Hasta La Ideas

As we reported back in August, at this year’s Autodesk University they decided to try something different, kicking the conference off with a sort of pre-conference focused on “creative talent from multiple disciplines.” The idea behind this new Autodesk CAVE Conference was to assemble some of the finest artists, designers and storytellers around and throw them into the same event in the hopes of yielding an entertaining and informative cross pollination.

With such a nebulous description, I didn’t know what to expect. But now, having attended, I’m here to tell you the event was a rousing success—everything it was billed to be and more—and that you must check it out next year!

The speaker list was an embarrassment of riches, and the packed schedule meant I’d only get to attend three sessions. Unable to decide which to attend first, my mind was quickly made up for me: I walked past an open door and heard the distinctly rapid-fire Bronx patter—of someone passionately discussing the movie Dumbo. Before I knew it my legs had brought me into the packed room where not a single seat was available.

The man presenting was Louis Gonzales, an animator and storyboard artist for Pixar. (If you don’t know his name, you know his work: Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, et cetera.) Gonzales is both a gifted artist and a student of story, and his childlike enthusiasm for Dumbo’s tale was coupled with a trenchant, technical analysis of how certain scenes were framed, and why they create particular kinds of emotional punch. Just as it began dawning on the audience that there was way more packed into Dumbo than the story of an elephant with big ears, Gonzales took us through a comprehensive slideshow of movies both classic and contemporary—his knowledge of film and film visuals is encyclopedic—showing us the insane level of construction and forethought that the creators had put into every frame. Before a single word is spoken by any of the characters, information is conveyed via lines, triangles, squares, circles, lighting, color.

After seeing script pages for Brave that Gonzales had covered in his red-ink notes, and him explaining what visual elements he knew he had to inject into particular scenes and why, I don’t think I’ll ever look at film or animation the same way again. I’ve been watching movies my entire life, and in the mere 55 minutes I saw Gonzales speak, he completely changed my perspective on visual presentation. And these were lessons anyone creating industrial design renderings could have drawn from.

Next came the keynote presentation, where we were treated to both Angelo Sotira’s story of how he started up DeviantArt followed by a chat from the wonderfully weird Neil Gaiman. Gaiman began his talk by explaining how the Chinese government had traditionally frowned upon science fiction, as that genre is often used to obliquely criticize institutional flaws, then recounted how they eventually relented and invited him to speak at their first-ever sci-fi convention. Intensely curious as to how this had happened, Gaiman tracked down the party official in charge of this action and asked him why sci-fi had suddenly been given the green light. “We [the Chinese] make everything,” the Chinese official explained, referring to his country’s manufacturing base, “but we don’t invent anything.” Science fiction, it had been decided by the party bosses, would be an effective way to stimulate the imaginations of Chinese youth, whom they hoped would subsequently provide original thought for the next generation of manufacturing.

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In olden days people have used the natural method for predicting the weather that depends on the atmosphere and the particular location and the important thing is that they have been true. But nowadays there are many modern equipments to identify about the hurricanes, floods and the other natural disaster and as a whole we cannot stop or prevent such things to happen. Some people used to find from the animal’s behavior. Barometer is the initial device used that determines the room temperature and collect the data accordingly. These kind of the predictions are very useful to plan the daily schedule and the fishermen can plan whether to go for fishing or not. The farmers can change the method of cultivation according the news updates.

Sometimes it goes wrong and this has made people to have the false thought on the forecasting measures, creating fun with the news reporting. The crops can be maintained accordingly depending on the electronic weather devices. The study have inhibited about the importance and the career with the meteorologists have increased a lot. The amateurs usually uses the barometric reading and later the advanced equipments like the windsock and the hygrometers are used frequently. Some of the small devices can be placed at home that costs around hundred dollars. They are entirely wireless and offers the automatic updates for all the seasons. The atomic clock have the other advanced features that is easily available in the electronic shops. All around they can be considered for around twenty hours.

Lippincott worked to unify the brands of merged airlines Avianca and TACA. The three-year project culminated in the recent unveiling of a bold new visual identity.

With a client list that includes 3M, Delta Air Lines, Hyatt, Samsung, Starbucks, and Walmart, Lippincott has spent the last seven decades combining strategy and creativity. (The recent brand face-lifts of Stanley and eBay? All Lippincott.) At the helm of the firm, which is part of Marsh & McLennan-owned Oliver Wyman, is Rick Wise, who oversees innovation in Lippincott’s design and strategy practices while also advising clients on their branding issues. The Wharton alum made time to chat with us about some recent Lippincott projects as well as his branding pet peeve, what’s on his desk, and why the Taj Mahal never gets old.

Lippincott turns 70 this year. How are you celebrating?
It’s a big year for us. We’re celebrating by both looking back on how the industry has evolved, honoring the moments Lippincott has influenced and the iconic brands we built, as well as looking ahead to what the next 70 years will bring. For instance, in May of this year, we designed “Pencil to Pixel” in collaboration with Monotype—an exhibit documenting the past, present and future of typography. As part of this, Lippincott developed an exhibit of its own—curating artifacts and designs throughout our history. As part of that we also moderated a roundtable discussion on the future role of design and brand expression with executives from Coach, Warby Parker, Virgin America, Chipotle, and eBay.

Tell us about a recent Lippincott project that you are particularly proud of and why?
We are very proud of the work we did for Avianca, the Latin American airline formed by the merger of Avianca and TACA airlines. We worked hand in hand with Avianca for three years to create a new unified brand, developing the new logo, aircraft livery, plane interior, visual system and frequent flyer program. It’s a really beautiful system for an airline that aspires to be the regional leader. But what we’re most proud is our work helping build a unified brand from the inside out—making sure the cultures were aligned, the employees were energized, and most importantly the customer experience could live up to the promise of a unified pan-Latin American airline.

As a specialist in brand strategy, what brand (aside from your current or past clients) would you single out as an emerging brand to watch?
I’m a huge music fan, and it’s been really interesting to watch the growth of Beats by Dr. Dre. It’s pretty amazing to see the brand they have created in just a few years, focusing on the overall music experience. They have taken a page out of Apple’s playbook by focusing on innovation delivered in great packaging and design, and took a product many thought might be obsolete and made it relevant again.
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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Quite a few stories about our brave new web-enabled economy made rounds last week, and together they provide an interesting survey of the culture of work in the Information Age. It starts, more or less, with James Surowiecki’s appraisal of Upstart in The New Yorker. His measured confidence in the new model for personal loans, in which individuals borrow money from wealthy patrons in exchange for a percentage of future earnings based on one’s projected income (typically 3–4% over 5–10 years; no more than 7%). The idea is to provide a structured horizon for opportunities that require a small amount of capital, whether it is entrepreneurial or educational—they also recently announced a kind of ‘third party’ scholarship program for aspiring developers who are looking for a patron to defray the costs of code school, a $12,000, 12-week program with a 90% placement rate at an average of $80 large starting salary.

New York Magazine‘s Kevin Roose responds a darker view of Upstart, drawing an analogy with indentured servitude, citing a rosy Bloomberg segment (above) on TaskRabbit as another example of unfounded buoyancy. Roose portrays the entire ‘gig economy’—as noted in the San Francisco Chronicle—as a fallacious boon to a still-faltering workforce, an empty promise for the underemployed masses.

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Also, do stock photos drive clickthroughs?

We’re not going to pretend that there is anything like a definitive to the answer to the question that launched a recent thread on our forums, but it’s as relevant as ever, what with the launch of a certain new product this week and the stories about the popular mythology surrounding that company that makes the aforementioned product. The OP cites the trend of crowdsourced ratings/reviews as an indicator for reliability, which is arguably one criteria for quality, but the question remains open-ended: Does Quality Sell the Product?

Much of the ambiguity simply has to do with the term itself; seeing as “quality” is essentially a concept when presented without a qualifier, Google suggested ‘assurance‘ and ‘control‘ (words that make for interesting and somewhat disparate associations, if you want to get meta) for the image search that yielded the leading image. But on a more practical level, it’s useful to distinguish between ‘quality’ and other, well, qualities: Michael DiTullo offers a negative definition by offering a list of other factors; other forumites focus on price or the related but more abstract notion of value. Meanwhile, Ray Jepson broadens the definition of the product from the artifact itself to the experience of using it… to reiterate the relationship between quality and value.

Of course, this being a longtime Industrial Design Website & Resource, participants turn to tools as examples—in fact, the very first reply refers to Harbor Freight (vs. Craftsman) as an example of “good enough” as opposed to “the best.” (Robert Pirsig’s rumination on this topic comes up a dozen posts later.)

But back to Harbor Freight, here’s a brief history of the discount hardware store… which might be contrasted with the saying: “Every Harbor Freight tool eventually becomes a hammer.”

Join the discussion: Does Quality Sell the Product?

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