Design is an economic act.
What EPC’s conversation with Simon Gough reveals about strategy, value, metrics, and the future role of design.
The leadership work behind Design.
A panel discussion on the hard calls design leaders make when trust, speed, culture, people, data, and story begin to compete, and what must be protected when every decision comes with a cost.
Should a strong design culture need designers in every room?
Designers and design leaders debated whether strong design cultures should require designers in every room. The discussion opened an important reflection: how can design intent scale without diluting craft, judgement, and the user’s voice?
What design leadership really demands today?
An insightful reflection on design leadership across judgement, information flow, transparency, team growth, ownership, organisational influence, and the evolving role of design beyond output.
EPC Unscripted: Behavioural understanding of the Indian consumer.
EPC hosted an Unscripted session on understanding the Indian consumer beyond stereotypes. With leaders from Amazon, Flipkart and 1990 Research Labs, we explored how trust, aspiration, culture, and context shape product decisions in India. The following is a 10-point documentation of the session.
EPC Design Dialogues: Empathy vs Consequences
A debate on Empathy vs Consequences from EPC Design Dialogues, exploring why good design must begin with understanding people, but mature design must also examine what its decisions set in motion.
EPC Design Dialogues: On Design as a Practice
Takeaways from EPC Design Dialogues’ round tables on leadership, critique, AI, B2B delight, behaviour, coaching, and the shift from design as output to design as responsible judgment.
Psychogeography for Designers
Psychogeography helps designers see that people do not experience places in a neutral way. Every environment shapes mood, attention, movement, and choice. To understand design deeply, we must study not just users, but the emotional force of context.
EPC Design Dialogues 2026, Bangalore - India
EPC Dialogues is a half-day gathering for senior designers and design leaders to share the kind of wisdom usually heard in closed rooms. No performative thought leadership. Just honest stories, interesting perspectives, and live dialogue from people who’ve built, shipped, hired, and led.
EPC Unscripted: Hiring in design.
EPC Unscripted brought together 3 design leaders and a room of designers for an honest, unscripted conversation on hiring in 2026—what’s broken, what’s changing, and what it really takes to get hired or hire well today.
"For the Time Being" at the Kochi Biennale.
An exploration of a living ecosystem of art and culture in the historic port city of Kochi - by Divya Venkatesh, UI & Graphics Designer at Wolffkraft. Over four days, the Kochi Muziris Biennale revealed itself
Friction vs Foundation in design teams.
What weakens design first is rarely the obstacle you can point at. It is often the ground beneath it. A useful way to rethink why teams break, adapt, or grow.
Designing for the bad days of your users.
The real test of design is not how it works on a good day. It is whether it still holds when the user is stressed, interrupted, overwhelmed, or simply not okay.
Designers as observers of the unseen.
Great design often begins before users say anything at all. In the pause, the hesitation, the unspoken discomfort, there is a signal. The best designers do not just study behaviour. They learn to notice what escapes the chart.
Your medium makes your decisions.
Your notebook isn’t just holding your ideas. It’s steering them. Page size, friction, and even how erasable a mark feels can push you toward commitment or endless iteration, clarity or chaos. Change the surface, and you may notice your decisions change first.
EPC Unscripted - Feb 7, 2026
In the age of AI, information spreads fast and flattens even faster. This Unscripted session distils two debates into practical takeaways: keep context in mind when you share, use cognitive diversity to catch blind spots, then converge to ship.
Lessons from London Immersion Program: What great designers do differently?
I had an opportunity to attend the London Design Festival as part of the Extended Pack Collective's immersion program last year. Through the program, I had the chance to meet many designers and
What makes a table iconic? A field guide for designers.
Design adores chairs, but life happens around tables: where we gather, spread ideas, and signal power. This essay offers a lens on what makes a table iconic and how to design one for homes and offices that are constantly shifting.
Designscape - Coorg 2026
Design is Conditioning, Culture, and Consequences In Jan 2026, the Extended Pack Collective hosted an EPC retreat in Coorg, bringing together 6 Design Leaders and 10 practising designers from across the ecosystem. A vibrant mix
Designing high-stakes interfaces: Lessons from supercars, ambulances, oil rigs, and everything in-between.
During EPC’s London Immersion Program, a small crew visited Conjure for a deep, high-context session where Founder Sam Clark shared case studies and two decades of lessons on design excellence and running an independent studio.
EPC Dialogues - Dubai: A designer's invisible edge.
EPC Dialogues, held in Dubai, brought global designers together to explore The Invisible Edge. These subtle human abilities help designers notice, interpret, and shape meaningful work. This recap distils the talks, panels, and reflections that unfolded through the day.
Bridging the gap between doing & leading in design.
Design leadership = Shield → Signal → Shape. Shield teams from noise; signal outcomes beyond UI/UX; shape craft via critique. Drop micromanaging & process dogma; start broadcasting capability and teaching with real work. Leaders need craft fluency + orchestration.
Care without clinging.
Care deeply, but don’t cling. Detachment keeps you adaptable, trusted, and in the game longer than any single design.
Craft or Code: Perspectives from designers at every stage.
Design is evolving fast. Here's what designers and design leaders are saying about where you should put more effort.
EPC Dialogues: Invisible effort, career reflections, and impact vs mastery.
Designers from nine diverse organisations came together to reflect on invisible work, career paths, and the balance between impact and mastery.
Seeking before solving: a designer's path to deeper impact.
The best designers slow down. They observe, ask better questions, and notice what others miss. They don’t just solve problems, they seek truths. Design is not about speed or cleverness, but about seeing clearly and making sense of what truly matters.
Tiny boxes, mighty stories.
A tiny matchbox became a powerful design story, blending art, culture, and commerce in just two inches of space. From freedom-era propaganda to global aesthetics, it demonstrates how even seemingly disposable objects can carry lasting meaning and creative impact.
The seven-mile skill: a full altitude approach to design.
Great designers think big and work small. They can shape strategy and fine-tune pixels. This range from vision to detail is the seven-mile skill. It is what turns ideas into real, usable products that feel right at every level.
Experience design earns its stripes when things break.
Most products are built for when things go right. However, real users encounter errors, slowdowns, and unexpected issues every day. Great design helps them recover, not blame them. That’s how trust is built. Designing for failure is not extra work. It is what makes the experience strong.
Delusion is a design skill.
Designers see more than what is there. They imagine what could be. Bold ideas may seem strange at first, but belief fuels progress. Design isn’t just vision. It’s turning belief into reality.
Start where you are, design what can be.
Great designers work patiently with the present, while imagining better futures. Real change starts by understanding the company as it is, with all its constraints, people, and processes. Design what exists today, while patiently shaping what could be tomorrow.
Polyvocality: when multiple truths shape better outcomes.
Polyvocality means making space for many truths, not just the loudest one. It challenges the rush to clarity and values tension, contradiction, and depth. In a world obsessed with speed and certainty, it invites us to slow down and truly listen.
From skateboards to spaceships: Gall’s law in design
Gall’s Law states that complex systems that work usually evolve from simpler ones that already function well. For designers, this means starting small, testing often, and letting complexity emerge from real use. Simplicity is not a shortcut but the foundation of something great.
What comes first: the design or the data?
Designing from data refines what’s known; designing to generate data explores what’s unknown. One optimises, the other discovers. Great design balances grounded insight and bold experimentation to create meaningful, resilient outcomes.
EPC Dialogues: between function and feeling.
Designers from the Extended Pack Collective explored whether design should solve problems or shift perception, and if the chase for “impact” comes at the cost of poetry. This excerpt captures the essence of that rich, reflective conversation.
Design for an uncertain future: thrive in radical ambiguity.
In an age of uncertainty, the best designers aren’t those who predict the future, but those who prepare for it. By embracing ambiguity, designing for resilience, and supporting human judgment, we create systems that thrive not despite the unknown, but because of it.
Mind-wandering: a creative superpower in the age of distractions.
Mind-wandering isn’t distraction. It’s your brain making quiet connections and sparking ideas. For designers, it’s not lost time but where breakthroughs often happen. Great ideas don’t always come from focus, they come when the mind is free to wander.
CMF for a conscious future: a workshop by Clara Bartholomeu.
In Clara Bartholomeu’s CMF workshop, designers explored how colour, material, and finish can shape emotion, sustainability, and identity. Through hands-on moodboard exercises and critique, they learned that thoughtful choices aren’t just aesthetic but are strategic.
Good enough: a strategy, not mediocrity.
Embracing “good enough” doesn’t mean lowering standards. It means solving the right problems without over-engineering. It’s a mindset that values clarity, function, and momentum over perfection, often leading to smarter, more sustainable outcomes.
Beyond empathy: designing with rational compassion.
Empathy’s spotlight can blind us. Designers must pair emotional sparks with data, ethics, and long-term impact, shifting from feeling a pain point to systematically easing it for everyone.
Quiet power of design.
Design’s real power is often quiet—found in thoughtful pauses, principled “no’s,” and subtle shifts that shape outcomes. It’s not always loud or visible, but it carries weight, guiding products and teams with care, clarity, and intention.
Bullshit jobs in design.
Many design roles today risk becoming what David Graeber called “bullshit jobs”. The work that looks important but adds no real value. When design serves optics over outcomes, creativity fades and meaning is lost. It’s time to shift from theatre to true impact.
The misconception of scale.
In a world obsessed with scale, we often forget that growth changes everything. What works on a small scale can break under pressure. This isn’t an argument against scaling, but a call to do it wisely, with care, and a deep respect for complexity.
EPC Dialogues: reimagining the intersection of design, sustainability, and future technologies.
An exclusive deep dive into the first session of the Extended Pack Collective's Dialogues with the Designers of the collective. The first EPC Dialogues, hosted by the Extended Pack Collective, wasn’t just