David Butler has always been a good friend of Portfolio Center, but it was still quite the honor to have him visit recently for seminar. He continues to move further into the upper echelons of the communications industry, now as the Vice President of Design for the 67 billion dollar brand, Coca-Cola. And even as the years bring more responsibility and demands on his energy, it seems he never ages or loses his youthful idealism and ability to connect with students. He was as generous with his time and wisdom as always.
These days, David is responsible for setting the global standard for Coke's design, building their global design function, and strengthening their internal design culture and reputation. He understands the vast opportunities designers have to effect change and how employing good design in the service of positive change can give a business a competitive advantage.
In his talk, "Redesigning Design," David discussed the new role of design in today's market and the ways design has become central to a company's profitability and success. He highlighted four essentials, in particular, that design contributes:
First, he says, is Authenticity:
"Designers can partner with marketing/brand experts to create clarity around a brand's true assets--it's core equities. We can then work with those equities to maintain the purity and honesty which made them unique in the first place. If you look at what we did recently with brand Coke for instance, this was a very design-led process in that we actually designed a greater sense of authenticity back into the brand's identity."
The second thing he mentioned was Desire:
"Creating desire is where we really feel the effect of balancing form and function. From a form perspective, we can design things to evoke beauty, simplicity, and cultural meaning. But we can also design things to be very functional, usable and useful. By balancing these, we can create sustainable desire."
Next was Reputation:
"Design can help build a company or brand's reputation around innovation, sustainability, etc. And I'm assuming the design is good. Bad design can build reputation in the opposite direction as well.
And, finally, Efficiency:
"This is really around scale. Designing using a modular approach can create great efficiencies and scale for a brand. This is part of our approach at Coke. Coke operates in 200 countries with 400 brands. We depend on our scale to drive the business forward. Design can play a big role in that.
David stressed that a designer working inside a corporation can add value only if he or she truly understands the business. A designer working within the company must be a synthesizer, an integrator; he must be able to connect his design expertise to the broader picture:
"The goal is for the designer to understand the business problems at hand in order to design business solutions. If the designer is not a 'thinking' designer and reduces solutions down to conversations and logic that only designers understand (or care about), their value goes way down. We, at Coke, focus on the business first and then use our skills as designers to integrate solutions rather than focus our time on 'selling in,' etc."
Portfolio Center students share a strong desire to communicate ideas, the willingness to let go of preconceived notions, and the compulsion to learn new ways of thinking. These qualities are fostered by the school’s constant stream of industry bigwigs, who bring their varied and colorful perspectives from all over the country. These creatives, who are always generous with their time and energy, tend to hang out with students, conducting informal workshops and continuing the day’s discussions over dinner. Often, what results are provocative interviews—written, shot, and designed by PC students.
