The art of design thinking

So how do designers display their work? I have been ruminating about the best way to present a portfolio that showcases the thinking and extends the viewer's impression beyond subjective stylistic preferences. AIGA, the United States' professional design association offers advice to designers in 4 Easy Steps to Create a Beautiful Design Portfolio . While the article recommends pairing explanatory text with images, the focus is on beauty, and the main copywriting advice is to explain “uptick in business” and “customer acquisition rates”. Yet, not all design communication is concerned with sales – many projects are about behavioural change, imparting important information or introducing new ideas, where success is not measured in dollars. So why is it important for designers to shift perceptions of their profession beyond aesthetics? Since designers are tasked with defining and solving the problem, showcasing the work leading up to the beautiful end product is c...

Many years ago, I had a short assignment in a global engineering firm. I was only involved at the end of a communications project and as I was handed the document, the head engineer deemed it ready for the ‘lipstick’.   My training is in graphic design.  Graphic design , also known as visual communication or communications design, is primarily concerned with making meaning through the considered combination of text and images. Lipstick , it is not.  Lipstick implies that designers merely add colour and gloss. Tim Brown from Ideo began using the term ‘design thinking’ to better describe the work that designers do, and shift perception  “beyond the sculptural objet” .  Design is the elegant and intentional solution that follows the careful unravelling of a problem, no matter the design discipline. Yet, graphic designers and their peak bodies perpetuate the idea that design is about style, by presenting work as a collection of beautiful images without insi...