Design Is More Than Packaging - The New York Times

One of the hardest things to convince clients of is that design is more
than just the pretty skin that is draped over a solution at the end to
make it look pretty. It is more than make-up or aesthetics. Design for
me, is a modus operandi, it is an attitude to problem solving that not
just compliments the scientific approach but it also
fuels the process. "Making it pretty" is not design, never was, never
will be. It's merely putting lipstick on a pig. Making it pretty is the
polar opposite to design thinking.


The first place I learnt design thinking was at the Caribbean School of Architecture. That way of thought is the most valuable skill I have in my lil' arsenal.


not Photoshop,

not Illustrator,

not Indesign or any other program that I know how to use.


The critical thought required to creatively solve a problem or to
deliver new ideas takes a whole lot more than pushing pixels. Disecting
a brief, distilling the elements and desiging an appropriate response
begins long before I fire up my tool of choice on the computer. The NY
Times article makes excellent points on the design thinking approach and
it's place in the workplace. Good to see that this is finally, truly,
hitting the main stream media.


Unboxed - Design Is More Than Packaging - NYTimes.com

“Design thinking is inherently about creating new choices, about divergence,” says Tim Brown, the chief executive and president of the design consulting firm IDEO, based in Palo Alto, Calif. “Most business processes are about making choices from a set of existing alternatives. Clearly, if all your competition is doing the same, then differentiation is tough. In order to innovate, we have to have new alternatives and new solutions to problems, and that is what design can do.”