Making Connections By Design

At the World Design Congress, the profession imagined how to bring designers and managers together on issues such as production and sustainability

by Helen Walters

If you happened to throw a brick around Nob Hill in San Francisco last weekend, chances are you'd have hit an international design legend, a corporate design leader, or maybe even a distinguished professor of design. All had congregated for the World Design Congress, essentially three conferences being held in the same place at the same time: the biennial Congress of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID); the annual gathering of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), and the annual National Education conference.

Presented together, the conferences made quite an impression. Organized and coordinated by IDEO co-founder Bill Moggridge, the event attracted around 2,000 attendees to 144 separate presentations, panels, and workshops over three days (Oct. 17-20). Designers, not regularly hailed for their shyness or lack of confidence, were in their element. The atmosphere was ebullient and the consensus clear: Design's moment is now.

"There's a huge sense of optimism in the profession," said Bob Schwartz, associate director of the Global Design Organization within P&G (PG), who traveled from Cincinnati with 15 P&G employees from all levels and departments. "It's impossible for companies, large or small, to look away from what's going on with their competitors or in other categories where design has become a driver."

Battle Cry of the Designers

How exactly designers might take advantage of business' new-found interest in using design to improve bottom lines was, however, less clear. "The design community is faced by unprecedented opportunity to chart a new course—and most of us aren't sure what to do with that opportunity," admitted Peter Mortensen of Jump Associates, the San Mateo (Calif.) innovation consultancy, which sent eight people to the conference. "We've spent so many decades arguing with businesspeople that we need a seat at the table. It was a war to make that case. And now we've won the war, people are struggling with how to win the peace."

Some speakers, such as Richard Seymour, the charismatic founder of British industrial design consultancy Seymourpowell, and Hartmut Esslinger, the equally outspoken founder of Frog Design, issued battle cries, urging the audience to seize the moment, to stand up with renewed vigor, steamrolling clients if necessary.

Seymour presented two keynote speeches and took part in two panel discussions. He described, among other things, being commissioned to design packaging for an unnamed frozen food producer. Instead, Seymourpowell generated a new way of conducting business, reinventing the company's frozen lasagna production by offering a product that was considerably more appetizing than its predecessor and that could be packaged appealingly—all in a cost-effective manner.

Putting Meaning Into Innovation

In this case, improving the food itself was the most effective way to affect the company's business. Designers must think beyond being mere service providers, Seymour argued. They have to stand up, acting as a conductor to unite employees around a common goal. Or, as he put it rather more earthily, "Get everyone on the inside of the tent, pissing out."

Esslinger and the impressive Branko Lukic, of Nonobject, were somewhat less inclusive. "Like crack junkies, most companies are addicted to wasteful mediocrity," was Esslinger's analysis of a scenario in which he sees the word "innovation" bandied about as an empty panacea for corporations lacking a clear idea. For his part, Lukic described his dismay that so many business models seem to call for watered-down products the world does not need.