Looking Back On Two Decades

A recent endeavor of mine was an installation at the Brooks Stevens Gallery of Industrial Design at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.  This exhibit celebrates the 20-year anniversary of the gallery and features historic work as well as a section devoted to the last 20 years of output from our company.  In addition to pulling together the exhibit I also participated in a panel discussion on the opening night.  Being that I started with Brooks Stevens just about 20 years ago this carried a little emotional weight for me.

The opening statement of our portion of the exhibit touched upon an issue I find very interesting from the view of a consultant design firm:

Industrial Design is often discussed using the language of visual aesthetics. The “function” of a product viewed as something to be captured within a stylish shell formed and polished to conform to the aesthetic vision of a lone designer. With success, that designer’s vision may extend to more and more products, imbuing them with a common “look”.  And so a designer’s brand language strengthens… 

The work of Brooks Stevens Inc. over the last 20 years doesn’t exhibit a common “look” nearly as much as it does a common “touch.” It is characterized by a focus upon bringing true value to the market and to the end user – crafting a balance between the factors of consumer desire, business viability, and functional feasibility. Aesthetic language is more impactful when it cooperates with functionality instead of fighting against it, and promotes the brand of the client rather than the brand of the designer. 

From products you touch everyday to products that touch your life in critical times… From nudging young dreamers to explore design to those careers started with BSI which have gone on to influence other firms and manufacturers…   

The touch of Brooks Stevens Inc. surrounds you – and it goes deeper than just the surface.

The BSG@20 exhibit also features work by Fiskars, Master Lock, Lunar Desgin, and GE Healthcare. The show will be ending its run on the 8th of February, 2014, and I encourage those of you who are in the area to visit this unique show before it closes.

What You Want v.s. What You Need (and When)

I snapped the image above over the holidays while visiting my aunt and uncle.  I pounced on the opportunity to document something firsthand that I had seen many times before online and in fieldwork.  We've all experienced the confusion of trying to use a remote control which had literally dozens of buttons more than we would interact with in daily use.  This low-tech solution strikes back with paper and masking tape.

This issue has been repeatedly addressed via ultra-simple remote controls, but the seemingly obvious solution never seems to stick.  Examples include Mitsubishi's pen remote (1990), Go-Video's Palm Mate (1993), and Samsung's Pebble remote (2009), among others.  I have yet to see one of these examples sitting out at a home I visit.  

Will we ever learn - or is is more of a case of serving needs which change contextually?  I suggest there is more than one customer to satisfy here, and that may be defined as much by time as by who:

• The end user, confronted by a daunting array of tiny buttons  when they simply want to turn up the volume.
• The end user, trying to make a purchase decision.  They may not understand all of the techno-jargon, but they can see when one product seems to have a lot more to offer than another for the same price.
• The retail buyer, tasked with pulling together a competitive offering of products each year.  Their customers may never get to touch the product if it is boxed or online, so bulleted and tallied lists of features have strong influence.
• The Manufacturer, attempting to minimize parts, costs, and SKUs across multiple products and markets.  Extending the reach of a product by adding more buttons on the same overlay is a small incremental hit compared to offering unique products tooled and designed for niche markets.

Working backward, the last two are different people with similar aims - but the first two are the same person separated by stage of ownership.  

I'm apparently not immune to this either, as evidenced by my last car purchase.  The rally-inspired performance capabilities and countless small convenience features sure were seductive when I was contemplating the purchase, but did they really make sense during my daily commute in heavy traffic?  Well, maybe that's not the best example, as it still brings a smile to my face every time it pummels my kidneys with it's stiff ride and presses me back into the seat in second gear.  Logical... well, not really.  Emotional... oh yes.


“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” 
 - E.F. Schumacher

Can You Hear Where I'm Coming From?

Considering the namesake of this blog, I felt obligated to reblog this post from FastCoDesign.  The audio at 3:33 shows how seemingly random patterns can transform into recognizable themes through repetition and scale (speed in this case).

Bimmer's Brand Ballad

BMW Introduces New ‘Sound Logo’

So, BMW has a new sound logo...

I'm intrigued by how effectively sound logos can reinforce a brand through our memory's affinity for audible stimuli.  We are inundated by them daily, and you would recognize them if you focused upon them - yet most of us seem oblivious of their presence in our lives.

The old one seems somehow more "Bavarian" to me.  The new one more... backwards psychedelic synth-saxophone?!?  What's your take?

When "Mirror, Mirror" Is Not A Mirror

There's an oft-quoted product development story involving "slow" elevators. In this story, passengers are complaining to building management about the lengthy waits for elevators in a tall building. Most would-be problem solvers, when presented with this situation, attack the readily apparent source of the pain: slow elevator mechanisms. The hero of the story decides that the real problem is that people think that elevators are too slow, and that perception is exacerbated by their boredom while waiting. Ultimately, mirrors are installed in the lobby and the elevators themselves, passengers occupy themselves with checking their hair, outfit, (and yes, other occupants), and management is thrilled with the inexpensive and easy to implement solution to their problems.

This story is typically pulled out to show how impactful the definition of a problem is to the creative problem solving process, and how thinking within disciplinary boxes can lead us to overlook novel solutions. It came to mind when I recently stayed at an Aloft hotel on a research trip and saw their familiar Liquid Lava™ floor tiles in the elevator. I realized that these were a new twist on the classic elevator mirror. They took this ubiquitous distractive element and elevated it slightly more toward actual engagement. In a sense, Aloft managed to put "mirrors" on the floors of their elevators without the risqué/creepy implications - while creating an experience unique to their hotels. They didn’t think outside the box, but rather rotated it on its side…

What Goes Around Comes Around...

When I was taking my foundation courses in school, it struck me that the basic principles of visual design the professors were attempting to drive into my head were often directly applicable to songwriting. Repetition, contrast, balance, and so on; I started noting how songs I liked manipulated these factors in effective ways. In hindsight, I now realize that these principles are relevant to nearly any creative endeavor - writing, dance, and yes, design.

The image above links to a fascinating video by mathemusician Vi Hart. The video illustrates this idea of crossing principles from one pursuit with another with more impact than I can in words alone here.

Day One, Post One…

I've been doing this "design" thing a while now, and I've learned a few things along the way. Sometimes I copied what I saw or was told to do, sometimes I learned the hard way. The most rewarding lessons came when I extrapolated an observation or idea into a new format and experimented with it - often in collaboration with a like-minded co-worker.

In that spirit, I'll be sharing some design-related thoughts via this blog - writing them down to visually "hear it out loud" and refine them along the way. Some of what I post should be obvious in hindsight – but hopefully stated in a novel way which makes it worth repeating.

A few themes will be recurring:

• Brand as Melody: exploration of Visual Brand Language (VBL) principles and processes using musical composition as an analogue.  I am personally fascinated by how closely these pursuits parallel each other, and feel that some elements of VBL can be more easily understood by non-designers when correlated to another medium, such as music.
• Harnessing the Spark: fostering and managing creativity within groups.  This can range from tools for the day-to-day activities of a creative group to the more concentrated actions in a brainstorming session.  In either, I am particularly interested in maintaining a keen eye on pragmatic and actionable results.
• Design Voyeur: observations of interesting design elements or approaches which may inspire you to be better or simply chuckle.

I hope someone out there finds my posts intriguing, professionally helpful, or simply amusing.  But... if you're looking for amusing pictures of cats you'll need to go elsewhere (I can provide links if needed).