Designs on brand success

In the latest issue of Catalyst’s Big Conversation, experts explored why design is a state of mind. 

Good design can make a huge difference to people’s lives, from James Watt’s Industrial Revolution steam engine to Apple’s Macintosh computer of the 20th century and its iPhone of the 21st. But what does ‘design’ really mean? In Catalyst’s latest roundtable discussion, participants considered how design goes far beyond products and packaging, to encompass brand, experience and service design, and touched on big topics such as planned obsolescence, circularity and life during a tough macro-economic environment.
First off: definitions. How do participants define ‘design’ in its boldest and broadest way? For Bob Sheard, founder and co-owner of design agency Fresh Britain, the focus should be on sustainability for decades to come. “Design, in its biggest sense, is how we create our future,” he says. “The choices we make today will hopefully create a window of time for someone not yet born to figure out the technologies and designs necessary to create sustainable life on Earth.” 
Sheard even goes so far as to suggest that we might redesign what we think makes us happy as humans, so instead of gaining status from what we own, we are defined by our knowledge. “If we start to be defined by what we know and what we do, we can then change the way we design production and consumption. We’ll start consuming knowledge, intelligence and experience, and move away from the design of ‘things’,” he says.
Planned obsolescence, where objects are designed to become obsolete within a fixed period, encouraging or requiring consumers to buy more, should become “as morally repugnant as drug driving”, Sheard says.