The Masters of Design

Noreen Morioka believes that the creative directors at companies like ABC and Nickelodeon are guardians of their brands. Getting to know them personally helps her crack their brands' DNA. So while her partner, Sean Adams, executes most of the firm's graphic-design work for organizations including Oxygen and the Sundance Film Festival, Morioka interprets her clients' sometimes vaguely articulated goals. When Nickelodeon's Nick Jr. channel was refining its logo, executive creative director Brown Johnson included "love" as one of the hazy brand attributes she wanted the channel to convey. Through close observation, Morioka learned that for Johnson, love meant "time and attention." That phrase animated Nick Jr.'s logo featuring parent-and-child animals. The message is for the masses, but for Morioka, it starts with one -- the keeper of the brand. -- JM

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Margareta van den Bosch

Head of design, H&M,
Stockholm, Sweden

Under Margareta van den Bosch's skillful eye, H&M translates cutting-edge, high-end fashions into affordable, accessible items for the masses. That's a model that has propelled the 58-year-old company to an enviable winning streak. Last year, sales rose 11%, while profits soared by 15%. H&M plans to open 150 new stores by the end of this year, bringing the total to about 1,200 worldwide. What's H&M's secret? Van den Bosch points to a triangle. "At the top are things that sell and change the fastest, and at the bottom are items we always keep in stock," she says. One top-of-the-triangle item that won glowing reviews from fashionistas worldwide came as a result of H&M's partnership last fall with couture designer Karl Lagerfeld. The one-shot clothing line was so popular that several weeks' worth of inventory sold out in a few hours -- just one of the ways that design powers profits. But for van den Bosch, the Lagerfeld episode was all in a day's work: "The line happened just like everything else around here." -- Ryan Underwood

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Larry Keeley

Cofounder, the Doblin Group,
Chicago, Illinois

Larry Keeley doesn't do design -- at least not the way most of us define it. Rather, he creates internal design processes that foster successful innovation. That's good, because according to his statistics, innovations fail 96% of the time. When Keeley does his job right (for clients including Citigroup, McDonald's, and Pfizer), the success rate climbs to somewhere between 35% and 70%. "We offer a way to stop coming up with hundreds of bad ideas and instead come up with one great design," he says.

In his mind, tapping a lucrative new market should not be the lucky result of some needle-in-the-haystack scramble. It should come as the end result of a purposeful, companywide push for innovation. -- RU

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Liz Sanders

Founder of MakeTools Inc., senior lecturer of design, Ohio State University,
Columbus, Ohio

Twenty-five years ago, the design powerhouse now known as Fitch (then Richards & Smith) tried an experiment. It hired Liz Sanders, an academic with a master's in anthropology, a PhD in psychology, and zero design experience. But the field was starting to pay closer attention to people as opposed to cold market dynamics; somehow, the hire felt right. In time, Sanders's background in understanding environmental dynamics (anthropology) and individual needs (psychology) played an ever- increasing role. She helped pioneer many of the ethnographic investigative methods -- such as photographing how customers interact with a company's products -- that are now a standard first step in any design initiative. Now she's facing her toughest challenge: to help design hospitals that make patients, not doctors and administrators, the top priority. -- RU

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Patrick Whitney

Director, the Institute of Design, Illinois
Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois