Noisy Decent Graphics

"There's a lot that could go wrong"

"many of the more revolutionary design aspects of the iPhone are—in hindsight—quite simple, provoking the much sought after 'Why didn't I think of that?' envy"

"For me, the iPhone is a Phone 2.0"

"That has to be very troubling to the competition because it's going to take them years to develop similar technical sophistication"

Find out what designers make of the iPhone in Business Week.

The best organisation of the information to aid the communication

This post and this post from Russell have made me think of another reason why the iPhone is so brilliant.

(Picture from the Darth Strategist, with thanks, usual stuff counts)

Yawn, yawn, another Mac fan saying how brilliant the iPhone is. Yes - but listen to these comments from one of those posts about the design of remote controls.

"you realise that remotes would be much better if they could evolve to highlight the buttons you regularly use"

"they should do a "big button" version so that grandparents who can't see so well and have arthritic fingers can use it. That goes for mobile phones too"

"Maybe they should supply his and hers remote controls"

"Why oh why are there no user intuitive remote controls?"

This is exactly what the iPhone will be able to do. The folksonomy of button design, if you like. It could learn which features you use most and only display those buttons.

(Picture taken from Apple, obviously. Usual stuff applies but I'm sure they won't mind. Especially as I'm about to give them $600.)

The best design organises information in the most useful way, but makes that organisation look seemless and elegant. Think Underground map. Not cartographically correct, but the best organisation of the information to aid the communication. That's what the iPhone should be able to do. That's great usability.

I once bought my Mum a calculator from the Early Learning Centre. Why? She kept complaining the screen and the buttons were too small on her calculator.

With an iPhone you could tell it you were 90 and struggling with the buttons and then you could download a bigger set of buttons through iTunes. How simple is that?

Etcetera.

And that is revolutionary. Now you might be thinking, 'yeah yeah, it's not that clever, anyone could have done it'.  Anyone hasn't got the iTunes infrastructure that Apple has. Anyone hasn't got the consumer confidence. And anyone hasn't done it. And as we keep saying it's all in the doing. Which is why everyone has phones designed like this.

(Picture of Steve Jobs talking about 'not so smart phones' at the iPhone launch, from Engadget, thanks chaps usual stuff applies)

I wonder if Matt has anything to add?

(My Mum isn't 90 by the way.)

"He has a gift of not putting too much in, which is a danger for many designers."

Good profile of Jonathan Ive in The Guardian last week.

"9:18 am if i die i want you to have my peripherals"

I hope you're watching...

"Doors with ambiguous hinges and handles that necessitate "push" or "pull" instructions."

Brilliant post (via Design Observer) about the worst designed everyday objects. Including:

1. "I always wondered why umbrellas have sharp metal points right at eye-level."

2. "The standard headphones that come with IPods."

3. "Pretty much everything ever marketed as storage for spices."

4. "The design of URLs, a pet peeve of mine. Almost all of them contain redundancies or dependencies that cause them to be way too long, or likely to become broken within a matter of months."

5. "I think many would say that the rulers of the US right now are poorly designed." (Do they mean Rulers or rulers?)

Fantastic stuff.
 

 

“Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

Margaret Mead said that. I found it in something Tom Peters had written, which I found reading Graham's Owner Managed Business Wiki.

"Projects don't fail from a lack of charts, graphs, or reports, they fail from a lack of communication and collaboration."

Advice / inspiration for young designers.

Thomas Heatherwick is an innovative genius. Two words that get over used in this industry but two words that couldn't be more appropriate here.

Thomas Heatherwick is a designer who does amazing things like this:

This bridge, which takes obvious cues from nature, is the best thing I've seen in years. It's completely brilliant. Fantastic looking, brilliantly engineered, innovative, sensible, natural, a bloody good idea, in tune with it's surroundings. It's perfect.

There was an interview with him in last weeks ES magazine.

Two bits in particular struck me as fantastic advice for young designers or for people about to embark on a design career. I'm constantly interested in how creative people work and think and make decisions. This gives a small insight into that.

I find this fascinating. Give the choice between lengthy discussion about how the structure of a birds nest could be applied to a cathedral, he chooses making lots of things, fast and often. If you're a design student and you've ever wondered why your tutors go on and on about sketches and roughs - this is why.

Just like sketching Heatherwick wanted to try lots of things quickly. He wanted his ideas to evolve as he made them. Lots. Quickly. Making mistakes. Learning. Evolving. That's the best way to work.

Next there's this.

Several points to make here. First if you want to be a designer in the future you're gonna have to do stuff like this. You're going to have to take bold steps and you're going have to approach people with your ideas. You will have to be proactive. You simply can not sit around waiting for stuff to happen. And like I said here, you're probably going to have to start up on your own one day and so this stuff will be twice as important.

Secondly, and luckily, in the design world almost everyone is findable and approachable. There are no untouchable stars like there are in other industries. If you're dream is to work with Phillipe Stark you can probably find him and speak to him. You can't do that with the Chairmen of BP or HSBC. Terence Conran (love him or hate him) is about as famous as British designers get, and there he is strolling down your college corridor (admittedly the college is the RCA).

They neglect to mention this in the article but Heatherwick did this not long after leaving University.

It's a window display for Harvey Nicks and it won a D&AD Gold Award. Not bad for two years out of college, eh?

Does that feel inspiring to anyone else? Does that make sense?

(All pictures taken from Thomas Heatherwick with thanks, usual stuff applies.)

"Some people just seem to want to be offended"

Brilliant comment from the ASA about Wieden's St Wayne poster.

iPods More Popular Than Beer

Via the Washington Post.

"Design represents a powerful alternative to the dominant management approaches of the last few decades and is an important perspective for leadership to embrace."

Another interesting tale over on Bruce's blog.

"Many firms that have experienced dramatic gains in shareholder value over the last few years (e.g., Google, Apple, Motorola) register innovation as a central driver of their progress. One can argue that innovation, and a culture that inspires and supports innovation, is the only sustainable competitive advantage. A frequent manifestation of recent innovation has been breakthrough design. Design represents a powerful alternative to the dominant management approaches of the last few decades and is an important perspective for leadership to embrace."

Thought To Start The Week With

Rainy Reading

Some good things to read on a rainy Saturday morning.

1. An interview with David Hillman in the Press Gazette

David Hillman designed The Guardian before the recent redesign and art directed the original Nova magazine. He has some great opinions about modern news design.

About The Times redesign, "a total and utter fucking disaster" about the Observer "It looks like the fucking Beano with pictures. Now it's just colour and design and type 15 feet high for no apparent reason." And my personal favourite, "at WHSmith's now, it's just a haze of tit and bum and bright colours". How very true.

2. An article in Fast Company about the awkward romance between business and design.

"Design, in short, is becoming an ever more important engine of corporate profit: It's no longer enough simply to outperform the competition; to thrive in a world of ceaseless and rapid change, business people have to outimagine the competition as well. They must begin to think (to become) more like designers."

Why isn't there a British Fast Company?

3. A special report in Business Week on Design Schools.

This ticks lots of boxes. Design is the New Management Consultancy and China, being two of them.

"Desperate to innovate, companies are turning to design schools for nimble, creative thinkers."

4. Graham's brilliant post

Last but by no means least, having said there are not enough women in director/equity roles I recommend you read Graham's brilliant post about & Daughter companies.

Or you could Switch Off Your Internet And Go Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead.

"design can be a valid business model"

"1,273% rise in Apple shares over the past 10 years"

Great article in IN about design, Apple and Jonathan Ive.

"design agencies often have the ear of the client CEO"

I was given a free Independent this morning and I was delighted to see this when i opened it.

Claire is not referring to my post but commenting on the BBH/Sony thing. I don't really have any strong feeling on that, so we'll skip neatly over it.

Let's have a look at some of the things Claire says in her article.

"the management consultant is rapidly being replaced by the design consultant as the industry bête noire." I'm not 100% sure on this, but I do think design consultancies are gaining more respect and kudos. Especially the good ones. Obviously. In fact it's probably because there are so many bad ones that the good ones are starting to rise up.

"There are plenty of good design agencies that inevitably have a view on how a brand could communicate with its customers." Yes. But there are probably plenty of market research agencies, printers and photographers who have a view too.

"there are plenty of examples of design agencies all but writing the advertising scripts themselves." Really? Like who?

"The fact that design agencies often have the ear of the client CEO while ad agencies have generally been frustrated in their attempts to get into the boardroom" OK now I'm getting interested. I would probably think the opposite, but now that she mentions it, I bet the CEO's at companies like Nokia, Phillips, Sony (haha) and Apple listen to designers more than they listen to ad agencies. Interesting.

So, nothing major going on here, but perhaps another step towards world wide acceptance of my Design is the New Management Consultancy theory.

"Touch a stove and burn your hand — that's failure; touch it again and burn your hand again — that's a mistake — same inquiry, no new information."

"When professors at Harvard Business School use IDEO as an example, it's customary to note the difference between a "failure" and a "mistake." In the HBS view, IDEO cherishes failure because it generates new information. But a failure that doesn't generate new information is called a mistake. Touch a stove and burn your hand — that's failure; touch it again and burn your hand again — that's a mistake — same inquiry, no new information."

From the book Artful Making mentioned in the previous post.

"You do not mix type faces. It's stupid. That is mannerism, trendy stuff, doing it because someone else is doing it. The only reason to do it."

Paul Rand. A legend.

"the last thing the world needs is another medium-sized, mediocre advert factory"

Brilliant. I presume Neil said this. From the w+k blog.

"Every great designer I've ever met has gotten respect the old fashioned way, by earning it."

Great post on the harsh realities of being a working graphic designer by Michael Bierut, head of Pentagram in America. 

"Be where you are"

There's a great post on Design Observer that I've just found even though it was written in March 2004.

It's called Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School and it's facinating. I'll list the ten below, but it's worth clicking through to read the little justifications.

1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
4. Don’t over-think a problem.
5. Start with what you know; then remove the unknowns.
6. Don’t forget your goal.
7. When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance.
8. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; or, no good deed goes unpunished.
9. It all comes down to output.
10. The rest of the world counts.

My favourite is probably number 5. Start with what you know; then remove the unknown.

"In design this means “draw what you know.” Start by putting down what you already know and already understand. If you are designing a chair, for example, you know that humans are of predictable height. The seat height, the angle of repose, and the loading requirements can at least be approximated. So draw them. Most students panic when faced with something they do not know and cannot control. Forget about it. Begin at the beginning. Then work on each unknown, solving and removing them one at a time. It is the most important rule of design. In Zen it is expressed as “Be where you are.” It works."

This all seems like good advice for the Design is the New Management Consultancy stuff.