Studioclues – Industrial design blog and portfolio site

In anticipation of a long flight this last weekend I went to the library to see if they had any new branding or design books. I stumbed upon Do you Matter as I sifted through the design section. I pulled it out and read the cover. “How great design will make people love your company” seemed so true and straight and to the point. I checked it out.

In this 236 page book, Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery talk about how the intangible by-products of good design and positive user experience,  can turn your company into an unstoppable force. The title , Do you matter, is a tough question to ask about your company. Does your company matter in the hearts of your customer? Will your customers care if you go away? Or will they simply buy your competitors products when your company is no longer there to offer service. If you do matter and your existence is important to your customers, then you have a great brand that is difficult to copy.

These days good products can be copied, even with good IP a product can be mimicked or an alternate design that provides a trade off can produced. Your competitor has then a comparable product. You are now not so special.

Brunner and Emery explain that  to build true loyalty of your customers, a positive emotional tie must be developed with all contact you have with your customer. How do you do this? You have to build a  company with “design culture”. A good company with design culture is very difficult to copy. A good design culture pumps out highly innovative and passionate products over and over again. It’s just in it’s DNA. Good design cultures put design thinking into every aspect of their business from HR to logistics, once this mindset is set, it is difficult to copy. If every part of your business puts positive customer experiences first with not a penny spared. Those pennies will come back in the form of more sales. It some times takes a leap of faith and dedication, but the intangible emotion of good design can buy lifelong loyalty of customers.

The books points out dozens of examples of companies that have built a culture around this premise and have built long lasting iconic brands, such as Apple, IKEA, BMW, Harley Davidson, and Samsung. These companies put design and experience first and subsequently moved to the top of their food chain in their industry.

http://www.doyoumatter.com/

Some recent quick sketches for fun I was working on. Conceptual medical devices. These exorbitantly priced devices are used for examination and have a semi technical feel. With only necessary controls exposed from within the housings Most of the settings of these device would be programmed from an interface at an external terminal beforehand.

Being in China for about week now I have found that good signage and clear communication in graphic design becomes even more important if the actual copy is unreadable.  The accompanying graphic with the copy becomes the sole form of communication to the user in this instance. As businesses become more global and their marks are being spread further into other cultures and cities, it is apparent that their mark must  represent their product or service in a non discriminatory way. I have found that in many instances signage has had the Chinese copy along with the English version nearby or as a footnote. A challenge sometimes for Chinese graphic designers but also a testament of their inclusion of global cultures.

Some examples from my trip to Shanghai last weekend.

Now on my third city stop in my China trip, Shanghai. What an amazing city with the friendliest people in the world. I can’t say enough about the gracious hospitality the people have been. Shanghai is a bustling city with the contrast of old world merchant shops and a futuristic skyline sitting beside each other in this city of 20 million. I have  chosen to explore off the beaten path excursions on foot finding more than I hoped for. Shanghai is filled with mom and pop merchant shops selling anything from hose fittings to high end spice grinders. The variety is overwhelming. Bargaining face to face with merchants is a lost experience in our daily lives these days. Walking into shops such as the ones encountered here have brought back that personal experience of passing goods from one to another via a “deal”. Such a great personal experience.

Again it has, or might be happening. Apple might be beating the market with less and more. There has been so much talk about how the iPad does not have a USB port, or that it does not have Flash support, and how it might not be ergonomic. These are all true things. But they are things that you can quantify and things that you can point at. What Apple chooses to do is remove these things that you want to quantify and replace them with the intangible. The things that I so try to define and quantify in my job role every day. It is a hard to fit an accurate description of a seamless design so visually stunning and interface so seamless, in an Excell cell.

Design Sojourn has a nice article expanding on this idea.

http://www.designsojourn.com/apple-executives-have-balls-of-steel/

I just scored a refurbished 21ux Cintiq for $1349. Yes $1349.  The new Cintiq just came out a few week ago with double the sensitivity of the previous one and I assumed the price of the previous one would go down.  I was right. I scored a refurb at$1349 and it came with a one year warranty. What a great deal.Typing on it right now.

Using a Cintiq home and at work causes you to depend on it at as  your friend. Many times you hunch over it with your pen as others use a mouse all day. There comes a problem for me when I click over to word processing and web surfing tasks that I more familiar navigating with a mouse. The issue now come down to where you feel more comfortable using the pan or the mouse and sometimes whether how long you will be doing this such task.

These are some sketches  I did to start brainstorming the problem. More to come. I gotta solve this issue.

I  will be  regretfully missing the IDSA northeast conference this year as I will be on a plane to China on the final day of the conference. That said, I want to tell you how important I think the conferences that a trade organizes, are important to attend.

I went to the Northeast conference last year in Boston and had a great experience overall. Not only were there great speakers such as Martin Keen , founder of Keen shoes and designer at heart, but their were tons of opportunities to talk with students and professionals who are in the same field as YOU. Yes, you. There are more of you and maybe they have something to share. It’s a small world as they say and I bumped into a few local Baltimore IDer’s who I had been brief encounters with in the past, and made a tighter connection with. We also had the opportunity to stay at one the Mass- Art students houses to cut down on costs, which was a great experience in itself. How better to get to know a group of students than crashing on their couch and eating the last of their cereal?

So with all that said, lastly there is also the the act of team building which always happens when you are cooped up in a van for five hours with a bunch of people in which you did not know their taste in music before hand. I found out that some of my team were really bad drivers actually and shouldn’t be on the road. It was a fun road trip and unforgettable team building experience.

Maybe next year I will have the opportunity to try travel again with the team, see some great design studios, and maybe see some great speakers.

I wanna make a shout out to Dave Miller over at davemillerdesign.com. Dave is a Senior Industrial Designer at Black and Decker with me, and works on global power tools. Dave is a very talented designer and has some great work now up on his site, and I urge you to check it out.  His coroflot portfolio has also been recently been jumping up the rankings also at Coroflot. Dave loves cars just like Taylor Langhals and you might find a few of them in his portfolio.

Here are some fun sketches of an aiming device I did  this evening. A dual turret (for accuracy) aiming  device to spot objects and enemies from far away with laser accuracy.

Browsing through Target today I stumbled onto the Dyson air multiplier. There is something to be said about a design that is a such a far cry from the form factor that we are accustomed to. The absence of the blades is such an odd concept for us to take hold to. Without the restrictions of blades, what other forms can this technology me molded in to. Can we even image what forms this will dictate.

Some doodles from this evening…