[Design Forum] Design connects people　

Design plays a key role across a range of sectors in society from art to business to represent beliefs, values and ideas.

Randi Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive of Zuckerberg Media and a marketing expert, believes that design guards the world from disorder and chaos and shapes people’s lives.

The Zuckerberg Media CEO, with multiple careers including author and TV producer, has published two books, including “Dot Complicated,” a New York Times bestseller about her views on technological advancement and sequential changes. She was also nominated for an Emmy in 2011for her blend of online and TV coverage of the U.S. midterm elections. 

Often appearing on a variety of TV shows in the U.S., the CEO, also sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, offers her insights into business and the start-up world.

Following is an excerpt of her written interview with The Korea Herald. – Ed.


KH: Herald Design Forum is based on the belief that the core role of design is to integrate different industries and create new values. Marketing, too, is a means of connecting different horizons, crossing borders in order to deliver the right value to the right audience. How may we combine the two as to create greater synergy?

Zuckerberg: Design and marketing both rely heavily on branding. When you create anything you are intuitively making it your brand because it contains a representation of your values, your ideas, and your personal aesthetic built into it. The same holds true for marketing: When you market a company you are branding its values and beliefs to potential consumers. Since branding is the common thread between design and marketing, creating a greater synergy first begins with a question: What is it you want to tell people about your ideas?


KH: HDF believes that design is no longer a designer-limited category, but more of a platform, involving people regardless of industry. In this sense, tell us your opinion about the value of design.

Zuckerberg: At heart, design is who and what we are. Each of us is made of a certain design. Composing music is in itself a design. And marketing and branding are built on design. Therefore the value of design is priceless and immeasurable.

Design gives energy to ideas and beliefs, which is why it’s so crucial to be able to look at everything -- from human psychology to a Broadway play to a branded corporate logo -- with an outsider’ s perspective, not just one built on our own bias.


KH: Please give us more details on your companies, Zuckerberg Media and Dot Complicated.

Zuckerberg: Zuckerberg Media is my boutique marketing firm and production company that focuses on much more than social media marketing and networking, but rather the lifestyle created around brands. We’ve worked with many high profile organizations and Fortune 500 companies including The Clinton Global Initiative, Cirque du Soleil and PayPal to help design an interactive experience using all types of media.

Dot Complicated, an offshoot of Zuckerberg Media’s core design and my own personal lifestyle brand, has published two books -- “Dot Complicated” ... and “Dot,” a children’s book -- runs the website DotComplicated.co, hosts the ‘Dot Complicated with Randi Zuckerberg’ radio show on SiriusXM (satellite radio) and publishes a “Dot Complicated” monthly newsletter.


KH: Herald has come up with the concept of DoT, Design of Things, to suggest that design acts as a connecting tool, a platform to the world. Would you agree on the expanded role of design?

Zuckerberg: Just one look at the sleek design of an iPhone 6 or the shape of Porsche and you know what the brand is before ever seeing the name. Design itself is a brand and it connects us by recognition. Through recognition and observance of design we are connected on a different plane.


KH: Is there a specific designer that you take an interest in?

Zuckerberg: I have always been a big fan of the designs of Dieter Rams who worked for Braun and the Functionalist School of Industrial Design. He greatly inspired Steve Jobs (another one of my favorite designers) with his “less is more” approach to his timeless designs.

Rams branded his designs through honest aesthetics and user intuition. His major belief for design is that innovation has to come from within to influence the outside world, which is really terrific advice for giving purpose to what we put out into society.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)