We are in the throes of the Design in Business Week. Do you think this event-driven approach is a good way of promoting design to clients and how might you make it more potent?
‘This kind of event provides a very nice social gathering without an iota of success because the word ‘design’ is too generic, it covers all aspects of life and nothing at the same time. The businessman likes to know how to improve the design of the tool machine to increase profit or some other practical delivery. Until we home in on this kind of reality, we are all wasting our time under the name of “design”.’
Marcello Minale, Partner, Minale Tattersfield & Partners
‘At Tayburn, we have always tried to introduce design to business as an important part of the marketing mix, so I applaud any activity which promotes creativity. It is a worthy effort and one that perhaps needs more attention. It also benefits hugely from “leaders” in their fields as speakers – there is nothing like success to breed imitation.’
Simon Norris, Managing Director, Tayburn Design
‘In his book, Anglomania, Ian Burma identifies “Britishness” with commerce and trade. This characteristic remains in evidence when the promotion of design becomes a Government thing, subsumed into a profit and loss context. Design is fast becoming the whore of business, pimped by Government and carried to the bed chamber by a bustling phalanx of well meaning Design in Business type promotions. But oh, how I yearn for what we do to represent something in our national life more meaningful than simply the hand maiden of business. Surely design must be concerned with more than business? Isn’t it also about a nation’s cultural temperature and how we frame a view of ourselves as designers and citizens?’
Rodney Fitch, Chairman, Rodney Fitch & Co
‘It’s 27 October, day one of Design in Business Week. How do I know this? Because Design Week asked me to write this piece. Some of you will know that Circus is full of business animals and creative animals; you’d think we’d have heard something about it. That nobody here had perhaps illustrates how the speech/ debate/ forum model can pass people by who spend their waking hours actually in the design-meets-business trenches.’
Tim O’Kennedy, Partner, Circus
- Design disciplines in this article
- Industries in this article
