“Design has assimilated – but the assimilation was not mutual. Designers now speak business fluently. But business has not learned to see design. It still treats form as polish, emotion as indulgence and ambiguity as inefficiency. […] The result is a monoculture of metrics. Brands are engineered, optimized, tested, templated. They perform. But they no longer resonate. Somewhere along the way, the visual intelligence of design – its rhythm, tension, friction – was replaced by a vocabulary of efficiency. And we accepted it because we thought that was the price of relevance.” Sharp piece by Natasha Jen, highlighting the tensions faced as Design gets a seat at the table. “What did we gain? What have we lost?”
Designers have spent years learning the language of business. But has business ever learned to see design? I wrote a piece for The Drum about how design’s deeper intelligence—its ambiguity, friction, and meaning-making power—has been flattened by the logic of metrics and optimization. https://lnkd.in/eGScgvxH When design becomes a means to an end, it stops questioning the ends. Thanks to Tom Banks for the generous write-up. Would love to hear how others are navigating this tension.
