What Is Design | Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a way of strategising for designers to help them solve complex problems for their clients, that put the consumer first.

Many ways of building a strategy are from looking from the outside, but design thinking is putting yourself on the inside. For example, thinking like a consumer, or potential customer, will give you a different idea of where to start than if you stay in the mind of 'just a designer'.

Design isn't just creativity and skill, it's finding a way to the desired outcome, while being functional, beautiful and simplistic. It involves both logical analysis and imagination.

Design can be, and is, applied to everything you ever see. Products, services, buildings, fashion, advertising, physical locations… anything that involves human interaction or use. It is also used for processes, which play a big part in the way we work, live and interact with others. Design is everything, and everywhere.

What do you design? Would you call yourself a designer? Leave your thoughts on www.whatisdesign.co.uk

What Is Design | The Concept of Collaboration

When you think of well known designers, you are aware of their individual projects and their most successful work. You also think of the studios they have worked in. One thing that can easily be overlooked, in design and in design studios, is the benefit and the positive effect of collaboration.

What Is Collaboration?

Collaboration is 'the action of working with someone to produce something'. Whether it be a designer and writer working together, or designers sharing their knowledge and skill with each other, collaborating is the relationship that is built between different minds. 

In design, collaboration can form ideas from multiple perspectives, beliefs, tastes and skill sets. You may have one person who has a more vast knowledge of typography, and another who has a skill for brand building. Whatever an individual is capable of doing, or how experience they are, collaboration can be beneficial with any and all projects.

What Can Collaboration Do For Design?

What do you think collaboration can do for design? This is where you weigh in. Let us know what you think collaboration is, means and can do for design and designers alike.

Just go to www.whatisdesign.co.uk and leave your thoughts and comments there!

What Is Design | A New Home for Design Museum

The Design Museum, is one of the world's leading museum devoted to contemporary design in every form from architecture and fashion to graphics, product and industrial design.

In 2008, following a long search for larger premises, the Design Museum selected the former Commonwealth Institute building in Kensington High Street, West London, as its new home.

This unique landmark from the 1960s, a Grade II* listed building that stood vacant for over a decade, is being transformed by a design team led by John Pawson who will make the building fit for a 21st century museum, whilst at the same time retaining its unique spatial quality.

The Arts Council awarded a £3 million grant to the Design Museum, which will go towards the transformation of the Design Museum Kensington. The move will give the museum three times more space than in its current location at Shad Thames.

There will also be improved learning facilities and a dedicated gallery to display its permanent collection, which will be accessible free of charge. It will bring the museum into Kensington’s cultural quarter, where it will join the Royal College of Art, V&A, Science Museum, Natural History Museum and Serpentine Gallery.


What are your thoughts on the new Design Museum? Why not share them over on our What Is Design website?

What Is Design | A Student's Perspective - Lillie Prior

Everything we do revolves around design. The clothes we wear, the transport we take, the technology we use. You may not realise it but design defines us. It gives us the power to exceed expectations, challenge the ordinary and above all be original, innovative and imaginative.

There is a wealth of design wherever you go whether it be sitting in traffic, surrounded by billboards pasted with promotional posters or doing the weekly shop, encompassed by thousands of individually packaged products. You just have to have the creative instinct to notice an appreciate it. Even the simple, monotonous act of travelling to work is rich with elements of design. Most people standing on the platform at 8 o’clock in the morning with a sophisticated suit and a sturdy leather briefcase won’t look twice at the grid formation on a timetable, the text on a coffee cup or the photograph displayed on the front cover of a glossy magazine. They are unaware of the power of design and unlike designers, they do not possess the ability to immerse oneself amongst design and understand the concept, decisions and thought process behind it.

Being a student interested in design at the Grange School, Hartford is an exciting, intriguing yet quite daunting position to be in. Working on exam tailored briefs in the safety of the classroom seems comfortable and uncomplicated in comparison to the competitive industry of design that I will be hopefully be exposed to in the coming years. Design is all about coming up with new ways of communicating ideas, perceptions and information to others and trying to make a piece of work stand out can be challenging. This however, is what I love about the world of design. It gives you the freedom to be creative, the license to be bold and the drive to be different!

“What is design?”
“Design is a journey of discovery.”

Lillie Prior

What Is Design | #missingtype

Many say that design can make a positive change and have a real effect on the way we think. This week, we've seen letters disappearing from street signs and shop fronts across the country. More specifically A, B and O. So, what's it all about?

The Prime Minister’s official residence has become D wning Street, you can buy books in W terst nes and watch a film at  de n for the duration of National Blood Week. The campaign is to encourage people to donate blood.

NHS Blood and Transplant have reported a 40% drop of new volunteers giving blood in England and North Wales, in the last decade. The campaign is aiming to raise awareness by eliminating the letters of the 3 blood groups - A, B and O, in the hope that it sparks a discussion and more people come forward to give blood.

You can get involved by taking the letters out of your name on social media and using the hashtag #missingtype.

What does this say for design? Is this a design campaign or is it much more than than? What do you think of the #missing type campaign, will it work?

Let us know by leaving us your thoughts over on What Is Design.

What Is Design, and What Is It Worth?

Design is everywhere you look, and to some, design is everything. But, what is design worth?

Robert L Peters is a designer and principal of Circle, a design consultancy he co-founded in 1976 in Canada. He gave worth to design with just one quote "Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future." If this is true, and design really does determine the future, then the work designers do goes beyond their knowledge of Adobe, kerning and colour palettes. A designer's job, if this is the case, is to create work that has a positive effect on the future, and that's a lot of responsibility to carry as an individual. The design itself, also has a responsibility to translate its meaning as clearly as possible, which surely increases the importance and worth of design?

If design is everything, then wouldn't everyone be a designer? Emily Pilloton thought so when she said, "I believe that design is problem solving with grace and foresight. I believe that there is always a better way. I believe that design is a human instinct, that people are inherently optimistic, that every man is a designer, and that every problem can either be defined as a design problem or solved with a design solution." Are you a designer? Do you believe everyone is in their own way? If everyone was a designer, would it lower the value of designers? Can everything be defined as a design problem, or solved with a design solution?

What are your thoughts? Why not share them in our Linkedin Group, on Twitter, on our What Is Design website. or by tagging us in a picture or video on Instagram?

We'd love to know what you think!

What Is Design?

Design Force Is Changing

Like most industry professionals, we’re normally too busy doing design to actually stop and think about what exactly design is. But all that’s about to change. As are we. Why? Because after 16 years in the business, working on everything from brand identity, comms and advertising, to research and insight, strategic development and internal change, we don’t think our current name says everything we want it to. So Design Force is evolving and to help us, we’re asking the question – What is Design?

To try and find the answer, we’re embarking on a quest to discover what you think design is. Which is why, over the next few months, we’ll be asking as many people as possible to finish the following sentence:

What Is Design?

We’d love to hear what you think. Post a comment, take a snap, or scribble a doodle. In fact do whatever it takes to share your definition of design.

Share Your Thoughts

There are many ways you can get involved. Send us a quick tweet to let us know what it means to you. Get involved in our discussions over in our Linkedin group, we want to hear what it means to everyone, no matter what you do for a living!

If you're feeling creative, why not use the hashtag #whatisdesign and create a picture or video on Instagram. We'd love to see and share your work!

We can't wait to see what you all think of design!

Design Is | An Insight To Paul Rand

Paul Rand was an American art director and graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM and UPS.

You could say he lived the real Graphic Designer's life. Starting from the bottom with a part-time job creating stock images that were supplied to magazines and newspapers.

Simplicity, or Modernist Design, was at the core of everything Rand did. He said logos "cannot survive unless it is designed with the utmost simplicity and restraint." Simplicity takes restraint from the designer, and that's what makes it so complicated.

Design brings everything together, and creates an understanding for the person who sees it. Rand said "Copy, art, and typography should be seen as a living entity; each element integrally related, in harmony with the whole, and essential to the execution of an idea."

If your job is outside of design, it can easily pass you by - or at least you think it does. Design is everything, and it is everywhere. Whether you notice it or not, it is always doing its intended job.

I haven't changed my mind about modernism from the first day I ever did it... It means integrity; it means honesty; it means the absence of sentimentality and the absence of nostalgia; it means simplicity; it means clarity. That's what modernism means to me. - Paul Rand

Share your thoughts, either on our Linkedin Group, Twitter or our What Is Design website.

We help Kleeneze break free!

One of the country’s longest established and most successful shop-from-home companies has introduced a new suite of business development tools with our help.

Kleeneze, based in Accrington, is famous for its home, health & beauty, cookery and seasonal ranges.  The company has built its business around distributors circulating catalogues and collecting orders from consumers in their community.

With Kleeneze ambitious to grow across 2011, it commissioned Design Force to create a suite of business development tools that would enable existing Kleeneze distributors to recruit additional support to expand their sales area.

Simon says “Break Free” highlighted both the commercial strength of the Kleeneze business model and the quality and diversity of the company’s product ranges.  “In many ways, we have positioned Kleeneze’s products at the centre of the story.  Millions of consumers every year recognise that much of the Kleeneze range is unique – and this is an important element of attracting new people to help sell the range.”

Kleeneze’s Head of Marketing Chris Hinds said we had captured the essence of what the company’s proposition and personality was all about.  “Ultimately, our business is built around our distributors and their dedication to providing a great service to customers, teamed with their enthusiasm for sharing the business opportunity with others. Design Force understood the importance of this, and have helped us articulate this message simply, powerfully and effectively.”