Elegant ideas — products, services, performances, strategies, whatever — all have some degree of these four elements: symmetry, seduction, subtraction, and sustainability. Guy Kawasaki interviews Matthew E. May on his recent book: The Pursuit of Elegance. +.
If Truman Capote was like a semantic Paganini, then Malcolm Gladwell is undoubtedly a Paganini of anecdotes. Much has been already written on Gladwell’s recent Outliers: The Story of Success. If a summary can be made before the book is actually written, then the best one was given by Richard St John in his 3-minute TED talk: “8 secrets of success”: [continue reading]
Please recommend a book that you have found particularly inspiring or meaningful to your development as a creative person? Outstanding graphic designers and their reading list: Inspired reading.
A store has 3 distinct aspects: design (the premises), merchandising (whatever you put in it) and operations (whatever employees do). They’re closely intertwined, interrelated and interdependent, so changing one of them will affect the other two as well. Their correlations are thoroughly covered in Paco Underhill’s analysis of an evolving shopping culture. It’s one of these books that in addition to substantial advice on customers’ tastes and habits is able to entertain us with witty anecdotes and gripping details.
The book has been incredibly well summarized by Malcolm Gladwell in his New Yorker article: The Science of Shopping, so instead of writing a mere ersatz of Gladwell’s review (which definitely is a must-read), I’ll focus on the book’s guidelines for designers. [continue reading]
“The Culture Code is the unconscious meaning we apply to any given thing — a car, a type of food, a relationship, even a country — via the culture in which we are raised. The American experience with Jeeps is very different from the French and German experience because our cultures evolved differently (we have strong cultural memories of the open frontier; the French and Germans have strong cultural memories of occupation and war). Therefore, the Codes — the meaning we give to the Jeep at an unconscious level — are different as well. (…) It is obvious to everyone that cultures are different from one another. What most people don’t realize, however, is that these differences actually lead to our processing the same information in different ways.”
However trivial the starting point of Clotaire Rapaille’s “Culture Code” may seem, the marketing (and cultural) guidance deduced from the anthropological study is quite puzzling. The analysis of several fundamental archetypes (ranging from shopping to sex), abundant in examples from Rapaille’s practice, seems to assure consistent results in any commercial endeavor. [continue reading]
“One of most difficult things to understand is the dynamics of marketplace. Why some companies win and others lose. Why some consumers prefer one brand and other consumers prefer another brand. Why a brand that is hot today can get cold tomorrow. Charles Darwin provides the theoretical concepts to understand the dynamics of the marketplace. The laws of nature apply equally as well to brands and categories.”
The idea behind Al & Laura Ries’ “The origins of brands” is quite simple: take Darwin’s idea of evolution and apply it to the branding process. Captivating as it is as a purely intellectual pursuit, the analogy results in four basic rules to follow: [continue reading]
“I heard a nice little story the other day,” Morrie says. He closes his eyes for a moment and I wait.
Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air — until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore. ‘My God, this is terrible,’ the wave says ‘Look what’s going to happen to me!’ Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, ‘Why do you look so sad?’ The first wave says, ‘You don’t understand! We’re all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn’t it terrible?’ The second wave says, ‘No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean.’”
[Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom]
/
“A key point of failure in today’s global design landscape lies precisely in the jargon — we need to invent new ways of writing, talking and thinking about concepts of “humanitarian design”; we need new language that doesn’t homogenize entire cultures, new vocabulary that better reflects the intricate lace of the world’s biocultural and psychosocial diversity as a drawing board for design.” Maria Popova on The Language of Design Imperialism. Insightful.
“Visual features that have no meaningful association with the product itself can actually make consumers like the product, provided that these features are something that the consumer can easily identify with.This means that critters on wine labels, however odd that may be, can be a good sales strategy. It allows a marketer to target a certain consumer by using images on labels that represent an important aspect of that customer’s life. Moreover, there are potentially many ways to make that label as unique as possible because a logo would be chosen based on who the target customers are and not on what that product is.” Building a Better Brand: How feelings shape product evaluation.
“I did not know Paul Rand. I did not work for him or study under him. My understanding of his importance, then, has been gained in the same way as students and practitioners in years to come will gain theirs: through books like Modernist Design. (…) So it’s with some trepidation that I wonder if I might lodge a few complaints about Mr. Rand as a model for graphic design practice. But here goes.” M. Bierut on Paul Rand.
“I never knew a designer that got hundreds of thousands of dollars to design a logo. Mostly, designers get paid to negotiate the difficult terrain of individual egos, expectations, tastes, and aspirations of various individuals in an organization or corporation, against business needs, and constraints of the marketplace. This is a process that can take a year or more. Getting a large, diverse group of people to agree on a single new methodology for all of their corporate communications means the designer has to be a strategist, psychiatrist, diplomat, showman, and even a Svengali.
The complicated process is worth money. That’s what clients pay for. The process, usually a series of endless presentations and refinements, persuasions and proofs, results, hopefully, in an accepted identity design” What they don’t teach you about identity design by Paula Scher.
Briefly and to the point (& video): Olympic Pictograms Through the Ages.
“Lindstrom suggests that too much messaging on a product’s packaging can actually prevent a sale. Logos and words can engage the rational mind, causing people to actually think harder about making a purchase. It’s a counter-intuitive notion, but then think about the effectiveness of the quiet logos on a bottle of POM Wonderful pomegranate juice, or a Method product, or the entire Apple product line up.” The Myth of the Rational Buyer: How Too Much Thinking Can Hurt Your Brand
Not exactly on the main subject of this blog, but hey, branding actually IS about meetings. Meetings, the Google way:
1. Set a firm agenda. 2. Assign a note-taker. 3. Carve out micro-meetings. 4. Hold office hours.
5. Discourage politics, use data. 6. Stick to the clock. [via: supervolatile]
A Bain & Co. survey notes that 80 percent of CEOs believe that their product is differentiated, but only 8 percent of consumers agree. To truly stand out in the market, a product must embody the characteristics of its brand. (…) The first to market position is a market opportunity, not a brand strategy. A product is not a brand.
“Design beautiful experiences, not beautiful artifacts. Stop asking “what” and start asking “why”. Start with experience, end with experience. Genius will fail, wisdom will succeed. Become wise. Keep it simple. From design thinking to dynamic thinking. Let iteration direct your process: Work more rapidly, change more frequently. Have fun. Adapt your process to your design goals, not the other way around. Preserve the experience, not your own competency.” The Experience Imperative: A Manifesto for Industrial Designers by Ken Fry.
Plus: “Experience design is not a remedy that turns products into miracles that everybody likes. It will help you speaking more efficiently to your target group. To that end products needs to be simplified. The simpler the product the more character it has, the more likely it is to be rejected or accepted by a group of customers. To that end you need to know your customers and you need to test your designs with your customers.” iA: Can Expierience be designed?
“Designers care. This is not always a good thing, and can, in fact, be annoying. Designers obsess so much about their work that it’s a wonder they ever let any finished project out the door. And they’re just as tough on everyone else’s work.” I feel excused now;). For other equally accurate features read: Four Things I’ve Learned About Designers by Warren Berger.
idiologie.com is an obsessive collection of my thoughts & findings, focusing extensively on branding and corporate identity.
I’m a graphic designer specializing in corporate branding and digital media. Some of my works are available at: www.helen.pl.
Networks:
LinkedIn / Readernaut / Twitter.
1 connaissance de l'individu par découverte de ses particularités
2 denoting an interest in ID & branding
[ORIGIN from Greek idios ‘own, distinct’ & French -logie or medieval Latin -logia, from Greek]