Some time ago (July 14, 2009 to be exact) I wrote an article encouraging designers to walk the entrepreneurial path on their own by bringing some of their own creations to the market. My article “Sometimes Designers need to Walk the Path on Their Own” encouraged design entrepreneurship simply because of the learning experience designers can get. Not only that, a designer should have the DNA to be an entrepreneur. It is really only about changing the mindset.

So I was presently surprised to see an interview where Scott Wilson, of Tik Tok Kickstarter fame, explains his thoughts on why Designers should be Entrepreneurs. However I disagree with the99percent when they labeled him as a “new breed of designer/entrepreneurs”. I’m sure you would agree with me that design entrepreneurship is something that many designers have been practicing for quite sometime now.

Anyways here is the quote:

Do you think all designers should be entrepreneurs? Or is that just your particular makeup?
I find it slightly odd that all designers aren’t like that, because you’re just so curious. For me, I have such a hunger to learn, to try new things, and to connect the dots. I love seeing all kinds of things from medical to industrial to whatever, and then going, “Oh that’s interesting, and how is that relevant to this thing over here that’s in a completely different sector or category.”

I think there’s a difference between a designer who just wants to go to his computer and design things in a vacuum or design things to a brief and not maybe be challenged too much, and a designer that can actually see the connections and challenge the brief and push back and create something that’s disruptive to what’s in the market right now.

Steve Jobs at Apple, Mark Parker at Nike – who I was fortunate enough to work with for two years – those guys are big-picture designers. They’re right-brain, they connect the dots. I think it’s really important to train that part of how you see things as a designer.

There are a lot of people out there who have more skill than I do, who are more creative, maybe more open-minded, but one of the things that I do is I see the connections and I see the opportunities and I can visualize them.

So I agree with Scott, designers have the DNA to be entrepreneurs. It is about curiosity, big picture thinking, and the ability to connect the dots. I would also like to add to his list the ability to wear many hats, working with, and empathizing with other people. Check out the full interview at the99percent for other cool anecdotes such as “Do what you think is Right and Apologize Later”. Enjoy!

The ever-witty Mike Monteiro, famous for his potty mouth, shared at a recent San Francisco Creative Mornings talk, the ups and downs of running a design business. For example, dealing with problems such as getting clients to pay up, getting comfortable with contracts and working with lawyers.

Filled with his usual F-Bomb expletives, this video is not really safe for work unless behind a pair of headphones. Nevertheless it is good to watch and worth spending that 39 mins or so, of your time. You can find a much tamer written version at his Mule Design Blog.

Via: Swiss Miss

I know I have been teasing all of you about a strategic design project that I have been and am still working on. It is now time for the big reveal with its official launch at 9am this morning PST, about an hour ago. I am super excited and very honored to be part of a team of clever and dedicated professionals.

Check out our new baby called CKIE; a crowdfunding platform created especially for funding product ideas. CKIE is an acronym that has been derived from a formula for Creativity. It goes something like this. C=f(K,I,E), which is creativity (C) is function of knowledge (K), imagination (I), and evaluation (E). I’m not sure where this formula came from but it sounds pretty good eh?

Created by my friends from Yanko Design, my role was supporting them in design and business strategy, profiling personas and identifying possible usage scenarios. These activities finally led to the fine-tuning of the user experience of the website and platform. I also brought to the table my extensive experience in managing the process of industrial design and product development activities and how these processes can be merged or applied onto this new Internet platform. Currently the platform is not 100% perfect and there is still much to be done, but we decided to launch it once it was stable and will continue to refine the site in the spirit of iterative software design.

I do know that there are similar crowdfunding or micro financing platforms out there. Furthermore I don’t often recommend businesses to adopt strategies that actually follow other strategies, but in this case the product we have been working on is quite different.

There are 4 main differences.

Firstly CKIE is focused on funding product ideas only. No books, movies, shows, art etc., just products. This means that 100% of people visiting the site are only interested in checking the latest industrial design, product ideas or concepts.

Secondly, CKIE is an international platform. We are open to designers, creators, entrepreneurs and people interested in backing or supporting ideas from all around the world. Why limited your ideas and customers to one geographic location when the world is your oyster?

Next. We have created a platform that is supported by experienced designers and design managers such as myself. Designers, entrepreneurs or anyone with an interesting idea can come on board and be able to speak to a person for help or advice and not be left on their own. We identified that industrial design and product development is such a long and difficult process that it can be daunting to many people, especially those that are in it the first time. Even experienced designers often have some difficulty navigating the tides of the realization process. At CKIE, there are experience design managers who will be able to support and help people get the best out of their design, the development process and the platform.

Finally, as part of our strategic profiling activities, we identified that most designers are good at the design and creation part but actually poor or clueless about the marketing and promotion of their ideas or design. Considering this insight added with how other crowd-sourcing platforms actually rely on participating designers to be responsible for their own marketing activities, the entire experience becomes a challenging and uncomfortable one. No longer. CKIE will leverage on its sister site, Yanko Design’s 2 million unique visitors a month to help market and profile the products that are going to be funded. This means that by putting your designs on CKIE, there will be a much better chance of getting your product seen, funded and eventually sold.

Well there you go. This is just an example of the range of exciting strategic design projects Design Sojourn has been engaged to work on. Check it out, and do let me know what you think? Even better, let me know if you are interested to join CKIE and I can help get you started. Enjoy!

David Sherwin, a Senior Interaction Designer at Frog Design, has complied a list of the top 10 mistakes design businesses make. This presentation is a must read for anyone who runs or owns a design business of any kind, as well as those thinking of starting out on their own entrepreneurship venture.

As this presentation is angled towards running a design consulting business, advertising or creative account managers would also find this presentation, especially the section on price negotiation, very useful. For example, rather than give a discount to your client, look at areas where you can reduce the scope of work you will do. This technique is something I myself have used frequently as a means to manage costs as well as expectations for my business partners.

This one is a keeper!

What a roller coaster ride it was in 2010? Just as we thought we were getting out the global economic crisis started in 2009 by the Lehman Brothers crash, we were dropped right into a troubled Euro dollar and European Union.

On that economic backdrop, I have to admit that mine was a pretty eventful year. Inspired by Seth Godin’s post encouraging all of us to take stock of what we did in 2010, I’ve decided to share with you some of my more important highlights.

1) Led the team that developed a range of new designs for the 2010 Philips Home Cinema Sound product portfolio. I also helped secure the design direction for the 2011 range as well.

2) Designed, developed and produced the Spaces for Ideas brand of stationary with the iconic Expandable Sketchbook as the brand’s first product. The Expandable Sketchbook has been well received on the Internet covered by sites such as Yanko Design, WFDJ, Not Cot etc., and on publications such as Epicurious and Home & Decor magazines in Asia.

3) The Spaces for Ideas: 2nd Collection was an even bigger roller coaster ride. Unfortunately it has been put on hold indefinitely, but my learning experience after the whole process was worth its weight in gold.

4) Left Philips Design at the end of September 2010 to start Design Sojourn Consulting, a boutique design agency that delivers great design strategies, easy to understand design lectures, and cutting edge industrial design services.

5) Reignited my passion for teaching, by working with professionals and students on design and design thinking. Notable lectures include “Designing Designers” for the Feng Zhu School of Design, “Design Thinking is Killing Creativity” for the Design and Technology teachers from the Ministry of Education, and “What is the value of Design?” organized by the Singapore Government for small/medium business owners.

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Going forward I like to share some of my goals for Design Sojourn in 2011. I’ve split them up in to my lines of business.

Design Sojourn Consulting

1) Find 5-10 really good clients to work with throughout the year. I hope to build a strong working relationship with my clients based on trust, good work ethic, and great communication. I believe it is from such working relationships that the best designs can be created.

2) Continue to build strong partnerships with other designers and build a collaborative work culture. Look out for two exciting announcement in the coming months based on 2 collaborative projects I have been working on!

Design Sojourn Brands

1) Continue to develop the Spaces for Ideas Brand by leveraging from its flagship product, the Expandable Sketchbook. I hope to sell out my entire inventory by July 2011 and then work on an improved version 2 before the end of the year.

2) Look at redoing the Brand’s 2nd collection of products (Storybook and Iteration Book), but this effort will need to start from scratch. At this time, I have a few new ideas that I will be working on with something to show soon.

Design Sojourn Publishing

1) Continue to develop the Design Sojourn blog as an important “home base” for all Design Sojourn related activities.

2) Double my readership by the middle of the year, and double it again by the end of the year. To help facilitate this, I am planning a blog redesign and consolidating a number of blog activities to improve simplicity and focus.

3) With so much diversity in the design blogosphere to compete with, I decided to simplify and center the blog’s activities on its new refined and simplified tagline: “Strategies for Good Industrial Design“. I think this new tagline sums up all my activities in the last 5 years and probably one of the few blogs that is willing to deal with the can of worms that comes from articulating what good design is all about. This direction also aligns well with all 3 of my lines of business.

4) I am hoping to get selected by a great Ad network like The Deck, CarbonAds or Fusion Ads etc. so that I can get more help to pay the bills. This will also allow me to keep blogging while focusing on my consulting side of my business.

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So what about you? What are your plans, goals and targets for yourself or your business in 2011? I would love to hear about them, and I hope this post will inspires you to share. Finally, I would like to thank you dear reader for allowing me to share my design sojourn with you!

Happy New Year everyone, and may your 2011 be your best year yet!

This give away is officially over! Winners will be contacted directly.

Christmas comes early for all Design Sojourn readers! It is indeed the season of giving, but more on that later… (heh-heh)

Avid Design Sojourn reader and multidisciplinary industrial designer Juho Viitasalo was very kind to send over finished samples of his design work for Tunewear. Called Finlandia, they are a range of iPhone / iPad covers inspired by nature with a Nordic twist. The iPhone 4 version was recently launched in September 2010.

With Kickstarter fever still going strong, and my own Spaces for Ideas Collection 2, design entrepreneurship is probably at the top of every designer’s mind.

Therefore, I thought you would be interested in an interview with a designer that took that chance and chased his dream of designing and realizing his own product. I had planned to interview Juho but he beat me to it with a nice email introduction about himself and his work.

I’m born in Finland. I’ve lived and worked in Japan for five years this time. I’ve also lived here before. So, I can speak, read and write Japanese. Right now I’m in Osaka where I work at a company called Propex.

I studied industrial design in Lund (Sweden) and Copenhagen (DK). Lund University and Danmarks Designskole. I also speak Swedish. Besides Finnish and English.

Previously I have been involved with design at NASA and Finnair among other places.

Finlandia series was born when the owner of Tunewear (Hideki Francis Onda) and I decided to do something together. Tunewear already produced iPhone accessories and our idea was to create a new product family to compliment their other products. With a Nordic twist.

I came up with a concept of iPhone cases with colorful patterns that are created using only one single graphical element. These patterns could be made into various other Apple accessories too.

I also created the stories behind the patterns. All are tied to Finnish design tradition and culture.

I am intrigued by the interchange of physical form and graphical elements. This series is a good example of that interchange.

Finlandia Series is a family under Tunewear’s eggshell brand. The patterns are now on iPhone 3GS and 4 and iPad cases. They are sold in about 10 countries with Finland being the latest addition!

I have a lot of ideas in the pipeline that involve the physical form and graphics.

I guess I should add that I worked together with a package designer in Tokyo and Tunewear’s staff in Hong Kong to make the products become reality.

Also I must mention that the white cable winder is not my design. It is a standard Tunewear item they wanted to add into the package. The 3GS cases did not have the cable winder and that made the packages slimmer.

You can find Juho on his website and also on Twitter too.

I would now like to turn this interview into an open discussion to include all Design Sojourn readers. One of the most important things for a design entrepreneur is good constructive feedback for his work. So please do leave a comment or question below for Juho? He will stop by from time to time to answer your questions.

Here comes the fun part. To encourage your feedback, I have 5 of Juho’s Finlandia iPhone 4 cases to give away! Here is how you can score one:

1) I’ll be randomly selecting one comment to this article and giving that author/reader a Finlandia case! This selection will happen on the 8th of December and again on the 15th of December. So if you leave a comment here you have 2 chances to win. By the way, every comment counts so come back frequently to chat?

2) Leave a comment on this article on Design Sojourn’s Facebook page. The winner will be randomly selected on the 8th of December. You have 1 chance to win and don’t forget to “Like” us?

3) Commenting and/or retweeting this post on Twitter with a #finlandia hashtag. The winner will be randomly selected on the 15th of December. You will have 1 chance to win.

4) Finally I need some feedback too, help! Don’t you guys have anything to say about my new Spaces for Ideas prototypes? I’ll be randomly selecting a winner on my Spaces for Ideas Collection 2 article on the 8th of December. You will have 1 chance to win.

To be fair to everyone, there can be only 1 winner. You can increase your chances of winning by commenting at all 4 places. I will be contacting and announcing all winners as soon as the selection is done. I will also be randomly selecting the covers for you and shipping them to you for free. That all folks, don’t wait and start commenting away now!

Edit: Strange. Either you guys don’t like to leave comments or don’t want the covers!!! No matter, I’ll just select a few DS readers randomly from all my previous articles for the give away. Will be contacting you directly so do stay tuned! These includes the re-tweeters as well.

This give away is officially over! Winners will be contacted directly.

I’m sure most of you would have probably heard of Scott Wilson’s little entrepreneurship adventure on Kickstarter, the TikTok and LunaTik iPod Nano watch? FastCo Design, then Cool Hunting and Gizmodo picked up the project and as a result, Scott raised USD$91K in two days. At the time of this article’s writing, 6 days since the launch, the project has amassed USD$276,984. Much more than the USD$15K originally asked for. Congrats Scott!

This comes hot on the heels of another successful Design Entrepreneurship venture The Glif, which is a tripod mount for the iPhone 4. Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost asked for $10K and got a cool USD$137,417 instead. Congrats guys!

So one is a highly famous Industrial Designer running his own consultancy and the other, a pair of spunky super tired (looking) designers.

Right, now back to the TikTok. As I know Scott is on Twitter I shot him a tweet in the off chance he might reply. Here is the conversation trail on Twitter.

This is probably the number 1 question on the top of everyone’s mind!

Scott, who is a mutual friend on Twitter, probably caught wind of the conversation and replied using the Twit-longer app. I’ve reproduce the full reply below:

@designsojourn @jasecoop Good “?”. Actually not. We are a 6 person studio. Funding tooling, minimum order quantities from factory, travel to factory, etc costs more than a small firm can cover/risk. $100k+. Plus this is the new way things will be funded in the future. Empowering creatives of all levels to make their vision without the need for big corps. I hope this inspires designers everywhere. Plus it’s just preorders. Old school way for designers/inventors was to give away over half your company for money.

I continue to banter with Scott and then probe by asking him a second question that everyone probably wanted to know as well.

Again Scott answers via Twit-longer reproduced here below:

@designsojourn @jasecoop actually 15k was the tooling. Min orders were 7500 pieces plus packaging duties, Ecommerce site coming… Adds up. Kickstarter recommends keeping $ lower in FAQ. Also if we only raised enough for tooling then we would have had to raise money for inventory and given away big % of equity. As it works out now we don’t! Designers stay in control!

So there you go. I know a lot of people had raised an eyebrow at the thought of a well-known Designer jumping on a bandwagon traditionally seen as one for the struggling design entrepreneur. The thought of someone subverting a system that he is obviously overqualified for is rather painful. However if you look at this as a glass half full scenario, this is a great inspiration for all designers looking to create that self-designed product you never could afford to.

As a Design Entrepreneur myself, I do feel kind of stupid though. Maybe I should be looking at such platforms to fund my projects rather than self-funding them all? Well you live and learn!

We should look beyond, Kickstarter and Scott Wilson, and ponder on the fact that it has now become a level playing field in Design. Design is now democratic if you like. With the Internet, good design can now come from anyone and anywhere, designer and non-designer. You don’t also need a lot of money to fund your design, just passion hours. Even better, you get to validate it without having to pay someone or launching it in the market and learning the hard way. Really, nothing stopping you except yourself.

Image by David Lofink

Design Sojourn Consulting officially opened for business today, and what a day it was! This first momentous day started slowly but ended with a heart pounding and diaphragm aching bang. I’ll tell you more about that story for sure!

I’m really thankful for all my friends (and family) who have rallied behind me with words of wisdom, business advice, job referrals or even just a pat on the back. Because of that support I’m very excited to be able to “open my doors” with a number of possible business opportunities. They include working with an organization to build a multidisciplinary creative culture anchored by design thinking, strategic design consulting work with a new untested brand, and supporting an entrepreneur fulfill his dream.

That being said, I still have capacity and available for hire, so please email me at brian@designsojourn.com if you would like to collaborate with me or know of anyone who would?

So thank you again for all your emails, blog comments, and tweets. I feel so loved!

Sorry for that cliffhanger of an ending in that last post where I announced that I would be leaving Philips Design at the end of September. I like to be a little dramatic at times and I thought it would be a nice lead in to the story I’m going to tell you today.

So what, you may ask, am I going to do next?

I have spent most of my life working for people, or more accurately, designing for other people and making said people rich! Well not really…but I did decide that it was a time to do something different. Central to this plan, as you probably guessed by now, is Design Sojourn.

If I do a little counting, my Design Sojourn blog has actually been in operation for almost 5 years now! Throughout the history of this website, I have shared my ideas and thoughts on design, bounced these ideas (and sparred) with designers from all over the world. I have even helped and mentored designers whenever I could. I hope such efforts have contributed to the international design industry as a whole and in return allowed me to build some credibility as thought leader in design.

So it is then logical to expand Design Sojourn into other areas beyond just blogging. I plan for Design Sojourn to evolve into a design consultancy and brand management company. Yup, I’m going to be an entrepreneur.

Here are a few more details:

Design Sojourn The Blog

First and foremost Design Sojourn the blog, will continue, but it’s going back to its roots. This blog cut its teeth by helping designers be the best they can be. Design Sojourn was and is all about “How to do good design, and make clever products”. I did, in recent years, evolved this blog into Strategic Design. However I realized that by helping designers become more strategic, it was really still in the same vein of helping designers be the best they can be. Being strategic is the name of the game in today’s design industry.

I have also taken a look at the state of my blog, and I have to say I’m not happy with it. In the recent years, my heavy workloads and family commitments have influenced a drop in the quality of my posts. I had discovered one day that the posts people came to Design Sojourn for were more than 2 years old. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not angry or anything, I have accepted that my priorities and attention were needed elsewhere. I will therefore plan to dedicate more time in writing useful and engaging posts that will make your visit to Design Sojourn worthwhile. Growing Design Sojourn is high on the priority list, with a target of doubling readership in the next six months.

Finally, now that I am on my own, I will not be tied down nor associated with any brand. I’m now a Design Rōnin. A master-less designer roaming the world and kicking ass! Sorry, too many Akira Kurosawa movies.

Rest assured that I’m not about to take a “dump in my own backyard”, but do expect a more edgy tone, more rants, and of course, constructive criticism. Not being associated to any brand does provide the freedom to have an unbiased view.

Design Sojourn Consulting

After everything, the unfortunate hash realities of life still exist. We still need to eat and I have a mortgage to pay. This is where things here at Design Sojourn will start to be a little different.

Many companies setup a company then a blog to get them going. I’ve actually flipped this approach on its head by turning my blog into a company, Design Sojourn Pte Ltd. Here is what we do:

Design Sojourn is a multi-disciplinary strategic design consultancy.

We see ourselves as guides or translators for clients and partners in their journey in design that will go beyond products and into services, systems and processes. We are also teachers and students at heart, so we are passionate in building creative environments and improving the design industries through training and education.

Anchoring our creative process around the tenets of Joy with Functionality and Simple but Edgy, we offer full end-to-end design solutions that range from commercially savvy design languages that fulfill business needs; to manufacturing viable and resolved designs; to marketing, communications and new media solutions. However we are also nimble and flexible enough to take on that “quick kill” design problem.

No job too big or too small.

I can promise you that other than getting a “Hire me” banner up, and an update to my About page, I will not be constantly reminding you of my consulting services. However, in the coming weeks, I will share more about Design Sojourn Consulting and what it stands for. Especially its design process which, I think, you might be interested to see?

If you, or someone you know, need my services or want to collaborate with me, please do not hesitate to contact me at brian@designsojourn.com. I won’t bite, and if something does come out of this tie-up, I will be in your debt as this will allow me to continue to blog, not to mention pay my mortgage…

Design Sojourn Brand Management

The other thing that Design Sojourn Pte Ltd is going into is Design Entrepreneurship. As Design Producers, we design, develop, and produce products under our own brand or basket of brands. We also work closely with awesome designers to collaborate on products from design to market. When the time is right you will know who these awesome designers are.

I’m sure by now, you also know about our Spaces for Ideas brand? Well you will be pleased to know that we have spun the brand off Design Sojourn and given it its own dedicated site at www.spacesforideas.com. To celebrate the launch of the site this new start, we have reduced the price of the Expandable Sketchbook, so if you have not gotten your Sketchbook yet, do head on over and get one now!

Edit: Due to time commitments, I am unable to run two websites at the same time. Therefore I am re-integrating the Spaces for Ideas store back into Design Sojourn. This should also make it a smoother navigating experience for you as well. Spacesforideas.com will still exist and will be reborn when the time is right. If you can, do check out the Spaces for Ideas store? We will also be expanding the Spaces for Ideas product range to include more sketchbook solutions.

On a side note, SpacesforIdeas.com will focus more on sales transactions and product information. My sharing of development efforts, as well as the design activities will still be here on Design Sojourn. I’m guessing that you don’t want to be bothered with all this blogging noise when you make your purchases or vice versa?

On Design Sojourn, you can expect some announcements as well as the banners you see now. I’ve dumped the ugly Google ads, and will continue to streamline the site’s design so these ads do not overpower your reading experience. However, they will be a necessary evil, as Design Sojourn is the main marketing engine for my Spaces for Ideas products. Please do let me know, if you have any feedback on this matter?

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There are a few other things in the works, but they are currently too premature to talk about it now. I’ll let you know as soon as they are ready to fly! All I can say is that they will be quite awesome.

What do you think? Am I out of my mind? Many of you have been part of my own design sojourn right from the start as friends and loyal supporters. It has been a great honor journeying with you and I do hope to get your continued support of this website and in all my future endeavors. Thank you.

The Pre-Order discount is over as this product has launched! Get your sketchbook at the Spaces for Ideas Store now!

Friends, the time has finally come! After spending a number of weeks finalizing the Spaces for Ideas Sketchbook, I can now confidently be in a position to take pre-orders!

Let’s sum up the Spaces for Ideas Sketchbook in my usual favorite way, as a nice succinct marketing tagline?

The Spaces for Ideas Sketchbook: Designed for people not afraid of big ideas!

Specifically, the key points are:

Who should buy it:
1) Creative people not afraid of producing and managing big ideas!
2) Team players looking for a platform for brainstorming with other people.
3) Ardent sketchers tired of pages that seem to run out of space.
4) Mobile nomads seeking affordable and portable sketchbook solutions.
5) Organized people looking for simple solutions for design documentation.

Who is this not for:
1) Creatives who have to sketch on small tables like those found in airplanes. Still a possible solution, as you can sketch on the folded A6 pages.
2) People who are allergic to creases.
3) Designers who have phobias of large empty pages.
4) People who can’t give up their boring standard sketchbooks for a paradigm-changing product!

One of the most challenging parts of this project was having to work out the costing and pricing strategies. I wanted to keep the prices as affordable as possible. However as my initial manufacturing quantities are not high (I’m funding this 100% out of pocket!) these prices are the best I can do at this time. Hopefully in future I can substantially increase the sales volumes and bring the prices down even more!

That being said, I would like to offer you each sketchbook at USD $15. As I much prefer to move volumes, I would encourage you to purchase a set of 5 sketchbooks at USD $60 instead. 5 Sketchbooks at $12 each is a 20% discount I’m giving you as a thank you for not having me queue at the post office for too long!

However to celebrate this momentous occasion and also get this show off to a flying start, I’m going to offer an additional 15% pre-order only discount! This means each sketchbook now costs $12.75 and $51 for 5! This special pre-order discount will last until Sunday 11 April 2010, 11.59pm, when we will have the official launch and all the pre-orders shipped!

The Pre-Order discount is over as this product has launched! Get your sketchbook at the Spaces for Ideas Store now!

Just in case you don’t happen to know what all this fuss is about, check out the background story on how I came up with this design and got it realized:

4) Spaces for Ideas: The Final Prototype