About
The Strategy of Design examines the power of design in business, culture, and society.
Bio
My name is Jomi. I’m a designer, product strategist, writer, and entrepreneur.
I’m currently the Head of Design and Creative Director of Photon Health.
I’ve spent a decade in product & design leadership roles building digital products, new business lines, and global design systems in media (Condé Nast), healthcare (Thirty Madison, Balanced, Photon), and other startups. I've also been a consultant helping startups and corporations alike establish their product & design practice from scratch to scale. I've been fortunate that my career has led to me to be deeply exposed and directly work on various design projects in fashion, architecture, interiors, music & pop culture, health delivery, marketplaces, and supply chains.
This has allowed me to develop a perspective on design that touches psychology, business, economics, engineering, and culture. It gave me a deep curiosity on what design is in the past, present, and future and its impact on society.
Vision
This publication is an outlet to share observations in the world of design across technology, fashion, architecture, consumer goods, and urban planning among others, as well as lessons learned in building products, in an attempt to connect the dots from what is happening today and where things are going.
It's objective is to unpack design's economic, cultural, and societal impact to use design as a force for creativity, innovation, and good — to make design about people and for people.
Mission
My motivation is to explore what it means to be a designer in the modern age — when technology is all around us, when we can reach audiences globally, when there is both abundance and a desperate need for equity, and when virtues like beauty are eroded in the name of speed and profit.
Being a designer is just a job like anything else: it can't enact policy, it can't make sweeping changes by itself, nor should it mean that designers ought to be the people making such decisions. The objective is to re-evaluate and contextualize the designer's role back into designing.
In this publication, to design means to consider all aspects of the experience and visualize & execute towards a desired future. This means not just how something looks and feels but the implications on multiple levels (concept → product → brand → audience → culture ) and multiple systems (designer → team → company → industry → society).
And while revenue is important for any enterprise to continue operations, doing so while being principled, attempting to create as much value as possible for as many people as possible, and caring about the second-order effects are all part of what it means to design something successfully.
This is a difficult challenge, and we won't always succeed or get it all right, but an even bigger reason why we need better design and better designers.
Philosophy
I believe designers must drastically influence what is built, how its built, and most importantly, why its built, to bring the specific change something wants to see in the world. Even a seasoned graphic designer when creating an identity or a campaign is trying to create a perception for their client. Ultimately, it's about persuasion, outcome, and influence, whether that's for 1 other person or a billion people.
This means it comes with a very specific set of skills, regardless of industry, and with it comes responsibility. Dissecting this into intuitive insights and actionable advice will be a common theme.
Designing and building identities, products, systems, and companies, are never in a vacuum — they are interacting with the strong gravitational pull of present reality: societal shifts, economic climates, technological currents, cultural trends, and philosophical bents, among other things.
This is about designing and building products and processes in the real world and how we can all be better designers.
I don't proclaim I know it all nor that I will because there's so much into being a designer. I just want to start and contribute to the the conversation.
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