“The death of print is at hand.”

So declared John Furneaux R.G.D., Managing Partner of Ove Design, at RGD Ontario’s Future by Design panel discussion at the Design Exchange on January 31, 2012. This first in a series of events on the last Tuesday night of every other month, was streamed live through the web with organized groups watching in North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and Kingston.

John was amongst five panelists including Mikey Richardson R.G.D., Founding Partner of AmoebaCorp; Kaye Puhlmann, VP of Design at Critical Mass; Bev Forster, Creative Director at BMO Financial Group, and Adrian Norris, Managing Editor, Presentation and Design for The Globe & Mail. Marawan El-Asfahani R.G.D., Managing Principal of Oxygen Design Agency and RGD Director, acted as Moderator.

John’s comment stemmed from a question about the future relevance of iPads. His response, “For 20 years, every year someone proclaims the death of print but only in the last year have I seen real movement to the death of print. If tablets keep going the way they are and we are able to easily distribute to it and the cost is reasonable, it will become so ubiquitous that the need for mass print will disappear.”

Kaye Puhlman agreed but focused her response on the importance of mobile. “When I started in this business 15 years ago, when a client came to you to conceive of a marketing campaign, you started by talking about print. Then we moved the focus to web. Now it’s mobile first.” Clients are thinking about how a campaign will be viewed on mobile devices first and then the web second. Print is often not considered at all.

But as Adrian Norris explained, at The Globe, they try to match the content delivery mechanism with the behaviour of its readers and at the same time engage readers in the development of that content. “Globe readers are a wealth of information and talents so we’ve developed special groups of 1,000 loyal readers who help guide an issue.”

Bev Forster agreed. At BMO Financial Group, her team worked with several independent design firms to develop four different designs for a student card. They then posted all four designs to Facebook and asked students for their opinion. This resulted in a clear winner that was pre-approved and known by its future audience.

For Mikey, social media represents a real opportunity for him and his clients. “The ability to engage in a dialogue with consumers is a great equalizer for small businesses. My smaller clients can authentically have real dialogue with real people and they have learned to be very good at it. Big brands struggle with how to speak to that real individual.”

John commented on how this impacted brand development. “Pre-Internet we created a brand and everyone agreed that was going to be it for the next 15 years. Now the world of branding is constantly iterative. We never really leave the beta stage. Our job is never done because we can’t possibly solve all of the issues at once. We have to design a brand platform instead of an edifice so that it can evolve.”

But what will grab the attention of the new visual consumer? Mikey Richardson explained, “People are superficial. They say never judge a book by its cover but that’s all we do now. We don’t have time for anything else.” Mikey explained that designers will have to create impactful, disruptive messages to gain immediate attention and then use great story-telling to keep consumers engaged.

To Kaye, consumers will be attracted to brands that are seamless across all devices and media. “The visual is never going to go away but now designers are not going to have to just think about the design of a Facebook page but more broadly about how they are engaging consumers on a social level. And then how the components of Facebook, Twitter, mobile and more will interact together.” Adrian agreed, “The key question is how do you tell your story in different ways with an overall vision of how all of the media interconnect and touch each other?”

To succeed in the future of design, designers will have to marry visual design with strategic thinking and marketing savvy. But the great news is that it will be a conversation, not a one-way lecture.