“Too many companies treat design as the skin slapped on at the last minute. In fact, at many companies, design is outsourced altogether.”
From Inside Steve’s Brain, By Leander Kahney
You’ve spent thousands of dollars, and thousands of man hours creating a product or service, and you don’t even consider how it will look? How will it feel when the consumer holds it, that’s if you can prompt the shopper to pick up the product off the shelf in the first place! It’s funny really, the reason you pick up a product and wish to part with your hard earned cash is that a product speaks to you, or at very least it looks professional. Would a iPod have been as popular, and created a whole new industry, if it had looked like a little beige box? After all, it still does the same thing?
The way your business looks, or the way your services and products look is important. It’s not about designing something that will lead the way and influence the next wave, or create a new genre (though, that would be fantastic if you were brave enough to do so), but about caring how your business looks. By telling yourself you can’t afford to create a professionally designed brand, or product package, you’re saying your product is of not enough value to warrant a professional image. To a prospective consumer, your product may be the best widget in the world, but if no one wants to pick it up and pay money for it, if it doesn’t look like a proper product, you’re going to go broke.
Imagine if, in comparison, you worked with a designer, while creating your product or service, and could intertwine the form with the function, what level of product would you come out with? By working these two often polarised aspects to business development, the design will also start to have function, in the same way as your products features work to make your product what it is. Design is not an add-on, but an integral part of selling your product’s value to consumers, and if you tell yourself you can’t afford design, can you really afford to produce your product and service in the first place? If your design says you don’t care about your business, why should your customer?
