Recently a late addition to a client project team suggested that adding new functionality to the website—the opposite of the established design strategy and whose fulfillment required staffing that they didn’t have— was:

“Easy, it’s just a push of a button.”

Today, as the ability to combine text and images is no further than your phone, most communication design is simply production, decoration, or both.

But why is that?

It’s easy to decorate; it’s hard to create with purpose. 

As a design strategist and business co-founder, I can see how companies often don’t know how tightly their business strategy dovetails with how they communicate. 

Successful businesses enhance their competitive advantage when they hire designers who think strategically. Less successful companies hire based on a production skill set—ticking off a check box of things to be done.

3 advantages design strategists create that production-ists and stylists can't match:

1. Strategists connect the dots

Innovative business strategy, design strategy, and great design implementation go hand in hand.

The ability to zoom out to the big picture—context, strategy, opportunity—and zoom back into the details—craft, impact, even typography and negative space—is valuable.

Powerful communication advances strategy by engaging audiences at a visceral and emotional level. 

2. Strategists simplify

Effective design has a point of view—a reason why—that filters what gets said, what gets shown, and what doesn’t make the cut. 

Businesses often get lost in complexity or try to market a generic product or service feature—faster, cheaper, or better.

A design strategist brings  a powerful outside view that cuts through the clutter—connecting what is vital for business growth to what is meaningful for customers. 

3. Strategists create something new

Inherent in the design process is visualizing something that hasn’t existed before.

Businesses often don't think this way. Instead, they look at what competitors are doing, follow broad trends, and survey large groups. 

In design, creating opportunities requires thinking differently about what we “see” and what we “know.” 

Design strategists go beyond trends and data to gain insights and springboard to creative solutions.