Strategy

Develop a winning position for your studio

A position is a simple, credible story that can be summarized in one or two key words. It forms the basis of your design value proposition. It’s about owning a big idea in your marketplace. The most successful and best recognised companies have strong business positioning. Volvo owning 'safety' and Nike owning 'performance' illustrate this idea.  Read more...

Want new business? Get out of the building

If you’ve set up a design studio and you’re actively seeking new business with clients by selling them on the value of design, then you're a design entrepreneur.  Read more...

Five steps to better client relationships

Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman developed the Buy-Sell Hierarchy, and explained it in their 2005 book, 'The New Successful Large Account Management'.

I have adapted the model to help design studios assess how their clients view them as a supplier. I explain this tool in the Building a business model for your studio workshop.  Read more...

Why marketers need designers

It’s amazing how many issues are common across studios of all sizes and locations. One of the consistent issues is that marketers don’t take designers seriously.   Read more...

32 ways to explain design value

More than 20 years ago we began doing design audits. We kicked off with a major project for an Australia wide hardware chain. The brief from the CEO was that we had to present something that was not too ‘arty farty’ because the store owners and the management were more about business than ‘arty farty stuff’.    Read more...

99designs is great for the design industry

I've spent a lot of time thinking about where our industry has come from and where it’s going. I wanted to offer a solution to the problem that seems to be dramatically changing the industry – I see this as the growth of transactional design.   Read more...

Empathy mapping: put yourself in your clients’ shoes

I think that the best way to convince a client about the value of design is to first understand what it is that motivates that client. This is where I use an empathy map. Read more...

Focus on measuring the benefit of design

The Design Ladder was developed by the Danish Design Centre (DDC) in 2003 as a tool to measure the level of design activity in Danish businesses. Read more...

Explaining your value-add services

A few months ago I was invited to present to a group of ten design firms that had been granted funding to rethink their business. The studio owners were at a weekend intensive program with a host of business experts.  Read more...

What strategy is (and isn’t)

There is a growing trend for designers to add strategy as one of their services. There are many ways that designers define strategy and this allows them to make the claim. Read more...

Selling design strategy to clients

I have been developing series of workshops on design and strategy as a follow-on from The business of design publication. This has lead me to examine more closely what it is that we do when we claim to use design as part of our client’s business strategy. Read more...

So what is design integration?

Last year I attended a seminar on design integration. Some of my colleagues think that this is a term that is only used and understood in academic and government circles.  Read more...