No subject

Hiring good people is very important. However, the larger is a
company, the more important is the role of corporate culture in
determining whether the company will produce good design.

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This is something of a chicken-and-egg discussion.

In my experience, the larger the company, the more likely they are to
have hired a professional creative team to create a comprehensive
design guide. Hopefully, the designers will reflect the client's
corporate culture in their work. They always claim to have done so
when justifying their ideas, but this isn't always the case.
Moreover, designers are often called in to create a framework that
will inspire changes to an existing culture. (Message from new CEO:
this tired old reactive company has to rejoin the market-driven
world. Give me something dynamic and exciting!)

Example from the real world: When Microsoft bought Great Plains
Software in Fargo, ND and Navision Software in Copenhagen, Denmark
(both ERP providers), the two companies were merged to form Microsoft
Business Solutions. The design guide (from McCann in SF)and the
accompanying instructions for use were based far less on the wildly
divergent cultures of the Redmond, Fargo, Copenhagen companies, than
on the perception that the new company hoped to create in the
marketplace.

All my best,
Eric

e-reiss.com
copenhagen, denmark