Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.
This week’s question:
I’m the creative lead of a direct-to-consumer brand in India with a background in design education and professional experience in the creative field. Over time, I’ve realised that my inclination toward strategy and creative thinking has helped me solve larger customer-centric problems through design and create meaningful business impact. At the same time, it has taken me a while to grasp the other side of the equation – the marketing metrics, numbers, and data that drive business decisions. I’m still learning on the job, gradually bridging the gap between creativity and business. This process has made me reflect on the role of design in business and the kind of knowledge designers need to truly influence outcomes beyond aesthetics.
We say design is critical to business, but can a designer truly create business-impactful work without understanding the business side? Where should the balance lie between pure creativity and business knowledge?