Check out this article (and the accompanying slideshow) about design phenom Ora Ito over on BusinessWeek. It’s a fun piece on how the impatient design dropout rose to the top… but also an indication of the mixed messages being broadcast about Design. Here’s someone with obviously a lot of raw talent and some pedigree being showcased as an example to a business community that is still largely unable to take design seriously. I have no doubt that some senior exec is going to expect one of his CAD jockeys to “be like Mike” (or in this case, Ito). And on the flipside there are people as talented as Ito laboring quietly under the thumb of a mediocre corporate management team; taking direction from people with no vision for the products they bring to market. As one senior vice president once told me, “We don’t know who buys this sh*t. But they do.”

Maybe what the business world needs is a behind-the-scenes peek at the average day-to-day life of a designer in the corporate world. Wouldn’t be as fun, but it might be a whole lot more instructive.