Design Forward: Creative Strategies for Sustainable Change

by Hartmut Esslinger (Editor)

Hartmut Esslinger’s leitmotif as a designer is ‘things do not stand for themselves, but for us.’ His new work, Design Forward, is a book about the history, practice, and future of Strategic Design.

Design is one of the few holistic disciplines in the industry that combine social and emotional desires and requirements with the realities and possibilities of technology, the economy, and resource planning, thus creating a more humane and ecological world.

Hartmut Esslinger’s message is that the future challenges for businesses are increasing due to global warming, surplus production, and energy waste, and ineffective management strategies (cheap-effective) are no longer working. He is demanding new thinking toward objectives and processes and also humane capitalism! This also calls for the establishment of a creative-focused education (Creative Sciences) alongside today’s focus on natural sciences and the liberal arts. This applies not only to finding and promoting all creative talent at an early school age, but also to then communicate the necessary professional expertise so that we are all in the position to constructively address the huge challenges ahead.

Genres: Design, Business

308 pages, Paperback

First published November 16, 2012

Reviews

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

To summarize the book: Business people are conservative number-crunching yes-men. Designers are the only people with creativity, therefore the only way a company can succeed is to have designers at the top. Apple is the best. Also take a look at the things I did on the next 100 pages (and also at the things my friends did on the next 50 pages).

Maybe I am exaggerating a bit. The book has some good ideas, but they are all revolving around keeping the customer (and customer experience) in mind, which is not really a novel idea, and also it is not something that is exclusively the job of a designer. I was expecting some more hands-on "Creative Strategies for Sustainable Change" aside from this one concept. I also feel a bit cheated because half of the book was just a showcase for the designs of the author and the author's friends.

[John Oswald · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m not entirely sure of Herr Esslinger’s intentions in this book. To proclaim the world-changing potential of Design? To showcase frog (the design company)? To show how incredible his students are? It’s very uneven and hasn’t aged well (published in 2012). I wish I’d read it at the time (I was starting at Fjord then), but, another breathless tome on how amazing Design is might have left me cold. And the tone is so typical of how the profession saw itself then: if only the corporate world could see the potential of good design, then capitalism would be fixed, and the planet saved! I don’t particularly disagree, but recent history has shown that the profession hasn’t lived up to the promise. What Esslinger and others didn’t foresee was how the consultancies and conglomerates would acquire most agencies (frog among them), in a logical and actually pretty synergistic and empowering way (many will challenge me on this, of course, and it hasn't worked out brilliantly for all...). Esslinger is a believer in ‘Strategic Design’, which (from what I can glean from the self-aggrandising anecdotes) means design work mandated from the highest possible level. Frog was definitely right place / right time / right offer of full product design (it's difficult to do ‘strategic design' when you're left with only parts of a new proposition to design). Ultimately, Esslinger argues (with little evidence beyond revenues and share price), that if products were better designed, there’d be less waste, and our economies would function better. And that if companies focused on good products rather than engineering their finances, they’d be better companies. Because look at Apple! (this is 2012 after all). All illustrated with overblown photography of beautiful, obsolete products… He then argues that we must educate designers differently to work more effectively with ‘business’ (he has my full support on this point!). Criticism aside, there’s some important thinking here about design education and how focusing on good products is a much better way, long term, to run a business. But oh my, it’s light on detail and long on a (nowadays) very dated rhetoric. #guehennoreads #booksofinstagram

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the middle section of this book charming - very interesting insights into the history of frog, and the evolution of current project design. Everything else felt a little too scattered (and the copyediting was poor). Overall, worth a read.