The Prepared Mind Discussion about designing human interaction.

During our time with the ReBrand jury, an interesting concept arose during judging. Niti Bhan, one of the ReBrand judges and design thinker extraordinaire, had made the case for one of the entries that had not made it into our finalists from the day before. It was the feeling of most of the judges that the execution of brand was not up to the level we were looking for.

“Doesn’t strategy count?” Niti countered. Her argument was that while the final execution may have been lacking, the strategy employed by the ReBrand had resulted in more close alignment with the way the target audience shops and increased overall sales. In the end, it was decided that the execution must rise to a certain overall level and while we were dependent on before-and-after sales figures from the contenstants, we had no idea that the increased sales weren’t due to other exterior circumstances such as a competitor going out of business, price-cutting or more favorable shelf space at a major retailer.

But it was a very interesting question. “Does strategy count?” We designers probably have a great deal of experience beginning design projects for which very little direction was provided and few measurable criteria for success were established at the start. And when a sound, well-conceived strategy does exist, more than likely it was hatched and perfected prior to the involvement of the creatives — who are often brought in at the end to “make it pretty”.

And how many times do we designers work up the perfect design brief at the start of a project and then procede to never refer back to it during the course of that project? Should a good strategy be rewarded despite a poor executation? Do we reward a good executation despite a flawed initial strategy?
.chris{}

What a fantastic experience it was in helping to judge the next crop of ReBrand 100 winners for 2007!

Anyone who is familiar with Malcom Gladwell’s excellent book “Blink” is familiar with the way humans employ “rapid cognition” in order to process information in the blink of an eye. Essentially, the art of making the types of snap judgements that in some cases can help us to return a tennis serve coming at us in under a second or in other cases may prevent us from walking down the dark alley where the 3 seedy-looking guys are standing.

One could argue that in the case of branding, this type of rapid cognition is on text-book display, as we make snap judgements while walking down the grocery store aisle, interacting with a bank teller or dropping into our favorite coffee spot for a cup o’ joe. (more…)

By now I’m back in NYC. Yesterday we spent the entire day narrowing down the field of 100 to the dozen or two dozen finalists we’d choose from today. Today, after much deliberation, we picked the “best of” finalists as well as the other entries we felt deserved to earn a “distinction”.

If you think you’ll get a clue from me as to what the results were, think again! LOL! You’ll have to wait until the winners are announced!

Having just recently arrived back in NYC, returned all my email and caught up on what’s going on at home, I’m fried and ready to zone out for a bit. Tomorrow I’ll summarize the experience and perhaps share a few thoughts.

Until then!

.chris{}

(I actually wrote this late last night but server problems at the hotel prevented me from posting it.)

Wow! What a long and hard day of judging! We began around 9:30 AM and our task was simple enough. 10 judges. 100 entries. A bag full of marbles (each judge had their own color). Read through each of the 100 rebrand case studies and decide which ones we liked the most.

In honesty, our task today was easier than our task will be tomorrow morning. Today we weeded out the ones that most of us judges did not feel strongly enough to reward with a marble. Tomorrow we must shorten the field down to the 5 that we, via consensus, agree represent this year’s best rebrands.

Tough stuff. I predict some fur will fly!

10 judges. 10 strong opinions. Let’s see what happens!

Until then! Below are photos of some of the judges in action.

.chris{}

We’ll I’m here in Rhode Island for Rebrand 2007! Despite a bit of traffic getting out of NYC, the drive to Providence wasn’t so bad. Upon arriving to our hotel — the beautiful Westin Hotel in downtown Providence — we were met by Rebrand founder Anaezi Modu, who escorted us to the home of RISD President Roger Mandle.

One could only imagine what happened next! Get a bunch of talented, seasoned and opinionated designers under one roof and you’re bound to have some spirited conversations and debates. This gathering did not disappoint!!!

I’ll have to stop writing for now and leave you wanting more, as it’s been a long day and we all have an early morning. Tomorrow I’ll have my camera and promise to capture some interesting nuggets as well as introduce you to the other judges.

.chris{}

Next week (November 1st and 2nd) Niti and I — along with 8 other very distinguished panelists — will be jurying the ReBrand 100 2007. Not only is it a thrill and an honor to have been selected as a juror for this distinguished panel (what were these guys smoking?) but it’s also a personal thrill to have the opportunity to meet Niti in person.

I’ll be bringing my trusty laptop with me to Providence and will blog my experience there. Maybe I’ll even be able to squeeze in a short podcast or two?

.chris{}

This past September, when my wife was in Germany visiting her family, we really used videoconferencing for the first time in any real fashion. She and I had both just recently upgraded to a Macbook and Macbook pro, respectively, and both our laptops now have built-in iSight.

Since she was taking her laptop to Germany with her, we figured, why spend all that money on long distance calls when we could now see each other while chatting? WE LOVED IT!!!!

I could show her our doggies over the web cam. My in-laws could come into the room and say “hi” (or in their case, “hallo”). And the mundane daily telephone call was livened up by being able to see your loved one face to face. It really did make it feel like we weren’t so far away from each other, even though we were 4,000 miles apart.

So of course I started asking, why don’t we do this more with our clients? Some of our clients are very much into the whole video conferencing thing. In the past, I was loathe to appear on screen having not shaved or while still wearing my sweats. But those are really silly reasons, as it doesn’t take much time to put on different shirt. And who cares if I shaved that morning or not?

I love the idea of being able to “be there” even when I can’t necessarily. We have made a concentrated effort to give more “face time” to our clients this year but with today’s technology, just because I can’t make it into the office doesn’t mean I can’t “see” a client.

This, of course, got me thinking about the possibilities of remote collaboration. Like many of you, there are vendors and clients I deal with exclusively over the web. Many I have never seen and would not know if they bumped into me on the street. While so far these relationships have worked out well, I can’t say it wouldn’t make me feel a bit better sometimes to be able to see the face of someone I’m dealing with.

.chris{}

We’re still alive! It’s been a long, long break and to be honest, I have been incredibly busy and perhaps a bit burned out. I missed blogging but can’t say I didn’t enjoy/need a bit of a break.

Typically I get inspired to blog about something by something that happens in my everyday life, whether design-related or not. In this case, I happened to be working on a very extensive client project where my firm’s role was chiefly that of development. Unfortunately the strategy, and specifically the design strategy, was handled by individuals on the client team who didn’t know anything about design strategy.

Part of the problem is that too many clients, and designers for that matter, think of strategy as an area that exists outside of the core competencies of design as opposed to an extension of the design process. And few designers list design strategy as one of their core competencies, this author included.

Seeing the words

Well I’m a visual person and one of my newest and most favorite toys is the Visual Thesaurus, which is an excellent tool! I created a visual map for the word “design” as well as a visual map for the word “strategy” just to see what came up. The results are below.

What’s interesting is that a lot of words that many people would usually associate with the word strategy (but were not on the strategy visual map) were closely associated with the word design. As you can see, many words like “purpose, intention, intent, figure, blueprint, pattern, specify, designate, destine, think, plan, innovation, invention, excogitation, conception, study, conceptualize and conceive”.

Why the disconnect between the denotation for the word design and the connotation? Why is it that, despite the obvious denotational similarities between the words design and strategy, few of us ever put the two words together or think they belong in the same universe?

Food for thought. This is my first entry in months so I can’t get too deep right off the bat!

.chris{}

We’ve been quiet here of late, so I thought I’d add a little note to excuse my tardiness here -

I’ve been busy, as some of you know, with the Core77/BusinessWeek Design Directory website. Just launched it officially yesterday.

The Monday Morning Must Read is a newsletter for those whose responsibility includes sourcing and selecting design services - new product introductions, product marketing, marketing, design and creative departments - at companies. You could, of course, skip straight to subscription here.

The Industry News site is based on blog publishing software, for the convenience of Core77 and myself, to update it periodically with short posts that we believe would be of interest to professionals managing design, innovation and creative consultancies and individuals. We aren’t assuming that our audience is aware of the nitty gritty details of design.

For the launch and initial time period, I’m the editor. I’d love feedback on this initiative, with tips or information on what you think would be of interest to our audience. Our aim is to maximize your ROI in design. Story and post pitches welcome. Email me at niti at core77 dot com, but don’t expect a reply till the 30th of March, I’m going to Paris for my birthday. Merci Beaucoup, mes amies.

I’ve been reading “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell. What a fascinating book! It’s not a design book and contrary to the way the title sounds, it’s not a “how-to” book. What it does is help us to understand how/why humans make snap judgements in the blink of an eye. When you think about it, this concept has a lot to do with how we do what we do as designers. It particularly speaks to how clients react to our work as well as to us, personally.

Clients at a Blink
At some point during every project, while selling our work to clients or while our clients’ clients are interacting with our finished product, Blink comes into play. Clients make a snap judgement to the initial design comps we show them based on their own, subconscious feelings/emotions/biases. An award-winning design which we created for one client, a design the client may have loved, could be soundly rejected as crap by another client.

Same work. Polar opposite reactions. Is it really the work the client is reacting to? Maybe not. Maybe they love the work we show them because they love us? More specifically, the love the process we have just subjected them to. Conversely, maybe they hate the work because they hate us or the process leading up to the presentation of work. (more…)

• I’ve grown addicted to the swissmiss blog, run by “Swiss designer gone NYC” Tina Roth Eisenberg. Her blog is a little different than this one in that she’s not nearly as verbose — OK, long-winded! LOL! — but every day she adds lots of great links to great design products and resources.
• I typically start my day by reading a handful of blogs and increasingly the blog of Industrial Brand Creative is one of them. They always have an interesting take on things and find angles you may not have considered previously.
• CPH127 is one of the more heady design blogs out there. Founded by a group of Danish designers, CPH127 (apparently CPH is the code for the Copenhagen airport) takes a much needed intellectual approach toward looking at design.
• I also find myself growing more and more addicted to the Rohdesign Weblog, written by designer Mike Roh. He also finds lots of interesting design resources to write about and has a wonderful “voice” to his blog.

.chris{}

I just registered for a channel on Odeo, so those of you who are on Odeo, feel free to leave me a message with some listener feedback. For those of you who are not familiar with Odeo, it is a web-based service that allows users to record voice messages via their own computer as well as via telephone. Once you have recorded a message, you can then send it to other channels on the Odeo system or email it to anyone you wish.

I’m starting a new segment on future podcasts where I’ll be including listener feedback/comments and you never know, your voice just might be included!

.chris{}

Wow! The HOW magazine email newsletter went out yesterday afternoon and the hit stats are through the roof! Thanks again to the folks at HOW and welcome to any new visitors to the blog. Take off your shoes and get comfortable! There’s cold beer in the fridge.

.chris{}

Well hot off the presses, the shoes I ordered from the Nike iD system have finally arrived! Here are the photos, as promised!!!!

(more…)

I’m convinced this podcast was haunted, or at least jinxed! Technical difficulties made for a surprise guest during this podcast.

 Standard Podcast [51:45m]: Download

• 0:00:00 The haunted podcast prevented our original guest, Peter Flaschner, from being able to be recorded
• 0:01:00 The surprise guest for this podcast
• 0:03:00 Please fill out the listener survey so that we can learn more about you, our audience
• 0:04:10 Design customization: engaging design clients/buyers and allowing more customization
• 0:12:50 How do we use dynamic technology to create a greater connection from the client to the designs we sell them?
• 0:24:06 Design, innovation and why the iPod is still on top. Newsweek article
• 0:37:23 The need to incorporate more innovation into our design practices and thinking

.chris{}