A good designer knows business

Remember when the design world seemed neatly divided? Creatives focused on perfecting their craft, while "the business folks" handled all those spreadsheets and metrics. 

These days, those lines are delightfully blurry, and it's creating some exciting opportunities for designers who love to dive deeper into how their work impacts the bigger picture.

While mastering creative tools and having strong artistic vision remains absolutely crucial, there's a growing appreciation for designers who can also speak the language of business. 

It's not about choosing one over the other – it's about adding another dimension to an already amazing skill set. Here's why and how you should do it.

The new designer dress code is business casual

Modern designers are expected to be business-minded problem solvers. Knowing how to communicate your value beyond the visuals will help you to sell your designs and services, and form long-term strategic partnerships where you can make more and more impact with every design you create. Because while a beautiful portfolio gets you through the door, business acumen is what keeps you in the room.

You're not expected to be a business consultant who happens to be really good at Figma, but you should understand the basics of business. Think of it as being bilingual: speaking both the language of design and business opens up whole new conversations and possibilities.

When you're involved in a rebrand, you need to know what the goals of said rebrand are, and what role design plays in that.

If you're designing a sales page, or an ad banner, you need to know what drives conversion for the audience you're designing for. In other words: you need to be able to be part of the conversation.

Your pitch and presentation should go beyond: "We'll use a sans-serif for modernity". Instead, you should be thinking of how you can A/B test typefaces against conversion rates. 

Because at the end of the day, it's not just about whether or not the client will love it, but whether or not customer will buy it. 

The blueprint for business-driven designers

You don't have to buy every online course under the sun or study economics to get ahead. Knowing the basics well is much more important than jumping on hypes. Here's what we'd learn today as designers. 

Strategic know-how is in style

The most exciting projects happen when designers bring both their artistic expertise and their understanding of business goals to the table. You're not compromising your creative vision – you're enriching it with purpose. Every colour choice, typography decision, and layout element should tie back to business objectives. 

Take On Running, for example. Their designers didn't just create nice-looking shoes; they researched what the current customer pains are in a market that's flooded with competition. Instead of trying to be a better version of their competitors, they zoomed in on the pain points of consumers, and replied accordingly. That helped them create a complete brand experience that makes people willing to pay premium prices for having clouds strapped to their feet. Their design became a vital part of the business, and of its success.

Learn to speak business (without losing your creative accent)

When clients ask about conversion rates or ROI, it's not about diminishing the importance of design – it's an opportunity to show how great design drives real results. Building this knowledge happens naturally through curiosity and experience.

So before you start throwing around acronyms like CTR and KPIs, it's important that you get to understand what your client is after, and teach them what you need to know to provide a solution to the problem they have. That all starts with the brief.

If you can understand the “why” behind design briefs, it'll lead to more effective solutions.

Think:

– How will we measure the impact of the design changes?

– Are there any past attempts to solve this problem we should learn from?

– How will different teams need to use and adapt these design components?

– What user research or data do you already have that we should review?

Asking these questions is a two-way street. You educate your clients on what you need to know to give them the best results and make data-based design decisions. 

The questions you should ask differ per project and brief, but make sure to only start designing when you know what goals are expected to be reached, and what problems you're expecting to solve. Because that's what design is: problem-solving. 

With that knowledge you can provide much more value in the weeks and months to come, and design with more strategic purpose. Educate yourself in the metrics that are most relevant to your specialisation, whether that's conversion rates, brand recall or UX-related metrics. A basic course can give you new insights that bring your pitch to the next level.

With this information, you're now the bridge between marketing teams (who want it yesterday), development teams (who say it'll take six months), leadership teams (who want it for half the budget) and the end-users (who just want it to work). 

Add data to your design toolkit

Rather than limiting creativity, user insights and metrics can spark new ideas and validate innovative approaches. 

Today's designers are comfortable turning user insights into design decisions. It's not enough to say "users will love this"—you need to know who those users are, and why they will love it.

Whether you're tracking engagement metrics, analysing user behaviour, or conducting A/B tests, let data inform your design choices. 

From Figma to financial impact: be a business-driven designer

Great design has always been about solving problems beautifully. While others debate whether Midjourney will replace designers, you'll be busy solving the problems AI can't touch: turning business challenges into creative opportunities that drive real results. Start small: pick one business metric relevant to your next project – maybe it's cart abandonment rates or brand recall scores. Research it, understand it, design for it. Then measure the impact. That's not just adding to your portfolio – it's adding to your value.

The tools may change, but strategic design thinking is future-proof.

If you're keen on building a long career in design that leaves a lasting impact on the brands you work for, know the business challenges that people in your industry are facing, and the goals they're trying to reach. With the right approach and by using data, your designs can contribute to their success, so start positioning yourself as the expert you are.

Illustration: Alexandra Mousourouli