design

The year is 1976, Dieter Rams, who is most renowned for his innovative design work for Braun and Vitsoe, is on stage in New York talking about the importance of design as part of the business strategy: (source)

It’s no surprise that the company behind the much-praised Aeron chair – Herman Miller – would embrace a compelling design ethos.  The exquisitely-designed chair is featured in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection, after all.

And yet, I was captivated by a recent presentation by the company’s director of insight and exploration, Gretchen Gscheidle.  (Thanks to the folks at San Diego’s CONNECT, for putting on the terrific seminar.)  As Gretchen outlined Herman Miller’s ten principles of design, I found them at once simple and profound.

Stories inspire, motivate, and shift the way the people think and work. Many civilizations throughout history understood the power of storytelling. From ancient Egypt to modern China story- telling provided the foundation for nearly everything. For business, often there needs to socialize strategies within executive management, the board and senior staff and they include telling innovaiton, survival and hero/heroine stories. Most survival stories are around when organization had to overcome big challenges from disruptive business models that threatened its existence. It is an important piece of organization culture building.

When Tim Brown said that ”design is getting big again”, he meant that Design is moving (or has moved, in my humble opinion) from a form giving exercise and into the boardroom where is have become a much bigger strategic activity.

So it looks like The Designer Fund, a VC fund that specifically invests in Startup companies that have designers as founders is starting to gain traction. It seems that suddenly everyone seems to have an opinion on the premium placed on designers.

I was presently surprised to find out that Chip Kidd presented at TED.

Chip is one of my favorite book cover designers. I especially like the cover he did for a book (which I own) on Concept Artwork for the Batman Animated series. So I really enjoyed this talk, and his super quirky sense of humor, at TED called “Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is.” It is fascinating to see how his personality merges with his design philosophy.

Often designers design stuff (products/services/interfaces etc.): to fit user personas, to solve problems, to make it beautiful etc. but don’t often consider the how it psychologically interfaces with the user.

Design Juices recently published an interview with Michael DiTullo, a designer I greatly respect, where he shares his insights and challenges he faced to get to where he is today, namely a Creative Director at Frog. (Actually it seems he is now the Chief Design Officer at DEI Holdings, Inc. Congrats Michael!)