Advocates for Design at Cleveland’s Startup Weekend
December 09, 2009 0 comments
A few weeks ago I attended Cleveland’s first Startup Weekend. The goal of the weekend was to start eight businesses over the weekend. There were 39 pitches. Each person had two minutes to describe their business idea and list who they needed to work on their team. Most of the pitches requested developers and business professionals, but only three people requested designers, which made me think that as designers we must not be advocating design as well as we should to the business community.
At the end of the weekend, I realized that by attending this event I was indeed advocating design. Brad Colbow, Beth Dean and Parag Jagdale are designers who also attended the event. Each of us showed our team members what it was like to work with a designer and how we could help their business startups succeed with good design. We did more than just talk about how we could help their businesses grow, we proved it by completing design work that helped our teams win Cleveland’s Startup Weekend. The two teams that won Cleveland’s Startup Weekend with a tie both had solid branding and websites that were designed well. Brad Colbow designed the branding and website for Local Food 365, and Beth Dean and I designed the branding and website for Pricefixr. While both startups had many different aspects that lead them to win Cleveland’s Startup Weekend, I believe that design is what gave both teams the added advantage. The visual design of both websites provided instant credibility, showing that both startups were on their way to success.
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