design in the future

Photo from ReForm School / Home Ec

Advertising Age's Lenore Skenazy posted an article today featuring a chat with futurist Richard Watson and his predicted trends that will affect marketing. I was elated to see Watson's second insight: physical design will become "infinitely more important."

Why? Well...

First: It's hard to get anyone's attention with an ad, so the product has to do the attention grabbing. Another reason for the ascendancy of product design: the aging population. If seniors can't open it, hold it, press it or use it, your product will miss a huge market.

One small step for marketing, one giant leap for designers everywhere.