What I Wrote by Willem Van Lancker

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

w h at i w r ot e

the collected u n d e r g r a d u at e writings of willem va n l a n c k e r

2 0 0 6 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2 0 10

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

You have the right to work but work for the workâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sake only; you have no right to the fruits of the work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness either. Perform every action with your heart fixed on the Supreme Lord. Renounce attachment to the fruits. Be even-tempered in success and failures, for it is this evenness of temper which is meant by Yoga. Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety, in the call of self-surrender. Seek refuge in the knowledge of Brahman. They who work selfishly for results are miserable. - Bhagavad Gita

contents

iii introduc tion

risd & brown

the decons truc-

the inesc apable

paul a scher

s tatement s of

tion of l anguage

printed word

intervie w

gr aphic designâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

curiosit y

ma ss

redesigning

cus tomiz ation

br anding

purpose

image problem

re thinking

design today?

harvard business

@issue interview

design & business

school: t wo plus t wo

101

111

abw xd 09

degree thesis

a conversation

design thinking

closing remarks

proposal

with andy cutler

today

113

115

117

123

silicon valle y is

@sick of

the ar tisan and

the inter ac tion

americ aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ne w

#sharing ye t ?

the automaton

of a line

he ar tbe at

129

137

commencement

thanks &

address

acknowledgement s

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

Throughout my undergraduate career at risd, I feel like I have developed almost as much as a writer as a designer. Rarely do I create a design project or undergo any design exercise without pausing for reflection and taking the time for a more critical reflection of my practice through writing. While this has led me to feel empowered to both articulate my thoughts visually and through language, at times I feel the two exist in separate universes within me-the complex division of left and right brain.

introduction

In order to remedy this I chose to reinvestigate my entire writing portfolio both for content and a deeper contemplation of my personality with the hope that I would find a more holistic cooperation between my â&#x20AC;&#x153;two sides.â&#x20AC;? The result, the record you hold in your hands, is a collection of relevant pieces chronologically organized to illustrate the development of my thought process and skill as a writer. To further challenge myself to understand the significance of my writer I have included visual poetic summaries to precede each piece, inviting the reader to better understand the unique combination of my passions. This complete work has enabled me to reapproach and re-package my thinking, in an exercise that is counter to my normal practice. My ability and failure at times in this challenge have reaffirmed my love for both visual design and writing. At the same time they have provided a coherent and intensely personal record of my undergraduate education.

iii

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

Not yet hard-wired, passion &

pragma tism

right

& left.

risd & brown s tat e m e n t s of purpose a p p l i c at i o n e s s ay s to rhode isl and school of design and brown

throughout my ye ars a s a s tudent,

through childhood and adolescence, art has helped shaped me as an individual; it has allowed me to affect the world around me. Art has been an invaluable outlet and has often given me the opportunity to reveal another side of myself, one that others do not always see at first glance. In my art, I can be anything I want to be, I can express myself any way that I wish, from any point of view, showing multiple facets of my personality. I owe much of this passion to my parents, who raised me in an artistic environment and encouraged me to think creatively in all aspects of my life. My father (risd â&#x20AC;&#x2122;78), working in the boat industry, introduced me to practical thinking and design from an early age. Today, as I reflect on my fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s skills and insights, I am amazed at the wealth and depth of knowledge that originated from his time at risd. My mom, an art teacher and administrator, who attended risd but graduated from Massachusetts College of Art, always introduced me to new ways of seeing, looking at art and life, exploring artists and media.

universit y 2006

one of my firs t memories from childhood is a drawing that I did for my mother, a portrait of her that I signed in very large letters. There is nothing abnormal about this; it is typical artwork by a three year old. The interesting aspect is that the name is written perfectly but entirely backwards so that it reads, melliw. This is an early childhood trait, as the connections between the analytical, logical left brain and the creative right brain are not yet hardwired. In my case, being left handed, my

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

right brain was controlling my backwards writing. Unlike many, who allow one side to drown out the other in early development, I realize that I have continued to foster the symbiosis between creativity and logic throughout my development. I have pushed my limits in both academia and the arts. When I first arrived at risd I was afraid I would not be ready for the intense foundation curriculum, working in media that I was unfamiliar with in a rigorous studio environment. Throughout high school I had concentrated on academics, athletics and leadership responsibilities and pursued graphic design independently. Happily, the experience has been unlike any I have previously encountered, a total right-brain immersion. I was re-energized. I took on these new challenges entirely open-minded and ready to take risks in my work. I was back on the playing field – coachable, competitive and challenged in a whole new way. As I look back on these newfound skills, I realize how valuable they will be to me in all aspects of my life. Though my time at risd has been a wholly positive one, I have encountered some challenges. I am not your stereotypical, counter-culture “art student.” There is a side to me that wants to continue to sail, play lacrosse and be a part of a politically active, motivated student community. At risd, I continue to search for ways to enrich my entire self.

Though my upbringing has shaped me significantly as an artistic individual, I have always chosen my own route and been allowed to discover my own passions. I have independently developed an enthusiasm and skill for graphic design, one that I plan to hone throughout my college years and beyond. In my first round with college applications, I chose to steer clear of art school, hoping to forge my own path, one completely divergent from my parents. This past summer, after a period of serious reflection and focus, I knew that I had made a huge misstep. I realized that if I had made a four-year commitment to attend a liberal arts college that I would be starving myself of the serious creativity that I needed to nurture and enrich my life. Looking forward, I didn’t want to be wasting my time in dry microeconomics lectures preparing me for a career that I would hate every day, regardless of its salary. risd has everything that I desire and require in a complete education. I have discovered something within myself. Here, I will be able to pursue my passion for design while developing a core artistic background through foundation studies. Furthermore, I hope to be able to supplement my education with business courses at Brown, a unique opportunity afforded by few other schools. This collaboration will nurture my growth as an artist as well as feed my desire to excel academically in business. risd will help me to continue the education that my parents began. The education that I receive here will prepare me for a successful career that I will love from the moment I leave College Hill.

Unlike many students at risd, I do not create my art for art’s sake. I want to take my talents in art and design to the next level and use my creative ability to make an impact on the world. Design is something that is intrinsic to my life, every day it affects how I see things and react to the world. I know that the combination of a Brown and risd education is exactly what I need to succeed and fully accomplish my goals. This fall semester I felt starved for a balanced, competitive academic education but I know that if I were only at Brown I would be feeling exactly the same way without the intense studio work. The tools I have acquired through my childhood and secondary school education have enriched both sides of my psyche. Like the two sides of my brain, having the opportunity to finally unite an education where I do not have make these sacrifices would allow me to follow my dreams. The culmination of this collaboration would be a degree from both schools. As you look at the most successful people of our time, not only are they the ones that are possessed with the creative ingenuity to think differently, they are the ones that refused to be deterred by any obstacle and are steadfast in their passions and energy. I am a person like this; I am a driven leader.

After nearly a semester at risd, in Freshman Foundation, I am more confident than ever that this is where I belong. Daily, I continue to improve my skills in the arts and push myself out of my comfort zone. At , I have felt the pain and value of a rigorous program. I work hard, but love what I am doing; I feel energized. Though I am confident that I want to concentrate in Graphic Design, the tools and experiences provided in Drawing, and 2d and 3d Design will enrich my education for years to come. The prospect of merging the marketing aspects of product development, advertising, and promotion with the artistic applications of media and advertising, through risd’s graphic design and industrial design departments (where I hope to take a significant number of non-major courses) with those of Brown’s business curriculum is very exciting. I am confident that if I pursue this field of study with the zeal I feel for it now, once I graduate,

I cannot wait to further my complete education.

risd & brown s tat e m e n t s of purpose a p p l i c at i o n e s s ay s to r h o d e i s l a n d school of design and brown universit y

I will be able to wake up every morning excited at what the day holds in store.

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

the deconstruction of l anguage

what firs t s truck me after I

read Roland Barthes’ “Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers,” was his commentary on the irreversible nature of speech, “a word cannot be retraced except precisely by saying one that retracts it” (Barthes 309). While saying this, Barthes falls into his own erratic use of language, parenthesizing all of his wayward or qualifying thoughts. When read aloud, Barthes’ piece is spoken in a stammering, difficult to follow document. However, when we, the readers, absorb it from the page, it becomes conversational and recognizable. Barthes attempts sum up his thoughts near the end of the article saying that once the written word is produced “I can objectively account for the former [writing] that ‘I’ am no longer in it” (Barthes 322).

This now brings me to the discussion of the power of speech in the classroom and the deconstruction of language in today’s world. It would be interesting to see what Barthes would have written had this article been published in 2008 rather than thirty years in the past. Today the contract of education that Barthes superbly lays out on pages 314 to 315 is virtually non-existent in the large university classroom. The introduction of the Internet in the classroom, where now at some large universities a student can take all of his/her classes online, has broken down the significance of the teacher student relationship. Furthermore, there is an increasing dilution of the discourse of language. If a student is sitting in his/her dorm room “attending” class the professor has no way of knowing Barthes continues to elaborate, here and whether or not his/ throughout the article, that speech is her message is being immeasurably more powerful than writing, received or that he/she both for a teacher and human beings in is being boiled down general. Though I can agree to a point, as a to “a reduced version, student of typography and on a broader scale, Graphic Design, the dead yet substantial… written letter, word, and page hold a much more tenacious hold not knowing if what is than the fleeting nature of a speech. Today our world is being taken (siphoned) out transformed with the proliferation of digital media. When this article was written in 1971, most of the speech that was captured was very premeditated, a thoughtful act. Reading this passage brought to mind the Watergate scandal. If no one had been able to capture the spoken word, Nixon would never have been impeached. No one would believe the investigators if they had simply said, “we heard someone saying something.” The written word on the other hand, is entirely incriminating. Once the word is out there, you cannot “show the eraser yourself,” (Barthes 309). It is there; it is concrete and cannot be reversed.

r e s p o n s e to r o l a n d b a r t h e s’ “o n w r i t e r s , intellec tual s, t e a c h e r s” 20 07

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

of the flow of speech is erratic statements (formulae, sentences) or the gist of an argument” (Barthes 312). My closest personal encounter with something of this nature here at Brown was my Economics 11 class held in the cavernous Salomon Hall. In ec11 there was no opportunity for a teacher student relationship to be cultivated, she would stand up on stage and speak “at” us, not in a format where we were encouraged to stretch our comfort zones by participating and learning from one another. One of the most important reasons many people attend a school like Brown, is to be surrounded in a community of intelligent, motivated people. Instead, though her lectures were informative and well planned, we would

sit in a passive environment one very similar in nature to staring at a computer display or television. Today, in the in midst of the “YouTube” effect, we find that this deconstruction of language has progressed from casual speech into the media, and anyone with a video camera or phone and an Internet connection. With the introduction of video-blogging in recent years, news articles and the proliferation of ideas has become such a casual procedure that we lack the former pluralism and eloquence of writing. Watching the news today I am overwhelmed that we live in a society where even the “credible” news outlets cover the death of Heath Ledger as a “tragedy” putting on the same level

of say a Mother Theresa figure (if you believe Heath Ledger affected your life or anyone’s for that matter as much as Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King, or the like, please let me know). A sickening repetitive cavalcade of images bombards us, blasting our senses daily. Furthermore, everyone can offer their opinion whether informed or not and much of the blind public will accept it as a fact because the person appears to have an air of authority (Wikipedia?), something Barthes pointed out as crucial for the success of a teacher or speaker. Both speech and writing today need to return to a world where they are regarded art forms,

the deconstruction of l anguage

intellectual pursuits, not as mere outlets for self-promotion or the attempted resuscitation of worn out stereotypes. “Language is always on the side of power; to speak is to exercise a will to power” (Barthes 311). Language in teaching, writing, and everyday speech is a what makes us human, our ability to articulate and convey our realities with each other and coexist

in an environment where we can “float,” and connect with an “art of living” (Barthes 331). I would hate to see that go to waste.

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

Meet typographic Hellvetica.

ma ssimo vignelli called graphic design,

singularly and objectively, but which can take on such a different character depending upon how they are juxtaposed, that they become the most important font families of all. It is this insidious, subconscious power that typography wields over the population that makes it so interesting. Graphic design allows us to communicate with each other but it also has the power to subliminally dictate our actions every day.

t h e i n e s c a pa b l e

This is definitely not a modern phenomenon, as many would assume. Long before the proliferation of movable type with the invention of Gutenburg’s printing press (circa 1493), fonts have existed and been identified as products and representations So, since typography and graphic design of certain cultures, religions, languages make language visible what dictates how we and regions. These hand-carved and handrespond to it? In other words, do we choose written fonts have withstood the centuries fonts, or do fonts choose us? Just as Gary and are now found on nearly everyone’s Hustwit provided us with the anecdote of personal computer. Fonts like Times, Trajan, seeing the word “welfare” set in his grungy and many of the transitional serif fonts, “punk rock” font on cnn; seeing words all are rooted in ancient Rome and more depicted in some qualitative visual manner specifically, transcribed from the Trajan very often influences and even changes their Column (circa 114 a.d.), believed to be one meaning. The viewer instantly associates of the finest examples of truly “Roman the word welfare with something dirty, type.” The writing styles of the characters wretched and negative. However, if the same in the illuminated manuscripts can be seen text were set in a clean, modern font, the on nearly every Irish pub in America, (A viewer’s reaction to the topic could easily be Short History of the Printed Word Chappell, completely the opposite. This phenomenon Bringhurst). Even then, there was a sort of is very apparent and obvious for some fonts association by font that people adhered to, and design elements. For example, if I were each locale having its own way of carving to use a rounded, bubbly font such as Comic and designing letters. Sans, the viewer would likely associate the text with fun, children, and light-hearted When the printing press arrived on content. Furthermore, many fonts, though the typographic scene at the end of the they do not fundamentally imply a certain 15th century, fonts and typography in quality or aesthetic, have become such a part Europe were primarily controlled by the of our mass culture that they are instantly Catholic Church. To differentiate their recognizable or identifiable with a particular type style from the Catholic printings, message or an unmistakable image. Think Protestant Dutch monks designed their of the Coca-Cola script; if you were to see own letterforms that they carried on their that font forming any other word it is likely backs to avoid persecution from the Diocese you would still think of Coke. At the same while still spreading their message, (Graphic time, there are fonts like Helvetica that Design: A Concise History, Hollis 68). So mean absolutely nothing at all when viewed here we have the Protestant people

20 07

and more specifically what graphic designers do, “a fight against ugliness.” He likened it to a doctor battling disease; designers are working to cure the visual disease that infests our surroundings and environment (Helvetica, Hustwit). It is true that typography, and on a broader scale, graphic design, affect our response and communication to and with our world subconsciously every day. “Design is solving problems. Graphic design is solving problems by making marks. Type is a uniquely rich set of marks because it makes language visible” (A Type Primer, Kane viii).

printed word e x p lo r i n g t h e prompt “do we pick the t y p e fa c e s , o r do they in turn, pick us?” in conte x t of a c o n v e r s at i o n with filmmaker gary hust wit

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

or the clergy at least, attempting to identify and separate themselves as a group in part by using type. The fonts they created eventually led to the common fonts, Caslon, Baskerville, and other modern English fonts. This is where most people get lost in the slight differences between fonts, things like the subtle nuances between Adobe Garamond and Garamond Premier Pro or even greater differences like those between Verdana and Univers. The layperson sees the Target logo and the logo for American Airlines as two entirely different fonts and designs. All the while, it is in fact a careful ruse, a manipulation of the tools and devices that are at a graphic designer’s disposal (and I do not mean the computer). Devices such as leading (the amount of vertical spacing between lines of type), kerning (the adjustment of letter spacing in a proportional sense), and tracking (the amount of space between a group of letters to affect density in text, color, and weight), are just a few that have allowed fonts like Helvetica to take on so many disparate forms and connotations.

Helvetica, with its rigid conformity was born out of the modernist world. The Twentieth century led to the rise of modernism in graphic design as well. The Modernist school of thought was born out of the Bauhaus in Germany as well as the Swiss style of typography. It relied on the simple tenet that less is more. Modernist designers worked out of grids, using strong contrast, and only a few fonts. Years later, during the cultural revolution of the sixties and seventies, design entered the post-modern stage in its development. All of the rules that designers had previously adhered to were often discarded in favor of “humanistic fonts” and hand-drawn designs that often were born out of mistakes in an artist’s work. This period stood in strong defiance to the order and structure of the modernist discipline. Helvetica survived this era as well. I do not want this to become an essay on the development of typography, so here I will break from my historical and technical recap. Today, in the digital era of typography where virtually no one in the trade physically creates their designs in metal type any longer, the ease of creating type and being a “graphic designer” has become as simple as buying a Mac with the latest version of the Adobe Creative Suite. In reality, being an effective graphic designer, the doctor of visual maladies and communication, takes so much more. It does not necessarily only take a degree in the discipline to make a good graphic designer. Instead, a good designer must

be an artist, as well as a student of human communication and a keen observer of how people interact with each other and react to their environment. As we have entered the d.i.y. (Do It Yourself) generation for nearly every aspect of life, this has led to a proliferation of unsuccessful fonts (just go to 1001fonts.com, fontfreak.com, etc. to see for yourself) and uninspiring, uninspired graphic design. Though we are living in a state of nearly total media saturation, graphic design still retains its fundamental influence over us, contrary to the idea that if something is such a part of our culture it becomes ubiquitous and invisible. It is entirely duplicitous and insidious in our world - on the Internet, television, the printed word and in our surroundings. However, even though we are bombarded by advertisements every second of every day, we are not immune to their power. We still recognize the giant, iconic Texaco sign as a place to stop for gas and not just a word set in Helvetica Bold. This argument takes me back to the question that prompted this essay to begin with; do we choose the fonts or do the fonts choose us? I think that it is a combination of both. When someone sets out to find a font that expresses exactly what he or she is looking for, they fall back on the conventions that have been set by our society (i.e. trying to find the perfect font for a new sushi restaurant, nine times out of ten he or she will select the typical “ninja/Asian” style font that everyone is familiar and identifies with). So in this sense, the fonts are choosing us but at the same time this is merely a reflection of the stereotypes and norms that the globally mediated society has created. It is the ground-breaking designs in figure-ground relationships and the balance of form and counter-form that shake the foundations of these trite stereotypical communicators. This is why Helvetica has become the ubiquitous behemoth in

the world of typography for the past fifty years. Paula Scher gave Helvetica the tag as the “font of the Vietnam War,” (Helvetica, Hustwit) because of its representation of nearly every corporation and government that supported the war; I could not disagree with this more. Helvetica is a font that has redefined how people react to typography because it transcends any one specific tag. If sixty years ago I had told a graphic designer that in 2008 there would be one single font used by mega-corporations including the likes of bmw, Target, Staples, Verizon, usps, American Apparel, American Airlines, the irs, Crate & Barrel, and Texaco (just to name a few) I would have been laughed out of the building. All of these companies indeed use Helvetica as their logo typeface. Yet their individual logos each express a visual icon that communicates a powerful message to the viewer. The viewer would never think twice that they were looking at the same font family. Helvetica, has become, not the voice of the totalitarian, but the most essentially human font.

t h e i n e s c a pa b l e printed word

So today, in a world where we are beyond modernism, beyond post-modernism, a place where everyone with a computer and an internet connection can communicate their views to millions of people, what will become of typography and graphic design?

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

pa u l a s c h e r

willem

intervie w

A lot of what interests me, as a graphic designer about to enter the professional world, is the extreme break in my experiences versus those of the people I will likely be working under. I see that technology and the way the computer has been used as a more and more important tool in the designer’s toolbox has changed something about the fundamental practice of graphic design. I think, maybe not at the highest levels so much but, the way that the craft has been approached. I worked with a RISD graduate last summer at adidas, he’s only 28 and the comparisons between our experiences at school are vastly different and he graduated in 2002. So what I am interested in talking to you about is the shift of graphic design throughout your career and the movement from a tactile discipline that really valued the craft and the cutting and pasting of “design” – a real technical aspect to a more computer based medium in a lot of ways because now what you do to quote Michael Bierut “what used to take you a week can now take you a few hours on the computer”. So I would like to start a conversation about this.

one- on- one c o n v e r s at i o n w i t h p e n ta g r a m pa r t n e r designer pa u l a s c h e r o n the future of design e d u c at i o n 2008

Has this big shift affected your process? The fact that maybe clients are demanding things faster now and requesting a speedier iteration of your work. paul a

First of all, technology always changes, and I’ve worked in the field for over thirty years. And the advantage of working in the field over thirty years is that I don’t have any expectation that technology isn’t going to change– because it always did. I think there was a period, perhaps pre-World War I to maybe the seventies when typesetting started to change where things were relatively the same so people did things the same way but when I started out type was linotype or handset you set from a type house and that if you wanted to enlarge something or see something bigger you did

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

it on a Lucy machine and then you used a stab camera then you used a Xerox machine, then you used a computer, then you used a fast computer, then you do things in dimension, then you make things animate, then you make things interact, and the idea that you can do all these things and that you’ll always be changing is something that I think everyone has to become incredibly comfortable with because the technology is, if it changed this much in thirty years think how much it will change in the next thirty years. I think things like mouses, for example I still would argue that that’s going to be like looking at a dial-up phone like this. I mean it’s a ridiculous tool. I mean, You should be on the screen or touching it or moving it, it should be much more like your iPhone. And you can tell that the minute the iPhone was invented you knew how dumb this is. I mean I think that craft is there because as long as you can see and as long as you can make value judgements about things, that’s what craft is. Craft isn’t just you know, cutting something with an X-acto knife and pulling it together, I mean I’m sitting with my team all the time making them craft the typography appropriately by closing up spaces and taking care that positioning is right and scale is right and the proportions of things are right. All of that matters because craft is at the heart of everything. So if you think well but you don’t craft it appropriately its going to look like crap-ola. What always happens with technology, traditionally, and what will continue to happen is that the first guys on it are the technological geeks and they have bad design skills so everything looks like holy hell until the designers get out of their fear of the thing and they get on it and all of a sudden its craft again. So craft does not go away.

I mean things take different lengths of time. I mean my, when I worked at CBS records, I used to do a hundred and fifty covers a year. There were about twenty-five people in the department we did the mechanicals by hand, everything was crafted and put together and there were a hundred and twenty five covers a year. Last year they did about the same hundred and twenty five covers with a hundred people and computers. So the volume is the same and the amount they’re outputting is the same and the equipment is so much faster so what are they doing with the extra time?

pa u l a s c h e r intervie w

Do you know what they’re doing with the extra time? willem

No? paul a

They’re making changes. What was great about the lack of technology was the fact that because it took more time to do something it was a discipline for people’s behavior. If you don’t have until the last minute to get the copy correct before you pass it on to the designer to layout then you’ll just take the last time or if you can be sloppy about it then change it and change it and change it cause it doesn’t take that much time then you’re going to do that. The timing expands to peoples incompetence, it isn’t so much that the thing is a time saving device. willem

Would you say that given the way the culture has shifted really even in the past ten years with the rise of the internet and the instantaneous live-blogging and all of these kind of things where there is total lack of the editorial – very sloppy, lots of typos. Do you see this happening in design at all? That some tiny little details that normally would have been picked up because there was so much care put into the fact that it is going to get sent out and made into metal or a die is going to be cut… 15

paul a

I think people are always sloppy when they can be. I don’t think that that has changed. I think that is part of – technology changes all the time, people don’t. If people can put off making decisions, if people are give an opportunity to be lazy and sloppy or fearful they will be. If people are inspired to greater noble heights, to rise to a greater calling to do better work, to be nobler human beings by some leader they will do that to. You know, people are people and the technology doesn’t do this to them, they are who they are.

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

If you can be sloppy on the internet and you don’t have to be edited and you can write with a pseudoname and get away with it then you know fine but then also how much import does it have. Its just a, you know, anything that is its own reward. willem

You mention that people aren’t changing and, I would have to disagree, because being a student now, surrounded by other student designers, and I know you’re a teacher at SVA so I am sure you are in touch with that. Do you think that there is this big shift in the way people are thinking and I see that a lot of times the solution is almost to immediately go to the computer when we aren’t directed specifically where to go. paul a

What’s wrong with that? willem

I think that it limits the student’s perspective as how to approach a project. paul a

Why? willem

I think that there is a lot more that can be discovered through exploration of different media as a graphic designer. paul a

Where should they go? willem

I think that one should still start in a sketch book… 16

paul a

Why?

pa u l a s c h e r intervie w

willem

Because I think that it allows you to more fluidly express your views and not... paul a

Well you sound like an old person. willem

I don’t know if that’s a compliment or a dig… paul a

No, I’m just saying that I happen to use a sketchbook and I don’t go to the computer but I don’t think that somebody that goes to the computer is necessarily more penned-in than someone that goes to a sketchbook… Some people use the computer as a sketchbook. You know it really depends upon how you think. I mean sometimes, I don’t have my sketchbook with me and I’ll do it on a napkin, sometimes I’ll do it in my head. Sometimes I’m doing it in a taxi cab. Sometimes I’ll be standing behind somebody at the computer and I’ll say “what do you think about doing blah blah blah,” and we just do it right there.. theres was no sketchbook, just a thought. You could have a thought anywhere – I mean the point is to think, its not really how you express it. willem

But I think that there is a tendency that a lot of what comes off the computer... paul a

I mean ‘cause you did just say to be that young people have different attitudes then you went in and sort of spewed out a really old-age attitude. willem

Well no, but that’s my attitude… The attitude of a lot of students is that the way that… paul a

But that’s not an attitude that’s just where they’re sitting willem

But don’t you think that that theres.. paul a

They don’t have a pad.

w h at i w r ote va n l a n c k e r

willem

Well everyone has a pad. paul a

Not necessarily. willem

But I think that the way that the model of the computer corners you into something that is very flat at times – and I think you see that a lot. paul a

But that depends on who the designer is. I mean, I think that is a generalization. There are broad generalizations in what you’re talking about but that’s assuming everybody that wants to be a designer is going to be good. You know, only a small percentage of people who study design, number one continue to practice and number two develop real voices that matter. And they usually do it not in art school, they do it later, they discover something later and how they get there is really irrelevant. Most students start out by copying, they should, how else are you going to learn if you don’t copy – I mean that’s how everybody begins. I don’t think, I think that the technology will always grow and change but I don’t think it’s a thing that changes human behavior all that much. I think it creates tempests in teapots. willem

Well how would you compare a school that’s cranking out a slick looking portfolio that jumps its students right into photoshop, creating album covers and all that kind of thing… Those students never understand or learn typography theory or the book arts. paul a

But they might learn it later. willem

Do you think that that is still an equally positive way to approach design, going for this finished product from the beginning and not necessarily having and understanding of where these things came from and actually working with metal type and gaining an appreciation for a more

holistic form of graphic design. Because design education is definitely moving away from that and I’d love to hear your opinion… I can’t speak on behalf of other design schools but RISD really values that foundation of design principles – valuing content over form.

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paul a

Well, I actually am of a couple minds, about it… I mean my students… I can tell you about RISD versus other schools is that the students I’ve hired from RISD are typographically, I think very limited because they seem to be so overly structured in the way they approach typography that they have no ability to be really expressive or express or understand how to create something that is specific to a place and a condition, not to a theory. And that’s problematic. So I, I don’t know about the book craft, but the gridded aspect of the way they’re teaching – I find it very frustrating. Drew (Freeman) can tell you chapter and verse about me shaking him up to try to get him out of it. Because its its limiting as a communication tool.. I think that the thing that bothers me about schools in general is not how they go about teaching craft, because all schools do it differently. At SVA they have a broad amount of craft courses and they also have- they have all kinds of courses, students come out in all different forms. At Yale they’re very much focused on political action and at Cranbook, I don’t know what the hell they’re focused on … Its usually some form of other form of exploration that seems anti-business world. But what I don’t see enough of anywhere is some form of teaching, and maybe you can’t do this separate from a client being involved, some form of teaching that enables the student to make understandable analogies to the public. Because in the end that’s what makes effective communication. You’re supposed to know your craft. If you’re

going to practice without knowing your craft that’s number one, but if you can’t communicate spirit or make information understandable to people then you haven’t really designed. All you’ve really done is laid out a grid.

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That’s really to me what matters, you know as we communicate in different forms whether, I mean right now, I’ll go upstairs and I’ll work on an environmental project, I’ll work on a project that’s an interactive digital display, I’ll work on about two or three identities, and I’ll work on a magazine on the web. They’re all different forms of communication in terms of what the discipline is but they all involve on thing in common, and the one thing in commons… understanding how to make information relevant to a specific audience. willem

It’s about context. paul a

We’ll its really other, its about what does somebody out there understand and how can I get them to be interested or how can I charm them in a way that makes them want to be interested or how can I project something about a place or a system or an institution or organizations that makes them become capable of recognizing it the next time they see it. willem

But I think that’s wholly connected to really understanding not only your client but also your end receiver. paul a

Well yes that is the… willem

Right but that’s all about building context and the better understanding you have of where your work is going to exist then the more effective its going to be. And I would agree with you that a lot of it, especially at RISD, sometimes seems disconnected and there isn’t really the thought of professional practice in any of this it. 20

paul a

Its about doing it in some vacuum.

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willem

Right, where it will never exist in – so why design in a vacuum? And I have been really interested in, throughout my few years at RISD, this new “buzzy” collaboration of design and business – which, when more closely examined, really isn’t new at all. You have individuals like Chris Pullman and Lou Dorfsman who did it years ago and created a perfect synergy of the two disciplines and generated work that affected the business beyond aesthetic superficiality. I’d love to hear your opinion on all of this – I don’t know if you’re familiar with Bruce Nussbaum and BusinessWeek (P: chuckles) And its all so surface and nothings really being… paul a

Well he doesn’t know very much willem

Well he’s not a designer, he’s a journalist. paul a

He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. willem

Well, do you think that there is any merit in any of these conversations… At schools like Harvard, and Yale now… paul a

It’s very hard, now Michael (Bierut) is teaching one at Harvard, he’s teaching actually business students about design… Which I think he’s probably going to have more success teaching business students to understand what they’re purchasing when they purchase design than to make design students understand about working with business. I think its almost impossible to teach, you can bring in you know people from marketing departments to give lectures, but its impossible to teach separate from the experience. Because the experience isn’t out of a textbook, the experience is really about human interaction. And its sort of understanding, you have a number of different problems. You have the dialogue that exists between you and your client.

Your client usually isn’t one person but a myriad of people and there can be several people and they can be in different decisions and different structures and they have all kinds of interpersonal problems in how they’re structured. That’s one set of parameters that you have to navigate any successful design through for it to survive and you have to know how to deal with that. Then there is the external audience that’s beyond the client who they want to reach and that you have to be able to sort of know not just how you’re going to do that but how are you going to shape that and show it back to your client to discuss why it is viable and why they should do it and why should invest, really hundreds of thousands of dollars in changing something or making something happen to that affect and if you don’t know that and can’t do that you really can’t work.

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willem

Its funny because what you basically described there is what, from my understanding, from studying advertising and branding – what those firms do. Yet for some reason and I do see the reason, as advertising being vilified by graphic designers but in the same right having a true collaboration with your client as a partner, and not just saying that you are partners, and really backing up what you create with – I don’t want to use the word research but for lack of a better word, but kind of true understanding and compassion of what you are creating and who it is for. That’s really in line with something that graphic design has in many ways repelled in the past. paul a

I think that it’s not that graphic design has been repelled by it, I think its. There were firms that tried to make design scientific – which it its not. They would do research that would show that people who bought toothpaste wanted it to be blue and that people. And in fact graphic designers, one of their biggest heroes should be Peter Arnell and its not right now. Peter Arnell

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persuaded Pepsi that they didn’t need the moisture drops on their can and the reason that soda companies have moisture drops on their can was they were sold a bill of goods by the Schecter Group about twenty years ago that said people who buy soft drinks need refreshment cues to remind them that they are thirsty, therefore there should be – if you go to a cola dispenser it is covered with water. There’s reasons things look the way they do, and they were sold… And it was sold to corporations by designers. By designers who figured out they were very cynical sort of advertising agency owned designers who found a way of using market research to ensure that the business was safe and client was going to buy… The real collaborators, the guys like Rand, who were also serious collaborators with business did it a different way. And that’s more what, I think we would advocate here, which is that you partner with your client, you make them understand that there is no science, and that to a degree there is risk involved, but that there are ways to both communicate with an audience and elevate the expectation of what design can be. And they are both equal goals and that is what you try to do – and it sometimes is an incremental process. If you design a product that changes the paradigm of what design can do in a given area, that’s a huge accomplishment. If you can change the look of a super market, if you can change the look of a CVS, that’s really doing your job. And to do that you actually have to, you have to work and have a communication with a client to have them understand how to do that… And that has nothing to do with technology. Even though all forms of technological forces are going to be used to your disposal it doesn’t matter. willem

Back to what you said about how you think it’s a better fight to do what Michael is doing, by educating business students on the value of design then vice versa.

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paul a

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No I think he has an easier shot at it. I’m say that business students work. I think he’s doing all of design a world of good because he’s making business students understand how design functions and what a designer can do for them and what a designer can’t do for them and dispelling scientific myths. So he’s making the process transparent and business students are interested because they’re going to have to purchase it if they’re going to, you know, run magazines they’re going to want to know how to redesign them.. they’re going to want to repackage products, they’re going to want to all sorts of these kind of things. For design students, teaching them about how business functions is reasonably difficult. You can give an assignment and you can have a real client come to class and actually talk about what they would be looking for but they don’t talk about design the way design is discussed in school so that you have to go through the translation process and I don’t know that you can do that all at once. I think you learn that better in a real world situation. So I just think that designers go to school, they learn the craft in whatever way the school teaches to them to learn it, they come out and they go to work at whatever different place they are and they discover a little bit about how the world works and through that discovery you learn to sort of manipulate your way around it and make it work for you anyway you can. willem

I totally agree with that but I think there could be more to it in the sense that, right now there is obscene idea of “design thinking” out there and to me its absurd because… paul a

That’s like saying you don’t think when you’re not designing! willem 24

Yes!

paul a

Is there cup thinking (holding up a cup)? Do you have room thinking?

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willem

And it’s a way to, it’s the next way to… Michael (Bierut) wrote about this in an essay called “Innovation is the New Black” calling design innovation makes it sound scientific. And, you know design thinking is really just the next iteration of that, but what gets me is if designers… If you really look at what design thinking is, its truly just a more holisitic approach to things, its just looking at the whole picture – more complete thinking. I think if designers have the tools of business thinking, which is an actually thing: organizations, understanding human interaction… Then you would be better off as a designer graduating with those tools as well. paul a

Yes, but there is no way to teach it. Because you can’t export it into the classroom. If you interned at a company. If you went and worked at the New York Times, for a summer, and you saw how the paper operated. And then you went back to redesign the New York Times, you’d do a better job at it, than if you were in class and it was assigned to you – even if the person came and talked to you about it. Its just not something you learn, it doesn’t export well to the classroom. And you can’t set up a sort of parable experience. I’ve tried it, its always a little off. willem

I think the closest thing I’ve come across in my career are collaborative enterprises between specific disciplines. Currently I am taking a joint studio class at MIT (that’s actually in the industrial design department at RISD), working with Sloan MBAs and MIT engineering graduates. The experience of having to explain your reasoning behind the work, in my case an interface design

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project, has enabled me to better understand who I am working with and how best to relate to the needs of my design. The most valuable part of the project is that it is just like “real work.” paul a

That’s right, that’s right. willem

And I believe that the more experiences that students can be exposed to like that, would greatly improve design education. paul a

There aren’t a lot of those… Why does a student have to be exposed to that? Why can’t they go to work? willem

Because you’re still in school paul a

But you’re in school your whole life. Why do you have to do that in a school environment? Who says? willem

I think that is better prepares you for when you get out into the professional world. paul a

But, but life is school. I mean it doesn’t matter. Why can’t you go to school and learn what you learn in school and then go into the real world and adapt then willem

Because you did it five years earlier, and then five years down the road you are onto the next thing, moving forward in what you can achieve in your career. paul a

It doesn’t work like that, I mean there’s no insurance that schools moves you any degree anyway. I mean there are experiences that schools are good for and there are experiences that life is good for. And you know, sooner or later, you leave school and you go and join life. And in life you learn those things then you find you understand why doing something the way you did it in school is not applicable and that you find a way to adapt to it and grow with it. And that the more open mind that you have about it probably the better and more successful and

more productive you will be. And the more rigid you are with preconceived notions about what it should be the harder its going to be for you when you realize it’s not that way. My students always thought every year, I go through the same thing, that they are going to do this portfolio, and that the portfolio… Everything they’ve learned in their life up to this point is in this portfolio, polished and finished to the highest level they can achieve at this moment in time and then when they do this thing they are done. And youre not done. It’s just the beginning. It’s the beginning of life. It’s the end of school. That’s all, it’s the end of school. But that’s school, not the school of life. So that you’ve done that, you’ve had that experience. The school prepares you in whatever way it prepares you – based on what school you selected, and what years you went to that school, depending on who’s teaching at that school. Read the Outliers that will tell you about the sort of accidental nature of this thing and then you go into life and based on what you’ve learned in school and essentially how much energy you have and intelligence and adaptability and perception, you will succeed or fail based on those characteristics all together. That because you have this other thing in school doesn’t mean you’re going to be better when you get out of school it just means that you had another course in school. But its still school.

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willem

But it can still open your eyes earlier in your life to something that… paul a

But you can learn that in a summer internship being in the basement of someplace and like seeing something firsthand. willem

But not everyone is afforded that opportunity and I think that… paul a

Well not everybody is going to do things the same way. I mean I know people who are brilliant and successful and are

phenomenally well educated and I know people who never went to art school and are better designers and are actually phenomenally successful and doing sensational work.

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willem

I don’t think there is one path. paul a

No there is no one path. willem

I think that it is such a fluid discipline that it allows for so many different ways to reach a successful end and I don’t believe there is one way to get it done. paul a

Well that’s the key too, you did say the key to it. Its fluid. And life is fluid. That technology is fluid. And that the most accepting you are of fluidity the most… I think that the stronger and more productive your career will be. If you can accept the notion that there is not an absolute way of doing it. willem

And I think that is what excites me the most is that, and your work is a testament to that… If you showed someone two examples from say the truvia packaging and some of your hand drawn work from a few years back… No one would be able to say “oh that’s the same designer” necessarily. But it is that ability, to continually remold yourself to your situation and your client’s needs, that really makes design work so well. paul a

Well the truvia thing was actually a serious and important job because it broke a vernacular of what that sort of looks like. And that was major work and the companies had to have the courage to do it and that was a year’s worth… the design took us about ten minutes. The refinement… Well not ten minutes, there was a meeting, we did some, we changed the name of it but we arrived at it pretty quickly then we did like little you know the package had to be finessed- the

machine only could cut it this way so we had to change the proportion and sort of meememe. But the ability to sort of persuade two corporations, not one because it was a partnership, to actually come out with something that was so dramatically different was a huge success. And the proof was how it popped on the aisle. Because the way we sold it, all I did when we went to present it the very first time was get all the stuff that’s in the store and just stick it right down on the table and don’t say anything else to it. Because you could do that and but I had figured out not just to do that but to do that at this time, because it was the timing and the condition of the companies and what their image was and what they wanted to be that enabled you to do that because there would be another time where you needed to blend in, and you have to know when to take that shot and that risk. And when they’ll come with you. That’s what that experience of understanding their communities does for you because you know how to...

pa u l a s c h e r intervie w

willem

Position paul a

Exactly. willem

You mentioned that it was a “serious” project, and that just reminded me of your ted talk… paul a

Oh I didn’t mean serious in that way… No it was serious in terms of business. It wasn’t serious in terms of my work willem

You mentioned in that talk that you haven’t done too much “serious work” lately, its been mostly “solemn” and looking at some of what you’ve produced… It’s definitely more clean-cut and refined lately, is that because that’s what people want right now and that’s what your clients want while you’d rather be creating something that’s more expressive from the self? 29

paul a

w h at i w r ote

No it has to do with the nature of the projects… If I take the Public Theatre as opposed to say doing the New York City Ballet or the New York Philharmonic or MoMA. When I did the Public Theatre which was an erratic identity and it involved my own personal language, and it was good because I did every single piece of it - and when I didn’t do it, it was bad. And it was irresponsible to the Public to a certain degree and I’ve redesigned the Public so its much more “solemn” but it functions better for the Public.

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willem

The actual mark you’re saying? paul a

No the mark is irrelevant. Everybody make a big deal about marks. No, no, no when you do identities for organizations, you’re not just doing a mark, you’re doing massive components of stuff because a mark could be ripped off. You want to create literature, you want to create websites, you want to create things that have a real look and the look is usually a collection of things. It’s a collection of typefaces, colors, bars, slashes, rules, images and the images have specific styles so you can recognize the style of the place. willem

So you’re talking about the hamlet poster, and the extension of the Public’s identity. paul a

Well the Hamlet poster was later, but actually the most current thing. I can actually show you it… let me get my power book. It’s a question of designing something that someone else can execute, and when you design, you can’t as an individual designer. I can’t as a business person, put out every single piece that from my hand but what I am doing now is designing systems that other people execute. And when the other designers work with it they can’t be as complex or idiosyncratic as when I do it myself because there are a million little iterations that I do all the time that I do

instinctively. So when you design something for somebody else, you’re necessarily more solemn because its more structured. That’s the nature of the beast. But on the one hand it’s a real choice and I’m really conflicted about it because… As a designer, working for my clients, I think to a degree I was irresponsible with the public theatre, even though they love me and I’ll be there forever and I can do whatever I want… but when I got into the Lincoln Center Institutions, they had to be able to fulfill, they had to be able to execute it. What happened at the Metropolitan Opera for example is that I designed a system that I thought was very simple but it wasn’t flexible enough for the advertisements to they gave the advertisements out to an ad agency and they made it horrible. But the thing was they were capable of fulfilling and turning these around in a day and the designers in house couldn’t turn these around in a day so it got lost and its terrible. The New York City Ballet is much more consistent.

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willem

So do you ever consult with outside agencies to remedy this problem? paul a

Absolutely, I hire them… I hired Julia Hoffman, who used to work for me to go up to MoMA because I designed the stuff then I gave it to her to put out so it would look the same. I mean I do that all the time. It’s not just doing design, you’re doing management consulting. What you find out is why departments don’t function properly. You’ll find there is some in-house art director and they’re really quite terrific, they’re just beleaguered because the structure of the organization is bad and you’re reporting to too many people and the hierarchy. willem

Exactly, that’s what you mentioned early in your book… about the hierarchy at cbs… paul a

Well you have to figure that stuff out because there are reasons why things don’t look good and they don’t have anything to

do with context or the design, it has to do with the way something is structured. So anyway that’s really what you… first you learn how to design something and that’s all you’re doing in school is learning how – in your own modest way with whatever technology is at hand at that given moment, this is all going to change in a week anyway. You’re learning how to design something and you can have all kinds of philosophies about it and all kinds of beliefs about it and you can work on the computer or the pad or whatever but I’m telling you none of it matters. What matters is taking this little bit of knowledge that you got in school and then going out into a world of change and a world of people concentrating on other things other than your craft and trying to make things be expressive, make sense, communicate and do all the things they do. And when they don’t try to figure out why they’re not doing it and then try to fix it so they do. And that’s all it is. And its hard and it changes all the time. And its hard to make invention when you’re trying to manage people, its hard to make change when something works. Its hard to break paradigms, its hard to move organizations. There are lots of things that are hard – you learn what they are.

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willem

It’s worth it though right? paul a

It’s great, it’s a great life. But you know, school is another life. School is not the same life. There’s nothing wrong with getting out of school.

willem

pa u l a s c h e r intervie w

Great, that was great. You know the only thing that I take away personally is that I do feel like we are at this critical moment when we, as designers, have the ear of a much larger community and if we just say “let designers just design” and we’ll collaborate when we can and not really reach out and seek problems, becoming equal partners. Because there is still a problem in a lot of organizations, that design isn’t considered as an equal partner. paul a

What are you talking about? willem

I’m saying that if we as designers just sit back while the business community and society at large is calling for us to do more, what are we really achieving? paul a

Oh, what you don’t understand is that the businesses want design. If design helps them become heroes, and helps them sell products and helps them do things more efficiently, then they’re going to like design. It has more to do with the way organizations are structured. If you take something simple like a magazine. A magazine is structured where the head person on the masthead is a publisher and there’s a managing editor, and there’s usually a separation of state where the managing guy oversees all the people selling advertising space and that’s over there and then within the actual making of the product. And a magazine is a perfect example because a magazine is one of the things that the design is the product and the art and editorial is what you are selling. You’ll see editor, editor-in-chief, managing editor, then you’re going to see two or three editors, then you’re going to see creative director or design director. Then you’re going to see a couple more editors then you’re going to see an art director with like about that much space down from the creative director. Then you’re going to see a bunch of like low peon people. So they’re all going to be working making this

magazine and the design director is going to be trying to persuade the editor to do something. And the editor, when he has to get a second opinion is going to call in his fellow editors, he’s never going to call in the art department to get their opinion. He’s going to call in the guys he goes to lunch with. And when lunch happens he’s going to go out with the other editors, he’s never going to go out with the art department. And that is the heart of the issue – it’s all social. If you go to any corporation, like what happens at institutions like the Lincoln Center and why its so difficult for me to keep the stuff looking well is that there might be a marketing person in power but the people who run the art department are way way down and they don’t meet the top people.

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willem

So then the success of breaking this would be to elevate designers into leadership positions, and that’s what happened at places like GBH and CBS. And that’s why Chris Pullman retired, because he was going to have to report to a marketing person. paul a

That’s right, and that’s why CBS ended up failing, because when Tisch took over and Stanton was long dead, Lou Dorfsman didn’t have any power anymore. willem

So that’s why I think that if a designer has more, and again I know your stance on the education part, but if you have more tools to elevate yourself within an organization then the more impact you can have with your design. paul a

Why would school give you those tools? Most people in business have real disdain for overly educated snot rags. willem

Its not overly educated, its zero education in business. paul a

Who has zero education? 34

willem

pa u l a s c h e r intervie w

Most design students have zero education in business and cooperation. paul a

I don’t think education in business is the answer. willem

No, I don’t think it’s the answer but I think there is much of a culture in design schools that enable students to think like leaders. paul a

I’ve worked with too many people who went to business school and they’re not leaders either. Most the people that are leaders are individual visionaries who, if you take somebody like Bill Paily (founder of CBS). It was somebody who understood both technology and entertainment in a time when he had an idea and took a risk and invested money. willem

So you don’t think that that can really help the position of the designer? paul a

No, I think that there will be companies that will be design driven like Apple, because they’ll have a leader like Steve Jobs and give a lot of power to their designers and listen to them. But CBS was great because Paily gave power to Frank Stanton who kept Dorfsman in a position of power and when the management changes the role changes and it doesn’t matter whether the person went to business school. Really things are much more incidental than that. They’re not if you go here and do this then that will happen. willem

Its not like there can be some paradigm shift in all of this, it has to be the individual. paul a

Yes, you could go to business school and be completely inarticulate. You could go to business school and be a terrible designer. I mean all of those things can happen. There formula for it. It really is, as I said, the best answer to anything is the not that life is fluid, that things change, that one needs to have an absolutely open mind, and to be

ready to look at situations and respond to them on the turn of a dime and to make things work. And all of life is like that and it doesn’t matter if its design or business or government. It’s incredibly complex and incredibly simple at the same time. You see systemic failures in things like the banking system, which I know pretty intimately because you know we did the Citibank logo and I was around when travelers merger with Citi: the thing that caused the debacle.

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willem

One of the things. paul a

It’s one of the things that were part of the systemic failure when the bank that got too big. willem

Yes. Well, first off thank you, its been a wonderful conversation. paul a

Well good I hope you got something good out of it. And don’t worry about studying business in school, go out in the world and study business. You can just study business by working for somebody…

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naming conventions of tropicana pure premium® b e f o r e a n d a f t e r a r n e l l® ’ s r e v o k e d r e d e s i g n .

th r ee r ecent e vent s in graphic design

have resonated far enough beyond our little community to draw considerable commentary from the mainstream media and public sector: Wolff Olins®’ London 2012® logo, Arnell®’s Pepsi® re-brand, and Arnell®’s Tropicana® packaging. These three events, through disparate in the reasons for the commentary they generated all nod to a larger concept of graphic design’s place in the public eye. In the summer of 2007, the graphic design community got its biggest buzz that anyone could remember in a long time with the release of the 2012 London Summer Olympics® logo, designed by Wolff Olins® with a pricetag of roughly $800,000. Though the press release called the logo a “powerful, modern emblem, symbolizing the dynamic Olympic® spirit and its inspirational ability to reach out to people all over the world,” almost immediately following its unveiling, scores of would-be designers and citizens began online petitions calling for a repeal of the entire identity package. Many complained that the identity held no relevance to London’s modern culture or history, others were quoted saying it looked like it was lifted from a 1980s Dire Straits® music video. An early poll on the bbc® website showed more than 80% of the votes giving the chunky, jaggedly stacked logo the lowest possible rating. British newspapers compared the new logo to a swastika and graffiti and ran their own replacement logo. London mayor Ken Livingstone, refusing to endorse the logo on the grounds that no studies had been conducted on its impact, stated, “If you employ someone to design a car and it kills you, you’re pretty unhappy about that. If you employ someone to design a logo for you and they haven’t done a basic health check, you have to ask what they do for their money.” Ultimately, the public moved on from the London 2012® logo fiasco (despite some continued rumblings about its overwhelming appearance throughout

London) but ironically, 20% of London’s adidas stores’ sales have been for 2012 Olympics product even though the product takes up less than 5% of retail space. Go figure, people buy what they hate. The Arnell Group®’s Pepsi® re-brand. This was met with equal outrage, although for largely different reasons than the Olympics package. Pepsi® recently repositioned itself as a brand that “refreshes itself” as the ad campaign suggests, in line with major events in American history. In fact the company has apparently had an image for nearly ever generation of modern American history, the new being just the most recent in the evolution of the iconic red and blue circle. But the logo itself, though somewhat controversial, was not the real source of the public outcry. It instead came back to the price tag for the project, which figured in the tens of millions. The leak of a 27-page internal document onto the web didn’t help either: the “thinking” behind the new brand direction and identity design compared the new logo to the Parthenon, the Mona Lisa, the golden section, and the universe as a whole. The piece entitled, Breathtaking, points out (amongst many other “facts”) that the “emotive forces” of the identity “shape the gestalt of the brand identity” through “symmetrical energy fields.” Articles ran in periodicals such as the New York Times®, Newsweek®, and elsewhere analyzing the laughable hubris of the entire campaign.

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The buzz over the Arnell Group®’s Tropicana® packaging redesign, however, has trumped them all. The new design aimed to be clean, refined, and decidedly higher-end. A new color-coding system for juice types and new language such as “high pulp” replacing the folksy “lots of pulp,” was so complicated that it required its own website explaining the changes. To say that the design missed the mark with its user is an understatement. People complained that they could no longer find Tropicana® products in their stores, designers and citizens alike likened the packaging to a generic brand and asked why the famous, and apparently well-liked, orange-and-straw image had been removed. The packaging fiasco lit up every design website and even made it to the national news. Individuals on social networking sites like Facebook® and Twitter® formed groups petitioning consumers to stop purchasing Tropicana products unless the company reverted to the old package. Feeling the pressure, Tropicana® decided to do just that, with the new-old package coming back into the stores only months after the makeover had taken effect. With graphic design appearing on the radar of so many people who normally wouldn’t give it a second thought, I suppose we, as a community, should be happy, right? But does this attention represent a step in the right direction—away from what Jessica Helfand writing on Design Observer®, calls, “the design ghetto” and toward a broader respect for the profession? In her essay “Graphic Design Spam” (November 17, 2008), Helfand goes on to lament that for the general public, “there is no difference between graphic design and the graphical arts,” and concludes, “maybe there should be.” Helfand’s concern that the public doesn’t understand the difference between real graphic design and the “graphical arts” of your average sign and symbol maker speaks to a long-established vocational and

technical stigma suffered by graphic design – one that has not been helped, she argues, by the wave of new two-year online graphic design programs. As these program’s ads bombard in-boxes, touting myriad design career options (Want to work in the exciting creative field of the Graphic Arts!?), recipients imagine that they, too, can painlessly and quickly become professional designers (and thus cannot help but question how major corporate remakes like Pepsi’s could possibly cost so much). Many designers, in considering this vocational stigma, have compared perceptions of the design profession to that of doctors and architects. Doctors and architects may mess up, too, but when is the last time you heard someone say they could perform heart surgery better than a doctor or design and construct a building better than an architect? You simply do not. When it comes to graphic design, however, the public often proclaims “I could do it better than that,” to the extent that graphic designers find themselves fighting for respect and attention continuously and in vain. This public perception, however, is not entirely without reason. rather than fight it, designers might see it as an opportunity to distinguish what really sets graphic design apart.

We have two problems here: the only time graphic design seems to garner any attention is when it fails. And the masses think it’s a no-brainer anyway. People say they could have created a “better logo than that” because that’s all they see, and ultimately, all they think graphic design is: logos, letterheads and website design. To the contrary, the real work graphic designers do, for the most part, is ephemeral, transient, and invisible to the average person. If architecture is the creation of our structures and habitats, and industrial design is the creation of our tools and products, then graphic design is the creation of agents for our ideas and communication. At its essence, graphic design is the most human and personal form of design, but how can we actually establish this as truth, if the public with whom we communicate believes it is a superficial veneer? One answer has to do less with design than with designers. At the top levels of graphic design, the community’s celebrity personalities have taken on a very lofty and patrician approach. One famous designer has been called the profession, the “medicine of the visual disease,” and others have credited themselves as “architects” in their projects. Graphic design, unlike, perhaps, medicine and architecture, should not be an elite little club. Graphic design is democratic design; it needs to reach out to connect individuals and exist always as a collaborative venture. The very fact that the public has such a great outcry when graphic design fails only underscores how involved the user should always be. Given the clutter of contemporary communication we can’t afford the egoism behind creating a “Frank Gehry®” or “Louis Sullivan®.” This is not what graphic design is or should ever aspire to be. Making graphic design a tool for authorship and personal notoriety only degrades its impact on our society—modern culture already has enough narcissism and personal exhibitionism. This is not to say

there is no room for personal expression and passion in graphic design but it should shine through in the intellect and contextual beauty behind the world and not through visual illustration or typography “owned” as a trademarked style. The real solution to graphic design’s image problem lies in our education system. At a time of exponential social change, never before has the mass media been more interested in topics like “design thinking,” “design as partnership,” interactive design, and communication methods in an age of information overload. If graphic design ever hopes to divorce itself from its superficial vocational stigma, now is the time, and our design schools (the accredited ones) are the place. It is here that we can practice the “partnership” model of getting outside our egos and plunging into the client’s world and here that we can explore diverse media and become more aware ourselves. My education has taught me the importance of graphic design is not determined by how well I can manipulate computer software (which is constantly changing anyway) or how slick a cd cover I can design (an embarrassingly simple assignment), but rather how well I can formulate a way to look at, analyze, and communicate ideas and messages artfully, while at the same time recognizing the needs and wants of the end user. Over the past three years I have manifested this way of thinking through sculpture, design, typography, writing, photography, and speech. The most important experiences I have had at school have not been in my studio classes but rather as a result of my studio classes. By being involved in interdisciplinary pursuits with non-designers, I have had the opportunity to translate the approach I have fostered in the studio in an entirely different, but equally relevant, venue. Design schools need to empower their students to have an equal appreciation, or at least empathy, for disciplines other than design.

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If we continue to treat design school as a vacuum, tomorrow’s designers, who could be instrumental in the health of human communication and culture, will not have the tools to treat design as partnership. If design schools, and the community as a whole, can understand that the relevance of a graphic design education not only lies in the instruction of design principles and techniques but also in a more holistic perspective on the world and its problems. Graphic design will find itself at the crux of the solution to much more than simple logo design and “making things look good.” Graphic design now has the opportunity to be an integral connector and creator of society more than history has ever demanded before—designers just need to be prepared to take on the responsibility.

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i probably should have known I was going to be a designer a long

time ago. When I was a kid, I was consumed with drawing complex imaginary maps (and explaining them to anyone who would listen), designing jerseys for teams in video games (rather than actually playing the games) and reading the encyclopedia and world atlas for fun. The first two quirks are obvious clues that I might someday become a designer, but it’s the third that I see as being so integral to why I am a designer. It’s a general curiosity about our world and our culture that have drawn me to study and appreciate design as a way of life.

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Today, I see myself as a well-rounded student and citizen as well as a designer. I have continued to foster an appreciation for many things beyond my studies, believing that my entire education, from athletics to politics, should be approached with equal seriousness and attention. As a student of graphic design, I understand typographic hierarchy, composition, semiotics, color theory, and system design, but it’s the fact that design allows constant, fluid access to many different disciplines that offers me the challenge and constant renewal. As Michael Bierut put it in his 79 Short Essays on Design, “The great thing about graphic design is it is almost always about something else.” It is this “something else” that excites me and it’s not simply for my own interest. I approach my work with the attitude that if I cannot care about my client’s work, or learn to care about it and relate to them, then how am I to effectively complete the job? If I were unable to see the situation from their perspective (or multiple perspectives) and invest myself as a partner in the project then I would simply not be able to create a meaningful or worthy piece. And I’m not just talking about research, collaboration, and understanding here. These are key components in the success of the job, but when curiosity is woven into a project, graphic design has the opportunity to transcend merely “work for hire” and become a more personal, more artful practice. Curiosity is the symbiotic human agent that enables the graphic designer to personally communicate, resonate, and connect with the client, and achieve graphic design’s ultimate purpose and goal: to connect and communicate information and meaning visually to its recipient. Case in point: this past summer, while interning at the adidas Group, I was asked to research the “brand story” of various client teams. One of my favorite client experiences was with the nhl Florida Panthers. I am a big sports fan, but hockey is the one sport I will almost never watch; in fact, I kind of hate it. Instead of begrudgingly researching an ice hockey team paradoxically from South Florida, where many local residents have never even seen snow, much less played hockey, I became obsessed with all aspects of the client, their story, the history of the region, and even the scientific taxonomy of the Florida Panther itself. I approached the project from the perspective of the fan/consumer, the

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rival, the citizen, and the owner. My resulting designs were built upon a sturdy foundation of honest curiosity. They echoed an Art Deco style with typography reminiscent of vintage South Florida hotel signage combined with an acute attention to the bone structure of a pantherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jaw line. In the end, the designs mattered very little. It was instead the process that will live on in me affording me the ability to create more meaningful and powerful work. M.C. Escherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famous rendering of the two hands drawing one another simultaneously illustrates this phenomenon. If design is created in a vacuum without any meaningful exposure to real human relationships and a legitimate interest and concern from the designer, it may be beautiful but it will ultimately be design generated not by cultural or social context but by the mere institution of graphic design itself. The best design that I see is inspired by a child-like curiosity that takes everything into account: a ballet identity inspired by rows of skyscrapers, an identity system for a high-end store echoing the bustle of big city traffic, or a sweetener packaging that divorces itself from market traditions and instead focuses on the simple qualities of the product. It is successes like these that push me to pursue my diverse and varied passions - in addition to design. Ultimately, it all comes back to the curiosity I still hold onto from my childhood, when I envisioned entire civilizations on a piece of white copier paper.

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We need to ask ourselves whether this is an appropriate trade off

discovery perspective individuality privacy freedom

for mos t of the t wentie th century,

manufacturers dictated how the average American consumer lived. The consumption-driven lifestyle model was introduced in the early 1900s and widely popularized in a post-World War II America that sought stability and uniformity in all aspects of life. Products were created for the masses homogeneously and with little regard for personal tastes, needs, or niche markets. This approach to manufacturing, business, and capitalism worked—and very well too, creating lots of eager and profitable consumers.

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Over the past few years a new paradigm has emerged as we leave the age of mass manufacturing behind and enter one of mass customization and what is now today known as “the long tail.” Wired magazine’s editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson, has written on the topic in regard to the entertainment and music industry, “ this is an example of an entirely new economic model for the media and entertainment industries, one that is just beginning to show its power. Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from dvds at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo! Launch to songs in the iTunes Music Store and Rhapsody. People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what’s available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture).” Though Long Tail economics and the observations of journalists like Chris Anderson and BusinessWeek’s innovation editor Bruce Nussbaum is new, the concept of mass customization is not. The ibm Advanced Business Institute’s Joseph Pine wrote about this “new frontier in business competition for both manufacturing and service industries” sixteen years ago in Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business Competitions. In his book, which has not been checked

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out of Brown University’s Rockefeller library since 1996, Pine argues that the standard view of American industry based on volume of production is no longer relevant in the modern era and that our nation needs to adapt our practices and innovate rather than trying to continue to compete with recently industrialized nations that trump our production capabilities. Even though Pine wrote his book before the rise of the internet and the true revolution of the information age, his views are contemporary and relevant, offering us a potential solution to the predicaments of our underperforming or failing manufacturing and information industries. Pine positions mass customization as a hybrid between artisan production (or craft) and mass production introduced to new appliances that reflect the concept of mass customization,– that originated in the mid-twentieth century as more educated and specific consumer markets emerged. Starting after World War II, when Japan assimilated Western practices of mass production and created a sleeker, more efficient model than the U.S., American industry tried and failed to emulate their model to adapt to the new rules and a shifting consumer base. This led to much of our nation’s present financial crisis and the crumbling of former pillars of the American economy like our automotive industry. Rather than leading through innovation, American industry stagnated through the 1980s and 90s. Around this time mass customization became a potential solution to the problem of foreign competition, not only for manufacturing, but also for the spectrum of American industry, from information architecture to how consumers interact within the marketplace. As Pine points out, America’s success has always emerged from our ability to innovate and promote creative thinking, not in the sheer

mass of our production or ability to adopt another culture’s practices like China and Japan. We are a nation of abstract thinkers; our educational institutions are the best in the world. Wouldn’t a movement away from twentieth-century industries create a new American system that would again set the standard for the developed world and promote the U.S. as a problem-solver and leader in the world community?

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But what was this movement toward? Micromarketing, leaner production techniques, and shorter product/service life cycles offer a system that will organically evolve not based on the principles of industry executives but rather the will and direction of the public. Pine breaks down four types of early mass customization. Collaborative customization involves a firm and an individual customer collaboratively determining the precise product offering that best serves the customerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs, such as a clothing company selling jeans to fit an individual customer. Adaptive customization engages customization on the user-end, producing a standardized product that the customer customizes, such as an adjustable office chair. Transparent customization provides customers with unique products tailor-made to a customerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs on a production level. Finally the last type of customization Pine outlines in the concept of cosmetic customization, the production of standard products marketed to customers in different ways, is the final example.

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Pineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s view of customization is largely product-based, and his analysis of markets and consumers is as relevant as ever as industry continues to customize commodities and products. But over the past five years or so, with the advent of more sophisticated internet marketing technologies, product customization given way to ever-expanding information customization. Most of our online content is edited and customized based on our own personal edits or statistical information collected through the Internet. The mass customization of information and software has redefined entire industries, from advertising and shopping to entertainment and music. Industry is continually attempting to understand how to best use this rapid interconnectedness to attract new customers and retain old ones. 51

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Pine noted in 1992 that we had entered an age of heightened market competitiveness over smaller and more fickle consumer groups. The Internet has only magnified this competitiveness since Pine wrote his book, as so many products are now sold directly to consumers by companies throughout the world. In response, business has linked marketing to new practices of social networking and interconnectedness in the customization of their products and information. An early foray into this realm of product and innovation customization was Budweiser’s Bud.tv, long-form Bud Light commercials that attempted to connect the brand’s “true-believers” by offering appealing content they would associate positively with their products. Bud.tv has some successes though it eventually folded as consumers demanded more control over their experience and gravitated toward organic, customized content rather than flashy, big budget campaigns. Perhaps the most impressive example of consumers dictating their own experience in the ever more democratized marketplace came just a few months ago when Tropicana released a total overhaul in their packaging, a redesign that was rejected by the public, who flooded Twitter and Facebook with complaints and actually moved PepsiCo, Tropicana’s parent company, to revert back to the old packaging. This is an important parable for how dynamic consumer behavior and interaction with industry can affect massive brand and product production change. However, this leads us to examine the issue a little more carefully. While taking back your Tropicana may seem like and empowering move, there is a downside to customizing

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our “experience”: we have also begun to fall into a trap of living within an entirely edited reality. As we all know, these days we subscribe to our favorite blog’s rss feeds, create our own front page for the newspaper (online, mind you), program iTunes to tell us what music we want to listen to, and fast forward through pundits who don’t share our views or advertisements for products we think we don’t want. Such customization of our existence around our preexisting perspectives presents a scary prospect as a society. Esquire Magazine’s culture writer Chuck Klosterman set forth a parodic history of the 21st century for Esquire’s 75th anniversary issue in which he described the idea of “news blow” (as a means of inhaling information) that “renders the user incapable of relating to any person not engaged with an identical strain of the substance.” Though his view is somewhat sensationalized (he also mentions the 2028 Presidential election between “Tom Brady (r-Michigan) and Will Smith (d-California)”) it is a relevant commentary. If we continue to exist in a culture where we are only exposed to what we want to see, taste, and hear and can buffer all other “interference,” how do we change and retain our humanity? And if we continue to be grouped by industry based on our past purchases, clicks, or other decisions, how do we truly discover anything new? In the new globalized world we are going to be presented with unlimited options for creating our own reality through the paradigm of mass information customization. As more of our existence 53

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is housed online, marketers and businesses will have even greater resources and opportunities to reach out to us and connect us to their products or services as “individuals,” (think of the advertisements in Minority Report). We need to ask ourselves whether this is an appropriate trade off. In the specific terms of visual communication and graphic design, it becomes a people based on an individual’s limited perspective or context. If we do become a society of isolated groups of consumers, politicos, and learners with provincial perspectives of the world, what is the good of all of this interconnectedness? All we are doing is redefining national and cultural boundaries in a virtual context. Customization culture was a necessary shift away from the antiquated manufacturing techniques of the twentieth century. It offers the consumer a product or service that better suits their particular needs creating a more successful interaction between the consumer and business. I am afraid, however, that even Joseph Pine, just sixteen years ago, had no idea of where we would take this scripted “individualization” or where we will take it even farther in the future. We think we consumers have power, but more than ever we exist in realities constructed by the networks and institutions we live in. This scenario can only dilute human discovery and narrow our point of view by offering us pre-sorted goods and services catering to our “tastes.”

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We need to ask ourselves whether this is an appropriate trade off not only in our own lives, but as graphic designers. Is it our responsibility to promote interaction between all members of society and not to compartmentalize people based on an individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s limited perspective or context? If we do become a society of isolated groups of consumers, politicos, and learners with provincial perspectives of the world, what is the good of all of this interconnectedness? All we are doing is redefining national and cultural boundaries in a virtual context. Since it is clear that society seems to be headstrong on this track, graphic designers and the media must continue to be more responsible and accountable for maintaining an appropriate balance between filtering and customization to articulate messages with openness and concern for humanity.

SYNCHRONIZING RAND

RATIONALIZING FUTURE BRAND

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the discipline of modern br anding and

corporate identity design have been evolving for over five thousand years. Throughout history mark makers have answered a vital human need to organize, identify and distinguish individuals, property, goods, and organizations. Throughout history the trademarks crafted by these individuals have manifested themselves in various ways from heraldic symbols, monograms, ceramic marks, seals, to the more contemporary concepts of logos, wordmarks, and identities. Regardless of how these marks were formally executed, whether metal brands, cuts, or painted crests they have all utilized typographic and graphic modes of expression to communicate social identity, ownership, and origin – techniques that are still evident in identity design today. Throughout the twentieth century, as global conglomerates formed, visual communication and graphic design became central components for the successful execution of clearly understandable brands and identities. Designers such as Paul Rand, Ivan Chermayeff, and Tom Geismar created some of the most powerful and celebrated marks and identity systems still in existence today. These pioneers coupled solid design foundations with a proper emphasis on the context, environment and extension of the brands they were creating. They infused the creative with the pragmatic but never lost sight that their ultimate goal was still the same as the mark makers thousands of years before them: communicate value, ownership, and an individual identity through simple and understandable graphic means.

Then something changed – businesses started looking for “brand management” to generate “brand architecture” systems and principles to communicate the perceived value of their organizations. The scope and management of these operations were moved out of the designer’s hands and into marketing departments as the business community began to attempt to quantify the value of brand creation and formulate scientific measures of design. The need for brands and organization did not change, but the way they were being conceived had shifted dramatically. During the nineties, the importance of visual communication and emphasis on the execution of design in corporate branding slowly diminished, as strategy and research became the chief informers. Design took a secondary role. This position has led to a culture within the branding community that often views design as an ephemeral element, rather than an integrated strategic member in the bigger picture.

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This commercial focus with apparent rewards for creating a memorable strategic brand (made evident throughout the nineties by the success of many major global super-brands) has led to a syndrome in our society evident in obsessive over branding and, more specifically, re-branding. With the widespread explosion of the Internet and the newfound ability corporations have to connect and interact with individuals, the strategy and science behind brand positioning and creation has reached a nauseating high. Organizations can now understand the trends and apparent desires of their customers to a degree of intimacy that has never previously been seen, fragmenting markets into miniature niches sensitive to every trend and change in taste by measuring web-traffic, purchasing history and web browser clicks.

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This ability to assess and collect such a large amount of useful information on the wants and needs of customers has been hugely beneficial in the customization and improvement of consumer interaction with brands. However, this has also led to a kind of attention deficit disorder in the corporate world, never quite satisfied that they are capably satiating every consumer need simultaneously. This concern has led to a rampant and irresponsible culture of re-branding in our society that is completely founded on notions of trend-following and current style and not on the basic tenets of strong, clear visual communication. Paul Rand, the world’s most celebrated identity and graphic designer, once said that the significance of the marks he created was not in the execution of the form they took on the page but rather the entire responsibility of the corporation to execute and carry out the promises the brand and design perpetuated. What troubles me about the recent re-branding of corporations like Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Pepsi is that the actual business practices have not changed, instead they are conforming to the whims of the public, simply feeding them a socalled “strategy” that they currently desire or identify with. What this leads to, especially when design takes a secondary (following) role, is a communications and system design that is based on trends, focus-tested data, and statistics that will appear outdated in a few years demanding another entire reevaluation of the process.

One of the most explicit examples illustrating this point of branding being used as a vehicle to augment profitability and not to improve consumer interaction or improve visual communication is the re-brand of ups in 2003, by FutureBrand. Upon its release, the new direction was widely criticized as ineffectual and as change for the sake of change. ups, the world’s largest package delivery company, delivering more than 15 million packages a day, was formerly identified by a logo designed by Paul Rand. The original mark, simply rendered in a single color, depicted the ups abbreviation under a stylized bowtied parcel. The mark, and its association with the trademark “Pullman Brown” color came to represent the standard for speed and reliability in the consumer and business shipping industry. By 2003, ups began to spread its enterprise into sectors beyond simply shipping packages to an “expansion of new global supply chain services” as stated in their new brand press release. This expansion along with an apparent need to “bring our look up to speed with our capabilities,” as quoted from then ups Chairman/ceo, Mike Eskew, in the same press release, is what has prompted the “revitalization” of the iconic brand.

the most about the obsessive reiteration. With the release of the new brand system, ups also introduced a new tagline summing up the intentions of their new direction: “Synchronizing the World of Business.” While the copy itself may have some issues of its own, on the whole the line is relevant and restates the message that ups is a corporation that provides solutions across the spectrum of business operations – not just the shipping of parcels. The issue I have, however, is that the As the statement continues, for a total of 28 mission of FutureBrand should have been not pages, it becomes apparent that the bulk of the solely to draft this message but also to ensure content is attempting to rationalize the new its viability and its ability to successfully direction, even addressing the replacement communicate effectively to the public. Here is of Paul Rand’s iconic mark stating that, in where I see the visual communication aspect fact, ups never allowed for bow-tied packages of the ups brand falling very short. Given as some sort of relevant basis for removing the widespread nature of ups’s business, it is the emblematic sign. In addition to pages of important for them to have an identity system writing on the increased capabilities of ups’s that can relate to all aspects of the business, awe-inspiring infrastructure, is a shockingly which seems to be the vague reasoning small amount of detail devoted to the focal behind the somewhat generic new brand point of the new brand system, the shield. The mark. However, what they actually ended up only passage, a brief five-sentence paragraph, with is a re-brand that effectively repackaged is filled with vague language akin to, “The the old meaning and visual strengths of actual look of the new logo gives it a stronger the Rand mark without adding any visual visual presence,” and “For even greater visual character or value – they re-branded impact, the shield gained a three-dimensional based on business decisions, not design appearance.” These lines could be dropped decisions. Upon closer examination, the randomly into any number of the new brand redesign of ups’s look, ostensibly to improve press releases and offer nothing fresh in business viability, has not contributed to an the way of describing the actual intentions improved user experience or more effective of the designer to communicate the “new” communication with the brand. The visual message ups seems intent on conveying. and relational cues that attracted consumers Additionally, the new logo was applied to ups to ups did not change: the big brown trucks, trucks, uniforms, and collateral in the exact the outfits, and the reliability of service. This same manner as the previous logo, without begs the question, what did re-branding do any invention or innovation in the use of the for ups apart from giving them a mark that mark within the system. One could argue that will likely feel stale and outdated in less Paul Rand’s 1961 identity did feel a bit stale than a decade? in the contemporary visual environment but the new identity lacks any true relevance or significance and comes off as a shiny dimensionalized shield with no semblance of semiotic inspiration or syntactic value to the corporation – and this is what disturbs me

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There have been other examples of corporations that, when reviewing the shortcomings of their business, decided that a facelift of their look (like ups) was the easiest solution. Any aspiring branding firm would have leapt at the opportunity to re-brand such an enormous global corporation. However, a design-led approach to researching the “needs” of a re-brand would have likely discovered that the company’s shortcomings did not lie in the mark itself but rather in a larger strategic communication breach that needed to be addressed. The resulting solution could reinforce a corporate identity and reinvigorate the brand through redesigning the model of visual communication as a system, not by simply throwing a shiny new shield on every truck. This discussion naturally leads us to another brand reinvention within the shipping industry – Federal Express. About ten years before ups facelift, Federal Express saw its business growing beyond American borders and an increase in business enterprises beyond just the delivery of parcels and, much like UPS, they deemed it necessary to re-design their brand identity system. The result was an abbreviation of the Federal

Express name to the now ubiquitous FedEx. Landor Associates was hired to spearhead the project and immediately identified two main strengths in FedEx’s business: brand recognition, its widespread identification with speed, precision, and its signature colors of purple and orange used to convey leadership and urgency. The cornerstone of Landor’s strategy was the adoption of a new tagline, “The World On Time,” summing up the company’s new direction as a global leader in precise, speedy shipping. In addition to the implementation of the new tagline, Landor also pressed FedEx to implement new strategies to deliver on this new promise – most notably, in the late nineties with the introduction of online shipment tracking, a first in the industry. The most visible feature of the new positioning, however, was the introduction of the new FedEx wordmark, a simple twocolor variation that emphasized the breadth of FedEx’s business by instituting basic color systems for each aspect of the business. This decision allowed FedEx to convey the multiple outlets of their corporation (Express, Freight, Home Delivery, Office) while still retaining the consistency of a globally identifiable symbol and brand. What sets the FedEx re-brand apart, in addition to effective visual design, is how highly the management of the corporation valued a strong design direction. In the words of ceo, Fred Smith, “corporate image is not viewed as something frivolous.” Though the public may have only implicitly noticed the logo change, FedEx made a commitment to their new design in a way that truly affected the way they interacted with their consumers. One of the most promising signs of positive intent to come from FedEx was the appointment of a single design decision maker to work with Landor allowing the creative decision making to impact the corporate strategy.

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With the introduction of the new abbreviated logo, company vehicles became moving billboards. Where â&#x20AC;&#x153;Federal Expressâ&#x20AC;? only allowed 58-inch high letters on trailers, the new abbreviated mark could stand 6-feet tall. In addition to the new, more effective wordmark, Landor implemented a limited use of purple as a base color on vehicles and aircraft. The result saved FedEx thousands of dollars in paint costs and reduced aircraft surface temperatures by nearly 40 degrees, thus lowering the energy costs necessary to cool the planes. The implementation innovation did not stop here. With 30,000 FedEx drop boxes located across the country, Landor designed a decal system that could be retrofitted over the old boxes saving money while slowly incorporating and implementing an entirely new box design for the future. The FedEx case study is an example of a true collaboration between designer and client, resulting in the creation of a product, which has clearly displayed its longevity (see the implementation of FedEx Office in the 2000s) and adaptability to the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s needs. In the end, the most important impact that Landor and the design team had on FedEx was not necessarily the implementation of a more effective wordmark but rather, the necessary revitalization of how the brand was perceived by the public within a complete corporate system and how to execute this transformation practically with sophisticated business goals in mind.

Branding has often been understood by the design community to be a discipline directed entirely by the business community with less than equal regard for design. Comparing these two cases illustrates the difference between a re-branding project that focuses on how design can powerfully affect business strategy through effective visual communication, with the results transcending focus groups and marketing figures, versus simply using design as a veneer to cover-up an outdated or faulty business model. When branding is approached with design as its center, it allows for more open-minded solutions that build on the brand as it relates social element to the receiver and consumer and not simply as a way to translate profit margins and scientific data in an attempt to quantify the significance of the brand. Identity and mark making have been an inseparably human pursuit for thousands of years, culminating in graphic and typographic communication. When the creation and recreation of brands focuses on addressing human needs and relies on designers for clarity and organization, the results are generative and build upon the connections brands and organizations can provide for our society. This nullifies the notion that brands and branding are simply meant to push a product or service. As power continues to shift to the individual, we will see a greater need for brands that can offer something in return to the consumer, products that positively interact within their environment and communicate value to the lives of consumers; this will be the biggest design challenge of all. 61

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i. introduc tion

The need to differentiate and stand out in a saturated marketplace of products and services has led to the introduction of design as a strategic catalyst positioned to revive faltering business models and rethink old industry practices. The excitement and momentum behind this movement began in the early 2000s with periodicals such as BusinessWeek and Fast Company devoting more and more attention to design and innovation. Around the same time, ideo’s David Kelley, and others, began to advance the methodology of design thinking, a more holistic approach to business problem solving using the processes and principles of creativity to direct business decisions. Understandably, businesses have been hungry to discover solutions to their problems through creativity and innovation.

rethinking design & business thesis project rese arching the role of business and le adership e d u c at i o n in design institutions 2009

However, as this new methodology of business practice holds design to a higher societal standard than ever before, there have been some questions surrounding its implementation and widespread effectiveness. Business periodicals have been the most sunny when reporting the progress of true partnerships and integration of “design thinking” but lately there has been some vacillation. Even one of the movement’s biggest allies, BusinessWeek’s Bruce Nussbaum, had to announce the death of his favorite catch-all word, the very notably hot: innovation. It is this very word that leads to a reflection upon the design community’s overall reaction and this call to arms. For the most part, very little of business practice has been affected by design. Though firms like ideo have been given the opportunity to affect the business model of a client, the more typical relationship is still a somewhat adversarial role between designer and client. Many professionals have often expressed in their personal monographs that business and design simply do not exist in the same universe. This really could not be further from the truth. The problem between design and business does not arise from a reciprocal need or from the lack of a common mission, but instead, it stems from lack of communication and mutual understanding. The reason many designers are not buying into this new excitement is not because they are uninterested in affecting their client’s strategy through creative means but rather, because they have not been given the tools or the opportunity to do this. The current commentary on the subject is causing excitement in the business audience but not in the design community. Graphic designer and vocal design-business writer, Michael Bierut, summed up the opinions shared by so many fellow designers- writing that businesses are excited about “innovation” because they see innovators as “forthright fellows with their shirtsleeves rolled up, covering whiteboards with vigorous magic-markered diagrams, arrows pointing to words like “Results!” Design, on the other hand, is seen as an aesthetic pursuit that is sometimes good and sometimes bad, while, “it’s taken for granted that innovation, however, is always good.” Extending beyond the trivial issues that designers have with the use of denigrating language (that’s a completely different matter), lies a much more deeply rooted obstacle preventing a better synthesis and understanding between design and business – that is the lack of context, organizational understanding, and leadership education promoted in modern design education.

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introduction

The more motivated of the two parties involved in this interaction, business, has already made monumental shifts in graduate business education toward a more complete awareness of design’s essential role in new business thinking. These new programs have been instrumental in the evolution today’s mba but ultimately do little to promote an equal, paradigm-shifting interaction between design and business. If business leaders have the tools to understand “design thinking,” this nevertheless does not promote design or designers to a true leadership position within organizations. Remedying this dilemma requires a reassessment of how business is to be integrated into new design school curricula. Design education already finds itself in a state of flux. Aside from the rapid evolution of the tools and media that students work with, even the most well-respected programs have been attempting to make their voices heard and add professional credibility to the field before a public that cannot differentiate these specialized attributes from an exclusively fine arts education. There have been two main approaches to business studies in design education (both discussed at length later in this document), one focusing on a complete integration of “design management” and the other, more common, an introduction of cursory seminars on business practice and technical skills. On a broader level, neither of these approaches is truly hitting the right mark - to educate designers that are excited and equipped not only to practice a high standard of design but also to manage and understand business situations and be respected as partners in the business community. Both design and business are still compartmentalizing each other within their respective institutions and will continue to attempt to package their essence into an easily understood and quantitative view of each field. Given the overlapping nature of these two disciplines, with the lines between design and business blurring constantly, the true cooperation that professionals are so excited to see will only become a reality when designers are trained to be leaders and equals in business and not just well-versed students in a narrowly defined “business” education. This is much more than another passing trend: design can be great business.

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ii. thesis

Michael Bierut, partner designer at Pentagram, once wrote, “Not everything is design, but design is about everything. So do yourself a favor: be ready for anything.” Today more than ever this statement rings true. As design evolved throughout the twentieth century there have been many iterations of its practice and theory. Connections with science, fine arts, engineering, the humanities, and sociology have led to a discipline that is so intertwined with everything in our world that it escapes definition. It is the broad classification of design, as the edification and thoughtful architecture of all human creation that epitomizes how integral design unquestionably is to the success of our society.

business

Thesis

Since the debate outlined in the summary above is not to be about the significance of design to the human race but rather, how design, as a method of problem solving, can be integrated into practices other than design-related areas to achieve an elevated level of success. The question stands, how can this be done? Like never before in modern history, design is being called upon to step into a leadership position, asked to address a myriad of dilemmas, both social and environmental, that challenge not only the way that we interact but also our very existence. Tough times have always called for creative problem solving and individual innovative genius to change seemingly futile situations, but what our present situation requires is not the work of a few brilliant men behind closed doors but instead, the movement of our entire culture toward an incorporation and an understanding of the importance of a more holistic and creative approach. There is no better place to begin this than with the designers themselves. Much has been written on the need to integrate creative “design thinking” within the business community but, apart from a great deal of conversation and good thinking on the topic, no action has been realized. Business leaders, no matter how excited they are to approach strategic problems from a “design” perspective, are not going to be effective in implementing any change in their business model unless they inspire a level of curiosity, excitement and potency amongst the design community themselves to achieve more and be equally involved. To designers today, the concept of becoming an integral partner in the business world is just another problem that the community must face. Sustainability, integrating deeper scientific approaches, gaining respect in the broader community, or integrating business thinking into their process – all of these issues are seen as equal. Designers somehow have to choose if they want to be form makers, focus on aesthetics, be dilettantes to the corporate world, or be designing systems and

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THESIS

ideas and generating real impact. However, this should not be the case. Designers need to understand that in order to move forward in any of these directions they need to be equipped and educated to collaborate beyond interactions among designers. This can only be achieved with a basic understanding of leadership, business practice, and organizations. The business, scientific, and general communities have made it abundantly clear that they are collectively eager to integrate “design thinking” more widely into their practice. The next step in this process is to affect a systemic shift in the way business thinking in approached by designers. Many designers and artists are often alienated by the concept of business thinking or integration. This conjures up notions of corporate boardrooms and more recently the perils and pitfalls of the financial crisis. In reality, this is not how business will affect design’s potential. In the higher education of designers today, a greater weight is now being placed on the conception of professional preparation – auxiliary courses geared to introduce students to pragmatic models of finance, accounting, intellectual property law, and basic start-up strategies. Though beneficial, these practices are certainly not going to advance the role of designers in any field – and this is not the assumption. There may however, be a way to spark a higher level of involvement on the topic of business, organically, within the design community, with the root of the solution fixed in education.

Design education on its own is a contentious topic and integrating so-called “professional” studies is a topic few designers will approach willingly. Since there are many methods presented to educate young designers in the three short years that the most intensive design programs prescribe, seeing eye-to-eye on a topic as broad as business education will not be achieved easily. However, when we examine the lack of integration more closely, if design schools were to adopt a more intrinsic approach to business education, designers would have the opportunity to be exposed to the inner workings of business and would learn how business can actually positively affect the execution of design and lead to a more practical, worldly and ultimately more effective design process. The notion that business education is more of a skill set for designers to learn instead of viewing design education as a concept for business people to embrace has a long, very resistant foundation. Regardless of how interested an individual designer may be to work in the corporate or business world beyond the design community, the very act of designing for the public and designing as a profession requires a solid understanding of client interactions, business goals, and pragmatic design solutions that must take business practices into account. It may be beneficial to understand design as a business leader but it is not necessary in order to succeed. A designer, on the

other hand, that cannot relate or communicate the significance of his product or service to a business and execute design processes with strategy in mind can no longer compete in today’s society. Furthermore, given design’s present nature as an educational discipline, where designers benefit from a knowledge of everything from science to theology, having a comprehensive notion of business will only further build upon the necessary skills through a deeper understanding of a client’s goals. This discussion of business and design education harkens back to Michael Bierut’s quote that design is about everything. Business studies and the promotion of tomorrow’s designers as leaders and engineers of strategic business practice can offer design so much more than a greater realization of design’s potential in the corporate world. If design students can be actively and openly engaged to rethink the scope of their education, we are giving them the opportunity to explore the depth of what design is capable of helping them achieve. They will be empowered to understand early in their careers that the skills and problem-solving approach developed in school can be implemented in countless applications, which have the potential to affect the world positively and creatively. The solution begins when we step beyond our limited views of what “design” and “business” are and begin to understand that we no longer live in a world that can afford to compartmentalize solutions by such anachronistic standards.

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THESIS

BUSINESS TODAY

design TODAY

design education TODAY

iii. business today

iv. design today

v. design educ ation

“Design Thinking,” nearly anyone working in business today has heard this phrase tossed around meetings and offices often in reference to a new product offering, corporate direction, or some other form of innovation. Lately, along with innovation, design thinking has taken hold in the business community as one of the key strategies for success. Companies are hungry to thrive, especially in today’s dire economic conditions, and they see design thinking as a tangible way toward achieving this goal.

Design has always had to walk the fine line between art and business. Since the rise of commercial design and mass-production in advertising and design in the post World War ii era, designers have been attempting to practice both good design and good business simultaneously. It has been anything but a smooth ride.

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Since the 1950s, following a mass exodus of European designers to the United States and a growing rise in the need for mass communication and production, the U.S. has been the worldwide leader in the higher education of designers. However, the approach to design education is far from the organized and structured approach as would be expected in a modern liberal arts college. continued on page x x

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Though the integration of strategic design in business and the promotion of creative leadership is critical in helping companies get ahead in the industry today, “design thinking” comes off as a complete misnomer for an approach that is actually nothing new at all to the business world. Looking at what is today regarded as “design thinking” leads us to the conclusion, when boiled down to its essence, that it is simply a more complete, holistic approach to the business philosophy. More abstractly, it can be described as a vehicle created to drive ideas through contextual observation, planning, and ultimately effective implementation. Frankly, successful companies have been executing this integrative strategy for years without the word design ever coming out of their mouths. Figures like Peter Drucker introduced concepts that parallel these “new” tenets startlingly closely as he and other business leaders championed a broader notion of business and implemented truly innovative ventures. Companies like ibm, under the leadership of Thomas Watson, put design at the forefront of their strategy, cementingibm as one of the most important and respected corporations of the 20th century. Ultimately, the term “design thinking” pigeonholes design and detracts from the fundamental idea that good business is really just good design. Businesses would greatly benefit from implementing a more holistic, pragmatic approach, which design is well known for, in all of their affairs in order to truly adopt “design thinking”. Regardless of buzzwords and inaccurate language swirling around conversations within the business community, it is abundantly clear that businesses are craving designers to do more than add aesthetic brilliance to their companies these days. They are in need of fundamental tactics and approaches to stay competitive and efficient in an increasingly dynamic and competitive world where the consumer is gaining more command every day.

To begin to break down this nascent and energetic blending of educational approaches it is best to first examine the institutions and organizations contributing to the conversation. Recently, these topics have become the mainstay of events like the Davos World Economic Forum, which brings together many leaders of business, politics, and now design as well as the intellectual community to try to better understand the most pressing issues facing the world. These forums have spawned many collaborative organizations in the past twenty years, formed to help better address the needs of the business world. Organizations, such as the Corporate Design Foundation, The Design Council (uk), DMI, C&binet (uk), the Business Innovation Factory, and the Center for Design and Business, vary in their specific mission, scale, and purpose (some

more profit-based than others) but are all committed to promote interaction and cooperation between design and business in order to demonstrate and implement design’s value in terms that businesses can understand. These organizations have been successful in spreading the themes of design integration, innovation and more recently business transformation throughout their communities but have struggled to “sell” the more comprehensive understanding of design to business, leaving their impact on the larger system of business practice relatively minor. In the educational circuit many business schools have felt the need to integrate “design thinking” into their curricula in order to stay relevant and successful in a world that now, given the recent events of the financial crisis, is not enamored with the attitude many schools have taken in the past. Business schools also are seeing the advantages of widening their scope of prospective students in the belief that there can be several paths to an mba and that the successful business leaders of tomorrow are going to be a much more diverse and varied group than the leaders of the 20th century. No school has embraced this idea more than the Rotman School of Management in Canada and its Dean, Roger Martin. Martin has embraced the philosophy of creative leadership within organizations and has worked within his school to introduce integrative thinking more fully into the core curriculum. He has gained international acclaim for his work and writing, and has become an international leader introducing this new discipline into the educational world. Rotman is not alone in these trends. Other business schools have begun to open their doors to a wider base of students, in the hope that a more well-rounded student body will lead to more innovation and diversity within both the curriculum and the student body. In terms of specific business schools, not surprisingly, Stanford has become another leader in embracing design and integrating engineers and designers into its mba program within its Institute of Design. Other programs have continued to form throughout the U.S. and the world as this concept of integrative discipline continues to evolve organically. Though the institutions and universities have moved forward by introducing this more integrative approach to business thinking, the most publicized and widely circulated “buzz” on the subject has been at BusinessWeek magazine. For the past few years BusinessWeek, along with a few other periodicals, not to the same extent, has advanced and fostered a discussion of innovation and design to the business community. In line with many of the recent trends in the magazine industry, much of this discussion has been on their active online portal, allowing for a wide reach and two-way discussions between the reader and the journalist. BusinessWeek has been extremely successful in terms of disseminating information,

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strategy, and provoking conversation around innovation to business people, but its biggest asset by far has been journalist, Bruce Nussbaum. If there were ever another cheerleader for a movement of this nature, Nussbaum would outshine, out network, and out-speak them. His chief duty at Business week is curating an eponymous blog, “Nussbaum on Design,” that covers everything design and business from Obama’s stimulus bill and its lack of innovative thinking, to open discussions on specific companies and their strategies for integrating design. In addition to the blog, Nussbaum religiously attends both design and business conferences, teaches a course at Parsons with several other high profile speakers on the topic, and makes connections within both fields to promote interconnectivity. Though his impact is more apparent to the business audience, who are more receptive to his writing style and background, Nussbaum does an impressive job promoting this budding discipline to everyone, easily relating his ideas to business minds, packaging up the whole chatter into a more linear system than has ever been articulated before. While his efforts are truly commendable and he is clearly a great promoter of both designers and their possible impact on the business world on a macro level, just like the institutions and universities he, along with BusinessWeek, has failed to affect any real change greater than a ripple throughout the industry. One could easily say that all of the literature on the subject is too focused on trends and buzz words, with the most recent swirl around the idea of “transformation”. Ultimately, these buzzwords offer only a superficial solution to what is a complex issue that demands the equal interaction and partnership of design. Too often these mantras have been reiterated in a form that forces the real solutions and dialogue into a format that is too easily quantitative and formulaic.

BusinessWeek, Nussbaum, the Rotman School of Management, and other involved institutions and organizations have created an amazing resource for businesses to better understand and define what is necessary for a successful interaction of design and business. However, returning back to the definition of “design thinking” there has still been little progress or success in the culminating parts of the process, namely the execution and implementation of the strategies everyone seems be so interested in. It appears, at least for now, that the current approach of hitting executives over the head with essays and conferences about the impact of design on business simply does not work. We will see what will eventually become of this interaction, whether the business world will commit to foster this interaction on a larger, systemic level. It stands to reason that if we can break from the habit of compartmentalizing ideas like “design thinking” and see the two as complements to one another there is clearly much success to be had.

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The design practices of the 1960s, 70s, and even 80s, were largely craft based; designers spent much of their time as a fine artist might, pouring over drafting tables and creating sample concept layouts and mock-ups by hand. They had a relationship with their clients for sure, but it often only involved a few meetings, often not even attended by the designers themselves. In larger firms, like advertising agencies, the designers never actually met the client; all messages were relayed through account executives and managers, the salespeople. This system led to a slow but certain rift between the design and business communities. The two could not see eye to eye because they rarely had the opportunity. Everything was conveniently compartmentalized to keep business and design in their own respective arenas. Though this was the norm, there were, however, some exceptions to this rule. Many smaller, designer-led, agencies offered direct interaction between designer and client. Designers like Paul Rand, Massimo Vignelli, Ivan Chermayeff, Tom Geismar, and Milton Glaser (among others), employed their work to transform the strategy of their clients through the sheer power of their work, and perhaps most surprisingly, the integration of business thinking into their agencies. This approach, contrary to the wildfire fervor around “design thinking” today, introduced the designer into a business atmosphere. Often introduced as vice presidents of design at larger organizations, designers were able to manage and coordinate all design-related functions within the business. Names like Lou Dorfsman at cbs and wgbh’s Chris Pullman are still icons today for the sensible design practices that elevated their companies to sublime levels of design consciousness and overall consistency. These strategies were often born out of a lack of specialization in the field, which forced designers into leadership roles, taking on the responsibility of a job that today would be filled by many different individuals. However, the success of this thinking and practice actually hurt the designer’s role as a leader in the business community. As the popularity of branding and consumerism in general exploded in the 1980s and 90s there was a rampant consolidation of these smaller creative design agencies as well as advertising agencies into larger communications holding companies with offices and employees worldwide. This movement led to a bureaucratization of the industry and a further compartmentalization of design, placing it into a separate and inequitable box from its business counterpart. The new directors of these organizations, who were not designers, created a hierarchy similar to that of an advertising agency where art direction fell clearly below the guise of account management, and rarely dealt directly with the client. Furthermore, with the rise

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D esig n T O D AY

of computer-aided design, we have seen the world form an even more ambiguous view of the discipline and what it is exactly that designers can offer. The fast paced rise of Do-It-Yourself design, in combination with a reluctance of many designers to embrace the new shift in the profession’s tools helped to create an animosity between the design and business worlds. This resentment was largely because businesses could not rationalize paying an expensive design consultancy for work the designers could not justify as being more valuable than what a ‘Photoshop jockey’ could create. Herein lies the root of design’s problems: communication of value and a mutual understanding between the client and the designer.

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The compartmentalization of design has emerged as the model for large design agencies, which are now more commonly referred to as branding or product innovation consultancies. Some of the smaller, privately-held firms still approach design with a clear understanding of the important integration of business into their practice. ideo, the internationally acclaimed product design firm, has truly established itself as the leader of this class. Under the leadership of Tim Brown, who has worked actively with figureheads of the business world to promote ‘design thinking’ and innovative strategy, ideo has carved out a niche as a respected and accomplished firm in even the eyes of the most conservative businesses. In addition to a unique but now widely emulated process of product development, ideo has begun to work with its clients to implement new strategic direction and design to bolster a company’s performance. Though these pioneering efforts have garnered great attention for ideo, their success has been rather limited. It seems that as a firm they have been able to successfully create a curiosity within the business community but have not yet truly implemented the ideas they support so passionately. In another approach to addressing these issues of compartmentalization, graphic designer, Michael Bierut has written a great deal on his personal view of design’s integration with business. A partner at the international design firm, Pentagram, Bierut basically fulfills the role of ceo, coo, and cfo in addition to designer for his group. Though they operate in a relatively niche market, with a smaller number of high-end clients, Pentagram’s strategy for collaboration between designer and client is unparalleled. The organization stresses the importance of designing as a partnership and deeply involves their client into the process to better address their needs. Though Bierut and Pentagram offer some unique and refreshing perspectives on the conversation, their impact, too, has been no more than a blip on the radar screen of the current business practices and strategies.

These two examples, in addition to the work of the large corporate firms and the small three to five person firms, provide a fairly complete depiction of the design industry as it stands today in relation to the world of business. There are certainly moments of brilliance and success in seeking a more comprehensive approach to design and a more meaningful relationship with the client, but on the whole, it remains an extremely fragmented and specific industry that the business community does not communicate with very well. The only way that this lack of shared vision or understanding is going to change is to broaden the education of tomorrow’s design and business professionals. Examining the range of design schools from portfolio schools like the Art Institute network which focus on technical skills, to the process-based schools like Rhode Island School of Design which push students to think in terms of design on an integrated level, it is clear that the incorporation of “business thinking” is still a relatively novel concept and not fully incorporated into most curricula. The most developed integration of a business curriculum into a design school appears to be Parsons School of Design in New York City. Parsons has hired journalist Bruce Nussbaum to teach in its design department, offering a survey of topics such as innovation and design thinking. Nussbaum has invited many big names from both the design and business worlds to speak at Parsons. After reviewing the course outline posted online, the approach still seems overly broad and vague. Beyond Parsons, the current landscape of business education in design schools is even bleaker. Many schools offer introductory courses in business skills such as financial accounting, organizations, and basic economics but merely teaching these skills will not change the paradigm in the professional community.

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The best design schools have a reputation for largely ignoring serious career planning, preparation, and business education, believing that those skills will be learned within the first few years in the professional world; the problem is, they are not. Designers graduate school and gain some exposure to these experiences but are still primarily designing while their higher-ups deal personally with clients, make strategy decisions and are basically taking general leadership control. This is a serious problem for design. If the discipline hopes to transcend its stigma as an aesthetic veneer to the business community, the change needs to start with a proper integration and preparation of students. The more educated and open-minded designers are to ‘business thinking’ the more they will be able to lead in the business world and change the corporate culture that developed throughout the 80’s and 90’s, redefining the business landscape and design’s involvement in it. Business education needs to not only be approached as

a skill set that will allow designers to operate their own firms and understand the financial decisions of their clients. Business education should be viewed as an important aspect of a complete design education, informing design as a broader model of what business and essential design really does, that is, to provide goods or services to satisfy a customer need. Fundamentally, an education with a sound basis in these principles would provide a design student with a better understanding of their projects, allowing them to quantify a more customer centric approach, eventually leading to better design. The emphasis on the human factor and the market association would help designers understand their clients better and put future professionals in a more viable position to lead in the organizations they end up working within.

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Today, a formal design education trains the best designers; there is no question surrounding this fact. However, the more pertinent question is whether or not design students are trained to be the best professional designers. The designers of the 1950s and 60s were from a generation that was the first to formally receive a higher education in design. Their experiences in school were those of constant collaboration across disciplines and much of the practice of design was often with areas of study that would today be completely foreign to contemporary designers. It is actually quite interesting that what designers should be striving for in their practice is an emulation of their predecessors who had so much less access to the resources at our disposal today. There is a general interest in integrating more fully with clients and businesses in the hope that it will lead to a more rewarding and freer design process, but not much has been put into actual practice. The current climate is more concerned with simply â&#x20AC;&#x153;dealingâ&#x20AC;? with business rather than becoming a more important and vocal member of the leadership and decision-making process. Until this changes within the educational culture of the preeminent design institutions, we will continue to see a struggle for design and business to be able to communicate on equal terms and with equal consideration. The eventual result of this really lies in the hands of design engaging business and empowering themselves to collaborate equally on interactions larger than a specific skill set can address alone.

v. design educ ation today continued...

rethinking design &

The early luminaries of design history were nearly all self-taught masters who relied on their own inventiveness, creativity, and contextual observation to derive their success. Today, this still remains a heavily valued skill for designers, but the current educational model has been slow to shake the notion that design is simply a commercial application of fine arts and it was treated largely this way throughout the twentieth century. Design has often been seen by the professional world as an adjunct component along with advertising and production – a gloss to make the true, underlying mechanism look better. However shallow this may seem to today’s intellectual and intelligent design audience, the education system at this time was focused on preparing students for the professional working world. This vocational, technique-driven standard in the world of American design education shifted toward a more abstract view following World War ii. The first U.S. design schools were modeled on the revolutionary practices of schools like the Bauhaus, Basel, and Ulm, which established the existence of basic design principles which underlie all design disciplines, emphasizing the importance of a design education beginning with abstract problem solving and introducing students to these universal principles before broaching any pragmatic topics. The designers that put forward this standard began design programs at institutions that graphic designer and author Michael Bierut calls “process schools,” places such as Yale (Josef Albers), Harvard (Walter Gropius), and Illinois Institute of Technology (van der Rohe) that emphasized process-driven problem solving.

business

D esig n E D U C AT IO N T O D AY

In the same essay, entitled, Why Graphic Designers Can’t Think, Bierut goes on to say that there are two types of design schools in the United States today: the previously mentioned “process schools” and the form-driven “slick schools.” While process schools are direct descendants of the theoretically centered European design meccas, the “slick schools” are more closely attributed to the technical institutions that approached design in a pragmatic manner, valuing the training of students, skills and presentation over sophisticated problem solving and “thinking” like a designer. For roughly the last thirty years of the twentieth century, these two types of schools coexisted somewhat harmoniously, each pursuing the discipline of design as their respective philosophies dictated. Then came the introduction of the personal computer and a great shift in the paradigm and accessibility of “design”. It was at this point that things became more nebulous within the design world. Technology has always triggered massive changes in the way design is executed, from the advent of set type to the introduction of the

Xerox machine, but the personal computer introduced an era that ignited a major change for design – the exponential growth of two-year associate programs focused on technique-based design education.

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The most interesting observation that Bierut makes about these two directions in U.S. design education is not how different these approaches are (as it seems both are equally sought by professional corporations) but rather how they are similar. Both, in effect, fail to create designers that are able to “think.” He goes on to elaborate that in most programs “it’s possible to study (graphic) design for four years without any meaningful exposure to the fine arts, literature, science, history, politics, or any of other disciplines that unite us in a common culture.” Bierut’s over arching argument is that designers need to be educated beyond simply understanding design principles. By its very nature, design is a practice that encompasses all aspects of humanity, a fact that could possibly be missed entirely with the recent flush of “designers” educated in online and vocational programs.

D esig n E D U C AT IO N T O D AY

Steven Heller, one of the most prolific contemporary design writers, further echoes Bierut’s sentiment. “What is the greatest problem facing (graphic) design education today? Not enough quality time.” Heller, who edited a collection of essays entitled The Education of a Graphic Designer, believes that the current model of design education is “insufficient to cover everything today’s well-rounded graphic designer should know.” This “crisis in education” is creating a generation of designers that lack a deep enough fluency in design languages, and a profound lack of “basic business acumen.” Heller’s views are commonplace among professional designers – basically, that design education (the Swiss method, presumably) isn’t broken; students simply are not presented with a broad enough education encompassing not only design but the humanities, business, and even sciences by the conclusion of their time in school. Though he laments a common problem, the only solution Heller can seem to suggest is the addition of an extra year to all American design programs. This hardly seems like a pragmatic solution and does not address the schism that lies at the heart of how to approach teaching design as a discipline. While Bierut and Heller argue that U.S. design education lacks the opportunities and time for students to gain a more complete education, author and designer Ralph Caplan, offers a different hypothesis in his essay, Why Designers Can Think. Here, he advocates for the “uncommon intelligence and curiosity” of designers and attempts to clarify the “seeming incongruity between

the intellectual prowess of designers and the limited educational requirements of the trade they follow.” He goes on to discuss that as technology has progressed, designing has become more about the mind than the hand. This theory leads to his final conclusion that it is not that design schools do not offer any “meaningful exposure” to the world beyond design, but rather, just like nearly any university today, students can easily avoid any meaningful exposure to a complete education no matter what their major of study. He believes that responsibility does not lie so much in the way that design schools teach but instead, how they present the education available to their students– the argument is of form versus content. While these perspectives attempt to depict the general attitude of current design professionals toward design education, none truly touch upon the real definition of what is the goal of all of this education. The goal is to create designers better prepared to affect the world with what they create and how they solve problems. This brings us back to a major issue facing nearly all design schools, that design graduates are not prepared by the institution for the challenges and interactions they are going to face in the professional world. It is argued that too much of the “professional” part of the education is left for the students to take on themselves and learn firsthand once in the workplace.

rethinking design & business

D esig n E D U C AT IO N T O D AY

The answer should be quite simple: offer students “professional preparation” courses to fill the holes in their education. The hopeful and ultimately more exciting aspect of the integration of design and business, when compared to the entirety of design education, is its relative nascence and capacity for continued redirection, refocus and finesse toward a more successful and rewarding end. Business and leadership education has only really been formally approached in design schools in the past ten years, unlike design education, which has evolved over the past seventy years. It is possible that an integrative approach to business thinking by designers may be just what design education needs to fully enable designers to finally assume professional positions befitting their full abilities. When examining the need for a business/professional education in American design schools, there is a clear trend that is in line with the much larger philosophies that Bierut outlined in his writing. After a cross-sectional analysis of businesses integration in design schools throughout the United States, two clear courses of action strategy emerged: the implementation of cursory adjunct programs, and design management full-time major integrations. The first course of action, far more widespread due to the extra-curricular nature of its approach, are exemplified in the cursory programs introduced in the past ten years by many design schools. Though the correlation is not exact, many of the schools on this list also

would fall into Bierut’s category of “process” schools. These longestablished institutions have well-fixed curricula and have appeared to, in many cases, introduce business education into their schools as a defensive move to add credibility to their program’s quantitative and professional merit, going along with the flow of current trend thinking. These perfunctory programs are typically operated through the college’s career planning office in the form of adding visiting lecturers, presentations on “business basics” such as balance sheets, intellectual property, interviews and coversheets, and short workshops on economics and finances. In addition, some of these schools have begun to offer elective courses on “business” that give students a survey of case studies, business plans, and business writing. These courses invite guest lecturers and alumni to talk with students about their experiences in the professional, “real” world, but on the whole offer little opportunity for personal experience, exploration or real leadership opportunities.

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Design EDUCATION TODAY

The second and immensely more integrative approach to business education is the new and emerging discipline of “Design Management.” Schools offer a design management program attempting to educate students through a hybrid curriculum combining both design skills and business education. This educational structure is aimed at creating a student that is well prepared for working in a business-like, creative environment and also has the tools to understand both management and design. Naturally, the schools that have been quick to embrace and welcome this integrative discipline as a complete major into their institutions have been the “slick” portfolio schools. The most unique in this group has been the California College of Arts, which has introduced the first mba program housed in a traditional design school. Many professionals in design and business have questioned the probability of success for this program and similar programs, existing in a school that has no prior business education track record and it remains to be seen if graduates of programs such as this will be more successful in the professional world than their more traditional design educated counterparts.

There continue to be questions surrounding the basic philosophy behind a complete design education in the United States and these two directions still do not offer a truly symbiotic relationship that a cross-disciplinary and contextually rich educational environment could offer. Both of these approaches fall short in their philosophies because neither is focused on elevating students to be more effective members of society after graduation. While the process schools focus their education on problem solving through theoretical puzzles and exercises and the slick schools appear concerned with creating brilliant aesthetics, neither understands that the transcendence of design education in a completely synergized setting. The success lies in offering students an experience that is more akin to the early design luminaries who learned through contextual observation and real-life challenges beyond image and form making. Once U.S. design schools adopt a more holistic approach and incorporate a fundamental understanding of business thinking into the heart of their curricula, they will realize that it will improve the work of their students on many levels and will lead to better design. The goal of design education for the twentieth century needs to be to address the role of a designer in society. Our culture is full of challenges and all types of problems and these educational institutions are in the position to provide the world with the creative thinkers to solve them. Students simply need to be given the structure and the opportunity to advance themselves into positions of authority and leadership in the professional world.

rethinking design & business

Design EDUCATION TODAY

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This year’s Senior Studio course in the Graphic Design Department at the Rhode Island School of Design focused on the theme of “Design Today.” The course objectives describe that we were to “address opportunities and complexities in graphic design- especially those emerging with new media, such as time-based and non-linear media, interactive/participatory design, and social networks.” Sounds like a great course, unfortunately much like “Design Today” the class suffered from trying to “be everything” and finally wound up as somewhat of a superficial survey in what was meant to be a deep examination of design’s emerging practices.

d e s i g n to day ? critique of risd’s senior studio gr aphic design course 2009

In recent years the word “design” has sadly become almost as meaningless as “innovation,” “outside- the-box,” and most recently “design thinking.” Recently design has come to promise so many things, while offering very little unique and tangible value. It still possess its 20th century qualities of providing aesthetics and style to objects but this has become very secondary to beliefs that it is the new model for doing business, creating new technologies, and transforming the way we live and interact. Leaders in the field are busy selling these ideas to business people with the proclamation that the mfa is the new mba; A statement which could not be farther from the truth. Sure an mfa provides graduates with skills in creative problem solving and unique process methods to their mba counterparts but how many companies are actually hiring mfas to manage their teams, product lines, and formulate their strategies - zero. The mfa is no more a golden ticket than any other degree, success in these fields really comes down to hard work, intelligence, and experience - not whether you went to hbs or the Stanford d.school. What all of this discussion about design and design thinking is most elementally about is creativity, problem solving, and collaborative leadership, elements not unique or exclusive to design. Every successful entrepreneur, scientist, author, and businessperson in the past hundred years has possessed the exact skills that design leaders express in their new books. But does this make them designers or even design thinkers? No, it is what it has always taken to be successful in our world, ingenuity, intelligence, and creativity. What is happening today is just a repackaging (quite well) these ideas as something new and marketable (design thinking). Ultimately this is doing a disservice to our field by promising something very few designers have been adequately educated or equipped for and a model that will never be sustainable in modern corporate culture.

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So while the professional world of “Design Today” has been so heavily diluted into a skill set involving everything plus that creative spark, our academic institutions have been scrambling to keep up and remain “relevant.” The response by risd’s Graphic Design Department, while noble that they are now attempting to change and give students the supposed tools to succeed in the modern world of “design,” is not succeeding. The course’s main project, an openended investigation of the risd Museum of Art, held potential for collaboration, creativity, and strategy, but ultimately didn’t live up to its billing. While these elements were promoted and presented, the course never made the leap into real strategy or creative challenge. Project teams consisted of four graphic designers, and while there were great elements of project management, the project lacked any formal client relationship. Though a diverse array of products were expected, including a mandatory motion workshop, much of what was produced was too surface to encourage deep intellectual thought and analysis. Essentially the course was much like the professional world of “Design Today,” it was trying to be too much and not hitting on anything with serious meaning or depth. What we need now isn’t an sweeping and superficial introduction to “new media” or “social networking” but a more focused curriculum allowing for personal exploration in technical disciplines (because there are now far too many to all be taught formally) while providing a foundation in what really makes design unique today: the ability to connect and improve an individual’s experiences through cross-disciplinary collaborative means. In some respects “Design Today” was a great course for me at this time in my life. It demonstrated to me that though everyone in the room is now aware of design’s true value in society: connections, delight, and (potentially) leadership, the paradigm shift has yet to occur to accomplish any of this. If designers can refocus their energy away from trying to be “the new mba” and back to establishing value and commodity through successful cross-disciplinary projects, real strategic influence, and solutions to improve our lives then we might finally find ourselves at the table today’s design leaders are too busy trying to sell their alchemy to. Ultimately if any solution like this ever should occur, and design case escape the mire of becoming the next “innovation” to business and technology, it isn’t going to start with our established organizations and leadership. The change must occur at the outset of a designer’s experience - in education. If a student is presented with the opportunity to critically study corroboratively (by this I mean involving engineers, English majors, biologists - the broad spectrum), simultaneously infusing a background in their passion (whether its technology,

d e s i g n to day ?

business, humanitarian, the environment, etc.) with a comprehensive studio curriculum, design might just be able to achieve these lofty goals on an individual level. The future of design cannot lie in a total reformation of the field, access to the tools has become too democratized for that (we will never be medicine) but rather through a new perspective for what design’s future leaders can affect and achieve. With that, I hope next year’s course is “Design Tomorrow,” because we’re already too late for “Today.”

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what are your three mos t subs tantial accomplishment s and why do you view them a s such?

hbs t wo + t wo a p p l i c at i o n e s s ay s f o r

Moving many times through my youth, each time readjusting to new norms and challenges has left me with many quantitative achievements to list, but as I enter my final undergraduate year, I realize that my most substantial accomplishment thus far is not so quantifiable. It is discovering my life’s passion for design. This passion, cultivated consciously or unconsciously through all of my formative years, translates into more than a career path for me, rather, into a way of life.

h a r va r d business school

At twenty-one, I feel privileged to be one in a small group of individuals who have found the reason to get up in the morning and a drive to succeed everyday. In my final critique this spring, a professor said to me as she looked at my portfolio, “You really love graphic design, don’t you? It shows through not only your work but the way you talk about it.” The statement stuck with me because she hit upon the real reason that I love graphic design – it’s capability of delivering an intangible narrative and it’s myriad methods of expression. My work in design does not have to fall within the conventional parameters or applications of graphic design, but rather can manifest through a more abstract means, creatively problem solving and strategizing. Whether or not I remain a “designer,” I will utilize these skills and my passion will continue to inspire me to push the limits of my capabilities. My second most substantial accomplishment is my recent fearlessness. This fearlessness comes as a result of a self-knowledge that I am capable of achieving any goal when I am completely invested. This fall, I became frustrated by the lack of organization and collaboration amongst students and faculty in my department. I took action and created impetus for a new departmental studio group devoted to generating a sense of community within our group of designers. Energized by my success in building community within risd, I have found many more opportunities to be a decision-maker and advocate for other causes from social design to business thinking on an administrative level. I have realized that I can push myself to extraordinary accomplishment, putting fear of failure behind me, a skill that will impact my development as I continue to mature. My most recent, most quantitative accomplishment so far has been securing an internship at Apple. Given the condition of our economy this year, finding a design internship for the summer was not easy. Throughout the spring, I became a slave to online applications and intense networking. The search culminated in a grueling week of inperson interviews, primarily in New York, that consumed my spring break. I emerged with several offers and was relieved at the prospects for my summer. In among the dozens of e-mails I received during this time was a response from Apple, resulting from my online application,

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requesting a phone interview. I knew that most of their interns would be graduate students with a few years of working behind them. Nonetheless, the next day, I received a call and was offered and accepted the position. What sticks with me most is that this internship came solely from the presentation of my work and the brief phone interview. For me, the offer from a company as highly esteemed as Apple, was a validation of my work, passion, and time spent doing what I love. This has only driven me to push myself more intensely. I see the achievements listed here less as accomplishments and more as benchmarks for how I intend to live my life: A passion and zeal for what I do that will keep me motivated even on the worst days, a firmly held belief that if hungry enough I can transcend boundaries to achieve goals that at first appear unattainable. Ultimately, however my story proceeds, I am confident that if I continue to follow my passions and learn from my experiences, I can make this world a better place.

what would like us to know about your undergr aduate ac ademic e xperience?

The particular virtue that I have nurtured most throughout my undergraduate experience has been my nascent curiosity to explore and dig deeper. This insatiable curiosity about our world and cultures has drawn me to study and appreciate design as a way of life and it has been my time at risd that has allowed me to make design my life’s passion. risd is a special place… allowing, pushing, coaxing me to become me. Where else could I have broken free from the traditional academic expectations, where else would I be able to share serious emails with the school’s President and Provost?

While at risd I have a cultivated my desire to realize the true potential of design by using my curiosity as a vehicle for creation. Today, I see myself as a well-rounded student and citizen as well as a designer. I have continued to foster an appreciation for many things beyond my studies, believing that my entire education, from athletics – sailing, playing lacrosse, squash and flag football at Brown to politics – working on Obama’s campaign, should be approached with equal seriousness and attention. I have studied Business Economics cross-registering at Brown, worked collaboratively on Industrial Design at mit and studied typographic hierarchy, composition, semiotics, color theory, and system design at risd, but the fact that design allows constant, fluid access to many different disciplines is what offers me the challenge and constant renewal. I love my education not because graphic design “is everything” but because graphic design is almost always about something else. My personal curiosity has led me to develop a way of approaching assignments and problems allowing more personal involvement, thus creating a more artful, inspired practice.

As a metaphor, recall M.C. Escher’s rendering of the two hands drawing one another simultaneously. If design is created in a vacuum without meaningful exposure to real human relationships with cultural or social context and a legitimate involvement from the designer, it may be beautiful, but it will ultimately simply be graphic design by itself. Good design is inspired by a curiosity that takes everything into account: simple, observed qualities such as rows of skyscrapers inspiring a ballet identity. These kinds of perceptions push me to continue to pursue my diverse passions - in addition to design. Ultimately, it all comes back to the curiosity I have held onto from my childhood, igniting a passion that will follow me for the rest of my academic and professional experience.

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what have you le arned from a mis take?

If you had told me where I would be today when I was a senior in high school, I would never have believed you. Art was certainly a passion for me and I had been introduced to graphic design, but these were not important things and I was set on playing college lacrosse and following a traditional path pursuing a career in “business” – whatever that meant. As I applied to colleges that year, I didn’t even consider applying to risd, after all, what could I get out of an art school? After receiving decisions from the colleges I applied to, through some wicked twist of fate, I was not accepted to a single school that I wanted to attend. All of my preconceived notions about a quality education were swirling, lost in my head. Crushed, I reflected for a long time about what “went wrong” and why I didn’t get what I thought that I wanted. I began planning for the upcoming year, trying to figure out what I really wanted. I came to the realization that playing lacrosse at a liberal arts college had little to do with who I was or with what I wanted to gain from my college experience. Then something happened – I thought about risd again. I suddenly knew that I should try to follow my passion and that risd seemed the logical place. Through an equally stunning twist of fate, I was accepted on unprecedented terms to risd that summer and began in the fall, embarking upon the most amazing path thus far in my life. Looking back, I see myself as a completely transformed person, from a student who was certainly gifted but never truly inspired, to an individual wholly engrossed, unable to imagine life without design playing a leading role. I have been so lucky to discover a community that has empowered me to develop into someone capable of thinking in new ways, succeeding and leading in both in the studio as well as the traditional classroom.

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The most important lessons that I take from this life-changing event are an understanding that even the most excruciating defeats can offer the best possible outcomes, things not previously visible or obvious. Also, if you have a passion, something that makes you feel alive, find a way to follow it. As I continue to grow, I am a stronger, more complete, and ultimately happier individual ready to take on whatever the future hurls my way.

discuss how you have eng aged with a communit y or org aniz ation.

The most relevant way that I have been involved within my community has certainly been my work toward integrating a model for a businessminded education into the essential curriculum at risd. In splitting my course load between Brown and risd, I created a balanced schedule for myself, tailored to offer not only a solid studio design foundation combined with liberal arts, but also the necessary ingredients for a business education. As I mature as a designer and as an individual, I become more aware of the uniqueness that this holistic concept holds. When a designer is able to not only consider form and composition, but also human interaction, diverse collaboration, and a pragmatic business perspective, the results can be transcendent. With this mission in mind, and my own experiences to vouch for its viability, I have made it my goal to reshape how risd, and the design school model in general, approach business education. This spring, I completed an exhaustive independent research thesis on the state of business-design education and I have come to understand that we, as a culture, are at a moment of great potential. Working with risd’s Provost and President, I have been formulating a plan that will help to acknowledge risd as the worldwide leader in complete design education and also as a champion in training tomorrow’s designers as our generation’s foremost leaders. I have been a part of several student groups to promote a consciousness of business thinking on campus. Next fall, as a part of a conference I am organizing with fellow Brown/risd students, A Better World by Design, I will moderate a panel on Design and Business, welcoming some of the world’s top minds on the topic to our campus to share their experiences and perspectives, further advancing these concepts within the community.

The synergy of design and academics, in an intellectual and contextually relevant manner, has become a passion of my undergraduate experience. I am excited every day to meld the philosophies and principles of my “two” educations and I have come to appreciate each new problem with an understanding of its multiple facets. Whether it is analyzing a business model for a national car-sharing brand at Brown or creating a poster series of specific letterforms at risd, the opportunity to combine right-brained creativity with left-brained analytic thought leaves my every experience richer and more meaningful.

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It is my hope that when I graduate from risd next spring I will be able to leave the school a more complete learning environment, where students are inspired and empowered to acquire the experiences that will allow them to understand design’s fullest potential. Our world can no longer be compartmentalized into convenient categories of design and business or academics and the arts. We need a new education model to redefine our approach to solving tomorrow’s staggering problems.

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@issue intervie w

Do you see the focus of design changing for your generation?

What do you see as the growth areas in design in the next decade or two?

an intervie w with the leading online journal of

Yes, but the role of design has been in a constant state of evolution throughout history and I see my generation as no different. Just as designers in the 20th century aimed to create value through form and content, we, the designers of the future, are working to expand the meaning and role design plays in our lives. There was a time when design was defined by products or a visual aesthetic but I believe that the future of design lies not in physical objects but rather the creation of experience, transformation and community- to disciplines as far-reaching as climate change and economics. Organizations like Project H Design and Architecture for Humanity are already leading the way in this refocusing and I believe this is only the beginning of a much larger movement.

Certainly issues to do with our climate renewable energy, green design with respect to consumer goods and commercial and residential development but also social entrepreneurship and enterprise. I believe the the growth we will witness in design will be two-fold: how to address the monumental challenges we face as a society but also how to harness the amazing potential that collaboration and community can provide through increased ventures between designers, engineers, business people, and scientists.

business & design 2009

Is sustainability taught as a design discipline or is it integrated into every course?

No, unfortunately I do not see it taught as either right now - but thankfully this is evolving very fast. Institutions are always slow to adopt change, and design schools are no exception. As the ideas of sustainability and environmental consciousness mature through grass roots growth in online communities like Core77, Treehugger, Design Observer and Planet Green, I believe educational models will shift and sustainability will begin to see adoption into most courses. It is only a matter of time before these concepts will find permanence in courses based not on trends but rather necessity - a societal need to deal with the issues at hand. 91

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Do you really think that design can solve the problems of the world?

Yes, but its not “design” per se, that can solve these problems, I am certainly not one to think that posters will somehow find a solution to the climate crisis. However I do believe that an integrated approach, by bringing together multiple disciplines to seriously tackle with a shared purpose utilizing a creative process and holistic thinking akin to design could, and does, play a major role in solving the major challenges of the world. Providence is a great example of this integration in action on a community scale. The Adobe 21 project, a collaboration between nonprofit (Community Works ri and the us Green Building Council) and for-profit organizations (Stack Design Build, Distill Studio, Cutler & Company, and V Street Media) has made strides in creating new jobs, increasing the supply of efficient affordable housing and promoting energy conservation on a neighborhood-wide scale. There is a lot of talk of these type of pursuits: “design thinking,” design “strategy,” but until design can collaborate in an equal partnership with other disciplines it will continue to be a veneer for aesthetic and lack the real depth of problem solving.

Do you that design studios as we know them today will continue to be viable? Or do you see some kind of collaborative global model emerging?

Like any sector of the economy, the keys to the future of survival and viability are based on flexibility, agility, and providing value. Design studios are no different than manufacturers, advertising agencies, and higher education. Those who embrace and welcome change while positioning themselves in a meaningful way that can guide their clients to not just a profitable endpoint, but also a leadership position, will not only survive but flourish. If the financial crisis and the recession have done anything for us they have expedited the acceptance of change by both individuals and institutions just to survive. Already you are seeing more of this change occurring by bringing multiple disciplines to the table, shared work environments, and creative approaches to freelancers and consultants.

Any thoughts on mobile communications will it be used for design? Will it become its own design specialty?

Why should today’s design students care - why not simply focus on branding and designing cool consumer products?

I think that mobile communications will no doubt continue to have a larger central role in our lives in the coming years. Working as an interface design intern for Apple this summer, I was able to see first hand the evolution of the iPhone design as its own specialty. Just like any other new technological platform before it, mobile communications devices demand a new way of thinking and a new design approach to make them truly exceptional. So, while I don’t think it will be its own “design specialty,” design for mobile communications certainly demands a new way of thinking about interaction and experience. Two of our speakers at this year’s conference, Jan Chipchase of the Nokia Research Center, and Ken Banks of Kiwanja, are trailblazers in designing mobile technologies and systems to rethink community in the developed and developing world - I am really looking forward hearing their experiences and where they see us going in the future.

I think it is critical that students “care” because we are moving into an era of responsibility and openness. I don’t think any of this is mutually exclusive anymore - by caring, what a young designer is really doing is investing in their own future. By broadening the scope and breaking down the compartmentalization of ideas like branding and advertising, and welcoming concepts of integration, collaboration and synthesis into their work, designers are opening the door to get involved with and serve an even bigger community. Students today have the opportunity to be role models with our “why not” attitude and a passion that we can actually make a difference in the world while we are still in school. Any serious student today should have keep issues of environmental and social design in mind, after all, its our future.

@issue intervie w

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IF YOU WANT TO GET IT DONE — DO IT NOW.

over the pa s t three days we have all engaged in an amazing event.

So much has gone into this weekend, and our sponsors and supporters have helped make this a reality--they responded to our message of making the world a better place. First off, I would like to thank our partner institutions, Brown and risd for allowing a group of students to take over an Ivy League school and a premier design institution for three days.

abwxd 0 9 c lo s i n g remarks a bet ter world by design c lo s i n g s p e e c h delivered to o v e r 5 0 0 conference

Additionally we have had a group of volunteers that performed above and beyond again and again, and this was not a simple event to coordinate. I’d also like to thank our corporate sponsors and donors, our principal sponsor, Kleiner Perkins, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Cutler & Company, Deepwater Wind, sddco, Providence ri, Cornish Associates, and jtj Investments for donating space for social events, Design Within Reach, aigia|ri, AndSpace Labs, the Renaissance Hotel, Generation, Project m, Core77, Moo, Ecolect, Design Observer, and Mercury Print and Mail for donating all of our programs and badges.

at t e n d e e s 2009

Reflecting on the experiences of this weekend, we have learned from a diverse array of speakers from five continents, engaged in conversations with attendees from around the world and worked together to create something bigger in activities created by Core77 and Project m... and created lasting connections with a broader community. But I know I don’t need to tell you about how great this weekend was you already know because you are the reason it was so successful, you made this event what it was. Instead, what I’d like to address in closing is - What Now? How do we make this more than just three day conference on social and environmental design and change? How do we live this everyday and let these ideas and experiences shape our actions? As Jaime Lerner said yesterday, it is really quite simple: “If you want to get it done - do it now.” The speakers and guests that shared their experiences with us this weekend are not only united by their multi-disciplinary design philosophies or passion to make the world a better place but they also continually push themselves beyond their comfort zone - taking risks, sharing their networks and providing invaluable counsel to an everexpanding universe of social change agents. 95

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None of us would be gathered here today if our committee didn’t share these same values - we could have made the excuse that we had too much classwork, not enough connections, and no funding. When we organized this committee seven months ago we couldn’t have appeared more different: architects, chemical & mechanical engineers, industrial designers, graphic designers, scientists and entrepreneurs - how were we ever going to agree on a list of speakers - much less a unifying theme. Not only did we find common ground and a shared passion to invite people outside of our own disciplines - we came to embrace a broader notion of what creating “A Better World by Design” really means. And because of our fearlessness and our willingness to admit that we needed help, we have created the model of what a student conference should be, professionals teaching students, students teaching professionals - in an environment of constant openness and communication. As a group of just nine students we now have our institutions buzzing and are sending a wave of excitement through our community - generating an energy to do more. And this is where all of you come into the picture-the over 500 participants involved. Assembled in this room we have an amazing community of people and I am not only talking about our wonderful speakers and presenters. I am certain that every person in this room has something they can offer to continue this revolution. I challenge each of you to commit to take the topics and ideas discussed here back to your schools, practices, and lives and make something happen - share your expertise, support this collaboration, every part makes a difference. Our guests have shown that the new way of design is openness, collaboration and an ability to work out of your comfort zone. We are always looking for new experiences and ways we can put this conversation into practice so please come speak to us and we will make it happen, After all this revolution starts with you.

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the world is in a rut. Previously successful systems, business practices

and infrastructures are breaking down in our society on all sides. The policies, methods, and problem solving approaches of the twentieth century have been turned on their head over and over again. Amid this social upheaval, the powers that be seem to have come upon a miraculous solution once again–this time, it is the process of creative thinking. Across boardrooms, executive offices, and on bookshelves, the call from science, industry, business and technology could not be louder– they see “creatives” as the next big thing, the saviors of business. Call it whatever you’d like, design thinking, creative problem solving, innovation, the semantics are irrelevant, and only add to the navel-gazing and empty speak that is being written by hoards of successful business people and designers alike.

DEGREE THESIS PROPOSAL F O U N DAT I O N ABS TR AC T FOR M Y S P R I N G 2 0 10 DEGREE PROJECT 2009

Unfortunately, design thinking or creative problem solving, no matter how well integrated into a company’s culture or mission, will never change paradigms or shift the direction of our ailing institutions. We must begin at the source and the source is education. If designers are ready to demand that they get a seat and a voice in management, strategy, and systems thinking then the models of design education need to reflect the shifting responsibility away from the design of objects (which dominated the twentieth century) to the design of interactions and experiences. This is by no means a small task. The current methods of design education were born out of post-war Europe and steeped in the philosophies of craft, process, and theory. This is all to merit, but in today’s shifting landscape, the old methods must be expanded upon. As the definition of design has burgeoned in our technology-driven world, a design education needs to be flexible and responsive. The expectations that a modern student has of both the technical and intellectual training from a school can no longer be limited to categories like print, motion, or interaction. In the new design school paradigm, the model must shift away from the discipline specific rigidity and allow for more cross-divisional projects, interactions, and opportunities. Students must be able to follow their personal passions and work together in teams that prepare them for the breadth ofinteractions that they will encounter in the professional world. The current problem with design is not that it is too focused on the aesthetic or that it is difficult to quantify its monetary value, today, it is rather that the majority of design students are not educated or prepared to be leaders in organizations. Taking an audit of every one of today’s championed “creative” organizations: Apple, Martha Stewart, ideo, Google, etc, each is led by inspired, creative individuals. In this model, all of the decisions are led by a sound design process and ideology. If our society hopes to tackle the mounting problems of the 21st century and if creative problem solving can be a vehicle to motivate that change, then it has to start with a new strategy for educating tomorrow’s design leaders.

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Here’s the real issue for me with leadership.

Sometimes the solution, and again you taught me this brilliantly, doesn’t and shouldn’t exist at the CEO level. To think that it does and it lives there only, is again a big mistake. So why couldn’t a nineteen-year old student from risd have a better idea how to work something than a Mayor or a college president? They could. 100

when anyone spe aks about the new energy in Providence for

more than five minutes, Andy Cutler’s name enters the conversation as someone to be involved with. In the short time that Andy has been a part of the Providence community he has redefined what activism, collaboration, and civic-mindedness can mean in a modern city and he does it without thinking twice.

a c o n v e r s at i o n w i t h a n dy cutler a n n otat e d intervie w with the social glue t h at b i n d s providence

I first met Andy in the winter of 2009, at an event at risd President John Maeda’s home inviting Providence business and community leaders to interact and connect with a small group of risd students. I was entering the planning stages of organizing the second annual “A Better World by Design” conference at Brown and risd and I was told Andy was someone I should seek out. Within minutes of my introduction, Andy and I were sketching plans for the conference and setting up a time to meet at his office in the next week. Ever since my time with Andy has been filled with energetic conversations, a flurry of note taking and address book augmentation. However, I have never had the opportunity to understand how Andy came into this role as “socialconnector-of-all-things-good-in-Providence” but now I finally had the opportunity.

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Knowing Andy’s background a little bit I opened our conversation asking more about his life before Providence, and Andy divulged in his typically well-spoken fashion: I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts, which interestingly enough was Fredrick Olmstead’s last community he did before he died (Swamscott, ma). But what was significant about that experience was that you knew everybody; everybody knew you. If it was raining out and you were driving home from school and someone you didn’t even hang out with was walking in the rain you still pull over the car and give them a ride home, because it was just that kind of community. So, then I went to go to school in Washington, dc studying sociology and psychology and if I had to do it over again I would have studied anthropology or design quite frankly. And from there I actually got into a “externship” program with United Way of America where they placed me in two locations in the country: Winston-Salem, North Carolina and then out in the Bay Area where I was specifically assigned to working with larger companies and large medical centers around their corporate contributions in the community. In Winston-Salem, it was much more like my hometown experience. It was 60,000 people, a

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relatively small city and so you walked into the grocery store and you were short on money, people would chip in and give you the change to get out of there. So that was great and then went out to the Bay Area and loved the creative energy out there but found it to be a very transient place. It didn’t resonate with me. I love visiting San Francisco but it doesn’t resonate in terms of living there because its so transient. I came back to the East Coast and worked at what was called Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, which was the number two ranked hmo in the country, and worked in their communications department. And then I went on to be the director of Public Affairs and Marketing for Faulkner Hospital, which is now part of the Brigham Women’s Hospital, they merged during my time there and I led the communications effort for that merger. Knowing Andy today, it is clear that his appreciation for community and neighborhood in the tradition sense are key factors in his eventual settling in Providence. It is no surprise that he feels so comfortable in knowing everyone in the community as his entire experience, from childhood to professional, has been shaped by these ideals and models. Later in the conversation I returned to the question of Andy’s original inspiration and drive to create a community of 200,000 (Providence) feel like more like his small town community to ask him if he has looked to any historical leaders or found inspiration in any specific individuals that have done work like him before. You inspire me. No, I really mean it. Its about, maybe this is a little more Buddhist in nature but, inspiration surrounds us everyday whether we choose to look at it and see it and appreciate it thats another story. What I have found is that I was living in a world representing very large entities who didn’t really care. Yes they all gave money to the community, yes they all contributed in some passive way but when it came to the business models and it came to charitable contribution, I found major flaws in that system. Be they large non-profit or for-profit. And so I guess the inspiration for me is having grown up in a single-parent family, I always appreciated when people did something for my family, so here’s a quick story to showcase that.

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The orthodontist in my small town had a monopoly on braces, there weren’t many maybe him and two other people. So even in a population of 20,000 people you can make a very good living. So I’m in college, about

20 years old and my mother comes up to me and shows me an envelope and she says, “do you know what this is? This is the last payment to Dr. Tennenbaum for your braces.” This doctor let her pay twenty five dollars and week for ten or fifteen years to pay off three kids’ braces. Now, what did I learn from that moment in time. I learned that here is someone making a contribution when he could have easily said “no” but he chose a different model. Its not letting money get in the way of a good idea. I mean if there is anything you guys taught me (working with students) is that its not about the money. Its about bringing the forces together that can propel and progress an initiative or a venture that’s worthwhile.

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As Andy continued to tell his story he reflected more on what drove him in his career and how as a broader thinker (not being bottled into a single discipline) he has been able to appreciate and positively impact business in a wide range of fields through communications and storytelling. This theme has shaped the way he forms partnerships with clients and empathizes with their passions and causes. From there I went into the agency world and worked for Ogilvy in Cambridge, specifically with the BioTech community and doing communications design. Helping launch new ventures in medicine and medical technology to communicate storytelling and presentation. Now as a chile I wasn’t a great science student. I fell in love with science as a professional, because of the stories behind science. The key moment of learning for me there was, I think in high school especially, kids are either placed in two pots: they’re either Science and Math people or English and History people, and I was in the latter group. But if I were being honest, I wasn’t really inspired by giving the stories, I very much could have been a scientist for all I know, but I really never really had an inclination toward it. Then I went down to New York and worked for Edelman where I was in the pharmaceutical industry, with companies like Pfizer when Pfizer bought Pharmacia. When they bought them they inherited an oncology franchise, Pfizer never had an oncology franchise, so I was part of the team that looked at that to help them understand a new business. And I was visiting Providence on the weekend because of a girlfriend and was finding it really difficult to go back on Sundays. And then finally moved up here and when I did I was

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still working for Edelman in New York and they said “you don’t have to quit, we’ll just bring you down a few days and week.” And that worked for four months but I always told people I had a “Jerry Maguire moment” on the Acela train coming back late one night when I remembered pulling up to my house and realizing I didn’t know my neighbors. I didn’t know who they were, what they did. So I really wasn’t a part of this community at all and then I finally just said “you know if I am ever going to get connected here, or feel like it’s home, I’m going to have to cut my connection to New York and take a risk and set out and do my own thing. So June of 2003 I officially started my company. It started out as Cutler Communications, morphed into Cutler & Company to enhance the brand that it is about the people we bring to the table and actually its evolved to the extent that in 2010 its going to be evolved again into a firm called Connectivity. So, our firm has moved beyond public relations at this point, I feel like we are in the Matrix. We are seeing things other public relations firms don’t see. Typically what would happen in the public relations industry, or advertising for that matter, when these firms hire, they would hire someone with twenty years of communications and public relations experiences, thats good to have one of those people at the table but I would also like to have an engineering professor, someone from Babson, I would like to have a designer at the table. And so it really is the most integrated design approach that rather than looking at the typical assignments, what I want to do at the firm is I want to go after virtually anything. That there is no problem that our team can’t stump. Either because we have the skill set or our networks do. This next step in the evolution of Andy’s business interests me as a comment on how closely tied “Connectivity” is to the individual of Andy Cutler. Andy’s company is following in the same pattern of development as its leader and the inclusivity of his new business model only reflects the way Andy approaches all of his relationships, business and personal. Intrigued by the more specific inner-workings of his new business evolution I pressed him further to discuss how he saw the company continuing to take shape and the involvement he would seek for team members.

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If you’re on the team for example with one piece of expertise, I don’t necessarily want you to quit your day job. In fact, your day job has a lot of value, where your situated has a lot of value. Here is where the model is unique, it has to be coming back to our conversation about A Better World by Design, or Revolution x Design for that matter, there has to be a shared interest in people wanting to bring business to the table. What I’ve found quite frankly with my affiliates is I was bringing everybody the work and wasn’t necessarily reciprocated. Now, in the end that didn’t affect my decision to bring some people in because its all common space but it got me really thinking about what a partnership is. And right now I am still in the final throws of defining what partnership means. You look at Aidan Petrie and Steve Lane (Ximedica), as they tell the story two risd alums, they’ve been together for over twenty-five years in business. Out in the creative community, they both laugh about it, because that’s unheard of. And so I’m not saying this next iteration will be that but that’s the model of partnership that I want. That Aidan always had a vested interest, even when he was not with Steve.

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Of anyone I have worked with the past few years in Providence I have found very few people who are as deeply committed and passionate about this city as Andy. Interested in what elements Providence holds and what really makes the city unique, I questioned him further. I didn’t know it when I came, and in fact, my first year in Providence sucked. I came pretty close to leaving actually because I didn’t get involved in the community, I thought the community should come to me. Here I am this person with a very unique experience that no other firm and no other person here has and I thought the mountains should be coming to Mohamed so to speak. This was totally the wrong concept and if I look back and there is only one thing I could have done differently, was take away that first year and insert proactivity into the community involvement. But I think it comes down to an ability to breathe. I’ve lived in bigger cities, and I like bigger cities, but Manhattan felt a little overwhelming to me. Your apartment is seen as an escape pod to the mass of humanity. So living in the West Side, the vibe just felt right. And its one of those intangibles but the frequency that Providence vibrates at resonated within me. That’s best way to describe it.

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To continue to foster the conversation about Andy’s relationship with the city I mentioned that if you were to ask anyone in that knows him to describe him in few words they would most commonly discuss not only his ability to connect people but also the amazing amount of giving he does with never asking for anything in return. I was curious to see what continues to push him to do that a and how do you get yours and learn to say no sometimes. I draw inspiration from the projects that I work on and so usually I’m pretty close to a hundred percent being involved in things that I feel deeply about. What I would say about that is that I have one standard for helping people and its a simple and difficult standard. You have to inspire me. That’s where I do bring “no” into it. You’d be surprised a lot of people do ask you and its not that I say “no” a ton because I think by the time people get to me they have vetted their work to a certain extent. But some people do come to me and they don’t inspire me with their project, or their confidence that they could actually do the project. And so that’s my standard, other people have their own but that’s mine. Looking toward the future I began to speak with Andy about his goals for Providence to become a thought leader in America’s future in innovation and social entrepreneurship. Curious how he saw his new company developing in the community I asked him to tell me where he saw himself in ten years.

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I had this conversation with a friend recently, which is a realization that I’m forty-three years old so am I going to be retiring in Providence? It was the first time in seven years that I stopped and actually thought about it for the first time. And I think for me I will stay here as long as I am inspired to be here. And I chose the name of my firm (Cutler & Company) for much the same reason a lot of people do - because I want to build a brand about who I am. So I’ve reached a point where I don’t need that crutch anymore so now with Connectivity the concept is bringing those disparate experiences to the table so that there is no code that we can’t crack. And actually I will go one step further with it, in my experience on all the different project I’ve worked on over the past twenty plus years is the difference between a project that is successful and one that isn’t is communications. When communications break down countries go to war, people dissolve

ventures and go their separate ways. To me it is all about communications and connectvity. Once you can figure out that stuff and the right people for a particular challenge there isn’t a challenge in the world you can’t solve.

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To date we’ve produced over half a million dollars in the Providence economy. Now just imagine if we had fifty companies doing that, what that kind of impact would be. I realize the power of microeconomics and I also realize the capital we have living here. We don’t have the best of everything but we have people that are really good. So when I talk about bringing them to the table, what I mean is we are looking to be genuinely involved in the evolution of a community. It was at that moment that I really began to understand what exactly Andy brings to our community - an investment in Providence as a place and the passion to develop the city as a special center for good. You know its funny, it does all come back to place. Its about creating an environment for people to work together and do cool things. I like using that model. So in the past I have represented a lot of life science companies and tech companies when I first came here. Today I see my work moving more toward an ideal setting where high-education could realize a fully marriage with government. I don’t think that relationship is fully leverages and its a space I’d like to be in. I realized through this conversation what really makes Andy Cutler tick. Having gained meaningful experience in so many different fields, working with so many different types of people, Andy has come to understand what he believes the key to his enterprise: working with people that you enjoy. Granted he is at a point in his career where he has some leeway in selecting his projects and coworkers but the ability to seek out inspiring, intelligent, and motivated people to work with is truly an amazing gift that Andy possesses and employs.

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Our conversation continued for nearly another hour (speaking has never been hard for Andy) and rambled into topics of Providence’s “Creative Capital” campaign, the hot-button student tax issue, and some projects we are still working on together but the details aren’t the most rivet piece of that later conversation. Though all of his stories Andy is constantly seeking a new type of leader, a voice that isn’t currently at the table, to level organizations and introduce new perspectives into his problem solving. The work Andy has done, and continues to do, is rethinking the models of hierarchy, organizations and who has a voice in our community. Wherever I am headed next I hope to enter the community with the same open-mindedness and energy that Andy is connecting and shaping Providence with. As a closing I felt the following quote summed Andy Cutler up for me best: Here’s the real issue for me with leadership. Sometimes the solution, and again you (the students) taught me this brilliantly, doesn’t and shouldn’t exist at the ceo level. To think that it does and it lives there only, is again a big mistake. So why couldn’t a nineteenyear old student from risd have a better idea how to work something than a Mayor or a college president? They could.

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INNOVA t i ON

thin outs king id the b e of ox!

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n desig ng i think

l v i s u an g i think

Y ET PAGE NING R R . TU RS DESIGN ANOTHE ON SIGNIFIE

though the phr a se “design thinking”

has been gaining in popularity for the better part of the last decade, it really entered the mainstream design vernacular last year with the introduction of several articles and books on the topic from designers and educators such as Tim Brown, Roger Martin, Roberto Verganti, and Harmut Esslinger. Unfortunately, judging by a popular January 9th New York Times article, very little has trickled into a mainstream conversation. The article, entitled “Multicultural Critical Theory. At b-School?,” attempts to tackle the shifting landscape of mba business education by using Roger Martin and the Rotman School of Management as a case study but actually frames the argument not around “design thinking,” which has been his main selling point for rotman, but rather around “critical thinking.” The article goes on to elaborate on the specific practice of “Design Works” at Rotman but uses this as the one single “design thinking” example among a list of other programs. As I read this article, I was surprised that one of “design thinking’s” biggest champions seemed to be proselytizing a new definition for his maverick approach in arguably the most prominent article to date. Has the fuse already run out on “design thinking,” just like when Bruce Nussbaum announced the death of innovation in late 2008?

When compared to the established educational and intellectual design ideologies, “Design Thinking” seems to lack the depth to promote design or designers in business organizations; perhaps it is simply another buzz phrase enlisted to differentiate and highlight an upcoming trend in business. Design should never be trivialized to a two-word catch-all for representing what we as designers have always brought to the table. Unfortunately, within the current economic environment, the concept seems to fit nicely as a neat solution to our problems. Seasoned design professionals and educators find themselves affirming this idea, adopting it as a new direction, fully aware that “design thinking” is something that they have always done.

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The real answers for designers’ concerns will never be drawn from the work of a few individuals at the top of the field but instead by the empowerment of our own practice to move ourselves into positions in a world where we can productively influence business. The broken paradigms of business will not change unless designers rise to their potential and those involved embrace us as equals on real actionable terms.

What I am trying to get at here isn’t really a question of whether or not it matters if a “design” leader adjusts their language but rather to pose the question of why we concern ourselves in believing that any of these ideas are actually crafted to help promote design as a discipline in organizations and not simply promoting the individuals who espouse them. 111

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VROOM! VROOM! Giddy up little Macintosh!

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now that we find ourselves in a

post-iPad world, I have taken some time to reflect, not on the device itself but rather the years-long spectacle that surrounded its dramatic release on January 27. The media storm that surrounded iPad was nothing that even the likes of Apple had ever seen. Every cable news network, blog, and business publication was speculating and sharing scant rumors about every aspect of the device from its implications on the Apple’s stock valuation to the fate of entire industries. It is apparent that in the past ten years, with the rise of major Silicon Valley corporations, we have become a culture of individuals that identify most with technology companies and their products. As the national auto industry has declined and our view of transportation has evolved, slowly the automobile has fallen out of prominence as our national symbol of innovation and industry. Not too long ago the “Heartbeat of America” was Chevrolet and we all clamored to get a look at the next Ford Mustang. Kids today (and the general public for that matter) are no longer obsessing over the new car released at the Detroit Auto Show (can you even think of the last car to get on the cover of the ny Times that wasn’t promoting a new energy solution?) but rather, are focused on when they can get their hands on the newest insert device (iPhone, iPod, Kindle, PlayStation, etc.). We have become a nation that identifies not in the steel and chrome stylings of the automobile but with the smooth glass screen of a phone or other portable device. Smack at the center of this is the institution of Silicon Valley. Wrought with all of the intrigue and drama of any good American love relationship, complete with secrecy, espionage, breakups, it won’t be long before we start to hear recording artists echoing the affairs

of Google, Apple, and the whole bunch (hopefully not). In Detroit the products were created from concept to construction in the United States, a truly populist ideal. Today’s “muscle-car race” in the Valley is really about the marketing of high-end products manufactured overseas, a decidedly less inspiring pillar of industry for a country struggling to lead and innovate once again.

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While this Detroit-Silicon Valley comparison may be fun (i.e. getting a new phone to attract girls/guys versus a shiny new Camaro), culturally its significance lends itself to a larger issue. We once adored automobiles as the backbone of our American industrial prowess. Now, we are now fleetingly mesmerized by a glorified computer, presented as having the capability to “change the way we live,” only to see its obsolescence in six months. The most disheartening implication for the new cultural institution of Silicon Valley and the decline of Detroit is the lack of permanence for any of this manufactured romance. In an object-obsessed culture where we initially celebrate our new possessions so passionately, we now form no lasting bond with any items. They are basically disposable. What will our “vintage” be, and where will we as a generation seek inspiration in the future if there is always a newer edition to replace the old. Automobiles have been updated annually in a similar fashion but something tells me we won’t be seeing any iPod rallies or swap meets down the road. It is up to designers to again question the meaning of “sustainability” and to approach this new era with an appreciation for the past.

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with google’s rele a se of buzz, its

latest Gmail experiment, I find myself feeling like we have entered a state of total social networking saturation on the internet, one that actually inhibits the ability for us to connect and share with friends. Google Buzz is a Gmail app that resembles an rss feed of status updates for a browser or mobile device. It feels like Facebook’s status updates embedded into your email with “likes,” the ability to respond directly to a posting, and private/public messaging. The main selling point on Google’s end, based on their keynote live coverage here, is the utilization of your Gmail contacts to share and communicate, essentially creating a list of followers you already know. Also available, the first version Buzz will be able to post updates from Twitter but will not post to Twitter, another interesting cross platform integration. What doesn’t click for me with Buzz is the idea that Google believes I would actually want to share anything with my Gmail contacts. If Facebook’s purpose is to connect with real friends and Twitter to connect with random people, organizations, and celebrities, then I have always looked at Gmail as a place to have more serious correspondence. Looking at list of who I am “following” on Buzz, I am finding it hard to think I would really care to share information with any of them at all.

The other piece of Google Buzz that feels redundant and odd, is its interaction (or lack of) with Google Wave and Google Latitude. For those not familiar, Google Wave (released this past fall as a preview) was billed as Google’s future collaboration and sharing interface that combined all Google Apps into an innovative mail-like platform. Though it was always my suspicion that Wave was eventually going to be melded into Gmail (and Buzz perhaps a stepping stone), I did not see it first implemented as a stale Facebook-like update tab.

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What I fear we are approaching is a point where while we are all trying to “share” and “be together” on the web we are instead posting the same status to the same twentyfive people multiple times by linking our Buzz, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr (the list could go on) accounts together, essentially creating the equivalent of internet garbage. In an industry that’s been built on the creation of innovative interactions and experiences, lately all of these companies have felt the need to replicate each others services almost exactly. Why can’t they instead focus on the refinement of what makes each of them unique and successful and increase market share and profit through true product innovation?

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much like it s name, FedEx Office, the

store formerly known as Kinko’s and FedExKinko’s, seems to be in a perennial state of reorganization and flux. Much of the very dated but “refurbished” location on Meeting Street in Providence, Rhode Island is unused and no longer houses any viable service. Nearly half of the location’s floor space is occupied by computer workstations behind a glass partition, like a mausoleum from a bygone era when computers were not an everyday commodity. Stacked boxes serve as storage for the location’s new identity as a printing and shipping outlet— a combination that always seemed a bit awkward. For a business that prides itself on its organization and punctuality, (“The World on Time”) FedEx Office feels neither global nor of this time. By stark contrast, Hope Bindery, a one room studio owned and operated by a quirky craftsman, a RISD alum named Jim, is bursting at the seams. Located deep in the heart of a mill-turned-studio in Pawtucket, the location boasts no illuminated sign but instead, a hand scrawled note taped to the stairs reading: “Hope Bindery: Third Floor Fourth Door on Your Left.” Inside the space, there is no division between you (the client) and the craftsman. You are all at once in his workspace, forcing you to become part of the work. And, if you hope to have Jim practice his magic for you, you had better be able to speak the language of bookbinding and design.

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While the two don’t offer identical services, the nature of their business, the production of printed matter, and their significance to my personal development as a designer and thinker offer an opportunity to make a revealing comparison between the automaton and the artisan.

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As more of our experience becomes enmeshed in “designed” environments, the automaton will continue to affect more and more of our service experience. The departure from relying on human capital for skilled processes has clearly streamlined transactions and improved business, but it has been at the sacrifice of what made those experiences worthwhile and “human” to begin with. We are all familiar with the automaton in our daily life--the self checkout at your supermarket, the voice on the other end of an 800 number--and in more sacred situations like our classrooms-No Child Left Behind, internet universities. Here, I am exploring the specific situation of FedEx Office and Hope Bindery, illustrating something of the relationship between the artisan and the automaton and providing a snapshot beyond scripted experiences into a more aware and educated cooperative process. Back in the quietly humming, halogenlit expanse of the FedEx Office, you enter feeling instantly alienated. The black and purple clad employee, who has probably had little training in paper goods (not their fault), follows the guide of a computer system instructing them to enter paper type, quantity, and any other specifications an order may have. The system is effective, standardizes the process, and makes for an efficient and transparent transaction.

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However, the moment the client attempts to deviate from the preordained path, the shallowness of the protocol is revealed. Essentially all of the “work” autonomy has been transferred from the hands of the transient and unskilled employee, (who remains nameless because each visit to this particular branch seems to yield an entirely new staff), to the machine and its touch screen interface. The photocopiers, just like the computer workstations, sit in mirror positions across the floor, were a revolutionary piece of office equipment at their inception. But now, the entire institution of FedEx Office seems dated and unsure of its position and role in the modern world post-print. FedEx Office has a designated line area, complete with birthday cards, candy, and other diversions. It sits empty because it is placed in front of the “Office” counters and not the “FedEx” area. More than once I saw a customer enter and pause, confused as they studied the “Form Line Here” sign before deciding to follow the pattern of their fellow customers to the left. It is a testament to either the rigid conformity of FedEx Office retail design or the lack of motivation or power of the employees to change any of these inconsistencies in their retail location, even if they make absolutely no sense. 118

Hope Bindery is the polar opposite. If you manage to find the location at all, which has no visible marking apart from the aforementioned handmade sign inside of the building, you enter a truly collaborative workspace that demands acumen not only in printing and book-building but also a patience for the artist’s space and lack of consistent client experience. When coming to Jim with a project, you need to be knowledgeable, ready to negotiate and understanding of his creative process. Unlike the rational and pre-organized process at FedEx Office, meetings with Jim are chaotic: projects are shared, gripes are heard, a personal connection is forged and the cooperative effort is felt. In this environment, despite its mess and seeming disorganization, it is clear that he is the master and the machines are merely a means to an end. Following my most recent visit to his studio, I realized something very different and new. As I entered with a pen, notepad, type samples, and cardboard box for my book, I realized that Jim’s process had actually conditioned me to work better and take more ownership of the knowledge, collaboration, and creation of my work. The process was efficient, even elegant. It was a successful partnership of designer and artisan. I understood his craft and he understood my need for clarity, there was no confusion, the customer became a partner.

Of course, this is almost never the case at FedEx Office. At FedEx, the human plays a lesser role and is more expendable than the non-human. There is little opportunity for a shared learning environment or for a real relationship between a client and an employee to form. With this model, FedEx Office is responsible for fewer people learning a limited range of tasks, which mostly consist of maintenance and transaction activities. This creates a consistent but stiff experience that feels oddly detached from the creation of printed matter.

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While I have largely focused on the negative aspects of this type of service-based retail environment, there are obvious inherent benefits of the speed, standardization, and increased accessibility of these resources. Still, while I realize that FedEx is a major corporation and Hope Bindery is a tiny, local operation, there are some aspects of the artisanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s practice that FedEx could absorb, and, in fact, already naturally begin to duplicate. For example, one of the most interesting effects of FedEx Office type environments is the way in which the human actors (employees) circumvent and work through the failures of such a systemized corporation. One sees it everyday, the presence of insight, experience, and expertise that humans bring into situations made for robots. Everyone benefits from personal involvement and self-empowerment. Companies like FedEx should encourage their employees to be active participants and creators in this process, with a shared goal of excellence (both personal and corporate). Strangely, though FedEx Office is the leader in the production of office and consumer print materials and is now a central retail hub for one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest shipping conglomerates, it feels increasingly out of sync with any sort of desirable contemporary experience, entirely removed from any human element of delight or creativity. In stark contrast, Hope Bindery, which replicates the artisanal work of a 19th century craftsman, manages to generate the type of mutual understanding and collaborative cooperation in the production process that corporate retail should embrace. As more and more processes become completely automated and available via the internet, the practice of delivering better services with unique value should be paramount. As automation technology becomes more and more commonplace, we, as a society, should demand flexibility,

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expertise and creativity from our face-to-face interactions with the service industry. The process and experience on both side of the counter should be valued over the lowest-commondenominator method of efficient product delivery. In many service jobs today, there is relatively little value placed on an employee taking ownership and pride in their work, as many do. If the employee could be encouraged and rewarded for operating as a master of their craft, then we may finally begin to see a balance between the qualities of the artisan and the automaton, to the benefit of both employees and customers.

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Parallel comparisons could be made in many of our societal systems. As technology continues to provide us with consistent experiences (fast food, supermarkets), efficiency and standardization are portrayed as benefits. In reality. everyone enters these experiences with unique perspectives, and the homogeneity betrays our individuality. What Hope Bindery shows us is the potential of self-ownership and individual practice as a viable and contemporary model, creating meaningful, engaging relationships. Organic interactions still fit in a world of franchised experiences. It isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t about pitting the artisan and the automaton againts each other, but of empowering individuals, whether employees or clients, to be creative, not only efficient.

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The inter ac tion

there are fe w communities more fleet-

ing, informal, and pervasive in modern society than the participation of waiting in a line. Comedians joke about it, theme parks attempt to add in-line entertainment, but it is something we all must deal with if we intend on working with or within organizations.

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This afternoon I had an opportunity to experience a high-performing (i.e. emotionally charged) line at the Amtrak ticketing counter of New York’s Pennsylvania Station. If you are familiar with Penn. Station then you are aware it is not the most inspiring train station in the world (or even on its respective subway lines), however it is a major hub and a point of entry to New York for thousands of people daily and constantly seems busy. The line in question was nothing special, made up of portable posts and a tacky velvet rope under a painfully dim drop ceiling tucked away in the corner of the station’s main hall. It is however, important to that that it was the Acela express line (as opposed to the Regional) so the individuals involved tended to be power suit clad, middle-aged to elderly, and all together more important looking than your typical train audience (this will come into play later). I joined the line when I realized I had missed my train and would have to be ticketed for another departing thirty minutes later. As I entered the queue of about fifteen, I felt a bit nervy that I would miss this later train as well. However, rather than panic and begin the typical “impatience dance,” I reflected on the triviality of the situation (40 minutes delay isn’t going to kill me) and started to hone my awareness to my new community within the line. Lines as an organization are a very unique orders of hierarchy, power, incentive and reward. Individuals are given an unreasonable amount of power as they “move up” in line and become increasingly unaware of and lose any feeling of responsibility to their counterparts at the back. At the moment of

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reward, being invited to the counter itself, all feeling of haste, responsibility, and ownership of goals in-line with the line disappear and a sense of undeserved accomplishment and superiority washes over. Converse to the entire situation, on the opposite side of the glass, the attendants seem to move at a snail’s pace, blissfully ignorant to the needs and anguish of the line community staring blankly in their direction. Today however, I was determined to explore and experience the line community with the hope that we could teach one another and form a proactive solution to our common plight. My first interaction began when an scarfed middle-aged woman ahead of me was one of contempt thinly veiled in a jovial tone. “You think they would have more staff on during rush hour,” she casually remarked in an surprised way as the corner of her lips turned up. I concurred something to the extent that systems never work as intended and we continued to wait impatiently. As we continued to study the “winners,” those being waited on at the counter I attempted to provide a proactive design solution that all customers to should timed (or at least shown a stopwatch) as they are waited on to remind them of the lowly status of line-dweller they just currently experienced and to be mindful of their former community. Additionally I thought to myself as one attendant was rapidly outpacing her counterparts, that they (Amtrak) should incentivize employee efficiency and quality - but maybe they already do.

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As we continued to cut back and forth in the line a frazzled looking man in a New York Jets sweatsuit appeared to ask an attendant a question. Immediately you could feel the entire line collectively tense up and clench its teeth: no one cuts the line and gets away with it. The man seemed well intentioned enough - though thoroughly confused and unaware - and he continued to talk with the attendant (who for the record did not ask him to get in line). Soon though, I noticed my fellow line-goers begin to exchange uncomfortable and disapproving looks but no

one spoke up. Let me remind you that this is a line of “leaders” and “elders” and while everyone felt the responsibility and right to complain about their plight no one could muster the courage to break for the rigid social structure they all bought into. So, as an aware and confident individual (and because the guy certainly wasn’t going to come after me as I think everyone else worried) I spoke up loudly but politely. Immediately the man retracted and scurried to the powerless back of the line- put into the proper order of the situation. After a few murmurs of thanks and appreciation we again settled into our “normal” roles - however I hoped that my actions had somehow “taught” the group to think a bit more individually and take ownership over the entire group and not just their own selfish interests. Only seconds later and my position elevated to number three in the line another cutter emerged. This one was decidedly more innocent (looking). A blonde college-aged girl with a Louis Vuitton handbag; she immediately demanded that the attendant “print her ticket because she has to catch a train in fifteen minutes.” Ironically I think half the line was attempting to get onto the same train. In this situation, while the line again grew impatient we saw a different result. She was immediately rebuffed by the Amtrak attendant (a different one than last time) and was told to head to the back of the line. Frustrated she cursed under her breath as she stormed away and then to my surprise came to a stop immediately in front of me. Being the only twenty-something male in the line’s lead, it was obvious that I would be an easy target. She pleaded with me to let her cut in line. I quickly said it wasn’t my decision but the decision of everyone behind me and I was in no place to let her in (nor would I have wanted to). Immediately the blame fell on me. She proceeded to berate me (and not the line-collective) before disappearing from sight. Again I was congratulated by my partners in line but I had an odd sense that this community we had created was

The inter ac tion of a line

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not at all healthy. Two situations presented themselves for leaders to emerge and two times no one but the youngest member (and the one also focusing specifically on reading the situation) spoke up. As the time came for me to take my victory lap to the attendantâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s counter, I made sure my directive of haste and consciousness did not leave my head as it had with every single one of my counterparts. After completing my transaction as quickly as possible I almost had the nerve to ask what platform the train was departing from but decided against it and moved swiftly to the center of the station. As expected the entire encounter did not take nearly as long as expected and I had a good five minutes of standing around afterward. But during this time I again saw my former line community partners. The empathy and relationship we had built was all but gone - it was as if I was no longer relevant in their universe. Once the binding contract of queuing up had disappeared we were no longer the linecommunity, but just part of a much larger one comprised of the whole of Penn. Station.

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What I took away most in this experience was the realization of just how conditioned and situationally humans react subconsciously in everyday situations. Today, I likely shared the line with senior executives and officials that routinely put people in their place and act against the grain of consensus, but when they were introduced to a vehicle as painfully simple as a line all of their power, knowledge, and understanding of situations disappeared. The individuals in the situation became fixed actors in a poorly scripted scenario. They felt the need to make remarks about their blood pressure rising, the pertinence of their own situation, and the irrational sense of power they felt as they heard their call to visit the attendant but nothing to benefit the group as a whole. I hope that my displays of individuality and proactive reflection helped create an environment of peripheral learning and participation that but its more likely that I won’t be remembered at all (except by the blonde girl I snubbed). While my affect on this group may be minimal, as a designer, I’ll take the more optimistic route and hope that someday I can re-imagine and remake the “line” so they don’t have to.

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firs t off, it ’s a genuine honor to be graduating with all of my fellow students and to have the privilege of delivering this address, risd is the most important community I have ever been a part of and I am deeply humbled by this opportunity.

On behalf of all of the students graduating today, I’d like to thank our families, friends, faculty, administration, and everyone else who has ever played a role in making our risd experiences a reality. Today, as we are celebrating the culmination of our risd academic careers, I can imagine, and attest to, the wash of emotions and reflections of the last four years we have shared together being felt right now. Over the past four years we have found ourselves maturing in an era of sweeping change. As citizens and individuals we have felt the pains of war, witnessed (and played vital roles in) historic politics, and experienced the collapse of some of our worlds most solid institutions. As students we straddled the missions and visions of two administrations giving us the unique opportunity to shape risd’s future with an personal knowledge of its history. So in this era of constant unease, unstable job markets, and civil unrest, what is risd? Its certainly not just a college of art and design. Proof of this can be found in the amount of critical thought and questioning risd does regarding its own existence, place and relevance in the evolution of our world. So... What is risd? Well as a graphic designer, it is in my nature to organize and communicate information. And knowing my audience’s visual tendencies, I have prepared some visuals to help guide us to a better realization:

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commencement address proposed (but ne ver delivered) speech for

Is it our handsome but fragmented hillside campus? The loose tiles in the Upper Quad that we have all been squirted by on rainy days? The Hogwarts-like mysteries and creatures locked away in the Nature Lab? Or the studios we called home in any one of our respective departments?

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No.

Is it our gleaming new “heart of campus,” The Chace Center? No, I forgot... that’s the Museum!

Is it our charismatic, globe-trotting, scarf-clad president? Nope.

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Scrotie? Well.... When the heat is on maybe...

$49,550

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Is it our tuition? No... Well maybe for our parents and loan officers in the audience.

Is it our world-class reputation? Well thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nice but its not enough...

So if risd is none of these things singularly -then what is it...? Of course, that’s actually very simple: risd is your zany freshman year roommate; it’s a painting major’s relationship with her canvas; it’s the everlasting bond of your champion flag football team; it’s your professor’s support and challenge to push yourself beyond where you think you could go; it’s the camaraderie felt in the Met after 8 hours of drawing homework and how you still enjoy getting harassed by Chef George; its the connections, interactions, an relationships that make risd the best.

commencement

So, if it’s relationships like these that make risd the best, then it really is all of us that “is” risd. But, like the relationships we have fostered during the past four years, we are not static. Like an overly-worked piece of clay, risd has squeezed us, crushed us, and shaped us into who we are today.

address

To shed some light on this to the visitors in the audience, I’d like to share a few scientific statistics I have come across in my work with risd’s strategic planning process this past semester to give you all a fuller picture of who we really are:

*Except for illustration majors.

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Well, now that we have established that you have equal statistical data to our strategic planning committees, I’d like to ask you to participate in a wonderful exercise Provost Jessie Shefrin presented to the Core Planning Group perform some months ago. If you have some paper and something to write with great, otherwise just think about it...

Try to visualize the “Shape of risd.” Is it an animal? Three Dimensional? Wet? Moldable? Ok, done? Here are some examples from our group that I think warrant sharing. Lets see how yours compared:

The most common metaphor for risd, as you may or may not know, is that of Silos. It comes from the frustration that we are all neatly working in our respective departments without any permeable structure to mix and work together - a challenge risd has faced for years.

Illustration Professor Susan Doyle, provided us with a pleasing image of a suspension bridge, with each part of the structure balancing and pulling on the other, emphasizing that risd cannot stand without the collaboration of all of its parts.

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But my favorite had to be the simple but elegant shape presented by Art History Professor Margot Nishimura. Margot, if you are in the audience I hope this plug forgives me for my lack of performance in your Illuminated Manuscripts course! The verticality of the shape, as I took it to mean it, is the most essential definition (albeit minimalist) of what risd is -depth. You have heard it once and will hear it a million times again. risd is truly unlike any place of learning anywhere else in the world. Unlike most college experiences where students encounter a horizontal rectangle of the liberal arts and sciences, we have each come to own a special discipline on a masterful level. Whenever I speak to or visit my friends from other colleges, I always return to risd amazed by the drive and passion we have for our craft and practice and the amount of work and thought we put into our making. It is this deep and iterative process that makes us so valuable to the world today. As I stated in my opening words; we are at a moment of critical capacity. Everywhere we turn from industry to environmentalism, our systems are breaking and we aren’t seeing the appropriate leaders step up to solve them with the proper perspective. Lately, I have been hearing the call from employers looking for “T-shaped people” to solve tomorrow’s staggering problems.

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People with both depth and breadth of knowledge, passion, and experience. Looking out at you, my classmates, I see an overwhelming majority of this type of excited and motivated person. And the best part is, we already have the hard part down, the depth! The next steps must be to take ownership of our abilities and take charge of creativity’s potential in the greater context of the world. However, while risd has afforded us the opportunity to dive deep in our practice, we all often lose sight of how our actions can relate and impact the world beyond our studio walls. So, as the world is calling for more “T-shaped people,” I’d like for us to take it one step further.

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While we will all be awarded degrees in specific disciplines today, it is my wholehearted belief that everyone one of us possess another talent to do â&#x20AC;&#x153;something-elseâ&#x20AC;? and something more. So its my challenge to you, my fellow classmates, to apply the depth of your knowledge and process to apply it to other newfound passions and explorations. Because for every one of us now, it can never be only what risd was, but rather what it will be for our entire lives. Just like our risd experience, it is what you make it. Thank you all again for the most transformative experience of my life...

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;It makes me feel guilty that anybody should have such a good time doing what they are supposed to do.â&#x20AC;? - Charles Eames

For Mom & Dad. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t thank you enough.

thanks & ack nowledgements

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This book is part of a series of works by Willem Van Lancker as a component to his Graphic Design bfa degree thesis at Rhode Island School of Design entitled “Agency & Structure.”

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