Design is dead, long live design

“So design is dead, but is it really? Is it like dead dead or just bit dead..or in a coma maybe? ”

I’ve used this analogy many times and it never stops amazing me how people react…they are genuinely confused. But why is that, what scares them? The reason is simple…it’s because design is like a distant relative they meet on Christmas or grandma’s birthday, we are here to fix it!

First make it useful, then make it pretty

We’ll get back to that story later on…but I can imagine you are wondering why are we talking about design? It’s simple- Helmes has its own design “department” now. Yes its true .. we have designers in the house and no, we’re not here to do only PowerPoints !

Helmes Design is here to do more, to achieve more .. to “go where no designer has ever gone”. Ok, I must admit…that’s a bit cliché but it has a point. Helmes Design is here to help all the teams inside the house and clients to use design thinking and all its amazing possibilities .. and of course, make things pretty …but make them also usable, viable and desirable to end customers.

Read also: Building innovation with design thinking

We have a process to achieve that and we’ve named it – “the brain”. It means we don’t use our gut feeling to do projects…instead we study, discover, explore, emphasize and synthesize to truly understand what to do .. and more importantly – why are we doing this.

Why won’t design die?

Now that we’ve finally met let’s get back to the story … by the way, it’s really nice to meet you all. The truth is that design will never die … on the contrary – it will conquer, fight and expand to every single industry we can imagine. It will grow even stronger and be even more relevant with every single day. And the reason behind it is simple- design helps to make things better by focusing on customers. Design does it by discovering the needs of end users, by providing simple and valuable solutions for everyday problems, by creating experience that is good, by coming up with changes that we need. Do you believe me…do you really? Well, let’s take a look at some facts and studies how thinking about customers and their experience has made a difference:

“By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.”

“50% of design-led companies report more loyal customers as a benefit to having advanced design practices”

“86% of consumers are willing to pay up to 25% more for a better customer experience.”

“73% of companies with “above average” Customer Experience maturity perform better financially than their competitors (compared to 44% of less mature companies).”

Design is influencing all the industries because it creates value for the customer and through that brings value for the company. More and more of companies are realizing that “it’s a real thing” and starting their transformation towards design-driven management and decisions. And we applaud to that, we love that!

Design isn’t dead .. it’s just waking up

Now you know, design is not dead nor never will be and there is nothing to worry about. It’s the opposite….design is like a bad itch you can’t get rid of, until you scratch it. And we, the design team, are here to help you do that…we are here to scratch your itch!

So the next time you think about design…then think about end customers, what would they want, how would they want it .. and then think about us. We are here to help you and create some good design in the process!

Long live design!