Design to Sell

Competing with a Visual Edge

Daniel Pink, in his recent best-selling book A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age (Riverhead, 2005), lists design as the first of the “Six Senses” he considers essential to economic and personal success in the twenty-first century.

Pink describes design as a “combination of utility and significance.” He writes:

A graphic designer must whip up a brochure that is easy to read. That’s utility. But at its most effective, her brochure must also transmit ideas or emotions that the words themselves cannot convey. That’s significance.

Your mastery of the ideas and techniques described in this book will open the doors of effective communications to you and—hopefully—your employer or clients. ...