LinesandWords

There's a dangerous romance in the design industry with process. LoveFrom spent six months researching Ferrari's interior redesign. They delivered four books of research before a single design concept was even presented. Six months. Four books. For Ferrari, one of the most iconic brands on the planet. And the result? It looks like it belongs in a Fiat. This isn't a knock on LoveFrom specifically. It's a symptom of something much bigger: the industry has confused the weight of the process with the quality of the output. Here's the trap: when you spend six months doing research and deliver four bound books to a client, everyone in the room feels smart. The client feels validated because look at all this effort. The agency feels justified because look at all this work. The process becomes its own product. It starts generating its own momentum, its own gravity. And at some point, nobody can tell the difference between being thorough and actually being productive. But the customer who sits in that Ferrari interior doesn't care about four books. They don't care about six months of ethnographic research or mood boards or "strategic frameworks". They care about one thing: does this feel like a Ferrari? Does this make me feel something? And the answer, in this case, is a resounding no. This is what happens when agencies sell process as a proxy for talent. Process is a safety net. It gives everyone involved permission to not worry about whether the people doing the work are actually exceptional at the craft or the right people for the job. Because if the research was thorough, if the methodology was sound, if the strategy was airtight, then surely the output will be great, right? Wrong. Process doesn't design anything. People do. Process is just a tool. It is not the product. And the moment you confuse the two, you end up putting a Fiat interior into a Ferrari.