Design Sojourn

I really enjoy reading blogs where the author shares his or her musings and anecdotal thoughts. I find that this gives a good insight into how that author thinks. Even better if these thoughts come from a designer. Check out Smart Design’s co-founder Tom Dair share his thoughts about redesigning the Rock-Paper-Scissors game. Tom argues that it does not seem logical that Paper trumps Rock, and sets out looking for a new Tri-factor that makes sense.

As I was growing up, my mom had a lot of advice, especially when it came to safety. I used to hear “it’s better to be a live chicken than a dead duck” a lot. Here’s another one: “if there is ever an electrical storm, whatever you do, don’t stand under a tree. The safest place during an electrical storm is in a car. The rubber tires protect it from the lightning”. One day some teenagers in a fast moving Camaro hit a tree down the street from my house. The car was totaled; fortunately the teenagers survived. Mom, as usual, had a rule to cover just such an event: “if you’re going to hit something with your car, don’t hit a tree. A car is no match for a tree.”

Once in a while, it is nice to read a post on Design Thinking that is fun, less serious, and not just about making money.

Image from AllMoviePhoto

That is right friends, I like to introduce to you a new activity on Design Sojourn and that is our very own Designer Mentoring Program.

But before I go on, you might be wondering why I’m doing this? Let me share the reason with you.

I often get a lot of email requests and questions for design advice. However, as I’m often very busy I don’t get a chance to respond properly or even not at all. Not only that, I wonder if my advice really works, as I often don’t get the full story or context of the problem. Worst still, when I do take the effort to give hearty advice, I don’t even get an email reply of thanks! Who are these people? (Boo-hiss!) Because of all these point, I now want a much higher level of interaction and engagement with the people I’m helping. Hence my thoughts of running a Designer Mentoring Program here at Design Sojourn.

Now, back to the program details.

This program is targeted to designers of all levels looking to better themselves and the quality of their design work. They will get a chance to interact closely with me and I will get a good opportunity to give them advice that is specifically targeted to their strengths and weaknesses.

To celebrate the launch of Design Sojourn’s Designer Mentoring Program, we are going to start this exclusive program with an initial intake of 5 people!

How Do You Get In?

Well there are a few things you will have to do to be considered. First off you need to be an Industrial Designer. Well I did think about opening this to Graphic or Interaction Designers, but I’m no expert in these fields and I believe I would provide no additional value add. (Apologies to all my Graphic/Web Designer friends. But if you are still keen I may make an exception, just let me know?)

Next, as my objective is for greater engagement and successful helping, I would need to be familiar with you. I would have to either met you personally or via the web. The very least is you must have some kind of “relationship” with me (being hot helps? Kidding!). This basically means:

1) You subscribe to Design Sojourn by RSS feed or by email.

2) You visit Design Sojourn frequently AND leave engaging comments.

3) You follow and engage me via Twitter.

That’s Not All!

For me to get to know you better you should also do the following:

1) If you have a blog, great! Write a post on this Designer Mentoring Program and why you would like to be part of it. Link back to me and I’ll come visit to get to know your thoughts and writings better.

2) If you are on Twitter, Re-Tweet it this post and pass the word around to show me the people you know and allow me to learn about you by who you are following. Oh, if you can do Digg or Stumble this site too?

3) Have a professional network, either on Linkedin, or professional portfolio sites like Core77 or Behance.net. Add me if you are on any. Again this is so that I can learn a lot more about you.

4) Finally leave me a comment below stating your interest to be considered, and perhaps leave some links to your online presence as indicated in point 1-3.

In fact why not do all 4 points? This is about being Internet savvy. Though not the deciding factor, I do require basic Internet skills, as this Mentoring Program will run online. I don’t want to have to waste time explaining what a blog is right?

What You Can Expect?

On a more serious note, if you are considered to be part of this Mentoring Program this is what you can expect:

1) A Portfolio Critique and Tune-up, by me and another prominent or experienced designer.

2) A complete skills assessment, review and improvement program.

3) Progressive Career Management and Advice.

4) Membership to a private and exclusive discussion forum where we can have in depth discussions about things not fit for public consumption! You will find answers to all your questions on design that you were afraid to ask!

———-

So that’s about it folks, and it is looking like I’ve bit off more than I can chew! I’m still fleshing out the details of the program and all I can say at this moment is that the program will leverage on the body of work I have shared in the this blog’s 4 year history. Do note that the selection process will close at the end of this month. May 31, 2009 at 11.59pm. I look forward to reading your comments, tweets, blog post and links!

Now, so who really wants to be a Design Sojourn Padiwan Learner?

Edit 1: Just to clarify, having an online network or presence is good, but not a key factor in my decision making process. The important thing is engagement, passion, and dedication to the program. I like to know that my effort put in, is reflected back with similar effort by the designer!

Edit 2: With 1 week to go before we close up our first intake of the 5 lucky designers for the Designer Mentoring Program, I thought to compile a list of designers who have expressed interest to be considered. So in no particular order:

1) Fecsx
2) Ingo Rauth
3) Raph Goldsworthy
4) Waikit Chung
5) Eugene Cheong
6) Louise Cochrane
7) Danny Chhang
8) Jason Cooper
9) Mendel Heit
10) Paavani
11) Jonning
12) Tiffany Wan
13) Arjan Schoof
14) Brian Moy
15) David Emmett
16) Raghuraj Ananthoj
17) Jason Phillips
18) Calvin Botha
19) Stephen Donald
20) Michael Greedrick
21) Munwar Khan
22) Robert Bell

Do drop me a message if I have accidentally missed out anyone?

Edit 3:
The intake of the first ever Designer Mentoring Program is now officially closed. I have been spending the weekend learning about the Designers who have expressed interest in this program. Believe you me it has not been an easy task doing the selection!

I will be posting the names of the lucky 5 designers on this blog soon. Do stay tuned!

I recently had a discussion with my better half on how “Loyalty Points” are pointless these days. (Please excuse the pun!) I rather have a clutter free wallet than carry my Ikea or local hardware store loyalty card.

Why accumulate points and work for delay gratification when I can get immediate satisfaction with more money in my wallet? I believe this has become more important in our current economic crisis.

Marketers or retailers need to know that loyalty cards are out dated to moment globalization happened. Why?

1) Brand loyalty is to the product not the store you buy from.

2) That being said, I will take a leap to say brand loyalty will soon become, if it has not already happened, a thing of the past. With multiple companies offering products that all good and very much the same. People brand switching is as common these days as salt. If I need a shirt, I don’t really care if its H&M, Mexx or Zara, they are all good and fit me well.

3) This means loyalty points will be useless to you as you will likely shop less and subsequently accumulate less points. In a vicious cycle, trying to upkeep a loyalty program becomes a struggle to even remember to bring the card!

4) Not only that, considering all things equal, there will be someone around the world that will have the same product cheaper than you can sell it. Worst that someone can be easily found on the internet.

So if you want my loyalty, and encourage me to keep coming back for more, give me a discount instead. I might even pay a membership fee if the discount is good enough.

On the flip side, there is one loyalty program I will continue to maintain. That is my Singapore Airlines Krisflyer membership. Why?

1) The delayed gratification or reward (for example, to get yourself upgraded) is worth the struggle for the points.

2) The product and its experience is important to that individual. For some flying budget air is good enough. This is the key, what is important to that individual.

3) The rewards are quite exclusive and not easily obtainable by most people.

Marketers will need to do their homework to see if a loyalty program is right for a brand or product. Just look at Apple, do you think they need a loyalty program?

Over the weekend we went to a fairly up market restaurant for dinner. It was a nice little quaint setup with enthusiastic waiters and fantastic food. My rack of lamb was particularly delicious.

All in all it was a good meal, good company and a good night. However it will be unlikely that I will comeback to this restaurant again. The reason was that someone decided to leave the doors to the restaurant’s toilet wide open. As a result of this, the moment you walked into the restaurant, it smelled like a well-used public toilet.

You never realized how important something like “a smell” is to a restaurant until it’s gone, and in this case, gone bad. In other words you don’t really know what you are missing until its gone. Identifying such small but important details takes a lot of skill, making designing an experience a difficult task indeed.

From another angle, I can almost say that “good design” is one people don’t have a problem with because it covers every possible problem by the removal of such “pain points”. I always say people should complain about “good design” a lot more!

Unfortunately consumers today are savvy enough to take a lot of this for granted in your products. This makes our task as Industrial Designers a lot more challenging. So now you know the baseline you have to maintain. The real question is how do you design a product that can go beyond this and more?

I was very thrilled to be able to visite the Droog store in Amsterdam. Sorry I don’t have any pictures as I was so excited to go in to the store that I forgot! Anyways it is worth a trip there if any of you are next in Amsterdam.

What was also of great interest to me was the store was also a museum! You could view certain classic Droog Design pieces as well as new work. Unless there is a “do not touch” sign you could also interact with the products.

What was also really good, was a visit to the other quaint shops in the area. There was an excellent Typography and Graphic Design book store as well as one that sells really cute stuff toys.

The experience was very enlightening, and unknown to me a thought was brewing at the back of my mind. It only bubbled to the surface when I read Seth Goding’s “Why aren’t you (really) good at graphic design?“. So I like to state that:

In this day and age, not only do we need change, we need to evolve to survive. And if you want to lead in your field, this has to be a basic “hygiene factor”.

I have dealt with the need for designers to evolve into “Hyper-creatives” in the past, but from this experience and a few in the past, I now believe this evolution needs to be applied to all things around us. An evolution with perhaps a focus on the user’s experience with your brand.

For example:

1) You can’t create a boutique product brand on philosophy alone. You need to give people access and a means to experience your philosophy.

2) Book stores can’t just carry books. They need to be well curated and selected, so much so that buying from that store means buying into the curator’s thought leadership.

3) I have mentioned this before but I think its relevant here. With everyone getting access to cheap digital cameras and SLRs, Photographers have to become more than just equipment or focal numbers. They have to push their ability into an art form.

I can keep going and I’m sure you can come up with many examples as well. So I’ll stop here. However before I go, I would like to ask you to take some time from your daily grind to think about the future and how you can evolve your product or your business and even you. If not, in time to come you will lose relevance and go the way of the dinosaurs.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, gives a great little talk about creative ventures, the creative genius and how we are ruining it (them). Very interesting, especially the part about how each great creative venture “kills” us bit by bit, metaphorically that is!

Designers you can relate right? Heh-heh. Enjoy!

Or: How to build your personal brand by blogging?

Wow.

What a great evening meeting and interacting with hot chicks and cool guys, Bloggers are great!

As mentioned in my last post, I was invited to speak at a Bloggers only session called “Your Blog: How to Market your Blog like a Brand”. This little cozy get together was organized by Pat, Tania and Brian from Ogilvy’s Open Room.

I had an opportunity to be in the company of a number of great speakers including Jon YongFook, “The Dude” behind ToysREvil and Arti, a former journalist, from Ogilvy.

I was in two minds if I should post this presentation on Design Sojourn or not. The reason is my presentation’s focus was about “How you can build a personal brand by blogging?”. Not really Strategic Industrial Design related, however I think a lot of you may find this information valuable, well at least I hope so! On a side note, this presentation was built and based on my Pillar Article “How to be a Design Superstar.”

Enjoy and do let me know what you think?

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot—albeit a perfect one—to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work—and learning from their mistakes—the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Get on with your Design and stop thinking about it. Fail often, Fail a lot, but fail early.

Quote Via: Russell Davies

Chris Bangle has left the building and its all over the Auto blogs and news websites! The fans are sadden, and the critics are cheering. Hmm…

Bangle leaves behind a humongous legacy of highs and lows. He was credited in creating “Flame surfacing” on the Z3/4 and the “Bangle Butt (Boot)” on the 2002 7 Series. Sadly his work was often widely criticized.

I was very lucky to have been invited for a quiet breakfast “meet the designers” session. He was warm and very approachable, despite my blunder about his work on the Renault Clieo. Biting the bullet, I asked him what he thought about the heavy criticism of his work. I cannot entirely remember what his reply was, but it was calm and almost rehearsed. It went something like “everyone is entitled to his opinion, but the sales figures never lie”. I like to always put it in another way, “There are no statues erected of critics”!

He has a very commercial approach to design, where aesthetic taste seems almost secondary to his focus of selling product. Is good design really just good business? What do you think? Regardless I believe his influence will continue to be seen in many years to come.

Press Release
Christopher E. Bangle, the BMW Group’s Head of Design, has worked closely with Adrian van Hooydonk in BMW Group design development for nearly17 years. Now he is handing over his post to van Hooydonk, who is currently Head of BMW Automobile Design. “Christopher Bangle has had a lasting impact on the identity of BMW Group’s brands. His contribution to the company’s success has been decisive, and together with his teams he has mapped out a clear and aesthetic route into the future,” said Dr Klaus Draeger, BMW AG’s Board Member for Development.

Dr Draeger went on to explain that the BMW Group was currently “in an excellent position”, thanks to a broad portfolio of automobiles and several new vehicle concepts due for market launch in the coming months and years. The BMW AG Management Board, he added, is looking forward to working with van Hooydonk as Head of BMW Group Design – a man who shares Bangle’s fascination for technology and aesthetics, tradition and innovation. Dr Draeger affirmed that van Hooydonk would be in a position to continue to build on a design philosophy, which extends across the BMW Group’s brands. Bangle’s plan to pursue his own design-related endeavours beyond the auto industry marks the start of a new phase in his life while maintaining strong ties with the BMW Group.

Over the years numerous designs for new vehicles and vehicle concepts have been developed under Christopher Bangle’s leadership. As well as continuing the BMW 3, 5 and 7 Series, he and his teams were responsible for a range of other models, including the BMW Z3, BMW Z4, BMW X5, BMW Z8, BMW X3, the new BMW 6 Series, the BMW X6 and the BMW 1 Series. Other developments under the auspices of Christopher Bangle include the new MINI and Rolls-Royce models and a number of innovative motorcycle concepts. During his tenure, Christopher Bangle was also instrumental in making the company’s consultancy subsidiary, BMW Group DesignworksUSA, what it is today: a global design agency in North America, Munich and Singapore for leading international brands and companies in a wide variety of industries.

Thanks to their outstanding design quality numerous products from all three of the BMW Group’s automobile brands have won a host of renowned awards from around the world. Bangle has always had a special aptitude for working with his teams to strengthen the identities and unmistakable images of the BMW Group’s brands and to inspire design innovations, said Dr Draeger, Board Member for Development. Over the years he has received a dozen patents for his technical applications and design. These, along with the one hundred additional patents awarded to the BMW Group Design under Bangle’s auspices, are a testimony to his creative and innovative power.

Born in the USA, Christopher Bangle, aged 52, has been Head of BMW Group Design Development since October 1992. After studying at the University of Wisconsin and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, he began his working life in Rüsselsheim, where he worked for Adam Opel AG. In 1985 he joined FIAT, where he became Director of the FIAT Centro Stile in 1992. Shortly afterwards he left the Italian automaker to come to Munich.

Throughout his career with the BMW Group Bangle’s right-hand man has been Adrian van Hooydonk, who is now set to become his successor. He described van Hooydonk as “truly a top professional in our business,” adding, “I am sure that the many strong design strategies he has helped us create for the BMW Group will continue to develop and evolve.”

Adrian van Hooydonk, aged 44, will take over as Director of BMW Group Design with immediate effect. In his new position he will be responsible for design development for the BMW, Rolls-Royce and MINI brands. Born in the Netherlands, van Hooydonk studied at Delft Polytechnic University in Holland and later at the Art Center Europe in Vevey, Switzerland, until 1992. From there he came to Munich, where he joined BMW as a designer. In the year 2000 he went to California to work for the BMW Group subsidiary Designworks USA. He was Director of the internationally renowned design agency from 2001 to 2004. Then, under Bangle as the BMW Group’s Head of Design, he became Head of the Brand Design Studio for BMW Automobiles.

The BMW 6 Series and 7 Series lines clearly bear the hallmark of van Hooydonk’s design influence, as do the Z9 Concept Car, the BMW Concept CS (unveiled in 2007) and the M1 Hommage Study. In 1997 van Hooydonk created the ACV 30 Show Car for MINI and more recently he and his team have developed the designs for the new BMW 7 Series and Z4 as well as for the Concept Progressive Activity Sedan, which celebrates its premiere at the Geneva Auto Show in early March 2009.

“I am honoured and extremely excited to take on this new responsibility”, says van Hooydonk. “BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce produce the best cars and motorcycles in their segment, and I am really looking forward to being able to contribute to the future development of these brands.” Speaking of his hopes for the years to come, van Hooydonk added: “I have no doubt that there are challenges ahead, but BMW’s depth in engineering and the passion of its talented design team are as strong as ever. Together I am sure we will be able to create some very sophisticated and extremely attractive concepts.”

Press release source: BMW Blog.

Probably the thing that irks me the most [in car design] is when I see this repetition of the known, because it shows people have comfort zones that are too tight to themselves and they’re really afraid to walk out of those. And then somebody comes up with a new idea, and then everybody follows that because their comfort zone has been expanded. The work that we’ve done in the last ten years has been about expanding those comfort zones.

~ Chris Bangle (BMW)

Ever wondered how the leaders in design do it? This is how. They push themselves out of their comfort zone and boldly go where no one else has or dares to. This is vital especially if you want to be a leader and not a follower.

On the flip side, don’t be that person that keeps on highlighting why things can’t be better, smaller, lighter, cheaper etc. and then find out that someone else, in likely China or Korea, was able to do it.

Now is not the time to be conservative. You have only one budget, make your choices well.

Quote Via: Objectified