Hello Everyone!

Fellow Cedarville Graphic Designers and Professor Hutchinson,

I would like to challenge you to consider adding another class to your

curriculum that will inspire and help our environment. I would like to share

with you a little about myself, and, something that has been developing in the

world of design that is important to our futures as graphic designers.

I have been told ‘what I cannot do’ by many people throughout my life. I

became a photographer because I could not illustrate like my sister. I wanted

to be an industrial designer but was told I did not have drawing skills; instead,

I chose to be a graphic designer. There are two types of graphic designers;

those who work in graphic-advertising departments and the second are design

leaders who focus on real world problems. For example in Kohl’s department

stores, graphic designers change colors on clothes, input signage, or graphics

for the latest season.

Visual of how boring it can look to be inputting colors on cloths all day (1)

The second kind is what I call a design leader or the

“Subway Guy”

A congested subway station (2)

A graphic designer was standing on the platform waiting to board a train

when he realizes everyone stands on the very edge of the platform, almost

falling into the tracks below. When the train arrived, he noticed people seated

as close as possible to the doors. There was great congestion between people
getting on and off the subway train. This graphic designer resolved the

frustrating congestion and used what I have found through research to be

elements of Design Leadership. (Smart, 2013) This inspires me to become a

more fulfilled designer who solves real world problems, not the one working

on endless advertisements. The definition of cause is “a person or thing that

acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a

result; the producer of an effect”. This is exactly what I want to do with

graphic design when I graduate. Design leaders see causes or challenges

everyday, which affect the world. However, the world does not always know it.

The effects of design leadership re-fabricate design processes to focus on

design problems and develop design solutions in business and industry

realms.

Design Leadership is combining leadership with the design process. What are

invisible to the world are elements of the design process. Using the “Subway

guy” as an example, the design process is seeing a problem and absorbing it.

Once the designer is saturated, the solution begins to materialize. He

practiced a design process of reviewing all the problems and gradually working

through each one. After riding the train several times, the Subway guy
realized if the doors were closer together, then people would not cluster next

to the doors.(Smart, 2013) The Subway guy’s example is important to us as

future graphic designers because the solution affected a real world problem.

A study in the UK said “design leaders help define the future while design

managers help go there.”(Lam, 2017, p. 165) Another good example of design

leadership is in this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlzaJI_zZO4

Video demonstration of Design Leadership (3)

Yves Bahar is an example of a designer that does both advertising and design

leadership. In the CBS Sunday Morning Segment, Yves Bahar’s remarkable

statement from a Finnish proverb, “The poor cannot afford bad design

because it breaks down and they have to buy it again” should be a wake up

call to all designers. This is design leadership at its best, Mexican children

were being held back from learning because of government issued, poorly

designed eyeglasses. In addition, despite big obstacles he made a ten-dollar

computer for children in the third-world. He is an example of design

leadership’s positive effects because his designs solve basic human needs in

the world.
The second designer, Dean Still, designed a stove for women in the third-

world to cook on without detrimental health problems. Any designer can

make a new latte sign, but I find it more gratifying to build a design that

improves quality of life.

Both of these designers demonstrate design leadership in their work. Each

designer uses design process to create solutions. Bahar and Still collaborated

with other artists and skill-sets to make their designs possible. These are the

types of artists and projects that will inspire design leadership. Implementing

design leadership into our Cedarville graphic design curriculum will help us

become greater international designers like Bahar and Still.

Bahar, Still, and the Subway guy help inspire future design leaders. Businesses

and different industries are taking notice of design leadership. In the UK they

did a study and showed “The study highlighted many strategic values of design

– namely: shares in design-led businesses outperform key stock market indices

by 200%; two-thirds of UK businesses believe that design in integral to future

economic performance”(Lam, 2017, p. 164) Design is affecting the stock

market in a positive way. The study also found that for every hundred pounds

spent on design in business, had a turn over of two hundred and twenty five
pounds.(Lam, 2017) The UK did three case studies using different problems,

but each one had different designers working within a collaborative team on

real world challenges. The teams were astonished by the significant

contributions of the designers. After the studies were completed, the

researchers were amazed that tools of design were helpful to solving the

dilemmas. The designers looked at the problem from a different perspective,

and converted issues to specific questions. “To sum up, design (including

design thinking, the design process and design tools/techniques) could

provide a useful approach for various organizations – big or small; for-profit

or non-profit – to identify new opportunities and turn complex, ill-defined

problems into well-focused questions for further investigation”(Lam, 2017, p.

168-169) This study is design leadership in action. Design leadership is

beneficial for different industries outside of design. This study done by the

UK shows that designers are valuable outside of advertising and in problem

solving situations. Designers can be great assets to the business world as well

as other industries. Design leadership gives tools to problem solve which can

be used in multiple situations and industries and this is why Cedarville should

make it a part of the Graphic Design curriculum.

All three designers are inspiring models of design leadership. Peter Smart, as

the Subway guy, used the tools of design process to immerse himself in

improving the efficiency of getting on and off the trains safely. Yvves Bahar

gave children in third-world countries the possibility of a better education and

look cute at the same time. Dean Still gave women all over the world a more

affordable efficient stove without ruining their health. The case studies done

in the UK confirm that graphic designers are an asset and can be useful in

multiple environments and industries. Having a class with design leaders that

have contributed to design leadership and other industries is important to

being future, successful graphic designers. I hope what I have presented today

challenges you as artists and inspires you to be world changing graphic

designers.
 Boris, J. (2014). The Influence of Colours on the Purchase
Decision M. Conference paper. 566-581. Retrieved January12,
2018.
The purpose of this article was to prove that colors influence what choices of purchasing and
decision machining process. In addition that women have a better perception of consumer
behavior during the process. This is a source from the ASU library search and has
additional graphs and other examples to show examples of research. This is relevant to
the topic because it shows scientific proof from the topic.

Dam, R., & Siang, T. (2017, December 16). Design Thinking: New
Innovative Thinking for New Problems. Retrieved January 16,
2018, from https://www.interaction-
design.org/literature/article/design-thinking-new-innovative-
thinking-for-new-problems
This article goes into depth of the process that designers go into to solve any problem. It also
talks about the different kinds of problems it can and has solves in the past and how the
perspective of the designer is different from others. This is not a source obtained from an
academic source but it is a credible website for designers. A designer’s perspective is
important to helping people understand where and how problems can be solved in this
type.

Gracio, H. L., & Rijo, C. (2017). Design thinking in the scope of strategic and
collaborative design. Strategic Design Research Journal, 10(1), 30-35.
Doi:10.4013/sdrj.2017.101.04
Design thinking is a article about collaborative design and the importance of it among
designers. This is an academic source from academic search complete that I found from
the ASU library website. This is relevant to my paper because it talks about elements of
Design Leadership.

Lam, B. (2017). Applying strategic design as a holistic approach to ingestigate and

address real world challenges. Strategic Design Research Journal, 10(2), 164-171.
Doi:10.4013/sdrj.2017.102.09
This is an article that is about using design in the real world. It is a case study done by the UK
with three different world issues. This is a credible source I found on academic search
complete. It is very important to my paper because it proves that design works in the real
world.

Smart, P. (2013, May 5). 50 Design Problems in 50 Days: Real Empathy for Innovation
(Part 1). Smashing Magazine, 1-
15.
50 Design Problems is an article about design in the world. The designer and writer Peter
Smart describes is design process through his project of working on improving the
subway. This is a credible source for my paper because it is written by an artist to other
artists. This is a perfect example for my topic of Design leadership because it shows all
the characteristics of it.
 Sroykham, W., Wongsathikun, J., & Wongsawat, Y. (2014). The
Effects of Perceiving Color in Living Environment on QEEG,
Oxygen Satuation, Pluse Rate, and Emotion regulation in Humans. 6226-6229. Retrieved
January 15, 2018.
This article explains how the eye perceives color and how it has a psychological effect and
other areas. In addition it talks about light perception and splits color into two categories.
This is a scientific study and has graphs and explanations to their experiments, which
makes it more credible as a source. A scientific explanation on why color is important
and effects people is very important to the subject topic.

Yildirim, K., Cagatay, K., & Ayalp, N. (2014). Effect of wall cloud
On the perception of classrooms. Indoor and Built Environment,
24(5), 607-616. Retrieved January 14, 2018.
In this study the main purpose was to evaluate how three colors effected male students.
This is relevant and credible source because it was a scientific evaluation on real students
and psychological perimeters. The finding from this study are very important because it
proves the point that colors do effect people in their environment and impact their
performance academically.

Yildirim, K., & Hidayetoglu, M. L. (2011). Effects of Interior

Colors of Mood and Preference: Comparisons of Two Living Rooms. 509-524. Retrieved
January 10, 2018.
This article explores if different interior colors in rooms provoke different moods in
people. The article is from an academic journal which makes it credible. Colors creating
different moods is one of the key points to my paper which makes it very important.

Visual of how boring it can look to be inputting colors on cloths all day (1)
A congested subway station (2)
Video demonstration of Design Leadership (3)