Thoughts

From bryan Close

Sometimes deep, sometimes light, our team is constantly reading, observing, making connections to the past, and prospecting the future. Here are some of our musings:

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Sympathy for Empathy

It doesn't really matter whether you're employing sympathy or true empathy in your search for innovative solutions; it's the commitment to real context that is fundamental to the design thinking process.

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Developing Brands for the Experience Economy

Developing brands for a public that prizes experiences requires an internal culture that's committed to design thinking. Design thinking cultivates empathy, and having an empathetic finger on the pulse of those on the street helps create the connections that they crave.

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Why Experience Matters

A good user experience leaves customers feeling content, but it's the exceptional experiences — the ones in which all of the details fall right into place — that generate immediate buzz and long-term loyalty.

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Thinking About Design Thinking 5: From Macro to Micro

There are three levels of design thinking and you’ve got to work through them in the right order, or the whole process will be flawed.

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Thinking About Design Thinking 4: Sticky Notes Do Not a Design Thinker Make

You can arrange (and interpret) sticky notes so that they point toward your desired solutions, but sticky notes alone won’t truly solve your problems — that takes a willingness to follow through on the complete design thinking process.

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Thinking About Design Thinking 3: We’re All Designing Some Kind of Solutions

While I’m wary of the term “designer” becoming diluted, there are many in other (non-design) fields who practice design thinking and, maybe, should be considered designers, as well.

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Thinking About Design Thinking 2: “Designers” are Everywhere These Days

There are more and more people out there with “designer” in their job titles, but does this change the way we define design?

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Thinking About Design Thinking 1: We're Basically Philosophers

Aristotle's academy aimed to explore and expand our understanding of how things worked, to find connections and solve problems. That's not so different than what we do as practitioners of design thinking.

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Good Design is Timeless

Timeless design is something that we're forever chasing and very rarely capturing. It doesn't succumb to passing trends. It feels accessible and elegant at the same time. It's simple, but not simplistic. Perhaps most importantly, it honors the fundamentals of our craft.

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Pantone Color of the Year 2019: Drawn’s Pick

Last year, Drawn accented its new building with Pantone Ultra Violet 18-3838 just months before it was named Color of the Year. We think we might be on a roll, so our creative director, Bryan Taylor, wrote a letter to Pantone expressing his choice for Color of the Year 2019.