(book review) The Designful Company

The Designful Company: How to build a culture of nonstop innovation by Marty Neumeier
New Riders, Berkeley-USA, 2009

The Designful Company takes off from Neumeier's previous books - The Brand Gap and Zag. Like his previous books, this one too, is a little, not so wordy, comprehensive book that you can finish reading on a short train ride.

Neumeier throws some light on the competition that business face in today's world while attacking the obsolete strategies of the industrial age that companies tend to use even today. He convinces that a firms needs to make innovation a  permanent strategy to stay in the game and that companies today need to integrate design practices in businesses to better position themselves against competition and to stand out of the crowd. This would mean empowering designers in the company and giving them a platform in the company where they can canvas their ideas.

The Designful company sure talks about designers and design thinking, but the most important part is that design drives change or rather, design is change. Creativity leads to innovation.

I liked the reading list at back of the book - gives some relevant good read titles, listed subject-wise.

I liked this book, but not so much as The Brand Gap.

(book review) The Brand Gap

The Brand Gap: How to bridge the distance between Business Strategy & Design by Marty Neumeier
New Riders, NY-USA, 2003


Anyone – be it in the business world, marketing, design, branding or elsewhere realize the power of the word - 'Brand'. Everyone talks about things like branded products, brand identity or brand experience and that a brand defines one's personality or marks one's likes and dislikes. But does everyone really understand what a 'brand' really means? Marty Neumier answers it all for us.

The author gives a new and a practical definition to 'building a brand' while explaining the 5 disciplines of brand building viz. :
1.Differentiate
2.Collaborate
3.Innovate
4.Validate
5.Cultivate

The book runs around all sorts of processes that go in creating, maintaining and growing a brand – the successful and the not-so-successful ones. The book starts from the very basic question: 'What is a brand?' and treads through branding, trends, the tests, problems,  strategy, creativity, names, avatars, designing, packaging, marketing, globalism and evolution of 'brand' to very comprehensive 'take-home' lessons. And these are just a few topics the book talks about.

As they say - “Good things come in small packages”, the best thing about this book is that Marty covers it all in a tiny little book that one can finish reading in a couple of hours. Its like taking a 'one quick pill' for all.

I would recommend this book to anyone with a background in design, business, branding, consumer study, engineering, psychology and anyone who likes to know the story behind brands.

You can view a presentation on the book by the author –  The Brand Gap
Its a huge presentation but worth a watch!