Why Design is Important for your Business
Design is an important part of any business. A business without design is like a doctor without a lab coat. Without design, a business doesn’t have a visual and practical backbone. When you think about design in business the first thing you think of is logos and branding but in reality, design can be present in many other aspects of a business.
To put it simply, there are two facets of design in any business;
- What consumers see.
- What consumers don’t see.
The design aspects that consumers see are:
- Logo and branding
- Visual marketing
- Packaging
- Advertising
- Website
- Printed materials (business cards, brochures, flyers)
The design aspects that consumers don’t see are:
- Sales and Performance programs
- Accounting systems
- Human Resource systems
- Offices
- Employee incentives
What consumers see
First let’s discuss why having a designed visual brand is important for your business. When your product or service is branded in a concise and appropriate way to reach and connect with your consumer, your sales and reputation will soar. If you sell products, there must be some sense of design when producing it, even if it is handmade soap. The difference between a brown squished ball in an ugly box and a colorful marbled slice of soap in a cellophane vacuum sealed package is abysmal.
Packaging depends greatly on design!
Let’s say we put the same amazing Ayurvedic shampoo in two different bottles. One is a boring white bottle with a flip top and a badly designed label that doesn’t appeal to anyone, the other is a clear bottle with a metal screw top and the label is beautifully designed with a gorgeous font and clear graphics of the ingredients in the shampoo.
Which would you choose if you didn’t know they were the same product?
Would you pay more for the well-designed bottle? Of course you would.
If you offer services and your clients find you online, the design of your website is crucial to your success. The development of the site and the user experience must have a clear design to fully immerse your client in the information and want to contact you immediately. Everything about your website should work, and for that to happen, design has to be involved.
What consumers don’t see
Design inside a business might be a bit of a confusing idea for an entrepreneur or big company that has no experience with design thinking or workplace efficiency design. Nevertheless, design should be present in many aspects of the business that consumers don’t see. Design is what makes the accounting programs work smoothly, design is what makes Human Resources processes more effective.
The programs and systems that businesses use were designed to be effective and practical. If a business skimps on using well designed programs, systems and interfaces; then processes could be slow, time consuming and less than perfect. A sales and performance platform that has been designed to help companies keep track of sales activities for each partner in the team will always be more productive than a simple spreadsheet or a physical notebook with tabs. Programs like Level Eleven used design to solve usual business and sales problems and save precious time.
Other in-house aspects where design can be incorporated are the way the office looks and functions. How the teams are organized in a well designed space leads to more productive environment. Even the conference rooms can be designed for better concentration. For example by having the right color lights, providing comfortable but not “too comfortable” chairs, by having a table with accessible outlets for all the laptops and a large screen that can be seen by everyone in the room.
Employee incentives like sweatshirts and coffee mugs can be designed in a way that employees will be proud to use and wear, not only in the office but out as well.
Design Thinking
A practical and productive way to incorporate design into your business is to switch from business thinking and move towards design thinking. Companies like Apple and Google have been using Design Thinking to solve all sorts of problems and in all aspects of their companies. Design Thinking can be applied to product production, employee disputes, delivery system complications and pretty much anything inside a business that a consumer see and doesn’t see.
Design Thinking can be defined as “out of the box” thinking, a way of finding solutions in a manner that wouldn’t be instantly apparent. Using Design Thinking inside your business will not only help you create better products for your consumers, it will also help you better understand why people need your services. Design Thinking can help you analyze your services to see if they really are what people need and how you can improve them to serve your clients better.
Over to you
How do you incorporate design into your business? Are you stuck only using it for what your consumers see? Try using design and design thinking behind the scenes and you will see improvements in your success!
