Mass production is no longer the only game in town. Small bands of visionary designers in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and home offices around the world have bypassed corporate clients to reach consumers directly through the Internet. Outsourcing their production directly to low-cost Asian and digital suppliers, they are realizing the creative potential possible with personal control of your own micro-brand.

Drawing on his experience as a designer and educator living at the crossroads of East and West, Roger Ball, with his colleague, Heidi Overhill, brings you a vision of the myriad opportunities waiting for designers and entrepreneurs as they step forward into the new era of DesignDirect.

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I read this book with great interest. The fact that it is written with a focus on the current Asian design reality is a real plus, as it offered a spin in my conceptions for the asian design scene. I must admit that I was initially surprised, as the tittle gave me the impression that I had a self help book in my hands, and then realized this was not the case at all.

I would say that I found the book having three distinct agendas. Firstly, there is a discourse on why designers can and should start running their own businesses now more than ever. For me, as a young designer, this part says "Here is an opportunity". On a second layer, the book seems to be building a case and an exemplar for other academics, so that they would also consider the possibility of incorporating courses similar to the one described in the book to their curricula. In fact, I thought that this is the strongest point that this book makes, and I would think it would be a very interesting and relevant read for design tutors and course directors. As a third part of the book, through the descriptions of the course structures, the assignments and discussions, a very clear idea on the steps for the creation of a design business is drawn. Clearly, I feel it is more of a "what steps you need to take" sort of approach, rather than "how to actually do it". There is undoubtedly a lot of good advice in there for business aspiring designers, but it feels like an underlying theme rather than a key point.

As a young designer who aims to start a DesignDirect sort of business in the future, I found some chapters very interesting, as they reveal different strategies and approaches to the subject through presenting well known product examples, I could easily relate to. It provides a lot of ideas, and helps dissolve a lot of fears that come with the thought of starting one's own business. That way it definitely makes the potential for running my own business seem much more possible and achievable that I thought before.

In total, I perceived the book mainly as a showcase of a successful example of teaching business to designers, a suggestion for how things could be done differently and the results the industry could expect if this was embraced in a wider level. In a nutshell, I would say that it is a book intended to educators more than young designers, and in doing so it is very successful.

(Lina Patsiou, 2012 Nov 17)

Thank you very much for this inspiring book. I have been teaching design and design management students for some time now. Of course we did a lot of project work, during which students were able to also exercise their skills through interesting real life assignments. However, this book goes one step further and suggests to students to actually start their own micro-brands, while they are still at school. This is a great idea! I totally agree with the procedure suggested by Roger Ball and Heidi Overhill that avoids prolonged business plan writing and calculations but goes directly to design action using the activity of "effectuating" step by step of the way towards the student's own micro brand. This is the time for and to Design Direct.

(Claudia Acklin, 2012 Nov 05)

I have finished reading Roger's Design Direct - it was fantastic. I have begun to share many of the attributes of the M.Des course that was so eloquently described with my senior design students here at Sha Tin College and it has confirmed much and provided more with my own micro-brand that I am developing at the moment.

The best investment in terms of design reading I have made.

(Paul Clarke, 2012 Apr 18)