Rama Gheerawo on why designers must think like leaders
Image of Graphite Pencil-winning Space Trash Signs for Privateer Space by Serviceplan Germany
Rama Gheerawo champions inclusive design as President of EIDD – Design for All Europe and as founder of his consultancy dedicated to inclusive innovation, INSTILL. He has been named a Creative Leader by Creative Review and was honoured with the Design Week Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Formerly Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art in London, Gheerawo has led hundreds of collaborations across business, government and communities. He’s the author of Creative Leadership: How to Design the 21st-century Organisation (2025), and his creative leadership model has trained thousands of people. Here, he explains why design drives business growth, transformation and behavioural change.
The famous industrial designer Patricia Moore once said: “Design is no longer a mere variable in determining the course of the future, it is the means of our very survival.”
The power of design has historically been overlooked in the wider world, too often seen as a purely aesthetic surface-level activity. Yet many of us know that design is not just decoration or a ‘nice-to-have’, but a critical tool for business, culture, and everyday life. When it is done right, with a balance between craft and intention, design is one of the most powerful change agents the world has.
In 2025, the D&AD Awards recognised this. Jurors did not just home in on brilliant visual ideas or exquisite craft alone. They also looked at impact, asking how design was used to influence behaviour, empower communities, solve pressing issues, and transform people’s lives and businesses. As Graphic Design juror Hannah Kelly put it, the work that rose to the top “had real impact in the world and put design at the centre of business and social problems.” This thinking represents the profound sea-change taking place within design and the new demands this places on designers, who must lead the way with empathy, clarity, and of course creativity.
Image of Rama Gheerawo by Yayasan Hasanah and Manggis
"When it is done right, with a balance between craft and intention, design is one of the most powerful change agents the world has."
In this age of the multi-hyphenate designer – who might simultaneously be a maker, thinker, strategist, activist, and business-person working across cultures, technologies, and touchpoints – there are fresh challenges in keeping up with these different demands. As the WePresent New Rules Design Report observed, these are in addition to other pressures faced by designers, from advancing technologies to fast-moving visual trends. These are not just industry tremors, they are tectonic shifts.
Yet the shifting role of the designer also brings fresh opportunities to make a far bigger impact than in the past, whether on business growth, cultural relevance or social transformation. As Pum Lefebure, Jury President and chief creative officer at Design Army, said: “Craft is very important, but the designer also needs to think like a CEO. Design has to change how people think, act, and see the world.”
Image of Yellow Pencil-winning Sightwalks for UNACEM by Circus Grey Peru
Many of this year’s D&AD Pencil winners rose to the task, showing the power of combining big thinking and craft to respond to real issues and causes.
To help the 1.3 million people in India affected by clubfoot, Buckaroo worked with McCann Worldgroup India to create Fit my Feet: a flip-flop kit priced at $2.40, now available through thousands of cobblers to deliver accessible and, importantly, scalable impact. Elsewhere, Sightwalks is a tactile signage system that helps visually impaired individuals identify nearby services by tapping the sidewalk with their cane.
As these winners and others have shown, inclusive design is not an add-on, but a driver of originality, relevance, and growth. Every designer I know carries a wish to leave the world in a better place than when they found it, but too often, design has excluded people as much as it has included them. This is why inclusive design must sit at the heart of creativity, and every design school, practising designer and design leader should know and implement these standards.
“Every designer I know carries a wish to leave the world in a better place than when they found it, but too often, design has excluded people as much as it has included them.”
Some creatives are even intent on leaving space in a better place, too. Space Trash Signs, a Pencil winner in Digital Design and Impact, visualised the consequences of space pollution whilst showcasing the next generation of digital design. The initiative prompted 400 million impressions, improving public engagement and increasing sign-ups for the ESA Zero Debris Charter by 2,300%.
The campaign showed the importance of bringing humanity into environmental and sustainability causes, which can sometimes be missing from ‘design for planet’ projects. Let us remember: when it comes to fighting for the future of our planet (and beyond), people are always part of the equation – sometimes as instigators of change or sometimes as resistors of it, sometimes as those most affected or sometimes those most responsible for it. ‘Planet’ and ‘people’ are not separate briefs, and the most impactful work understands this.
Image of Graphite Pencil-winning Fit My Feet for Buckaroo by McCann Worldgroup India
As creatives, we know first-hand that design is not only powerful but essential, just as Patricia Moore said. Our next challenge is to ensure we communicate that to others across business and society. This is why the conversation about impact matters so deeply, taking us beyond aesthetics and decoration into the realms of transformation. Research from McKinsey, Adobe and The Design Management Institute reminds us that creativity is the skill most in demand for the future, with many professionals on LinkedIn supporting this. But unless we find new ways of bringing creativity into mainstream conversations, celebrating our discipline unabashedly, and enabling every human being as a unique, creative force, we will not move. A creative sea-change is not one single wave, but many small ones coming together to create a tide.
Check out D&AD’s Sea Change Design theme in this year’s trend report, where we delve into how though design may be viewed by many as an aesthetic discipline, the role of the designer stretches far beyond.