the value of design : "the cheap teapot" by Seth Godin

Many clients think design is an expense.   They add up all their revenue for the year, subtract the costs they can't eliminate, and whatever is left, that's available for design expenses. In-house folks face the same challenge, but they discover that the boss is just as generous with time as she/he is in money (not at all.)

If the people we work with would think about cheap teapots for a second, they might have a different point of view.

Target and Kmart both sell cheap teapots.   The Kmart teapot is a fine, functional teapot. It does the assigned job of a teapot (heating water) and that's about it.   The Target teapot is designed by Michael Graves. Love it or hate it, it's designed.   And that's the point.   Both cost the same to manufacturer. But the Target gets a lot more out of its teapot than Kmart does. When you visit the home of someone with a Target teapot, you're likely to have a conversation about it. You ask about it, and your host tells you where he got it and how cheap it was.   If you love it, you go to Target and buy one.   And that, my friends, is why Target is profitable and Kmart is in bankruptcy court.   Target learned that you can pay for great design once and enjoy the benefits for years.

They discovered that making a remarkable product (remarkable means worth making a remark about--creating stuff that markets itself) is actually a profit center. The goal of design must change from merely enabling a product (whether it's a widget or a newsletter) to do what it was intended to do to something bigger--we need to figure out how to make things remarkable enough that they market themselves. Just about any short list includes Apple and Nike and Raygun and Starbucks and the Aeron chair and OXO.   Each is successful in its own way, and each is largely successful because it uses design to take its products further than the competition.   Safe design is boring.   It's expensive.   And ultimately, it's risky because it's invisible.   It's the edgy, risky, aggressive designs that pay for themselves.   Very good is bad. Time to be an extremist instead.