I had lunch with Laurent Bolli of Bread and Butter today, and he pointed to an article about Metadesign’s CEO talking about the complicated *g* relationship between design and business.

It is a short and interesting piece. Bill Hill is putting words on something most clients feel while working with designers and vice versa: the lack of a common language, of tangible things to articulate discussions around. This leads to blunt statements like “clients are stupid” or “designers don’t understand what a business is”. Being from both worlds, Hill’s view is both refreshing and interesting.

From inspiration to investment

Designers and their clients aren’t in the same room. Even if they were, it is highly unlikely that they would even be able to speak the same language. As long as designers speak the language of emotion while business leaders expect to hear metrics, there’s going to be a problem. CEOs want to hear about Return on Investment. Designers want to talk about Return on Inspiration.

Now replace the word designer with programmer and read the article again. It applies a little isn’t it?

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 7:01 pm and is filed under design, english. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.