Book Review: Creative Strategy and the Business of Design

This book is for creative professionals who want to understand more about the business aspect of design industry. It has lots of insights that should benefit freelancers, especially those who have to work with clients, big companies.

This book goes through the why of design. It answers questions like who are the customers that you're targeting, how you should target them, how to be relevant to them, and how to meet the business objectives of your clients who are paying you. There are explanation of different strategies involved, how you should approach your project and the different aspects to consider besides design itself.

So it's not just as simple as coming up with a beautiful graphic. It's about making your work relevant to people who see it so that it can be effective at bringing the message across.

The content is not something you would expect to be taught at design schools. And it's precisely because of that that this book is going to be helpful to creative professionals, especially those who have ambitions of creating work with greater impact.

Overall, the concepts presented allows you to take a top down view at creative work. It's mostly strategy, and it explains the difference between strategy and execution. If you want more practical hands-on advice, I would recommend you check out Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff they don't teach you in design school, but should too.

Creative Strategy and the Business of Design is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)