DownsideUpDesign

I first came across Sandy – not pictured above – during some expert interviews Sense Worldwide conducted for a financial services client. Somebody had tipped us off to the fact that she was writing a blog about the value of the ephemera that we surround ourselves with. After seeing the delightful Things&People with it’s impeccable presentation of people’s stories about their stuff, we just had to get in touch.

Sandy had a lasting impact on our project and I was intrigued to know more about this creative who lists Pentagram, Time Out, Apple and Nokia on her C.V. Over coffee in the Sense Worldwide loft, we spent a couple of hours discussing the ups and downs of a career in Cupertino, the richness of the mundane, stitching paper bags and her upcoming projects. I knew that if CreativeMornings came to London, I’d have to have Sandy on board.

And here we are.

Sandy will be taking over the amazing space at Forward in Camden on August 5th for our second CreativeMornings London. I can’t tell you how excited I am to have her speaking. You can sign up for the event from August 1st at 11:00 here.

But enough from me, it’s time to hand over to Sandy for our CreativeMornings London interview.

Where do you go when you need to concentrate?
My work room but generally hatching ideas and refining them happens anywhere.

Is it about what you know or who you know?
Both. If you only know people there’s no disguising a lack of ability.

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Two obsessions of mine collided today. I learnt that Apple-man Jonathan Ive has written the forward to Dieter Rams latest book As Little Design as Possible.

The year after I started my industrial design degree, I took on a part-time job in Apple’s brow-beaten reseller chain. For years they’d been peddling uninspired, underpowered product.

They then suffered the humiliation of selling jelly beans and clam shells when everything else was black.

Life in Apple-land felt hopeless.

Yet as I fell for German industrial design during the week, it wasn’t long before I was selling it’s American second coming on weekends.

First came the seminal G4 Cube and then the iPod. They were the first expressions of a design aesthetic that has now come to define the brand.

However, the most fascinating thing about these products was not their design, brilliantly engaging as it remains.

Rather, it was the effect the objects had on anyone who came into contact with them. Customers were fascinated, resellers revitalised. We began to tell great stories about the products rather than trying (and failing) to win on specs.

The products delighted us and we wanted to share that with the world.

And here’s a video that explains how that delight happened; 8-odd minutes of Dieter Rams loveliness:

The key take-away for me?

“…learn a little bit that not the spectacular things are the important things. The unspectacular things are the important things”

If Apple has shown us anything over the years, a dogged determination to get the unspectacular right, those head-slapping problems of the modern age, really can underpin success.

It’s something I try to remember every day.

More often than not, when party conversation turns to what I do for a living, I’ll provide an ever-changing explanation and get slapped in the face with “Oh, so you’re a market researcher!”.

Now there’s nothing wrong with market researchers. The way I describe what I do, on the other hand, could clearly do with some work.

Thankfully the Design Council has come to my aid. They had the nous to stick a camera in front of, among others, Robert Verganti, author of Design-driven Innovation, and he gave his thoughts on just that topic.

The killer take-away for me?

“…if you’re targeting a more radical type of innovation, if you radically want to change the meaning of things like the Nintendo Wii, it’s a radical change of meaning, and then you actually have to step back from users. Because otherwise users pull you into the current meaning of things and you want to envision the meaning by working with interpreters, other people outside your company typically, that can help you to see the experience of how people give meaning to things from a different perspective.”

Ok, so calling myself an interpreter of meaning could could unsettle a negroni or two on the cocktail circuit. But it’s a rather nice encapsulation of what I get to do at Sense.

(Verganti quote at 4:46)

Hat tip to Brian Ling at Design Sojourn

Everything is a Remix Part 1 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Produced by Kirby Ferguson, Everything is a Remix is a great two-part (soon to be three-part) look at how remixing underpins pretty much every facet of our modern culture.

I can still remember the day when, as an undergrad industrial design student, I realised -with the help of a world-weary lecturer- that there was nothing new in the world, just better, smarter ways to mash stuff together.

I felt both dejected at relived; dejected because my ego wanted the salve of original thought. Relieved because design was just like the music I was listening to. Easy, right?

Youthful arrogance knocked out of me, I soon realised that remixing well is one of the toughest jobs in the world. Yet somehow at Sense we do it day in day out.

Like all things, I guess practice makes perfect.

Hat tip to SwissMiss for bringing this to light.

To many of you working outside of the automotive sector, the exchange you see above is probably fairly unremarkable. It’s just two guys discussing their different perspectives on a product.

Within the hallowed halls of automotive design however, what you’ve just witnessed is the equivalent of Lloyd Bentsen saying to Dan Quayle “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy”.

It really is that big a deal.

But you know what, it’s not even Chris Bangle’s damnation by the faintest of praise that really matters here.

It’s simply the fact that we’re seeing Chris -one-time enfant terrible of the automotive design world- go head to head with Jason Castriota who was, before today, the golden child of the sector in many peoples’ eyes in a public forum. They’re having, albeit briefly, a proper debate about Jason’s work.

Open criticism and discourse have always been an underpinning facet of any developed or developing culture (and I’m using the term culture in the broadest possible sense here). It’s the exchanges between peers and between peers and critics, sometimes unpleasant but fundamentally constructive, that give us cause to question our trajectory and properly test our thinking.

But criticism and discourse are the two things that the automotive sector, particularly the design component of it, has always lacked. Sure, there have been small efforts embarked on by individuals, but the industry press has been far too shy to deeply -critically- question how and what car companies are doing.

But today, I hope, this has begun to change. Full credit to Eric and the crew at Car Design News for being on hand to capture this and having the guts to put it live. In a way it’s a shame that Castriota and his new employer Saab should be the first subject of properly public debate. But we had to start a proper conversation somewhere. Long may it continue.

Aston Martin today released pics of its new DB9-based model, the Virage and, somewhat surprisingly (for me at least), there’s been a huge amount of negativity thrown at the car.

Why? Because it doesn’t look “new” enough.

So, let’s pause for a minute, take a look at a side-by side comparison of a the original 2004 DB9 and the 2011 Virage and make up our own minds. Then read on.

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