Design Strategy

Posted by: www.creativethirst.com

For design to have an impact on a business goal, it must revolve around a guiding strategy. To simply design something without an underlying strategy that supports a specific objective will not utilize design as a competitive advantage.

Although the design may be aesthetically pleasing, it may not generate as large an impact on results that you are striving for and may be developed subjectively as opposed to what will have the highest impact. Additionally, there are usually several business goals to meet and the likely hood of intuitively or subjectively maximizing all of them can be difficult, which is where design strategy should be leveraged.

Design strategy is not a particular color, or graphic image, or a logo, or a design concept or any other design element.

A design strategy is an approach to how a particular objective will be accomplished with design or any of design’s core competencies. The design strategy should always be joined to a particular business objective and its purpose is to provide a clear starting point for the team to develop solutions. It provides a measurement against which to analyze the solution. An example would be:

Business Objective:
Improve market share and the bottom line.

Design Strategy:
Develop design concepts that improve the recognizability of the brand across all product groups. Reinforce the brand promise and strengthen the relationship with the customer.

Using a design strategy liberates the creative mind to think out of the box for business solutions and provides you with an advantage over your competition.