The challenge
The Global Design team wanted colleagues across Colgate-Palmolive to understand that design shaped more than how products looked.
Another internal deck was unlikely to do the job.
The team needed something tangible and lasting: substantial enough for design leaders, clear enough for colleagues in other disciplines and engaging enough to be read rather than filed away.
The approach
The company already had the stories. The harder part was finding the thread between them.
We interviewed teams across functions and geographies to understand how design shaped product development, marketing, manufacturing and cross-functional work. Then we organized those examples into a larger narrative about design’s role across the business.
The work was part reporting, part strategy: asking questions that surfaced the strongest examples, finding the throughline between them and translating design language so it could travel between disciplines.
Across the book, one idea held everything together: design is not simply how something looks. It is how an idea becomes understandable, usable and real.
The outcome
The book gave teams a shared way to explain what design contributed.
It became a reference for onboarding colleagues, discussing cross-functional projects and aligning around a more consistent language for design. By grounding broad ideas in specific examples, the book helped non-designers recognize where design already shaped their work — and where it could do more.
The publication was made to last beyond its launch. It did.
“As a writer, Colin was able to take complex and often not well understood (technical) areas, and synthesize them into relatable, relevant stories that connect with a general audience. He writes with clarity, bringing the right balance of credibility and emotion to his storytelling.”