Designers: Earn Your Seat at the Table

This essay was written for the Makers of Sport® newsletter in February 2016. Monday Musings and Weekend Reads were the written editions of the newsletter that accompanied the podcast; the archived email is on Mailchimp. The newsletter's links and announcements are trimmed here.

As creative people, we often get looped into groups, stereotypes and broad generalizations. The suits might see us as the weird art kids. In-housers might get viewed as "the creative one" when what is really meant might be, "oh you get to play all day, I can't believe we justified your salary somehow".

When many of us chose to be designers, we were most likely influenced by some artistic talent as a kid. We were one of the few that didn't move into some other discipline as we grew older or mistakenly believed that we weren't creative (for what it is worth, I believe all human beings are creative. It is just drummed out of us from any early age for some reason).

Because of not being understood or perhaps only being in an unfortunate position where our visual and software skills are used to execute more important people's ideas, designers are often looked down upon by executives and the powers-that-be within organizations.

This view against designers causes much bitterness within the design community. I am certainly not innocent (especially in my early twenties) for whining about not being respected by some corporate client or not having a seat at the table where the grownups..I mean...important decision makers are seated.

There is no question that there are executives and clients out there that do not respect what designers do. They don't understand the visual nature of branding, the subconscious messages being translated through layout hierarchy or typography's role in evoking a feeling and providing better readability. And because they don't value design as a profession, they will always be stuck with unprofessional designers, the ones that don't get it. The ones that want to make art and get paid for it.

But, I believe in addition both above, designers themselves have fanned the stereotype flames. As an industry, we tend to a bit whiny; complaining that we aren't respected. Many of us though are literally executing graphic-for-graphic, layout-for-layout other people's ideas without providing any real value from an input perspective other than stating our ideas are better because we are trained designers or we should be trusted because we are the designer. The problem is, everyone has ideas—good and bad. And everyone can make a subjective judgement on a visual piece. It's what you do with ideas and how you can justify visual work from a business perspective that will set you apart as a designer.

Historically and even today, the greatest designers in the world recognized that design is a valuable business asset. It is more than creating subjective "art" for a client or project, but rather it is a strategic method of communicating clearly and providing a recognizable face or experience for an organization or product.

Why do people buy the same products on the shelf at the grocery store? It's because they have developed a relationship with a brand and its packaging or logo are translating who that brand is in a visual style. It becomes familiar and recognizable.

The greatest organizations in the world have design at their core as I've discussed before, but the highest level of designers that have seats at the decision-making table realize that their ability to make something visually appealing in Photoshop is not what distinguishes them from the rest of the designers in the world. Rather, it's their ability to solve problems creatively from a business angle that have gotten them to the top.

The late Steve Jobs didn't invent computers or even the graphical user interface. In fact, I'm not sure anything Apple has ever created is truly "original" from a product perspective; but, what Jobs had that companies like Dell and Microsoft didn't have was an ability to think differently and create based on intuition, as well as an uncanny ability to provide both aesthetically pleasing and easy to use experiences. This type of thinking is what sets Apple apart—the fact that they think about every single touchpoint of the brand from the packaging, to the physical shopping experience, to the actual user experience of the product itself. This type of thinking is systems thinking. It is design thinking.

Tim Brown, CEO of world-renown experience design firm IDEO, states in his book [Change by Design](https://www.ideo.com/by-ideo/change-by-design?cbd): the best designers match necessity to utility, constraint to possibility, and need to demand. These design thinkers rely on rigorous observations of how we use spaces and the objects and services that occupy them; they discover patterns where others see complexity and confusion; they synthesize new ideas from seemingly disparate fragments; and they convert problems into opportunities.

Sure designers should be able to execute visual work in the proper software using design fundamentals such as composition, color theory and typography, but in order to truly earn a seat the table, designers need to be able to prove that they understand business and can provide ideas or create systems that solve real problems. Having this understanding, as well as the ability to execute design, makes for more than just a service provider doing exactly what others say, but a valuable and trusted asset to an organization.

One of my favorite lines from the recent Steve Jobs biopic by Aaron Sorkin: "Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra." If you want to get a seat the table in the world of business as a designer, learn to be more than a musician, learn to play the orchestra. Learn to use your design talents to shape where organizations, products and people can go. Don't just be someone's leashed Photoshopped, learn to identify patterns in complexity and to convert business problems into opportunities. Then not only will you be asked to sit at the table, you may be asked to sit next to the head of the table.

Have a great week, y'all.

Cheers,

Adam