Jim Dunne
Founding Partner
Jim is a designer who believes design can positively impact the world by contributing to the development of better solutions to the ‘wicked problems’ we face in the 21st century.
Jim’s design career began while serving an apprenticeship as a commercial artist in a printing company. At that time graphic design was beginning to be considered as a strategic tool for change in organizations, not simply for surface decoration, and was being applied in this way by designers specializing in Corporate Identity.
During the 1980’s while working in Kilkenny Design, Jim became interested in how Corporate Identity design had the potential to visualize strategic options and possibilities for businesses if deployed in a holistic and democratic way.
Design and some of the unique tools of designers were found to be useful to help clarify complex organizational issues such as purpose, meaning, relationships, structure and competitive positioning. Designers were able to this by ‘holding up a mirror’ and reflecting back what an organisations reality ‘looked and behaved like’ in contrast to its stated strategies and plans.
During the 1990’s and into early 21st century Jim helped build a business in Ireland that demonstrated this belief that design could ‘paint realistic pictures’ of potential futures and bring them to life with such power that an organisation could be shown not only its weaknesses, but also its possibilities.
Jim co-founded Design Twentyfirst Century in 2008 in the belief that we are now on the cusp of another wave where these same tools, processes and methodologies can be applied to the world’s most difficult and complex problems. That using the new technologies of social interaction and communication together with ‘design thinking’ we can help design better solutions for the world.
