There are a ton of articles in the press today about "business" and "design".  A lot of magazines seem to suggest that if you just hire a bunch of designers and ditch your old marketers/engineers, you'll end up with the next iPod.  This is, of course, crap; you'll just create a new bureaucracy.

As a result, I was thrilled to read a recent FastCompany article - Streamlining HP - talking about how HP is using design to improve its operations.  The article is great as it talks about the challenges HP is having and how success is not guaranteed - but there are some early signs.

Read the article; here are three interesting things for you:

1) By consolidating all its logos into the above "jewel" logo, HP estimates it will save $50 million.

2) HP used to have so many controls that they could fill a 4' x 8' poster.  Now they've replaced them all with one much simpler and intuitive control:

3) Here's an example of HP using "design" to make well-engineered products more useful for consumers: