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January 29, 2008

Design Thursday: When is a corset like a coffin?

Why, when fashion designer Hussein Chalayan feels like making one out of amber wood and metal, as he did for his Fall/Winter 1995-96 collection, that's when. And why is this relevant now?

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 2:53 PM | 1 Comments

January 24, 2008

Design Thursday: What would a Mayan branding guru do?

In the middle of a cold, nasty January day, it’s hard to resist the lure of a beachy vacation in Cancun --- even if the closest you can get is a meeting room in New York’s Meatpacking District. So earlier this week I trudged over to the opening party for Nizuc, the latest hotel/condo/resort project by master hotelier Adrian Zecha, the head of tony Amanresorts and GHM Hotels (best known in North America as the company behind The Setai in South Beach.)

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 12:22 PM | 11 Comments

January 9, 2008

Design Thursday: Don't Get Mad, Design Products

“Anger and frustration are great starting points” for product design, James Dyson, inventor of the eponymous vacuum cleaner, told Fast Company’s Chuck Salter in an interview last spring. At the time, Dyson, who’s famously obsessed with engineering

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 5:15 PM | 1 Comment

December 21, 2007

Simply the Best: Maeda’s the Man at RISD

John Maeda, MIT Media Lab guru, artist, designer, computer scientist, author – in short, a guy who comes about as close as it gets to being a Renaissance Man, circa 2007 --- was just named the new president of the Rhode Island School of Design, one of the most prestigious design schools in the world. It’s a great day for RISD – but also for the design world in general.

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 1:18 PM | 2 Comments

December 11, 2007

Art Basel Miami: Has Art Basel Lost its Cool?

Staring at the big, sparkly Tom Friedman painting, "Glitterbattle," in the Gagosian booth, the woman in the red flowered house dress, yellow socks, and black sneakers, was inspired. So was her companion, dressed in khaki shorts, an Hawaiian shirt, and a baseball cap emblazoned with a butterfly.

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 9:00 AM | Add Comment

December 10, 2007

Design Miami: Tattoos on the Wrong Side of the Tracks

Location, as any real estate broker worth her Blackberry will tell you, is everything. So, too, at Design Miami, where one of the show's most interesting exhibits languished for want of a better address.

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 3:00 PM | 1 Comment

Design/Miami: A Musical Racket -- by Design

George Antheil, the self-proclaimed "bad boy of music," was likely rockin' in his grave last Friday night as partygoers wearing earplugs gathered at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami to hear his crazy composition the way it was designed to be heard -- a mere 80 years after he first wrote it. The American composer’s 1924 work, the deafening cacophony known as The Ballet Mechanique -- a musical piece designed (in its shortened form) for four pianos, four xylophones, two electric bells, two propellers, timpani, glockenspiel, and other percussion -- was the main
musical attraction at the design museum's Art Basel-week party.

Originally, the piece was to have accompanied Fernand Leger’s Dadaist film of the same name, but at the time it was composed, the technology didn’t exist to synchronize so many player pianos (in its long form, it calls for 16 player pianos, playing four parts). It wasn’t until 1999 that engineers at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell , managed to make it work using MIDI-controlled Disklaviers. Although the piece was successful when it first debuted in Paris, it bombed in New York, and caused fist fights in various other places where it was performed. Antheil's career as a serious
composer never recovered from his Carnegie Hall flop --- until 60 years later. This week, the machines had center stage, proving robots can often outperform their human counterparts -- but aren't nearly as good at hoisting a martini.

Posted by Linda Tischler at 12:12 PM | Add Comment

December 7, 2007

Design/Miami: Hipsters' Fave Art Party

Watch your back, Art Basel Miami. If last night's Vernissage (the fancy art show term for Opening Night Party) was any indication, the venerable art fair's little sister, Design/Miami, shows sign of upstaging her illustrious forbear.

The entire Design District, here in Miami, was a rollicking party -- with a distinctly younger, hipper demographic than was sipping champagne over at the Art Basel show at the Convention

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 12:01 PM | Add Comment

November 15, 2007

Design Thursday: Design Miami preview: Designer Tats

Want to pay the ultimate homage to your favorite artist? Now you can commission a limited edition tattoo by a range of trendy international artists, and spend the rest of your life as a walking gallery exhibit.

Design agent provocateur Tobias Wong announced last Friday at Core 77’s

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 11:22 AM | Add Comment

November 8, 2007

Design Thursday: Design for Democracy

If you doubt that design matters, think about the ballot you might have cast on this past Election Day—and then talk to Al Gore.

Two years before a blizzard of hanging chads froze Gore out of the Oval Office, a 1998 study found that punch-card ballots—which were widely used in the 2000 presidential election, especially in the two Florida counties that sparked a recount—were seriously flawed, with an error rate of roughly 15%. The study's title was certainly prescient: "Disenfranchised by Design: Voting Systems and the Election Process." Unfortunately, the report's wonky, understated conclusion—"recent research on voting systems demonstrates the need to improve usability..."—was virtually ignored.

But oh, how things changed after the fallout from the disastrous Florida recount. Spurred by a finding that poor ballot design cost Gore anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000 votes in Florida—which would have been more than enough to deliver him the presidency—a group of designers from AIGA launched an initiative to "re-enfranchise" voters, through design. Dubbed "Design for Democracy," the effort sought to redesign the entire voting experience, so as to bring clarity to everything from registering to navigating the polling place to casting the ballot to counting the actual vote.

Design for Democracy's crisp, intuitive ballots first tuned up in Cook County Illinois and the state of Oregon. Two years ago, that proof-of-concept effort led Design for Democracy to partner with the US Election Assistance Commission, to begin creating guidelines that will hopefully make balloting and polling-place material more comprehensible for all citizens. Basically, the designers crafted design guidelines for voting materials that can be customized by local designers, election officials, and printers for state and local jurisdictions. Their efforts are now supplemented by a book from Marcia Lausen, Design for Democracy: Ballot and Election Design, that amounts to an invaluable guide for voter advocates.

Those who equate design with decoration might wonder: how in the world can color palettes and typography create a better-informed electorate? The answer lies in the realization that behind every design is a process—a thought process. And just as unfocused design thinking brought us the debacle of butterfly ballots and chads in 2000, perhaps objective, pragmatic design thinking might make the interaction between the US government and its citizens a whole lot more trustworthy and efficient. A year from now, we'll know the answer, when the 2008 election returns come rolling in.

Posted by Bill Breen at 11:07 PM | Add Comment

October 31, 2007

Design: Tricked-Out Logos, Halloween-Style

I recently surveyed execs at different Web companies to see what they were doing for Halloween. It turns out that not only were many of their celebrations company-wide, they also inspired clever ways to promote the holiday through special content on or enabled by their Websites. (To find out more, check out the article here.)

But even without a specific Halloween function, many Websites are giving the holiday a fun nod through design. Smashing Magazine got knee-deep in Halloween action by asking readers to design a holiday logo for the website. The magazine also highlights sightings of logos throughout the Web specially revamped for the day, and readers have already responded with additional sightings. Google -- which routinely transforms its logo even for lesser-known occasions -- gets extra credit for figuring out how to signify Halloween without the ubiquitous pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns, although Mashable isn't a fan of the design.

I wonder: do whimsical holiday designs make these sites more inviting? What are your favorite Halloween Web designs this year?

Posted by April Joyner at 3:24 PM | Add Comment

October 25, 2007

Design Thursday: Partying on at the National Design Awards

“First, I’d like to apologize for my attire, and its lack of festiveness,” Paul Simon, wearing a tasteful, but banker-like business suit, said to the largely black-clad crowd at last week’s National Design Awards. Simon was on hand at the gala to present the award for graphic design to celebrated book designer Chip Kidd, who had also designed the cover of Simon’s newest CD, “Surprise.” Clutching the foot high sculpture, Simon noted, “This award, though somewhat napkin-like, is much nicer than a Grammy.”

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 3:30 PM | Add Comment

Design Thursday: Gapminder's (and Google's) Revolutionary Design for Data

As anyone who's ever dipped into, say, the United Nations' statistical databases knows all too well, the presentation of data is in dire need of a design makeover. With its ant-sized type and near-infinite columns of bland-on-bland numbers, the UN's statistical tables—in fact, probably all statistical tables—are impenetrable to all but the most relentless of data-miners. And yet, in an eye-opening presentation at last week's Connecting'07 design conference in San Francisco, Hans Rosling proved that it doesn't have to be that way.

Rosling's Trendalyzer software, developed by his adult children and recently acquired by Google, takes the UN's demographic stats (among many other sources) and magically transforms them into brilliantly hued, moving animations that instantly convey global trends in mortality rates, income distribution, and much, much more. Along the way, he demonstrates that our notions of the "developing world" are only about 40 years out of date—thanks in part to the fact that few of us have had the forbearance to seriously delve into the data.

Take, for example, the myth that the world is sharply divided between "Us" (the "Western World," where families are small and lives are long) and "Them" (the "Third World," where families are large and lives are short). Rosling, who plotted the average life expectancy and family size for every country in the world, shows that this conventional view of the world is correct—if you're looking at 1962 data.

But with a click, Rosling brings the data to life, and brilliant bubbles (representing countries) float across his graph. As the years flash by, the gap between the industrialized and developing countries gradually closes. In the 1990s, the AIDS epidemic pulls some countries (mostly African) back into the abyss of rapidly increasing mortality rates. But by 2003, we find that we are living in an entirely new world, with the vast majority of countries clustered in the upper-left corner of the graph—where families are small and lives are long. Vietnam, for example, has the same family size and life expectancy in 2003 as the US did in 1974. Deep poverty persists, of course, but it's pockmarked across the entire planet, in places as diverse as New Orleans and Poland.

If we don't look at the data, we miss the vast social changes that have swept across Asia and the rest of the so-called developing world. Thanks to Rosling's design breakthrough, which can be viewed in all its glory at Gapminder, the data has now been gloriously brought to life.

Posted by Bill Breen at 6:50 AM | Add Comment

October 11, 2007

Design Thursday: Everyday Engineering from IDEO

While the celebration of all things hip and happening in the design world continues next week with New York's Design Happening—seven days of events that will find the editor of House & Garden magazine primping in a window of Crate & Barrel—let us pause to consider the invisible men and women who bring function to form: the engineers.

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Posted by Bill Breen at 11:42 PM | Add Comment

October 4, 2007

Design Thursday: What’s Good Design? You Decide.

Enough with the design pundits! The Cooper-Hewitt, America’s national design museum, thinks the people deserve a voice in anointing the world’s best-designed products. In anticipation of National Design Week (Oct. 14-20), the museum is inviting the public to log on to its site, www.cooperhewitt.org, to nominate their favorite objects, or vote for faves that others have already listed.

Among the current top choices: TOMs slip-on shoes, a floating swimming pool in Brooklyn, yellow police tape that reads, “Everything is OK,” ice cubes that look like little chunks of pipe and, inevitably, the iPhone.

There’s plenty of opportunity to argue the merits of each nominee (and, this being a public forum, some of the comments admittedly verge on the nasty).

But make your voice heard soon. Voting ends on Oct. 16 at 6pm EST. Nominations will be tallied for the People’s Design Award, and the winner will be announced at the National Design Awards gala in New York on Oct. 18. That event will be streamed live on the museum’s site, so even if you don’t have a ticket, you can still tune in to the festivities and watch in your jammies. Nicely designed ones, of course.

Posted by Linda Tischler at 1:05 PM | 1 Comment

October 2, 2007

Video: Yves Behar -- Master of Design

In case you missed it, our October issue features our fourth annual special report about the intersection of business and design. You can get full access to all of the content, including exclusive multimedia features, such as two video interviews with Yves Behar, a video tour of R/GA Interactive's best agency work, and slideshows of the widgets we love, such as the Nokia N95, plus additional exclusives by clicking over the Masters of Design home.

Here's one of the videos featured in our package, where Senior Writer Linda Tischler caught up with Yves Behar at this year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair to discus the future of furniture design.

To see more, go here.

Posted by Lynne d Johnson at 6:36 PM | 0 Comments

September 27, 2007

Design Thursday: What HP's Design VP Learned from IBM and Netscape

How do you design a coordinated, focused design strategy for a sprawling, $97 billion behemoth comprised of scores of business units that are used to operating independently? If you're Sam Lucente, who leads Hewlett-Packard's design practice, you leverage some of what you learned at your previous two gigs, even as you ignore the conventional wisdom on "managing design."

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Posted by Bill Breen at 3:03 PM | Add Comment

September 24, 2007

One Laptop Per Child: Failure is not an Option

The news that the XO Laptop developed by the One Laptop Per Child foundation is launching a buy-one-get-one sale to encourage first world consumers to help fund laptops for children in developing countries has spawned an eager chorus of nay-sayers quick to label the project a failure.

“The design was too top down!” They’re saying. “Not market-tested with kids in the countries it was intended for!” “Better they should have cell-phones!”

Tell that to the kid in Nigeria who told OLPC founder Nick Negroponte that he “valued his laptop more than his life.” Or the one who refused to give his broken laptop back to be repaired for fear he’d never see it again.

Continue reading "One Laptop Per Child: Failure is not an Option"

Posted by Linda Tischler at 5:37 PM | 8 Comments

September 20, 2007

Design Thursday: HP's Design Strategy for the Blackbird 002

PC Magazine called it "the most compelling gaming system" in the past three years. Wired pronounced it "a force of nature." The influential AnandTech put it on "the cutting edge of design and technology." While the newly released Blackbird 002 has left the uber-geeks swooning, what's really remarkable is that it comes from Hewlett-Packard, a company that's not exactly known for producing exotic, extreme-performance computers. HP might at times act like a lumbering giant, but in creating the Blackbird, it was as agile as the machine's namesake—the SR-71 Blackbird surveillance aircraft. Here's a quick story on how the Blackbird 002 came to be.

It started last year, on a flight from Palo Alto to San Diego. Phil McKinney, who's VP and CTO of HP's Personal Systems Group, and Todd Bradley, who's the division's EVP, were on their way to evaluate a company with some "interesting technology," when McKinney struck up a conversation with one of the HP engineers who were accompanying them. The technologist proceeded to describe how he'd developed, working off hours, a motherboard that delivered twice the performance of anything that was on the market at the time. McKinney quickly realized that the motherboard could take HP into the gaming market, which the tech giant had never cracked. Before the 75-minute flight was over, Bradley approved a $1 million budget and a start-up team of 10 engineers to develop a souped-up computer for the gaming space.

McKinney heads up HP's Innovation Program Office, an internal VC group that gives employees the opportunity to build companies inside HP—and gives HP the opportunity to launch new growth engines. The IPO's current goal is to each year churn out two worldwide launches that demonstrate the potential to grow into $600 million to $800 million businesses within three to four years. That means McKinney and his team must vet between 200 and 300 "good" business plans annually—about one per workday. It's a ruthless process. "The problem with most innovation processes is that they don't kill good-but-not-great ideas, they simply wound them and let them linger," says McKinney. "HP is known for being nice, but our goal is to kill often and kill fast."

Blackbird's chances for surviving the IPO gamut improved markedly when HP acquired Voodoo PC, the boutique maker of Ferrari-quality gaming systems—Blackbird is the first product to be co-designed by HP and Voodoo. McKinney worked closely with the engineering team, whose leaders sat within a "two cube radius" of his cubicle. The design initiative for the Blackbird had none of the normal constraints that are applied to HP's core product line. The goal was to create an elegantly simple, iconic design—which meant that the handcuffs were off, and the engineers and designers were free to unleash all the passion and creativity that they could muster. Basically, they changed the look of a power PC.

"A lot of gaming PCs have a kind of 'power plastic' look, but the Blackbird is all metal—there's no plastic in the thing," says McKinney. "We mounted it on a raised stand, which cools the machine from every side—an industry first. We don't get hot spots, which lets it run cooler and quieter, and therefore deliver a much more robust performance. And we made the entire machine tool-less, so it's very simple to do upgrades."

While Blackbird is decidedly a high-end PC, it's also a test-bed for technology and design innovations—and a seed-bank for the future. "Some of what you see now in this product," says McKinney, "will eventually turn up in our mainstream products."

Posted by Bill Breen at 11:00 PM | Add Comment

September 13, 2007

Design Thursday: Ingo Maurer's Light Fantastic

You may not know the name of Ingo Maurer, the celebrated German lighting designer, but you probably know his work. If you’ve ever been to New York at Christmas, and seen the UNICEF crystal snowflake that hangs at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, you’ve seen his artistry. If you’ve ever been charmed by a lamp that consisted of little more than a light bulb with angel wings, you’ve been captivated by his imagination.

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 10:00 AM | Add Comment

September 6, 2007

Design Thursday: Roger Martin on "The Opposable Mind"

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that one sign of a "first-rate intelligence" is the ability "to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." According to Roger Martin, a sure sign of a first-rate business intelligence is the ability to recognize two diametrically opposing ideas and meld them into a new model that is superior to either.

In his new book, The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking, which the Harvard Business School Press is due to publish in December, Martin sketches out the process by which innovators as varied as Procter & Gamble chief AG Lafley, choreographer Martha Graham, and Red Hat co-founder Bob Young used the constructive tension from two conflicting ideas to "think [their] way through to a new and superior idea."

Martin holds that design thinking is a critical component of integrative thinking. In a phone interview, he argued that designers often engage in abductive reasoning: they imagine what might be and act on that insight—even though they can't prove it. This was the first step that Isadore Sharp took when he imagined a new model for a luxury hotel—a model that gave birth to the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts Ltd.

As Martin tells it, in the early 1970s, there were two dominant business models for would-be hoteliers: small motels offering a few homey frills at modest prices and large, downtown hotels with expensive amenities that catered to business travelers. Rather than follow the lead of most business strategists, which is to look at a decision as a series of "either-or" propositions and settle for the choice with the fewest downsides, Sharp held the two opposing models in his head, stared into the mystery of how to imagine a third way, and hit upon a design that would "combine the best of the small hotel with the best of a large hotel."

Sharp's new model for Four Seasons replicated the "at-home" feeling of the small hotel by being the first to offer shampoo in the shower, 24-hour room service, dry cleaning, and the like. Four Seasons replicated the efficiency of the office by being the first to install two-line phones and well-lighted desks in every room and 24-hours business centers. Sharp essentially redefined luxury as a service that temporarily filled in for both the home and the workplace. "By offering guests a distinctly different kind of service," says Martin, "Four Seasons could charge a substantial price premium."

Sharp couldn't prove that his new model would succeed until he actually built it—a key reason why many executives dislike talk of "design thinking." After all, it's a lot easier and safer to run a billion-dollar business than it is to invent one. And yet today, Four Seasons, with 73 hotels, is considerably larger than the next biggest luxury hotelier, Ritz-Carlton, with 59 hotels.

Successful designers often speak of having a "creative breakthrough." Perhaps what they're really describing is integrative thinking: creatively resolving the tension between two opposing ideas, as Isadore Sharp did more than 30 years ago.

Posted by Bill Breen at 3:48 PM | 2 Comments

August 30, 2007

Design Thursday: Escaping the Commodity Trap

Imagine that you just got a new job as a brand manager at Kimberly-Clark. That’s the good news. The bad news? Your first assignment is to think up ways to grow market share for Kleenex, a product so commoditized that its very name veers into the generic. Yikes!

OK, so there are pink boxes and blue. Little boxes and big ones. Pop-up tissues, and ones that lie inert in their box. Tissues with virus-fighting properties and tissues that let you fend for yourself against marauding germs. And then…and then….uh....

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 10:25 AM | Add Comment

August 23, 2007

Design Thursday: The Buzz Around "Design Thinking"

The phrase "design thinking" is certainly in vogue these days. In design circles, it's been part of the lexicon for several years. Stanford's d. school, to cite just one example, even uses the term on its home page. But now it seems that the phrase has entered the common vernacular—a Google search turns up roughly 141 million results. Which leads to three thoughts:

*While "design thinking" is on many, many minds, there's less than universal agreement on what it actually means. Consider a quick survey of references on design thinking and business:
For Roger Martin, design thinking "is about shaping a context, rather than taking it as it is."
Jeanne Liedtka asserts that design thinking "deals primarily with what does not yet exist."
Tim Brown suggests that design thinking is "inherently a prototyping business—once you spot a promising idea, you build it."

All of the above are aspects of design thinking. But when you add them and the many other definitions all up, a comprehensive description of the term remains less than clear—and leaves you wondering whether "design thinking" has really been thought through.

*As "design thinking" morphs into a buzzword, is it now becoming so widespread—and so vague—that it's demeaning to other professions? Dan Saffer raises that concern while crafting his own definition. "Are we saying that other disciplines aren't creative?" Saffer writes. "Certainly, design thinking is innovative and focused on problem-solving. But so is the thinking of many different types of professions: lawyers, engineers, and contractors, to name only a few."

*As the term's popularity ascends, there's a danger that we automatically assume that "design thinking" should be the de-facto approach to cracking any kind of creative problem. As Peter Merholz points out, that kind of hype fuels a "dark side" to design thinking—an arrogance that leads to "overbearing control," a "weakness for styling," and "condescension toward users."

Despite the lack of an adequate definition, "design thinking" is a powerful tool. But it's not a panacea. As any smart designer will tell you, sometimes "business thinking"—measurement and analysis—is more than sufficient.

Posted by Bill Breen at 10:23 PM | 1 Comment

August 16, 2007

Design Thursday: Design Flambé

The last time I saw Murray Moss, he was downstairs in his Soho shop, composing a tableau of furniture that looked as it if had been salvaged from a particularly gruesome house fire. The pedigrees of the pieces were still discernible within their blackened skeletons – a Mackintosh chair here, a Sottsass étagère there.

I found the whole scene slightly chilling, but Murray was his customary cheery self, and told me not to worry. Nobody had torched his inventory --- or, rather, the torching was strictly by design.

I've since come to appreciate designer Maarten Baas’s work, so was delighted to hear that the 29-year-old Dutch wunderkind’s latest masterpiece, an artfully incinerated Steinway, had been the centerpiece when Moss’s newest outpost on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles opened last week.

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Posted by Linda Tischler at 12:32 PM | Add Comment

August 9, 2007

Design Thursday: Proving Design Moves Markets

We know that great design fuels revenue and grows margins. But thus far, most companies -- with the possible exception of pioneers like Procter & Gamble and Whirlpool—have been unable to prove it. The main reason is that it's exceedingly difficult to untangle design's contribution from all the other business drivers--engineering, manufacturing, distribution, marketing--that ultimately fuel a product's performance in the marketplace.

There is, however, compelling evidence that in the aggregate, companies that excel in design kick some serious butt in the market that matters most to investors: the stock market. The data comes from the London-based Design Council, a publicly funded research organization that promotes the role of design in Britain. The Council reports that over a ten-year period, from 1995 to 2004, 61 "design-led" businesses outperformed the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 by more than 200%.

The Council's "Design Index" tracked the share prices of British companies that demonstrated a sustained record in racking up design and innovation awards--outfits like Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Easy-Jet, Rolls Royce, BP, and Unilever. It found that the organizations' overall performance was consistent: the Index rose more in good times than the FTSE 100 average and fell less in bad times. (The Council regularly re-calculated the Index to account for mergers and de-listings.) As the Council put it in an accompanying report that was updated last month, "The Value of Design Factfinder", the Index presents "clear evidence of a relationship between design investment, business performance, and long-term stock market value."

In a phone interview, Harry Rich, deputy chief executive of the Council, conceded that the Index does not demonstrate a causal link between design and stock market performance. "The claim is not that design is the magic bullet that made it all happen," he said. "The claim is that in a well-run business, one of the things you'll be doing is great design. You can put as much good design as you want into a business, but if you can't manage, say, your cash flow or distribution network, you won't be successful. In successful companies, good design is part of a total package."

The Council, in its attempts to demonstrate the bottom-line value of design, has been way out in front of US-based organizations. And yet, in Rich's view, the recent scramble to calculate the ROI on design investments might have gone a little too far. "There's an interesting paradox here: Sometimes, the requirements that we put on ourselves to 'prove' design's impact are greater than those we put on any other business area. The fact is, there are many areas in business where it's impossible to isolate and quantify the ROI. Think of the billions that are spent on strategic-management consultancies, and yet it's difficult to demonstrate a causal link between the consultants' advice and a business outcome. So we need to cut ourselves a bit of slack. Let's be realistic about what's provable."

Rich believes that if companies combine good design with good management, good financial results will follow. And he contends that designers have little to fear from the growing interest in calculating the real return on design investments. "My experience, in talking to executives, is that if they don't believe in design in the first place--if they think it's a bunch of nonsense--they won't be convinced otherwise by any kind of data. However, if executives are open-minded but want to see some evidence, you can certainly make the case that design will help make them more competitive."

Posted by Bill Breen at 1:43 PM | Add Comment

August 2, 2007

Talking Trash

It’s not easy being green. Anybody who’s ever really tried to minimize his or her carbon footprint, knows that even when you’re committed to recycling and responsible purchasing, you can be foiled by forces outside your control. You buy a new set of tiny earbuds, and they come encased in a mound of nasty plastic and Styrofoam. You order lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and get a portion big enough for three (the upside: I now feel virtuous instead of cheap for my unrepentant doggie bag habit, and my predilection for tap over bottled water). You buy something online, only to trigger a torrent of unwanted catalogs.

Like many other design firms these days, the folks at Frog Design have been grappling with what sustainability means from a design standpoint. How can they be more responsible in conceiving objects so that they have less of an impact on our natural resources, and the life of our planet?

But recently, one of Frog’s staffers, Ashley Menger, a design analyst in Austin, decided to launch an experiment to see how much trash she, personally, was generating. The test: to see how much trash one individual produces in the space of two weeks. The rules: Anything that she couldn’t compost, flush or recycle had to be carried or kept within 5 feet at all times. To report on her progress, she launched a blog on the Frog Design site called Trash Talk, in which she documented her struggle to be less trashy. It wasn’t easy, and over the course of two weeks, she discovered her lust for paper napkins when she was eating burritos (recalling, with horror, how she used to just grab a stack), and her dismay at ordering lunch, only to be served giant helping of mustard and mayo in Styrofoam cups along with her sandwich (which she dutifully trucked home to a compost bin in a Tupperware container, and recycled the Styrofoam via Cycled Plastics .

Continue reading "Talking Trash"

Posted by Linda Tischler at 10:19 AM | 1 Comments

July 26, 2007

Design: Proving the Value of Design

We know that design is an expense—just look at any company's balance sheet. And we know intuitively that for many companies, design is a profit center. But few organizations can actually prove that great design drives profits. One data point: a Whirlpool survey of 15 "design-centric" companies including BMW, Nike, and Nokia found that when it came to measuring their return on design (ROD), most were clueless—they simply relied on a rough calculus of basing their future design investments on past performance.

And yet, as more and more companies begin to boost their investments in design, CFOs are increasingly seeking a bullet-proof system for forecasting their ROD—one that's a little more dependable than "trust me, I'm a designer." The quest to empirically prove design's ability to generate profit is beginning to take hold in companies like Whirlpool, Procter & Gamble, and Hewlett-Packard.

One of the pioneers of the return-on-design movement is Rob Wallace, managing partner of Wallace Church Inc., a package-design consultancy that works with consumer-brand giants like Nestle, Samsung, and Home Depot. Wallace's 2001 article in Design Management Review amounted to a clarion call for quantifying design's value. In a recent phone interview, Wallace remained adamant that objective business measurements will ultimately underscore the power of design, even as he conceded that the effort is not without its share of controversy and obstacles. Here are excerpts from our conversation:

FC: Why have you been pushing designers to work with companies to calculate their return on design investments?

Wallace: I set out 15 years ago to find a methodology I could use to prove the ROI on brand-identity [i.e., packaging] design, which is our specific expertise. My motivation stems from that old adage, If you can't measure it you can't manage it. Businesspeople operate in a world of numbers. As designers, we have to embrace that world. We've always been about aesthetics—we're more interested in whether a design "moves" someone —which is all well and good, but that's not the way executives make decisions.

FC: You've said that many companies want to calculate their ROI on design, but few ever get around to actually crunching the numbers. Why is that?

Wallace: Our clients say they don't have the time or the allocation of resources to do the pre-design research, much less the post-design research. They barely have the time and money to do the quantification of the design before it hits the marketplace, and now we're asking them—six months or a year after the product hits the market—to put the time, energy, and money into quantifying the extent to which the design moved the needle on revenue. Plus, it's difficult to untangle design's influence from all the other influences—like engineering, marketing, and distribution—that contribute to a brand's success.

Seven years ago, we surveyed many of the major consumer packaged-goods companies—like Nestlé, Unilever, Coca-Cola—to learn about their measures for tracking the financial value of their brand-identity efforts. Design managers—even heads of consumer research—want to embrace measuring design ROI as a company-wide best practice, but when the rubber hit the road I got very little response. I got probably 18 to 20 case studies out of hundreds of requests. And the results I did get were published results of sales increases; a few went so far as to show the amount of profit that the increases generated. But in terms of what I need to determine the actual ROI, I'm not by any means getting an overwhelming response.

FC: Then what makes you think that design drives profitability?

Here's one example: On average, based on two dozen case studies with Fortune 500 companies, for every dollar invested in advertising, packaging and promotion, and visual communication at the point of sale, companies realized a $7.21 ROI. But when the advertising didn't change (or there was no advertising)—and packaging design was the only thing that did change—there was a $15.17 average ROI on every dollar invested.

I'm confident that if the ROI on design was truly measured, design would come out quite well, and it would be treated by the finance side as the adult it now wants to be. The ROI on design is not only a tool for showing design's true value, it can also show how and when design can be most critically used as a tool to continually generate the highest profits.

FC: So why are many design managers ambivalent about measuring ROI?

They've spent their entire careers being visualists; they're just not comfortable with numbers. Some are scared that the numbers might indicate that they're not doing the best job. To those people I say, I get it, you make sense. But you've got to be a leader in this process because it's going to change and you're going to be quantified. It's time to find a universally acceptable platform by which we can all hold each other's feet to the same fire and be measured.

If the design managers don't embrace this the CFOs will. They will take the lead in determining design's ROI. And [design managers] will hate it.

Posted by Bill Breen at 2:21 PM | 4 Comments

July 19, 2007

Design: Vacationing with Design Eyes

Once you start to see the world through design eyes, it’s hard to stop judging your surroundings by a more demanding standard – even when you’re on vacation.

Last week, I spent a few days in Bermuda, then journeyed on to Miami for the rest of the week. I really tried to untether myself electronically, vigilantly ignoring my email, purposely not checking my office voice mail, rarely even turning into CNN. But I couldn’t help noticing the design decisions that alternately delighted and disappointed me in my travels. And, being a reporter, I couldn’t resist making a few notes on the back of a boarding pass on the way home.

Herewith, my top 10 list of design hits and misses from the road:

Top 5 Design Delights

1.The stepped slate roofs of Bermuda. These white-painted marvels have evolved over the course of four centuries to resist gale force winds and collect water.
Since the island has no fresh water, a Bermuda roof is required, by law, to capture 80% of the rain that falls on it. Talk about form following function! But they’re as cool as they are handy – in short, delicious design.

2. Mosaic highway overpasses in Miami. Sun, sand, turquoise water – all captured in the most mundane embodiment of municipal infrastructure. Somebody in Miami’s highway planning department has the big picture view of his/her city.

3. The Wacky Architecture of Miami. OK, so I didn’t love it all, but I was certainly amused by most of it. Miami’s the kind of over-the-top city that’s willing to greenlight all manner of architectural extravaganzas, often in yummy colors.
Between the sun, the heat, and the crazy buildings, it’s hard to have a serious thought in your head. Which, I guess, makes it a near-perfect vacation destination.

4. Pink buses in Bermuda. Funny how the right color can make something as banal as a bus feel festive. Somehow you don’t get the same rush riding a Greyhound to Pittsburgh.

5. Thoughtful airport touches in Fort Lauderdale: a special set of seats, right after security, where you can reattach your shoes to your feet; a cellphone waiting area outside, where cars can idle until their arriving traveler emerges from baggage claim; the Samsung mobile recharging stations at the gates, where laptop toters can gather to while away the long hours between delayed flights checking their email or uploading videos to YouTube.

My pet peeves? Read on....

Continue reading "Design: Vacationing with Design Eyes"

Posted by Linda Tischler at 10:00 AM | 1 Comment

June 15, 2007

Proud to Be Green (With Envy)

We here at FastCompany pride ourselves on the fact that our offices are in 7 World Trade Center, a building with gold-level LEED certification. So when EcoGeek published a list of the world's Top Ten Green Skyscrapers, it came as a great surprise that our new home didn't make the cut.

What really adds insult to injury, however, is the fact that EcoGeek's list claims the Hearst Tower (coming in at No. 6) was the first skyscraper in New York City to receive gold-level status. That's just not true--we beat them by a full six months. 7 WTC received its gold rating on March 8, 2006 while Hearst didn't get there's until September 22, 2006. The only difference is that Hearst is the first in the city to be certified for "core and shell and interiors," meaning the building structure itself and the individual floors were all done by the developer. 7 WTC is only "core and shell;" each tenant is responsible for the design of its floor. I don't see too much of a difference.

These distinctions won't matter for much longer anyway, since the Bank of America Tower is about to one-up both of us by being the first NYC skyscraper to receive platinum-level certification next year. The BOA Tower, which also made EcoGeek's list at No. 3, employs a lot of the same concepts as 7 WTC and the Hearst Tower but will also use natural gas fuel cells to create on-site electricity and sunlight-sensing LEDs for more efficient lighting.

Continue reading "Proud to Be Green (With Envy)"

Posted by Liz Webber at 4:02 PM | 8 Comments

June 13, 2007

Design in Dubai: Authenticity Angst

It's true what you've read: Dubai is like no other place on earth. I had a wonderful time. But I won’t be one of those folks urging vacationers to check out the all-inclusive deals on Travelocity.

For one thing, for six months out of the year, the place pretty much uninhabitable. In late May, it ranged from 102 to 104 degrees during the day. From June through November, the heat is nuclear. Not just hot as hell, but humid as a jungle --- an interesting trick, considering it’s desert as far as the eye can see.

How bad is it? The Indians and Philippinos were complaining. Folks who can afford it, skip town. The hotels’ occupancy drops precipitously. Busboys take holidays back to Romania and Goa.

And for another month, Ramadan pretty much shuts down the town. “My friends were horrified,” said one British publisher, whose guests forgot to check their holiday calendars before booking a flight. “They couldn’t even be seen drinking a bottle of water in their cars without getting into trouble.” Hard to have a vacation when all the fun stuff --- like eating and drinking – can only happen after sundown.

But, I hear, the place is quite lovely during the remaining months. The beaches are superb. The water is warm, and the hotels are first rate. I’ve never experienced such consistently warm and attentive customer service, from waiters to shuttle bus drivers to customs officers (who actually make jokes and welcome you to their country!) And they’re not just grubbing for tips, which seem to be in short supply.

They say the Emiratis are a naturally hospitable people. I have no reason to doubt that, although it was hard to judge by this trip because I could count how many natives I met on the fingers of one hand. Only 18% of the population in the city is native. “In 5 years, you’ll have to pay money to see a local,” says the head of the heritage foundation. All the work of the country is done by guest labor. The Sheik’s pronouncement that he has 180 nationalities living and working together in peace seems to be true. It’s a truly multi-culti society, revolving around a shared language – English.

Tolerance rules the day. Supermarkets are filled with delicacies from other countries, so the Indians can get their curry and the Thai their furry little fruits. What’s lost is a sense of what is truly Emirati. And that’s beginning to be the source of some angst.

For example, when you get to the lavishly-appointed duty free shop (replete with life-size gold palm trees), you realize that, apart from dates and stuffed camels (another continuing motif; the camel is to Dubai what the moose is to Minneapolis), there’s nothing much that says “authentic Dubai” to buy for the folks back home.

When you're hauling home cheap booze from a Muslim country, you know it’s a problem. The sheik is worried.

Continue reading "Design in Dubai: Authenticity Angst"

Posted by Linda Tischler at 10:00 AM | 1 Comment

June 12, 2007

Design in Dubai: Unreal Real Estate

Forget strife in the Middle East: The biggest story right now in Dubai is real estate. To start, there's the most mind-boggling housing project is on the planet, the The Palm, the luxury home development made by dredging sand from the ocean floor and turning it into palm-shaped tracts of luxury housing. It will soon to be followed by The World, a similar land-fill project in which zillionaires can each buy the ‘island’ of their choice -- Australia, Japan, the Philippines, Africa, etc. -- for about $10M each. Some 40% of the world’s dredgers are now in Dubai. That means there's a lot of property to move, so the city has become one big real estate showcase.

Everywhere you look, there are signs advertising condos. The airport. Billboards on the highways. On the Emirates airline entertainment channel. In endless free-standing kiosks at the Mall of the Emirates. There’s The Lagoons --- a tract that advertises “a lush waterfront landscape” on Dubai Creek. There’s the Fairmont Palm Residence, which touts a luxury 4 bedroom villa for 18,000,000 AED. (about $5M). And there’s Palazzo Versace Dubai, a 130,000 square meter hotel and condo complex, which will include 215 suites, restaurants, and a day spa, all of which will be furnished with an exclusive line of products from the Versace Home Collection. That 'lifestyle' sideline has been the engine behind the recent turnaround in Versace's fortunes.

There will also be 169 exclusive condominiums, of which 50% have been sold prior to release.Who’s going to buy all these? Who knows? Maybe they should talk to Michael Shvo. But prices are escalating, just like they did in Miami before the recent crash of the overheated market there.

Rashad Bukhas, the head of all Dubai museums, says that two years ago, condos were selling for about $250 AED per sq ft. Now? $1200 AED per sq. ft. for the same type building. The area around the Emirates Tower, he says, will soon be the most expensive square mile in the world.

Dubai is handy for Iranians, who can’t get into the US from Iran, but could get in if they had a Dubai address. And it’s great if you’re working for Halliburton or SOM. No taxes! Golf! Tennis! Horseback riding!

The downside of all this growth? Horrendous traffic. As Greg Brandeau, CTO of Pixar, said, “This is like Sim City in real time.”

Continue reading "Design in Dubai: Unreal Real Estate"

Posted by Linda Tischler at 12:00 PM | 8 Comments

June 11, 2007

Design in Dubai: Future Shock on the Gulf

If you enjoy the smog of LA, the traffic of Washington DC’s Beltway at rush hour, the blistering heat of Orlando in August, the retail pizzazz of the Mall of America, the cultural attractions of Midland, Texas, and the sensitive architecture of Las Vegas, you’ll adore Dubai. It’s Singapore with hummus. “Sim City in real time,” as Greg Brandeau, CTO of Pixar so astutely observed.

Brandeau and I, along with a few hundred design luminaries from around the globe, were recently in Dubai for the first International Design Forum, an initiative created to jump start a conversation between the Arab world and international designers about the commercial and social impact of design in a rapidly changing world.

The conference attracted a glossy array of folks: Rem Koolhaas was there to launch a book, Al Manakh (which means ‘climate’ in Arabic), which is an annual publication that will weigh in on how the Arab world is responding to a period of urban hypergrowth – and where design fits in that transformation; and Karim Rashid showed up to present a studio on his designs (and serve as DJ at a late night party for the young ‘uns). Paola Antonelli, curator of the design department at MOMA; Dutch designer Marcel Wanders, international provocateur Oliviero Toscani (the man behind those provocative Benetton ads); Lebanese architect Bernard Khoury; Red Dot president Peter Zec; and Khalid Al Malik, CEO of Tatweer, the company beind such projects as Dubailand, Tiger Woods Dubai (the dhamp’s first golf course; and Bawadi, one of the world’s biggest hospitality companies, all served on panels debating the region's design -- or lack of it.

Continue reading "Design in Dubai: Future Shock on the Gulf"

Posted by Linda Tischler at 3:29 PM | 1 Comment

May 30, 2007

Microsoft Brings My Pet Peeves to the Surface

One of the things that bother me more than anything else is seeing the reflection of finger prints on my computer screen. It seems that no matter how many times I wipe it down with those special disinfectant wipes they are always there. I'm not even sure how they get there in the first place; I certainly don't spend my days fondling the screen. But my compulsion to keep things clean is frequently set off by this constant nuisance.

So, when I was reading the paper this morning, this finger print problem is what instantly struck me when I read about Microsoft's new product, Surface. This new means of setting off my compulsive cleaning is an interactive table that responds to touch. The table will be able to read multiple touches simultaneously, download pictures from a wi-fi enabled camera that is sitting on its surface, and read digitally encrypted cards like hotel key cards.

According to The New York Times, Microsoft is planning to unveil Surface today at a The Wall Street Journal conference on everything digital in California. Here is an article from the Mercury News that describes some of the capabilities of the table as seen firsthand.

Surface will first be marketed commercially and already has buyers like Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide and Harrah's Entertainment. While I think this product may be a neat idea, a whole slew of problems (beside the fact that it will look dirty all the time) spring to mind.

First, there is my propensity to spill drinks on just about everything. I hope Microsoft has built-in some sort of safety mechanism for just such an occasion, since tabletops are usually where people tend to put their drinks first and are often the beneficiary of my martini faux-pas.

A more pressing problem, though, is technology rape. Surface seems like a whole new way to bring identity theft front and center. I imagine that if this device can read a hotel key card, it makes me wonder if it could be programmed to read my credit cards. I can already see myself unknowingly sitting my purse on the table in a hotel only to find that everything electronic has now been scanned by the table and is in the hands of any person who comes to touch the table next. In an instant I have been abused by what I thought was a seemingly innocent piece of furniture.

But alas, until Microsoft unleashes this bit of technological wonder onto the world, I will not know if my fears are unmerited. If you are at the unveiling today or have heard anything else about this electronic furniture, please share (and hopefully set my fears to rest)!

Posted by Lisa LaMotta at 9:39 AM | 3 Comments

May 21, 2007

The Little Red Book of Chinese Advertising

“Imagine the Beatles at JFK in 1964. That was what our reception was like.” Kevin Swanepoel, president of The One Club, was recounting what it was like to step before an auditorium of hundreds of clapping, cheering, camera-wielding Chinese students in Beijing and Shanghai at this year’s One Show China Creative Youth Competition.

The occasion? The launch party for the Club’s annual show of student work, generated during the organization’s yearly pilgrimage to the Far East.

Ranged around the room at the One Club Gallery’s on the second floor of 21 E. 26th Street in New York, were samples of the students’ work – a poster of increasingly blackened butterflies with the caption “Tail gas is killing our colors,” for HybridCenter.org, an organization that promotes hybrid vehicles. An elderly Chinese woman surrounded by dozens of cats in a riff on the MasterCard “priceless” campaign. Photography in which a crippled Chinese man, makes his way painfully forward in front of a billboard of Michael Jordan zooming in for a lay-up.

The John, Paul, George and Ringos who incited such excitement in the Far East were hardly your customary rock star types – middle-aged guys with sober haircuts and North Face jackets whose day jobs rarely involved thrash guitars. They had come, in their seventh annual trek, to China to hold creative workshops for young Chinese students with visions of big careers in advertising or graphic design dancing in their heads.

The week-long odyssey was designed to introduce 300 young people, some of whom had traveled 22 hours by train to attend, to the basics of Western advertising and design.

The competition this year was particularly fierce. By November, One Club organizers had received entries from over 1800 teams, representing 115 universities in 34 provinces.

And the work they created was, Joe Duffy, chairman of Duffy & Partners, even better than in previous years -- more original, more confident, and less imitative of the West.

But the prize for the winners is potentially more than just a cool week studying with such advertising and design masters as Duffy, Dave Holloway, creative director of Northern Lights, and Tay Guan Hin, regional EDC of JWT in Southeast Asia. In the wake of China’s 2005 decision to abandon the law requiring advertising conglomerates to partner with local agencies, a herd of major international agency groups have set up shop in the country. The only problem? A serious dearth of local talent.

In past years, Swanepoel says, a number of top students from the program had scored jobs with big agencies within weeks of their completing the program. Given the quality of the work on display, it's clear these kids are ready to compete on not just a national -- but an international -- stage.

The show will run through May 25.

Below is a slideshow of images from One Show China:

Posted by Linda Tischler at 1:38 PM | Add Comment

May 16, 2007

Toyota Takes On . . .Diesel

Toyota says rev up your engines and listen to that non-existent roar of their hybrid vehicles as they take over the market!

Masatami Takimoto, president in charge of powertrain development for Toyota, said that he foresees all Toyota models being hybrid by 2020, despite a slight stall in popularity of the Prius due to rising costs. The 430,000 Prius were sold last year.

The enviro-friendly autogiant is looking to cut costs for their hybrid vehicles by developing new battery technology. The new Prius, due out in late 2008/early 2009, will most likely include a lithium-ion battery.

Toyota's announcement to be completely hybrid by the end of the next decade comes at a time when diesel vehicles are giving the hybrids a run for their money due to increased performance and comparable green attributes.

Do you think that other automakers will follow Toyota's example or are the costs too high? For more on Toyota check out this article in Fast Company magazine.

Posted by Lisa LaMotta at 12:34 PM | 6 Comments

May 11, 2007