Hasta La Ideas

It’s nice to see even mainstream news organizations paying attention to the chronically underexposed design departments of major corporations. These days guys like Ralph Gilles and of course, Jonathan Ive get a lot more ink than we’d have seen a decade ago. Most recently Reuters got inside the design department at Samsung Electronics to talk shop with Lee Minhyouk, Samsung Mobile’s design veep.

While the meaty article looks at the expected areas of business differences between Samsung and chief rival Apple (the former manufactures their own components, the latter must outsource, etc.) and examines the mutual sue-fest the companies have recently engaged in, what most caught our eye was this analogy about product design:

To become a truly innovative company, Samsung needs to explore the art, as well as the science, of what it does, critics say.

“Samsung is like a fantastic soap maker,” said Christian Lindholm, chief innovation officer of service design consultancy Fjord based in Finland. “Their products get you clean, lathers well. However, they do not know how to make perfumes, an industry where margins are significantly higher. Perfume is an experience. Perfume is meant to seduce, make you attractive and feel good. You love your perfume, but you like your soap.”

One point hinted at in the article seems to be that Samsung is viewing design as a science that can be learned, but that they have not managed to harness capital-A Art. That’s a thorny problem that every design university Dean has grappled with, and Apple’s mastery of this issue creates as much profit as it does envy.

That doesn’t mean Samsung doesn’t understand the problem; it just means they’re not there yet. But at least one fun fact in the article shows they are trying to get there: Samsung’s designers get sent on inspirational trips to places like Iguazu Falls in Brazil and the Incan city of Cuzco in Peru! Now that’s a sweet gig, and for the sake of overworked ID’ers everywhere, I hope that becomes recognized as a recipe for design success!

(more…)

By our count, we’re now in our fourth straight month of being in the black when it comes to the American Institute of Architects‘ monthly Architecture Billings Index. Our minds are always relatively cloudy, but we can’t even remember the last time that was the case. Looking back through our archives (which is chock full of repeated phrases like “inches up ever so slightly” and “takes another dive”), we see the last time we came close was the summer of 2010, when after three months of growth, you guessed it, the ABI “took another dive.” This month, like those preceding it, haven’t been giant leaps, but we’ve landed at 51.0, up from 50.9 the month prior (anything above 50 indicates an increase in billings and a general look at the health and wellness of the industry). So while not huge growth, we’ll certainly take four months of good news over the alternative. Here’s the AIA’s chief digit bearer:

“This is more good news for the design and construction industry that continues to see improving business conditions,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, PhD, Hon. AIA. “The factors that are preventing a more accelerated recovery are persistent caution from clients to move ahead with new projects, and a continued difficulty in accessing financing for projects that developers have decided to pursue.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It’s a project of firsts: Marc Newson’s first crack at camera design, Pentax’s plunge into design world collaborations, and the first time a Pentax product will be sold at retail outlets other than camera stores. Behold, the Pentax K-01, a 16-megapixel digital SLR hybrid that uses sleek interchangeable lenses (the world’s thinnest, according to the company). Envisioned with “clean and simple lines that create an elegant graphical composition,” the new model was developed in line with Newson’s design themes to be “timeless, trusty, and touchable,” which translates to features such as original-design push buttons and control levers, a mode dial and power switch in his beloved machined aluminum, and a rubberized grip. Newson’s touch extends to the product logo, camera strap, and start-up screen.

“The inspiration behind this design, like many projects that I work on, is simply the desire to create something which as a consumer, I myself would like to own or would like to purchase,” says the designer, who describes the K-01 as “not gimmicky at all.” The camera has already sold out at Colette in Paris, where its release was feted by the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Dior jewelry designer Victoire de Castellane at a bash hosted by Olympia le Tan. Take one for a test drive at A+R, which is hosting a “Shoot+See” event this Saturday, March 17, at its Venice, California store. And click below to watch Newson lovingly fondle the “compact and trim” body of the K-01 as he answers questions about its development.
continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The hand plane used by woodworkers for generations has a blade placed at an angle between two flat pieces, enabling it to cleanly trim the surface of wood without gouging it. In the 1700s a clever Frenchman named Jean-Jacques Perret made a version of this that men could drag across their face in order to shave. Inspired by the hand plane, he had invented the world’s first safety razor.

By the early 1900s, an American inventor named King Camp Gilette invented a disposable safety razor—and a wicked business practice known as the “loss leader”: the idea is that you sell the main component of a system for cheap (or even give it away), but you make all your money back selling crucial accessories for it at high prices.

This model is still being used today—look at printers and toner cartridges, or even subsidized cell phones and usurious data usage plans. And of course, disposable razors are still frickin’ expensive—locally I have to shell out 30 bucks for 12 razor cartridges, nearly $3 per cartridge—while the handles are not.

Dollar Shave Club is a new company that’s finally addressing this situation with reasonable prices. Sign up and they send you a free razor handle up front, like the old business model; but then they send you a package of cartridges every month (three, four or five depending on what plan you select) for something closer to what they actually cost to produce. The monthly fees go as low as a buck per month for five of their basic-model cartridges, which rings in at just 20 cents per cartridge—though the fee is suffixed with the ominous “plus shipping & handling.” (What the heck is “handling,” anyway?)

In any case, their explanatory video is pretty awesome (or “f***cking great,” in their words). Any commercial where the CEO swings a machete near an employee gets my respect:

(more…)

Last year we noted there was an exciting new documentary being shot, called “Design the New Business.” Spearheaded by designer/author/entrepreneur and TU Delft professor Erik Roscam Abbing, the doc is intended to demonstrate today’s crucial interconnectedness of design and business by interviewing industry leaders from the likes of Philips Design, Intel, Volkswagen, Virgin Mobile, and many others.

We’re thrilled to announce the doc is finished and ready to go! It’ll be released on March 6th, free of charge, on its own website. Here’s the completed trailer:

(more…)