Every once a while I like to look back to see what sort of trendpredictions research companies made, that have come true. In 2002, someclever researches from British Telecom published in BTexec that in 5years time, ie 2007, lifestyle brands will dominate. I must say unlikemany other predictions these researchers were right on the money.Just look around you at the worlds more popular brands and products.Apple has dancing silhouettes, Nike is always doing it, and BMW givesyou sheer pleasure. The power of branding is not dead, it has evolved into a whole new animal as beautifully described by Kevin Roberts. Consumer lifestyle brands dominate and as far as I am concern will continue to dominate into the near future.What about the Design Discipline, the organisations and peoplebehind those wonder products? My thoughts will be that it will continueto be more and more difficult to survive if the Design Discipline doesnot find itself in a strong relationship with branding. Before we go on, lets now take a quick look at the designdiscipline, in particular industrial design. It seems these dayseveryone is talkingabout design management and creative thinking in business, especiallyin consumer electronics. Designers, non-designers, engineers, CEOs,management consultants, etc. are all talking, however as Seinfeldalways says, not that its anything wrong with that. Not only that, itis also becoming more and more difficult to NOT do good design.Everywhere we go, shops and the media, we are bombarded with fairlygood if not great products to buy. Designers are well equip these dayswith all the right skills and know how to do things right, and thepower and speed of the internet just facilitates it. It is not surprising to see that a recent AIGA symposium focused on defining Designers in 2015,though targeted more towards Graphic Designers, it did give a route mapof great skills and roles designers will play in organizations in thecoming years. However in my humble opinion, the viewpoint seems prettynarrow focusing on technical aspects rather than the bigger picture.The successful companies of today {both in design and buyers of designcirca 2007} have already begun to apply or use such design strategiesand management tools. Personally I did not think that the boundaries ofthe discussion stretched far enough to include leading designmanagement companies such as IDEO {though the symposium did proposedone of IDEO’s “T” shape characteristics of successful creatives andtheir management}, and even management guru Tom Peters as they are inthe forefront of such design + creativity management techniques. Andthese guys have been on their soap box for a very long time. PerhapsTom and some chaps from IDEO would have been a great addition to the“drivers” to this discussion.So if the future is much about continuing about what the bestcompanies are doing now but better, and it seems every one else caneventually catch up and also do an equally good job in design, thenwhat’s going to happen to the design discipline? In particular what isgoing to happen to people who’s job is focused on actual design anddesigning?If we extrapolate this a little more, if good design is goodbusiness from China, Korea and to the USA and then Europe, then how candesign consultancies and designers be different and rise to the top? Onone hand this is a good thing as this means that design has beenaccepted mainstream as a true strategic competitive advantage for anorganization, designers can now rejoice. But the bad thing is gooddesign will now be a given, a commodity. Just like TQM {Total QualityManagement} or customer service, good design will become a baseline andexpected by consumer as everyone will be doing some form of it.Industrial design agencies need branding skills to succeedIn the near future, not only will product development be more competitive, uber consumers wi
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