Good Design is Good Business

As part of VMSD’s travels to EuroShop in March with the euro a go go road trip (much more on that in our May issue), I had the opportunity to attend a lunchtime talk by professor Peter Zec, Ph.D., German publisher, consultant, creator and ceo of the Red Dot, as well as author of the book, “Design Value.” Zec’s focus, through his organization’s Red Dot Design Awards, is to recognize design excellence and innovation in communication design, product design and design concepts.

During his presentation, he shared what he believes to be the key components of good design: It must be innovative and functional; it must be seductive and aesthetic; it should be useful and usable; and finally, it must be long lasting and eco-friendly. 

But not every retailer has design as part of its core DNA, like perennial darlings Apple or Nike. Within many organizations, the vast majority of creatives fight the good fight every day to convince their internal or external clients that good design pays dividends.

In an attempt to add tools to designers’ arsenals, Zec explains that Red Dot has developed a method to determine the “design value” of an organization. By tracking the design achievements and financial performance of these design-driven institutions over time, researchers, and eventually practitioners, can draw correlations and begin to quantify what design’s strategic contribution has meant to the financial success of these companies.  

The ability to establish design value, and from that design return, brings the industry a degree closer to proving the prevalent theory that good design is simply good business.