UC school director appointed to Forbes Council

DAAP partnership reflects university’s longtime connection between design and business

Design plays an important role in business and commerce, from the look of products to the ways we interact with them. A new relationship between the University of Cincinnati’s design school and Forbes magazine reflects the longstanding partnership between UC design and the business world.

Gjoko Muratovski, endowed chair and director of the Myron E. Ullman, Jr. School of Design in UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, has been named to the Forbes Agency Council. As part of the invitation-only collective, Muratovski will contribute his insights in Forbes articles and expert panels, while accessing new opportunities for DAAP’s Ullman School of Design.

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Gjoko Muratovski's debut column in Forbes

“We are honored to welcome Gjoko Muratovski into the community,” says Scott Gerber, founder of the collective that includes Forbes Agency Council. “Our mission is to bring together proven leaders from every industry, creating a curated, social capital-driven network that helps every member grow professionally and make an even greater impact on the business world.”

In Muratovski’s first Forbes article, “The Art of Disruptive Leadership,” he leans on his training in crisis leadership, which has paid off amid the current pandemic.

“It’s about how a company can prepare itself to avoid disruption by investing in preemptive innovation,” Muratovksi explains.

The Forbes partnership is just the latest example in the long history of UC’s design school impacting business. In fact, that idea is the heart of the school dating back to its founding 150 years ago.

“This school was established with a mandate to help American industry thrive by creating better products,” Muratovski says. “We were always connected with business, manufacturing and production of goods. This is a legacy that has carried on and still defines who we are.”

Muratovski points to cooperative education, an industry engagement model invented at UC in 1906, as a prime example. Through co-op, students in the Ullman School of Design — as well as throughout DAAP and the university — alternate traditional semesters with full-time employment in their field.

Muratovski stands in the college museum of design accomplishments

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Gjoko Muratovski in DAAP's design museum. Photo/Tina Gutierrez

One of the top employers in DAAP, particularly for design students, is Ford Motor Co. Jesse Diephuis, innovation specialist in product development, automotive design and industrial design at Ford, says he associates DAAP’s Ullman School of Design with “top professionalism, a shared thirst for knowledge and a sense of being in the moment of pivotal transformation in design discipline.”

With Muratovski’s appointment to the Forbes Council, Diephuis says, “I would expect to see even more collaborations and fresh ideas flourish because he can anticipate emerging needs and aspirations of both design-related organizations and entrepreneurial businesses.”

Under Muratovski’s leadership since 2016, the school has introduced a number of initiatives that have helped elevate its national and international profile, including a streamlined curriculum, a series of new research labs, a design museum highlighting the accomplishments of DAAP alumni and two on-site cutting-edge creative hubs: the Future Mobility Center and Fashion Technology Center, where students have access to state-of-the-art tech in the fields of transportation and fashion design, respectively.

For Muratovski, it all ties back to the school’s design legacy and its impact on the business community.

“Most importantly for us,” he says, “we have established a whole new level of relationship with industry and reinstated our status as the leading design school in the United States. In terms of innovation leadership, we are now the go-to place for industry.”