sona khosla

I loooove this book. Yes, loooove with 4 o’s.

The Designful Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation is the third of Marty’s “whiteboard books” in which he takes a deep and complex topic on branding and simplifies it so that it just makes plain sense.

The powerful concept that Marty (I feel like we’re on a first name basis) presents here is that design is change. Wowzer. That’s so powerful. Mainly because it takes the power out of the hands of the few people who know how to use Photoshop and puts it in the hands of every individual in an organization. There are so many kinds of designers. People who re-engineer process. People who design ads. People who dream up new solutions for customers. People who champion the people in their company. People in Marketing. People in Product. People in Customer Service. People in HR. People everywhere.

What I love about this book is that it reminded me of a part of myself I sometimes lose. The creative, the designer, the one who cares so much about beauty, harmony and integrity. The one who fusses over typography and prides herself on guessing the typeface being used in the movie credits. It’s so easy to lose this part of myself. I get caught in typical left-brain ideals like the bottom line, rules, margins, KPIs, standards and start to lose touch with that part of myself that knows with something other than my logic. Then, even worse, I lose respect for my intuition, my instincts, my desire to make things better and different and I become part of the “system” that I myself don’t respect.

Anyways, this book reminded me that designers and creatives are to be respected, if not understood. And it reminded me to trade in the “or” for the “and” to find creative solutions to “wicked problems” that all organizations face like: balancing long-term goals with short-term demands; predicting the returns on innovative concepts; combining profitability and social responsibility. It’s true, these can be solved, albeit not easily.

Admist the simple aesthetic of the book lies some revolutionary ideas that have the power to transform people and corporations. Don’t be fooled. This isn’t just another little book on branding.

Great case studies, but too academic.

Parts of Brand Digital were dense and after re-reading these parts, they ended up being somewhat meaningless. The the last 10 pages, however, delivered the entire message of the book in a succinct, engaging and consumable way. 

It took me a year-and-a-half to read this book. Most other brand books have taken me less than a month to gobble up.