I downloaded Kindle for the iPhone and decided to purchase a book, to take it for a spin. I settled on this one because 1) I remember always enjoying frogdesign's ads on the back covers of my issues of I.D. magazine; and 2) Hartmut Esslinger was one of those designers I would often read about while growing up.
 
I'm still on vacation but have managed to finish a couple of chapters, and I've enjoyed what I've read so far. Esslinger's writing style makes for easy reading, and his inclusion of personal stories help keep the reader emotionally engaged. What I most enjoy is Esslinger's theme of having a design-driven creative strategy, and how the consumate designer should have both design and business chops. The design purist has a place in this world, but such a person can also become an impediment if he or she refuses to acknowledge the realities and constraints of a business that has the moral obligation to produce profit for its investors. This doesn't imply that Design is necessarily the blind and silent servant of Business, but it does acknowledge a mutual dependency between the two. As Walt Disney once said, "We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies."

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