David Holston
Creative and Marketing Strategy
The Strategic Designer:
Tools and techniques for managing the design process
Published by HOW Design/Simon & Schuster
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Author and Workshop Facilitator
Design Thinking, Business Strategy, Creativity
The Book:
Great design and great client relationships; Two things that all designers want. The Strategic Designer is based on research conducted with over 100 designers, educators and researchers from across the nation. The book provides a framework for collaboration, context and accountability in design problem solving. The book offers accepted professional practices and acts as a graphic design process body of knowledge, guiding the reader through each step of the graphic design process. Designers will learn how to build strong client relationships, increase project success rates, boost efficiency and enhance their creativity.
The Workshop
I've presented workshops across the county. I really enjoy working with communicators and designers to make the concepts of the book come to life. The Strategic Designer Workshop was created to help you find new ways to spark creativity and engage your clients and audiences on a deeper level. This workshop provides you with fun activities for solving strategic design problems through visual thinking, drawing, images, words, role playing, mapping, stories and other activities.
What you will learn
The Strategic Designer Workshop teaches you tools for working through strategic communication questions with clients through fun and collaborative activities to help you create great design solutions. You will learn:
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How to make your client relationships more productive
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How to identify the real design problem to be solved
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How to get clients to clearly express their goals
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How to work with audiences to gather design insights
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Strategies for developing creative ideas consistently
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How to get past client subjectivity
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How to evaluate design success
Each participant will walk away with a collection of strategic communication exercises, a150 page PDF workbook outlining the exercises.
How you will benefit
Based on over 100 interviews with communicators, designers, researchers and educators, The Strategic Designer Workshop provides you tools and techniques used in design process best practices. By understanding how to integrate the tools and exercises associated with the various phases of the design process, you'll be better able to provide your clients with well thought out and strategic design decisions.
Who should attend
This workshop is appropriate for designers and design managers who are interested in gaining insight into design process best practices.
