(ers) in corporate America once again made itself apparent. A headhunter contacted me about a ‘marketing’ position with a major US mutual fund company; the position would oversee the creative efforts and coordinate with sales in a specific sales channel. Based on my experience in the financial services industry, the headhunter told me I was a great candidate for the job. The outcome was the hiring managers didn’t feel I was “senior” enough, which the headhunter put as “your resume is all design.” Peter Phillips, of the Design Management Institute, pointed out the thinking of American management when he wrote, “hearing from the non-design managers, who said they did not understand design well and therefore did not value it.”(1)

Even as ‘Design’ has been pushed into the American conscious, or at least the mainstream media, with articles in Business Week, Fast Company and Time, the many of corporate America’s management does not value the role of design in their organizations. (It is interesting to note that most of these articles or special issues rarely mention graphic design.) And I’m not sure this will change soon. Kathleen Formosa, of the New School, and Steven Kroter, former Chair, Design and Management Department at Parsons School of Design, researched how future business leaders were being educated in terms of the role of design in business. The y found that “According to our recent review of top-tier American MBA programs we found that not a single one addressed or incorporated design into its curricula in any significant way. Even in those programs focused on marketing and branding, curricular attention to the principles or theories of design is cursory, at best. We view the result of this omission to be an epidemic of design illiteracy in the ranks of mid- and upper-level (sic: management).”(2)

But it was not always this way in American business. Recently Design Observer wrote a post about a time when large corporations encouraged and supported the use of design. In 1946. Walter Paepcke, the then CEO of Container Corporation of America (CCA), wrote:

“[A]rtists and businessmen, today as formerly, fundamentally have much in common and can contribute the more to society as they come to complement their talents…It should be made easy, remunerative and agreeable for the artist to ‘function in society not as a decorator but as a vital participant.’ The artist and the businessman should cultivate every opportunity to teach and supplement one another, to cooperate with one another, just as the nations of the world must do.”

Thirty-one years later, Walter Hoving, then chairman of Tiffany & Co., attempted to bring the most influential designers, business leaders, and educators of that era to an understanding of their interdependence. His vision of design was that while it may not be obvious, design had a direct impact on a corporation’s bottom line. In order to further this vision, he organized a lecture series at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. It was his hope that this series would “serve as an inspiration for business leaders, students and all of us concerned with promoting the highest standards of excellence.”

What has led to the negative change in the attitude of business leaders in terms of the value of design? How did we get from the Paepcke’s and Hoving’s of the 20th century to today’s brand sensitive but design ignorant business leaders? Clearly there are firms that value design, including Tiffany, Apple, Nike, Target and others. But why do they seem to be in the minority? Have we as designers failed to build the case for the value of design in the top-floor offices of corporate America? Is there an inherent problem with understanding design and its value in the minds of American executives? And if there was a more thorough understanding of the power of design in the past, what happened? How did the “knowing what design does” become such a mystery to American management?

These are problems that we all face. We need to find a way to solve them and raise design’s standing in mind of American management. And that’s what we do best, solve problems and deliver solutions. Here are some suggestions to get things started:
Have clients complete design briefs. This allows them to appreciate the process of design and realize it’s not a case of, “let’s jump on the computer and see what happens.”

Use the brief to tune designers into the business goals of a project. And make sure that presentations are in the language of business and not design-speak.

Spread the word of successes outside one’s immediate group.

Ban the word “like”. Present solutions in terms of the goals setout in the brief and that the solutions work in terms of the needs of the business.

Utilize a charge-back system, which brings something to the table that all business people understand: monetary value. (I have not always been a fan of this but I am beginning to feel that design costing something and viewing design as something of value, are intrinsically linked. Of course, the quality has to be there too.)

Finally, and most importantly, the name of our department does not contain the word “Art”. We are called the Strategic Design Group and we work to remind every time we can that, without design, most corporation’s aren’t much different than their competition.

Notes:

1. “Lessons from the Trenches: Insights from Design Management Seminars,” Peter Phillips, Design Management Journal, Summer 2002

2. “Toward Design Literacy in American Management: A Strategy for MBA Programss,” Kathleen Formosa and Steven Kroeter, Design Management Journal, Summer 2002

The magazine's core audience will be graphic design professionals and web developers. It hopes to be both an educational and entertaining resource for anyone in the field. It will feature case studies to tutorials to share with designers of all skill levels. Regular features will cover common issues and solutions that designers and developers run across daily. The publication will also keep you up-to-date on the latest trends, technology and software issues. All of this in a professionally produced, accessible PDF.

The magazine will be published quarterly and you can subscribe here.

Design InFlight encourages it's readers to submit articles, tutorials and artwork to the publication. The guidelines can be found at the link above.

So, try it out. It looks pretty cool and for just $10 bucks for a year, there isn't a better bargain out there.