Often our hardest job... is to remove, remove, remove bit by bit, anything that is unnecessary, that gets in the way of maximum unity. It's like music, we make a melody like this - Instead of discord - something like that. I think it's very close to composing music. Creating harmony, something very sensual...
Ronan Bouroullec as quoted in Objectified (Directed by Gary Hustwit), Swiss Dots, 2009, www.objectifiedfilm.com. Quote starts at 26:14.
The great design thinker Horst Rittel once wrote that “a design problem keeps changing while it is treated, because the understanding of what ought to be accomplished, and how it might be accomplished is continually shifting. Learning what the problem is IS the problem.”
Peter Hall, "A Good Argument," MetropolisMag.com, 18 Mar 2009, www.metropolismag.com/story/20090318/a-good-argument via Alan Blood.
8. Be an anthropologist, not an archaeologist.
An archaeologist seeks to understand the past by investigating its relics and digging for the truth of what was. An anthropologist studies people to understand their values, needs, and desires. If you want to design new solutions for the future, you have to understand what people care about and design for that. Don’t dig for the answer—connect.
"IDEO’s Ten Tips For Creating a 21st–Century Classroom Experience," MetropolisMag.com, Feb 2009, www.metropolismag.com/story/20090218/ideos-ten-tips-for-creating-a-21st-century-classroom-experience via Alan Blood.
One of my heroes is the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a man who lived before the profession of design even existed. As the challenges of the industrial age spread to every field of human endeavor, a parade of bold innovators who shaped the world, as they have shaped my own thinking, followed him: William Morris, Frank Lloyd Wright, the visionary educators of the German Bauhaus, the American industrial designers Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfuss, the team of Ray and Charles Eames. What they all shared was optimism, an openness to ex-perimentation, a love of storytelling, a need to collaborate, and an instinct to think with their hands—to build, to prototype, and to communicate complex ideas with masterful simplicity. They didn’t just do design; they lived design. These great thinkers were not as they appear in the coffee-table books about the “pioneers,” “masters,” and “icons” of modern design. They were not minimalist, esoteric members of design’s elite priesthood, and they did not wear black turtlenecks. They were creative innovators who bridged the chasm between thinking and doing because they were passionately committed to the goal of a better life and a better world. Today we have the opportunity to take their example and unleash the power of design thinking as a means of exploring new possibilities, creating new choices, and bringing new solutions to the world. In the process, we may find that we have made our societies healthier, our businesses more profitable, and our own lives richer and more meaningful.
Tim Brown, "The Making of a Design Thinker," MetropolisMag.com, Oct 2009, metropolismag.com/story/20091021/the-making-of-a-design-thinker.
“It’s time to take risks,” Mr. Fielding said he told them. “When consumers are ready to spend again, we will be ready.”
The involvement of Mr. Jobs, the Apple chief executive who joined the Disney board with the 2006 acquisition of Pixar, is particularly notable. For the first time, Mr. Jobs’s fingerprints can be seen on Disney strategy, in the same way that he influenced the look and feel of Apple’s own immensely popular retail chain. While Mr. Jobs did not personally toil on the Imagination Park concept, he pushed Disney to move far past a refurbishment.
“Dream bigger — that was Steve’s message,” said Andy Mooney, chairman of Disney Consumer Products."
Brooks Barnes, "Disney’s Retail Plan Is a Theme Park in Its Stores," New York Times, 12 Oct 2009,
www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/business/media/13disney.html.
A fundamental design and life lesson from the Zen arts is to never use more when less will do....The ancient art of Japanese brush painting called Sumi-e provides a powerful lesson concerning the use of color, communication, and restraints. Sumi-e was brought to Japan from China and is an art deeply rooted in Zen, embodying many of the tenets of the Zen aesthetic including simplicity and the idea of maximum effect with minimum means....
...Either way the lesson is clear: few colors carefully selected and positioned can be more effective than many colors indiscriminately placed.
The objective of Sumi-e is not to recreate the subject to look perfectly like the original, but to capture its essence — that is, to express its essence. This is achieved not with more but with less....
Garr Reynolds, "Sumi-e, color, and the art of less," Presentation Zen, 6 Oct 2009,
www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2009/10/a-fundamental-design-and-life-lesson-from-the-zen-arts-is-to-never-use-more-when-less-will-do-this-goes-for-the-use-of-color.html
Lizette Alvarez, "U.S. Veteran Returns Iwo Jima Relic to Daughter of Japanese Soldier," New York Times, 18 Sep 2009,
www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/nyregion/20iwo.html.
Anyone who has ever been to Target would instantly recognize the Michael Graves section simply by the distinctive blue boxes lined up at the base of a kitchen-products gondola. 'Graves blue' is a Wedgwood-y shade, as iconic as Tiffany's robin's egg blue. Born from the color of architectural blueprints, it's a complex hue not easily matched with a Pantone number. But it's Graves's favorite and, naturally, the one he chose to use in his first collection.
Target, it seems, had other ideas. Graves remembers submitting his first collection -- which featured a toaster, a blender, and an ice bucket, all with blue handles -- to the trend spotters at Target's headquarters. 'They said, 'Well, we love it, but the blue will have to go,' ' he recalls, laughing. ' 'Blue doesn't sell. Half of America doesn't like blue, and the other doesn't like green. It's got to be neutral.' ' The standoff continued until Ron Johnson, then head of the discounter's home products, mediated the dispute. 'I had to step in and say, 'Guys, these are Michael's products,' ' says Johnson, who now oversees Apple's retail stores. 'Design works if it's authentic, inspired, and has a clear point of view. It can't be a collection of input.'"
When the line launched in stores, Graves was instantly vindicated. From day one, the toaster has been a hit at Target, and five years later, it's still available. "That's the fundamental difference about design," Johnson says. "It endures."
"Between the Lines," Fast Company, 1 Aug 2004,
www.fastcompany.com/magazine/85/open_betweenthelines.html.
Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.
Hayagreeva Rao, Robert Sutton, and Allen P. Webb, "Innovation lessons from Pixar Director Brad Bird," McKinsey Quarterly, April 2008, www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Innovation_lessons_from_Pixar_An_interview_with_Oscar-winning_director_Brad_Bird_2127.