Sandra Dartnell was asked to give a presentation on how to buy design at a creative networking event called Creative Bedfordshire. The presentation was developed to educate micro businesses with small budgets. View Buying Design Better , Subtitle – Making sure that the design you buy results in a quality product that does the job.

About creating the presentation and Sandra Dartnell
During the process of working out the content and putting the presentation together I came to the most simple conclusion yet about how I feel about design (or rather how I feel about the value of design), how I can communicate that opinion to my customers – and how I most want to help people via my consultancy business.

How I feel about the value of Design

_Design speaks

_Design works hard

_Design can move your business

_Bad design speaks just as loud as good design

_Bad design works just as hard as good design

_Good design can move your business ahead

This became a brief for my great friend and designer Emma Turland at S & T Design.

Together we created my marketing. Here is a summary of the flip-side which explains a bit more about how I feel about the value of design

What is design saying about your business?

Design affects what is important to you – your products, your prices, your company – because design communicates how something should be perceived.

They might not realise it but design is important to your customers too. It informs their decision making. It tells them how to feel about your business.

Design works hard. It works hard to tell people what you are, who you are and how to value you.

Design is a powerful problem solver for customers and business owners. It attracts and explains. It gives stand-out and offers alignment with other successful businesses.

But solving problems and seeing opportunities starts with knowing yourself.

Ask a designer to reflect your business not define it.

Know who you are. Know how to communicate who you are. 
Buy design better. Be seen, understood, ahead.

This brings me back to what I learned about how I most want to help people via my consultancy business. A flawed start in the basics is incredibly tricky to recover from (for the project outcome and the project team) and so it is the start that I focus on.

Helping people buy design better

_Start with knowing who are you
_Create a clear brief (Most importantly Know how to communicate who you are. Know why you are doing, not what you are doing)
_Aim high and be constrained

A nice productive little business journey for me, helped along by @CreativeBeds.

Sandra Dartnell, ThinkingCX