Gems Sty

Regular reader Scott asks:

We designers and innovators struggle all the time to get our name “out there” so we can more quickly push our designs into reality.  Entering (and winning) such contests as Muji can certainly help, but at what cost?

If you sit back and look at the bigger picture of what is happening, it is really quite sad.  Let’s say a huge company needs to develop a new fun dispenser for their soap product.  They can spend millions hiring a prestigious design firm to get a filtered short list of a few new ideas put together by a team of perhaps 5 designers, or they can sponsor a design competition - disguise their motive in the form of a “challenge” to the designers of the world.

As in most design competitions, it would not be surprising to see 5000 designers enter from around the world.  Each designer would carefully follow the rules, in many cases pay a FEE of up to perhaps $100 or so and then spend hours carefully and vividly illustrating their novel work, presenting it in the exact form required by the rules of the competition (and the sponsoring company).  They would then submit their invention, their design, their intellectual property to so-called “judges” who work with the sponsor to determine select winners.  During this process, the sponsoring company has the privilege of inspecting the outcome of perhaps the biggest brainstorm session in the world.

The cost to the company is minimal (pay the judges and award $10,000/ $5,000/$1,000 to the winners).  For this small cost, the company gets to see incredibly diverse and innovative concepts from great minds of many parts of the world (ideas that have not be shown before) AND they get the rights to the designs they want AND they don’t have to pay royalties or give the struggling designer any design credit to HIS or HER design, AND they also get free advertisement as a result of being the sponsoring company (it looks like great PR - a win win win for the company).

Are we fools here?  I’m surprised all companies don’t tap into this wealth of eager brains.  We need to form a union to protect our innovations from the corporate world.

If we don’t win, which is often the case, we don’t even get any constructive criticism from the judges for our fee.  So we don’t really learn from the experience (design wise) and honestly, we can’t be certain that the judges even looked at our designs.  We often don’t even get a courtesy email to let us know that we didn’t make the next round.  I wish there was a better way.

What are your thoughts?

I’d post my own thoughts in the comments section - join in with your views!

Back in the 1960s especially, Braun was among the very cutting edge in industrial design - they were the pioneer and the leaders that played a major role in defining and shaping conversations on aesthetics and design. Even today, modern design icons from Apple are still arguably very much inspired by the Braun aesthetics of the bygone era.

The Braun Prize is still very much a coveted prize for any design students in the world, though you’d have to admit, Braun itself as a corporation has faded somewhat significantly in its influence on the design world.

Industrial designer Joe Doucet noticed this issue, and took the initiative to start the speculative design efforts designed to reignite what made Braun great:

Doucet hopes the self-funded prototypes (presented to the manufacturer earlier this year) will help initiate a change in the Braun aesthetic, which, since Dieter Rams’ days as head of design, has “lacked distinction”. “It’s been 40 years since Braun was in the design museum,” says Doucet. “The products are still engineered very well, but there is no ethos. If you remove the Braun branding they could be by any other manufacturer.”

Here are his three speculative designs for a toaster, mobile phone and music player:

For me, I’d agree with the assessment that Braun has faded from design leadership in many (most?) of its consumer product segments. Perhaps they’ve decided that one-style-can’t-fit-all-demographics; perhaps no one could take on Dieter Ram’s hats. In any case, as I glance across the home appliances aisle now, it is difficult to pick out a Braun apart from its (imho) still very iconic BRAUN logo.

What do you think of Doucet’s proposals? Do they work for you?

[via iconeye]

1969

The Apollo 11 landed on the moon, marking one of the most significant milestone in mankind’s conquest into space. It was one of the defining moments in mankind’s history - the sense of awe, hope, humility, and a basket of other indescribable emotions can still be felt through as one takes a walk back through the event transcript:

Then Armstrong said the famous words, “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

Shortly after landing, before preparations began for the EVA, Aldrin broadcast that: “This is the LM pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.

He then took Communion privately.

At 2:56 UTC on July 21, Armstrong made his descent to the Moon’s surface and spoke his famous line “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” exactly six and a half hours after landing.Aldrin joined him, describing the view as “Magnificent desolation.”

2008

Fast forward to 2008 - the Phoenix lands, and locates one of the critical factors for possibility of life in space - water on Mars. And here’s the defining moment - a tweet:

The evolution of technology and communication?

When is a design done? As design itself is usually a rather subjective judgment, designers are often lulled into a seemingly endless cycle of re-examination and ‘that-last-bit-of-tweaking’. abduzeedo asks 23 professional (graphic) designers on their take on when/how they consider their design work to be finished - here are some samples:

“I know a design is finished when every time I add something or adjust something it seems to get worse. I often create a set of history snapshots of the design trying different things - additions or small alterations - and then show them to my wife - who is also a designer. When we both agree that the original is already complete then I delete the snapshots and stop there. Of course sometimes adding one more element can lead you down a whole other path of design, and I have wound up totally reworking a look. But that’s the joy of design, there are always many solutions to a problem!” - Collis Ta’eed.

“I’m never sure if a design is done unless i take a break from it and don’t bother looking at it until the next morning. If what I see the next day puts a smile on my face, then it’s done.” - Kevin Brisseaux

“When the deadline is met.” - James Wignall

“I am finished with a piece when nothing else I add looks good. To me this means the piece isn’t finished, it’s simply reached my creative limitations.” - Joshua Smith

Your take?

Stumbled upon this discovery on Harvard Business Publishing mentioning how Zappos, an internet shoe retailer (on course to exceed $1billion in annual revenues), has a very unique method of retaining committed staff - they pay their newly-hired staff $1000 to quit:

After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later. (About ten percent of new call-center employees take the money and run.)

Wow. I’ve not dealt with Zappos personally - never bought or returned any shoes from them. But apparently the customer service are legendary. I guess this eccentric strategy (does eccentric have to be opposite of logical? Because if the numbers are balanced, this strategy seems really logical too) was one of the factors that helped them achieve this level of service.

I guess if it’s not already in every business case study textbook, it’d soon be!

It is certainly not something to be boastful about. A household in North London was challenged to document how much food they actually waste and throw out - because they passed the expiry dates; because they were just tempted by the food marketers at the point-of-purchase; because they rot before they could eat them, etc. They all added up to almost half of their grocery purchase (!).

The average family throws away £610 of perfectly good food each year — much of it totally untouched — according to figures released this week. That works out at £11.73 a week. And all of that adds to the £10billion of waste across the country. But are these figures really representative of an ordinary family? Femail challenged Ursula Hirschkorn, 36, who lives in North London with her husband Mike, 32, and two sons, Jacob, four, and Max, two, to keep a diary for a week to discover just how much food her family throws out.

It’s quite astounding to see just how much perfectly good food thrown away - and this being a rather normal occurrence, a typical family in a developed world. Head here for the full article.

I’ve been thinking about a shift in my mindset from pre-University days to post-graduation (and subsequently working), as I noticed my ‘I-can-conquer-the-world’ mentality starting to wane and fade. And so when I stumbled upon this comic from PHD it struck me quite strongly.

PHD Comic is primarily about post-grad education - check out their most popular ones here.

Whether you’re an Apple fanboy or a PC die-hard, a good commercial is a good commercial. Here’s a clever parody portraying Lenovo’s edge over the Apple MacBook Air - showing off its integrated DVD-Drive, Ethernet ports and 3 USB ports and driving home the message: Lenovo’s machine is not a compromise, but a complete machine that still fits within that small envelope.

In almost every post this would inevitably draw fanboys on the Mac and the PC sides, claiming the superiority of their preferred choice while mudslinging the ‘enemy’. Sometimes it makes me wonder - with the marketing adage that apathy is worse than hate/love - so, what if everything you use has some crazy zealous fan/enemy? All the way from the choice of your breakfast cereal, to the file you use, to the USB cable that you carry - what if each and everyone of them has such polarizing camps?

If that sounds too scary or faraway, then what exactly is the essence that makes a product more polarizing than others? What is it about operating systems, MP3 players, computers and cars that bestow upon them this natural (?) sense of territory and boundary, of ‘me’ versus ‘the rest’?

I thought this idea that is being implemented in libraries in UK is a really brilliant an interesting one:

The idea, which comes from Scandinavia, is simple: instead of books, readers can come to the library and borrow a person for a 30-minute chat. The human “books” on offer vary from event to event but always include a healthy cross-section of stereotypes. Last weekend, the small but richly diverse list included Police Officer, Vegan, Male Nanny and Lifelong Activist as well as Person with Mental Health Difficulties and Young Person Excluded from School.

It’d certainly be fun to chit chat with a living person - being with a real person, relating to actual experiences will certainly lend a great degree of empathy and sensitivity to the topic on hand, beyond what the pages on paper can convey.

Probably as much fun would be to (if not more) be the ‘book’ waiting to be checked out. I think if this idea ever comes where I am, I’d definitely sign up for it.

Flogos are flying logos - a company has found out how to make these puffy white things and set them up into the sky, bearing whatever marques you wish to have through stenciling. The sizes aren’t too big now - from 24 inches to 48 inches - so you aren’t about to see a giant logo hanging on the horizon over the city’s skyline, yet. So for now, they’re still cute, funky little things that’d be great to spice up your launch event or what-have you.

But I’d imagine them getting bigger as technology improves. New and bigger. From 48 inch to 48 feet. From white puffy things to multi-colored splendor (Flogos is already working on tinted versions).

The thought of having to you walk out of your house, and can’t even avoid advertisements and commercial-ness even in the skies is rather troubling. Right now we’re seeing them on billboards, signs, streets, buildings…imagine when the sky’s full of these clouds too. On one end of the sky you see a whole patterned formation of LV’s monograms; elsewhere you see McDonald’s arches and Apple’s half-eaten apple jostling for space and attention, each pretending to be a clever gimmick, a part of nature’s clouds - when they are patently not.

And if these cloud-logos are just that - a bunch of water vapor - how would a city district rule it? Can you classify it as a blimp that needs license for the airspace it permeates? “But it’s just a cloud!”. And it can probably be released anywhere, rather anonymously and difficult to trace.

Maybe I’m thinking too much.