Hasta La Ideas

In Wednesday’s “Baby Boomers Beget Big-ass Buttons” post, we mentioned the prevalance of aging boomers in the market and how that’s having an effect on product design. Here are some more specific statistics from Israeli designer Ron Nabarro: “If you talk about age 55 and up, the estimate for the U.S. is around 79 million people, and for Europe it is 56 million – and that’s if you ignore the growth in China.

“All of these people have an unnatural encounter with technology. The potential is mammoth for product marketing. Every five seconds in the U.S. and Europe, a baby boomer passes the age of 60. In the Western world these are usually well-off people, who are willing to pay good money for products that won’t make them feel they are old already.”

Core77 reader Erin Read Ruddick, who specializes in marketing to Baby Boomers, has similiar sentiments. As she commented on Wednesday’s post:

It’s good business to recognize that aging Americans are looking for technology that is accessible no matter what stage your eyesight and fine motor skills are in. That said, as a marketer…I question the names. “PhoneEasy”? “HandleEasy”? Sounds denigrating and patronizing to me.

There are roughly 78 million Boomers plus another 59 million or so Matures (66 plus, also known as Silent Generation). They’re highly educated, tech savvy and used to having the best. Why would they choose a product with a name that makes them sound like incompetent children?

We think Nabarro would agree. Haaretz.com has an interview up with Nabarro (who is 64 years old himself and an ICSID Regional Advisor who won last year’s World Technology Award in the Design category for his work with Senior Touch Ltd.) where he shares his thoughts on designing for the elderly. An excerpt:

Personally, I can’t read the instruction sheets that come with medication. I’ve had many people tell me in embarrassment that they use a magnifying glass, because the type is too small. The young graphic designer who designed that document thought about how to make it attractive, not about its functionality. Even I fell into the trap when I bought a nicely designed new microwave oven. It is made of stainless steel, and the lettering on it is small and black. If the lighting isn’t good, I can’t read it easily. This is the kind of unpleasant encounter that the designer can prevent. That person in his sixties wants to retain his quality of living, and he is willing to invest a lot in that.

…I can’t help what people see when they look in the mirror, but it’s my job to minimize the negative feeling that occurs when a user meets a product. On the other hand, you don’t want products that scream out ‘I was designed for the elderly,’ because then people won’t buy them. The designer needs to design an attractive product that nevertheless offers a solution to the limitations of older people.

Read the entire piece here. (And Ms. Ruddick, thanks for your thoughts.)

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Our pals over at our cousin blog, Agency Spy, were one of the first to break the story late Wednesday that songstress Lady Gaga was to appear at the ongoing Consumer Electronic Show with the announcement that she is to become Polaroid’s new Creative Director. You’ll recall that we reported on Polaroid-as-we-knew-it breathing its last breaths back in April and finally expiring as it was unloaded to a pair of financial groups for a likely after life filled with tacky licensing deals and a general watering down of a once proud brand. We’re not exactly sure what to think about this high-profile reboot, or what exactly Gaga will be creative directing (at the press conference, she looked a little like this was the first she’d heard of any of this), but maybe it means there’s still some life in Polaroid after all. Footage from the entire press conference here, a bit more info from Agency Spy, the official press release, and here’s a short clip of the free-for-all at the Vegas event once Gaga finally appeared:

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Following up on one of the biggest stories to close out 2009 with: the hiring of John Edelman at the long-suffering Design Within Reach, the NY Times has put together this very interesting piece about the designers and companies who had gone after DWR for blatantly copying their designs. Alan Heller, in particular, talks about his getting burnt by the company, who he’d sold furniture of his own creation to, only to have his work copied, its name changed, and listed with prices cheaper than he’d sold his originals for. There are a lot of re-hashed facts and bits of history in the piece, most of which were already covered in Jeff Chu‘s great Fast Company story, but the meat and potatoes is hearing more from Edelman about how he wants to try and win back the respect of designers who had felt slighted (or even took matters to court, like Heller) by DWR. Fortunately for them, despite their rocky past, they still seem to have not burnt every bridge with every designer across the board:

Karim Rashid, a designer of sleek contemporary objects in New York, said he didn’t know enough about the company’s ethics to give an opinion. But, he said, “if they called me, I would work with them,” because so little contemporary design is produced in the United States. “I’m working with about 35 companies in Italy, and not a single one in the U.S.,” he said.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Known for its understated elegance and design, Japanese ‘unbrand’ Muji has shared a message on its website that is well worth the few minutes it takes to go through the flash presentation.

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Last week you read the official press release denoting ID Magazine’s demise; this week editor Jesse Ashlock eulogizes the magazine in blog form.

It wasn’t until taking the top job last spring that I came to realize how problematic some found I.D.’s brand identity, and to learn that battles had been waged over its mission for years. Was it a consumer magazine or a trade, and what did those damn letters really stand for? Of course, they stood for “international design,” but some still yearned for the days, decades ago, when they meant “industrial design”; others mistook I.D. for Interior Design, and the rise of interactive design added yet another I.D. to the mix.

It’s been said that those varying interpretations kept the magazine from being sustainable in a fractured marketplace, and maybe there’s some truth to that. To me, however, the multiple meanings were complementary, not competitive, and they attested to the way the brand had grown along with the design world over the years. They spoke, to use another i word, to the growing interdisciplinarity of the design disciplines, and the increasingly integral role of design in our lives and collective consciousness.

Read the rest here.

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