Another Film on Design Thinking in the Oven

Just as the film makers at One Time Studio are rallying up supporters and funding for their documentary, Design & Thinking, another group of designers are working on their own film, also eager to investigate the meaning behind the overused buzzword “design thinking.” Initiated by Erik Roscam Abbing, Design the New Business is a collaboration […]

Just as the film makers at One Time Studio are rallying up supporters and funding for their documentary, Design & Thinking, another group of designers are working on their own film, also eager to investigate the meaning behind the overused buzzword “design thinking.” Initiated by Erik Roscam Abbing, Design the New Business is a collaboration with Erik van Bergen, Esra Gokgoz, Gunjan Singh, Juan David Martin, Marta Ferreira de Sá, Miguel Melgarejo and Robert Zwamborn to find out the design key to business success.

Like Design & Thinking, Design the New Business promises it will feature an array of notable interviewees across the design industry, but the line-up has not yet been announced. They’ve released a teaser so far, and have emphasized that there will be equal parts focus on design and business. The short documentary sets out to investigate how the design mindset is helping to evolve business thinking, and how this growing relationship between the two disciplines is changing the way we live. The eight-person collective, all hailing from the Master’s program in Strategic Product De­sign at Delft University of Technol­ogy in the Netherlands, admit to being amateur film makers. But as a group of designers, they are confident that their own design thinking and sensibilities will figure out the process for them along the way.

Non-designers may find these discussions stimulating, but if they haven’t already, will designers have grown tired of this topic by the time these films are released in October? Perhaps. The launch of these two film projects reveals that designers have finally had it, and want to get down to the core of what it is they do, and the value of their skill set. What does design thinking actually mean, and what is it doing to shape the environment in which we work? The answers will be explored through case studies and examples, not definitions. The coinciding introduction of these two film bring together many prominent voices at one time, and will hopefully, and finally, put a context to the term we’ve heard thrown around in excess for so long.


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For a while, it seemed like a formal discussion about the state of design in a film format was lacking and overdue, but it turns out that good things come in twos.

For more design and business-related videos, visit the Design the New Business blog.

Cheryl Yau is a designer from Hong Kong and currently an MFA candidate in the Design Criticism program at the School of Visual Arts, New York. She considers typesetting to be a therapeutic activity, and will always be a city girl at heart.

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