“A designer is only as good as what he or she knows. If all you know is what you’ve garnered from fifteen years of living in Detroit, it’s going to limit what you can lay down. If you’ve had experiences around the world, you’ll be able to design a much richer story for people to enjoy.”
J Mays, Global Vice President of Design, Ford Motor Company
Just read this in an Esquire interview with J Mays and what he has to say adds to some of the points I was making in my recent interview with Raph Goldsworthy over at Design Droplets.
There’s a whole lot more in the interview that chimes with me too, especially J’s thoughts on simplicity, building stories and the cars of the 50s.
Short but wonderfully sweet, it’s well worth a couple of minutes of your time.
P. S. What better image to represent J’s globetrotting ways than his (and Martin Smith’s) seminal Avus, somewhat out of context with some serious looking travellers in marle catsuits. Hawt.
[Source: Esquire Image: Audi Press]
For those of you not enjoying the wonderfully aestival* weather of Sydney, you may be unaware that the Sydney Design festival is coming to a close for 2009.
As part of the festivities, a market was arranged at the Powerhouse Museum to enable design-hungry Sydneysiders to access the best in emerging design talent. Having more than a passing interest in the event, called Young Blood, I offered to cover the it for the Melbourne-based Design Droplets blog.
I had high hopes of shedding light on a great event and a shedload of Australian design talent. Sadly the outcome was a little different.
Head over to Design Droplets to read the full catastrophe.
*Wicked word for the day: aestival adj. belonging to or appearing in summer.
Coming back to Sydney after almost four years away, I’m getting a lot of questions about what I actually do for a living these days. Although I’m getting to cocktail party spiel down pat, Raph Goldsworthy over at Design Droplets has just published a fascinating interview with Ralf Beuker (design management luminary and all ’round nice guy) that’s helping me enormously when discussion about the weather has been exhausted.
Full of wonderful insights into the different roles designers and design can play within companies, Ralf covers the full spectrum of design strategy, design management and how design thinking can be applied business-wide, from operational matters up to the corporate level.
Head over to Design Droplets and read one of Raph’s best interviews yet.
[Picture: neutralSurface/Flikr licensed under Creative Commons]
