Along with the desire-for-something-like-a-blog note were ideas for blog posts, many of which are relevant to this blog: design, business, and culture. Expect to see them in the near future…

A big thanks to Jeff Harrington of Harrington Design and his Design Can blog. He invited me to post there back in March 2006, and gave his blessing for me to syndicate my posts. He and I are great friends and colleagues, but we each have our own perspective and sense of humor, so if you like design blogs, I encourage you to give his a try, too. Thanks, man!

from MSN | ecommercetimes.com

from ESPN

I’ve also thought that traditional media (broadcast TV, the mainstream music and movie industries, etc.) spend too much time and energy being afraid of new technology when they are some of the few who have the capital and power to be early adopters.

Here’s ever-more support for my theories.
From Yahoo: TV Ads Grab Attention in Fast-Forward

Patterson Pope’s Laws of Stuff

Folio Weekly is known for exposing the unsightly underbelly of Northeast Florida political life, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to look good on the outside.

Folio Weekly is currently seeking 10 creative (and local) visual artists to beautify, deface or otherwise adorn some of our outdoor newspaper racks.

The racks will be displayed at the September Art Walk in downtown Jacksonville, as well as at distribution points throughout Northeast Florida for at least a year. Participating artists will also be profiled in our September 16 Fall Arts Preview issue.

Those interested in participating must submit a rough sketch of their design, using our official template, by July 30. Templates may be downloaded at www.folioweekly.com and must be either e-mailed as a JPEG file to coverup@folioweekly.com or snail-mailed to Folio Weekly Coverup, 9456 Philips Highway, Suite 11, Jacksonville, Florida 32256.

So get sketchin’. We’re ready for out extreme makeover.

(Also, see Urban Jacksonville’s interview with the creator of this project here.)

SEATTLE – Do you cringe when you see a sign on the front of a house proclaiming that “The Johnson’s” reside there? Does the phrase “Her and I” make you want to tear your hair out?

Fear not. You are not alone. There are others out there like you. They’re members of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG), a Seattle-based organization created by writer/columnist Martha Brockenbrough.

Brockenbrough, a columnist with Microsoft’s Encarta Web site, says she started SPOGG to make grammar fun and funny.

“It’s not about talking as though you’ve got the posterior stick syndrome. It’s about knowing what words mean and how to use them,” she said.

SPOGG members submit examples of grammangling.

read entire article >>

It has all the usual and important green promises: measure your carbon footprint, pledge to reduce it annually, rewrite your company policies, etc. And already several of my design heroes have signed up: AIGA is one of the first “Endorsers” (or organizations), and on the list of “Adopters” (or firms) are Heller Design, Tricycle and Willoughby Design Group. (But where’s Pentagram?) It’s similar to the positive peer pressure one receives on refusing speculative work.

But my favorite part is the promise to educate clients on sustainability. The greater appreciation of design gives designers greater power. And not just power to demand the aesthetic we want or the billable rates we deserve. Power to change the minds of those who used to be our “bosses” and are now our partners. Power to improve the world in a real way, armed only with our pretty pictures and witty words. But only if we band together.

The first principal of the Designers Accord is to publicly declare one’s participation. To declare participation, one must fully understand what participation means. So for now, I publicly declare my intention to study and adpot the Designers Accord. Join me!

First, I started thinking about how bad the January 2008 numbers would be when they’re finally posted (approximately February 1), and what my threshold would be before I started considering a different career. Then, I remembered my ‘naive’ question when I first joined a women’s investment club in 2000 (right before the last recession): doesn’t a recession only happen because everyone panics, and if everyone remained calm, wouldn’t the recession be avoided? Then, I had a great idea for an analogy between the markets and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but someone beat me to it: the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Markets.

Natural Resources Defense Council’s Greening Your Business

originally posted on the Design Can blog

I tried two words — ‘experience’ and ‘considerable’ — which are overly-used in a letter I’m working with. Maybe try looking them up yourself, and see what you think.

I like the interface. It’s colorful, fun and intuitive. One qucikly understands what each of the colored dots and line styles means. Or maybe, it’s deceptive (see below).

I don’t like the lack of words. More often than not, clicking the little dots doesn’t reveal more words as I explore. My two words yielded only a few alternatives, none of which seemed much of an improvement over the original word, or meant precisely the same thing. Maybe it’s because I’m a new user, and haven’t picked up on all the best practices — but then, isn’t the interface supposed to make it intuitive enough I shouldn’t have to spend hours learning it?

I don’t like the limited free trial. So many web sites have found a way to make money without charging a subscription fee. Even AOL is giving the milk away for free. I think VT would do better to find a model that offers a basic online version for free with advertising, and an upgraded version for a fee with no adverstising, just like Pandora does (PS — I love Pandora). I can’t think of a model that would allow the desktop version for free, but after looking at the comparison between the online and desktop versions, the only advantage I see is that it doesn’t require internet access (if you can call that an advantage).

What do you think?

The London firm isn’t content with the designer-for-hire role. Instead, it aims to shape clients’ business strategy as well as design.

read the article • view the slide show

Justin Gignac pulled off what might be the ultimate marketing coup: repackaging NYC’s garbage for $100 a cube. by Liz Danzico

Justin Gignac goes out of his way to find garbage. Right off the street—from back alleys, from uptown, from downtown—he collects it late at night after his day job at an advertising firm. He boxes it up, labels it, then sells it for up to $100 via his company, NYC Garbage. Gignac has made trash trendy through a package design and marketing plan developed while he was a still a student at the School of Visual Arts.

Liz Danzico: Garbage isn’t the first thing people think of when brainstorming new product ideas. How did this all start?

Justin Gignac: I started selling New York City garbage when I was in college at the School of Visual Arts—I came up with the idea one day during my summer internship. A group of us were having a discussion about the importance of packaging, and someone claimed that package design wasn’t important. I disagreed. I figured the only way to really know if your package design is successful is to try to package something nobody would ever want. Garbage made perfect sense.

read the story

Too bad the web design leaves so much to be desired…

This started as a conversation between Amber and I at the latest AIGA Jacksonville Cocktails & Creatives, and others got dragged in as they passed by (Jessi, Russel, Ron and a few others). I’ve started this post in the hope they and others would type up their stories, too.

Of course, just as the expert says in the article, graphic designers have always done many things that fit into Interaction Design. But there’s so much more — brand is to logo what interaction design is to graphic design — it encompasses and connects.

read the article

While of great interest today, the discussion of design in business is hardly a new phenomenon. In a 1965 speech at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Hugh DuPree, one of a troika of DuPrees who presided over the company for half a century, described how his family went about connecting business with design. In the process, they transformed Herman Miller from a tiny failing residential furniture manufacturer to a paragon of American design:

“Design is an integral part of the business. The designer’s decisions are as important as those of the sales or production departments. It is his responsibility to recognize needs and solve them in his own way. There is no pressure on the designer to modify design to meet the market. Sales and Manufacturing have a responsibility to feed back to Design information that helps the designers to define the problem.

“But the designer decides how to use this information…. We decide what we will make. If the designer and management like a solution to a particular problem, it is put into production. There is no attempt to conform to the so-called norms of public taste, nor is there any special faith in the methods used to evaluate the buying public. Our designers must not be hamstrung by management’s fear of getting out of step. All that is asked of the designer is a valid solution.”

read the rest of the story

Architects Associates

Picture this: A burly, tattooed Hell’s Angel wears a dainty gingham apron over his black leather biker vest as he frosts a birthday cake. It’s a highly incongruous image, but one that leapt to my mind upon hearing of the Harley-Davidson brand cake-decorating kit currently available for sale via baking stores and Web sites.

You can see the thinking. Riding a Harley (HDI) is more than a form of transportation, it’s a lifestyle. Shouldn’t the company take advantage of that by introducing branded products that its fans need in life—such as icing?

But when there’s extreme dissonance between a company’s core identity and a new product launched to reach untapped markets, corporations risk diluting the power of their brands. Would you buy Bic underwear or Pirates of the Caribbean jewelry?

read the rest of the story
watch the slide show

The Logo Creator

Not long ago, Motorola saw itself the same way its customers did: as a tech-driven seller of products, not a brand. The success of the RAZR changed all that. By ringing the consumer’s bell, the hot-selling mobile phone validated a new strategy, internally dubbed MOTOME. Suddenly Motorola (MOT ) was a company that had rediscovered its identity as a major consumer brand.

The key, says global marketing head George Neill, who came to the company last year from Apple (AAPL), was to think of the brand as providing experiences to consumers, not just hardware. “We’re focused on giving access to what people want — music, video, Internet — wherever customers roam.” That translated into an 18% gain in the company’s global brand value on this year’s BusinessWeek/Interbrand Annual Ranking of the 100 Top Global Brands. The phonemaker, adds Interbrand Group CEO Jez Frampton, is “redefining the place people make for the Motorola brand in their lives.”

This year’s list is brimming with hot brands such as Motorola that are crafting new and surprising ways to branch into entirely new product arenas. Hyundai is launching a premium sedan. Google (GOOG ) is wading into selling ad time on the radio. Others are revving up their brand’s goodwill value to dodge problems, as McDonald’s (MCD ) is doing with its health and fitness marketing to counter concerns about junk food.

Every company wants its brand to get bigger. The hard part is balancing what the brand is with a vision of what it would like to be. “As soon as you try to go someplace that doesn’t fit or where you don’t have credibility, it can detract from your organization and your brand,” says Frampton. The sixth annual BusinessWeek/Interbrand rankings measure an elusive but crucial quality. Companies that score high can count on plenty of customer loyalty as they push into risky expansions.

read the rest of the story

watch the slide show

take the quiz

originally posted on the Design Can blog with 1 comment

from Business Week Online

Fossil’s multiple logos, ever-changing packaging, and continually reinvented publications appear at first to have nothing more in common than a certain visual historicity the Retro look. “The fact is that we have a very consistent brand identity, built around the ideals the company was founded on in 1986,” says Tim Hale, who has been Fossil’s creative director since the beginning. “But graphically, it comes out of a shared sensibility among our customers, staff, and management, and not out of a standards manual.” This is a living brand, rather than a legislated one. And design is the differentiating factor.

It’s been a powerful differentiator. Starting with one line of Retro-style watches sold through department stores, Fossil now sells sunglasses, leather goods, and apparel in 2,000 partner stores and 82 of their own outlets and that’s just the domestic market. Fossil products (and its lifestyle brand) are distributed in 80 countries, bringing in upwards of $500 million in net annual sales.

The brand’s success has translated to a second business. Disney, Cole-Haan, Armani, DKNY, and Paul Frank have all contracted Fossil to design, produce, and brand their own licensed products. Belief in design as the maker of brands has paid off.

When Fossil was launched in the ’80s, most businesses based their brands on product-oriented, features-and-benefits positions. Fossil’s decision to base their brand on design was a gamble but one that was informed by market realities.

Founders Tom and Kosta Kartsotis observed Swatch’s success in the early ’80s, and saw an opportunity for other affordable, design-driven brands. By 1985, they had three lines of watches on the market, based on different design themes. Only one succeeded: the ’50s-style watches loved by their father, “the Fossil” (hence the company name). Once the market chose the Retro line, they brought Tim Hale on board to develop the brand.

Hale’s mandate was to first find out why consumers liked Retro, and then to exemplify those values in design. “Our market is 18- to 25-year olds. They don’t have personal memories of the mid-century, and don’t necessarily know where this style comes from, but they like it,” he says. “To them, it looks `classic.’” It’s much the same overseas, where the brand translates as authentic Americana. Inside Fossil, Retro style stands for the company’s traditional values: honesty, bringing a good product to market for a good price, having integrity in its dealings with people, and standing behind the product. “We try to be as authentic in the way we operate as in our design,” Hale says.

The appeal of Fossil’s style seems to be rooted in its innocence, which the designers emphasize. “We focus on the positives of the postwar era: the return to industry, the technological innovation, the fascination with big cars, the optimism,” says Hale. “And we love the effects they created with saturated color and illustration.”

As an infant brand, Fossil’s challenge was to create identity at the point of purchase without advertising support. Unique packaging was the solution. The packages had to work as display props, brand identifiers, and value-added items in their own right. “We wanted to give the merchandiser something to merchandise with, and the customer something to love,” says Hale.

They started going to flea markets in search of ’50s ephemera. They bought packages, tins, jars, antique cameras, telephones, radios, knick-knacks, and then immersed themselves in the artifacts of the era. Initially, they used the collection as props to create an authentic setting for the watches in their merchandising materials. “Then we realized we had to create that same kind of collectibility with our own packaging,” says Hale, “which is where the idea of the tins came from.” Tin packages last for years, can be printed with almost any kind of design and people love them.

From the beginning, Hale and the Kartsotis brothers wanted the visual identity to be random. Hale explains that “you can’t hold people’s interest in displays unless you update them regularly, and customers won’t keep a package if they already have one just like it. On top of that, our market continually refreshes itself as customers age out of the demographic, so we need to refresh our look.” They deliberately designed packages with the Fossil name appearing in all kinds of fonts and settings, using themes and graphics that vary from year to year. Still, they manage to convey a consistent image. As Hale says, “We know what is and isn’t Fossil.”

Being a high-fashion brand, they have to provide new products continually. Fossil goes to market five times a year, and since 25% of the line expires in each cycle, the entire product line is refreshed annually. So is the packaging. “We produce close to 3 million tins per year, using 100-plus different designs,” says Hale. That’s a lot of new design and it’s all done in-house.

Fossil’s 100-plus design staff could easily pass for a full-service consultancy. They have watch designers, graphic designers, eyewear designers, packaging designers, photographers, model makers, and manufacturing designers. “We could go outside and find phenomenal talent, but that would be a double-edged sword,” Hale says. “Since they don’t live the brand every day, they don’t always get it. We’d rather put the energy into managing and developing our own talent. On top of that, consultants’ fees would cut into our margins. Owning both the brand and the infrastructure has been very healthy for us.”

It also helps Fossil maintain a consistent identity as the brand evolves. “Fossil is a moving target,” Hale says. “With our own staff, we can keep the designers on the same page as we take new directions. Though we stay in the same genre, we use a different set of themes every year,” says Hale. “To keep it fresh, we’ve promoted the idea among the designers of constantly reinterpreting the theme, adding to the language of the brand. This allows us to bring in young designers with new ideas, teach them the core elements of the brand, and trust them to express it visually.”

Each packaging series has a theme resort hotels, motor oil, or laundry soap carried over two to four tins. For products sold in Fossil stores, the designers also develop themes around the individual locations, to make a connection between the store and the products it sells. For each cycle, the designers make trend boards themed collections of vintage packaging to present at brainstorming sessions. “We’ll come out of each session with a half dozen themes. Then the designers go off, develop original concepts based on the source material, and bring them back for the next session, where we might begin to work out the colors.”

One problem with relying on historical sources is that the design can become an homage to the past, rather than a contemporary communication. To stay current, Hale and his team have created a hybrid. They collect and study matchbook art, album covers, needle packages for radiographs, old cans for pharmaceuticals, cologne, and cosmetics, select graphic ideas that suit Fossil’s witty, unpretentious personality, and recombine them. “We interpret the source material and put a spin on it,” says Hale, “but we always strive for authenticity. The typography, for instance, is either hand-drawn, set in old lead and wood type, or printed with silkscreen or rubber plates, then scanned in. We pay close attention to the effects age has on surfaces and color pure colors don’t translate as Retro. They have to be distressed, given texture, and look as though they’ve dulled or yellowed with age.” Over time, though still working from mid-century sources, Fossil has developed a visual language of its own. Bouncy, customized fonts and simple, cheery illustrations are arranged in energetic compositions with a distinct palette of ochres, olives, soft blues and strong reds. The designs are simpler and bolder than their mid-century models, more carefully focused, but never lose the spirit of the age.

What’s interesting, given all this attention to authenticity, is that most of Fossil’s products don’t look Retro. While the packaging story is about classic Americana, the product story is driven by fashion trends in the Modernist tradition: good materials, good craftsmanship, simple lines, and considered detail. Hale says, “People have a sentimental attachment to the humor and authenticity of the brand, but on a day-to-day basis, they want stylish accessories.”

The tins are virtually a separate product line. “We have a running joke,” says Hale, “that you can either buy a watch and pick out a tin, or buy a tin and pick out a watch. Either way, it costs about $65 bucks.” Behind the wit lies an interesting marketing strategy. “Letting customers choose their own tin adds to the shopping experience. If the item is a gift, they can customize the package for the person they are giving it to.”

Since the brand, rather than product features, drives Fossil’s success, it seemed logical to extend the line. Fossil is gambling their success on two factors: the nature of their brand, and the experience of their management. “We started as a watch company, but what people came to love is the character our visual identity represents,” Hale explains. It’s a lifestyle brand, and as such isn’t married to any one product.

Retail experience matters when it come to knowing what products to add and when to add them. “Our senior management comes from department store backgrounds, and know where the holes are,” Hale says. “They saw a vacancy in watches, then in leather, then in sunwear; those vacancies represented opportunities for the right vendor, with the right product, at the right price.”

Fossil has managed to translate their Retro image across media as well as across product lines. Whether print, interactive, or architectural, the underlying visual language and personality are constant. The headquarters building is done in Chicago brick, with stained concrete floors, and warm interior colors. The annual reports use light-hearted historical imagery, lively headlines, rich textures, and the same warm colors. The website follows suit. But the packaging carries the brand to the public.

As Hale says, “We’re not packaging products, we’re packaging Fossil.” In fact, the U.S. courts have ruled that the watch-in-a-tin is part of Fossil’s trade dress, as well as the shape of the original box. “The identification of Fossil with the tins is almost on the same level as the identification of Coca-Cola with the hourglass bottle,” says Hale. The tins have become so popular that they’ve become collectibles in their own right, as intended. “We started assigning dates and serial numbers to them, like baseball cards, so collectors could keep track of them,” Hale says. “And they do. These days, when we go to flea markets, we see a lot of Fossils.”

by Meaghan O’Neill
Interior Design.net
4/6/2006

The event is now in its third year.

First established in 2003 with the mission of “celebrating and promoting London as the creative capital of the world,” the London Design Festival (LDF) is now in its third year. The event, which will be held September 15-30, consists of design-led activities held at various locations—museums, galleries, shops, trade associations, academic settings, and individual design studios, among other locations—throughout the city. In 2005, more than 170 activities were presented, relating to disciplines including architecture, fashion, furniture, textiles, craft, product, digital, interiors, and jewelry.

The 2006 program will include more partners, particularly in retail, and more activities, such as lecture programs, educational initiatives, research programs, exhibitions, and awards.
One of the LDF’s core objectives is to create links between the general public, established industry, and emerging talent. Design, organizers hope, will be at the center of the commercial landscape and cultural consciousness.

“The festival will continue to be a central part of promoting and celebrating London as the creative capital of the world,” says LDF chairman John Sorrell.

Last year, LDF attracted 450,000 visitors; about 170,000 of those were design industry members.

Michael Vanderbyl has 30 years under his belt as principal of his namesake firm, and the accolades are rolling in. The multidisciplinary designer is this year’s recipient of the IIDA Southern California Chapter’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Tonight, March 28, the award will be presented at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, during the 17th Annual IIDA Calibre Awards ceremony.

Tomorrow, Vanderbyl will be the guest of honor at the Teknion showroom in Santa Monica. Furniture manufacturer Teknion and textile manufacturer Luna Textiles will honor Vanderbyl with snacks and cocktails. The designer, who has work in the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt Museum (Smithsonian Institution), the Library of Congress, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum Die Neue Sammlung in Munich, established Vanderbyl Design in San Francisco in 1973. The multi-disciplinary firm now offers graphics, packaging, signage, interiors, showrooms, furniture, textiles, and fashion apparel.

The Teknion showroom event kicks off at 5pm. To RSVP, contact Tiana Pardini, Teknion A&D representative at tpardini@tekus.com or 310-902-1162. The showroom is located at 631 Wilshire Blvd., on the 2nd floor.

A slew of design events will occur in Los Angeles this week, coinciding with NeoCon West and L.A.DesignWeek. For more information, visit the Merchandise Mart online.


http://www.interiordesign.net/article/CA6319433.html?title=Article