Design Currency by Jenn and Ken Visocky O’Grady, A Book Review

Husband and wife team Jenn and Ken Visocky O’Grady have done it again.  These successful university professors, Jenn a Professor at Cleveland State University and Ken an Associate Professor at Kent State University, have quite a lot under their belt. Co-founders of creative think tank Enspace and co-authors of The Information Design Handbook and A Designer’s Research Manual, the Visocky O’Grady duo has come together once again to write Design Currency.

Design currency, their third creation, is dedicated to designers everywhere pushing the boundaries of design. It aims to help designers understand, define and promote the value of their design work.  The Visocky O’Grady’s promise to teach the reader to leverage traditional design skills in new ways, measure the value that their design work brings to a project, articulate that value so that they can position themselves as a partner in the development process, charge what they’re worth and prevent their job from getting crowd-sourced or outsourced and generate business value by better identifying audience needs.

Design Currency is now available on Pearson Higher Ed in paperback, at $27.99, or digitally at $22.39.

The Scoop

Jenn and Ken Visocky O’Grady skip what could be a never ending discussion about design aesthetics and cut straight to the chase.  How can designers best measure the value of their design in terms of business metrics?

Design Currency is filled with hardy advice, giving concrete objectives for designers looking to turn skills into outcomes, insights into actions, ideas into processes.  The authors show the reader, through very specific and thoughtful discussion, how to see their design work through new eyes.

Quick tips and short exercises fill Design Currency‘s 229 pages, engaging and challenging the reader with food for thought.  Colorful photography, charts and graphs from the Visocky O’Grady’s and work from contributors like WMC Fest favorite Brian Andrew Jaskinski illustrate their points.

The empowerment provided by the Visocky O’Grady’s also gives the reader the self-assurance to both qualify and quantify their aesthetic decisions, thus making them an expert not only in the design realm but as a business professional as well.

If you have the time to take a bite out of this thorough handbook, you’ll be on your way to more confidently promoting your work to your client, objectively and aesthetically.

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