Brute Force

Michael and Jessica discuss IBM, which has embraced design thinking and hired of thousands of designers.

Michael says this commitment to design is “expressed almost with the brute force of numbers,” unlike the “Good Design Is Good Business” era of Paul Rand, Eliot Noyes, and Eero Saarinen, which was “not a mass movement but led by a relatively small elite cadre of high priests.”

And Jessica asks: “If you’re not thinking like a designer, what are you thinking like? Design thinking is creative thinking. It’s creative problem-solving.”

Also mentioned:

Video from Paris: Behind the Bataclan and the most viewed Vine

Pigeons diagnose breast cancer on X-rays as well as radiologists

Janine Benyus, Biomimicry

The Coke bottle at 100

Linda Tischler and David Butler, Design to Grow

New York Times obituary for Michael Gross

Michael on the forgotten design legacy of National Lampoon

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By Michael Bierut & Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer and a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Communications Arts and Eye magazines. A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame, Helfand received her B.A. and her M.F.A. from Yale University where she has taught since 1994.