Growing a design business is a challenging feat for many reasons. One of the biggest is due to the nature of design. Design is part art and part science. It is part subjective and part objective.

When you are building a design team, there is a certain amount of work that is objective. This is the 2+2=4 type of work. This work does not require a sense of artistry and can be done by less experienced team members as they learn, or by a machine. This is the work that scales.

The remaining work is art. The style evolves from the experience of the designer, and organizations will pay well to work with a designer that reflects their desired sense of artistry and style. When creating a piece of work, this style is the result of a million tiny decisions over the course of the design process that coalesce into the finished work. It is difficult to teach this, because you can not memorize a million hypothetical “if this, then this” responses. Rather, the instructor needs to teach the pupil how they think, which is no less challenging. It is also less practical as the design team becomes larger.

As a design team grows it must by necessity focus on the objective, scalable tasks. As a result, most design organizations, as they expand, loose their sense of style. This does not mean that they cease to produce thoughtful, successful designs. It means that as a whole, the organization looses it’s design identity.