John Edson is president of Lunar, a leading global design firm that has worked with Apple on many products. Edson’s book Design Like Apple uncovers the lessons from Apple’s singular approach to product creation, manufacturing, delivery, and customer experience.
From his earliest days at Apple, Steve Jobs set the standard that all products should be “insanely great.” Continuing that standard today, Apple sees design as a tool for creating beautiful experiences that surprise and delight, but also convey a point of view down to the smallest detail – from the tactile feedback of a keyboard to the out-of-the-box experience of an iPhone package. The entire Apple organization is designed to give top priority to design considerations.
Design Like Apple is subtitled “Seven Principles for Creating Insanely Great Products, Services, and Experiences.” Here are the seven principles with a short description:
- Design makes all the difference – beauty, ingenuity, and charisma create a unique competitive advantage
- Design the organization – nurture taste, talent, and a design culture
- The product is the marketing – great products sell themselves
- Design is systems thinking – product and context are one
- Design out loud – prototype to perfection
- Design is for people – connect with your customer
- Design with conviction – commit to a unique voice
The content of Design Like Apple is a fascinating read, but the design of the book itself is amazing – this is a book that you won’t want to get on Kindle or other e-reader, but instead hold in your hands as you see how the author practices the book’s message in its own design.
You may wonder why I’m recommending this book for further study by leaders in ChurchWorld. That’s simple:
Leaders are designers.
The sooner you accept and apply that statement, the better off you will be as a leader.
inspired by and adapted from Design Like Apple by John Edson
I plan to dive into the individual principles at a later date, but if you are curious about design and leadership, take a look at these posts:
27gen.com 
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