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Industrial Design and Business

Every year, more and more of the business magazines are coming out with their own design annuals. Recently, Business Week teamed up with the IDSA to publish 158 product design winners. You can read the article, a companion article on Design Strategy as well as spend a half hour looking through all 158 winners.

It’s nice to see business publications embracing this new awareness of quality design being a sound business strategy. Unfortunately, the infatuation still seems focused primarily on product design. I see little in the way of glitzy spreads highlighting the benefits of embracing graphic design, better web strategies, more sellable packaging, easier to navigate support systems, etc. Granted, I don’t linger in the business section of the magazine rack as much as I maybe should. Has anyone seen business focused articles on graphic design? If not, why is that? Should the AIGA be calling up Business Week and making a pitch for an article?

All that aside, it’s always fun to look through the designs. Apple, of course, makes a showing. The Mac Mini, Airport Express, and Shuffle all show up on the list. And, of course, Apple’s influence tends to rub off on others as well. An obvious example being JBL’s iPod speaker stand and a not-so-obvious one is Johnson Control’s Room Temperature Sensors. It’s also nice to see Microsoft make the list for once as well with their Windows Home Center.

For the graphic designer looking for some more hardware bling bling, there’s a new Wacom Tablet, the ‘Octopus’ LCD monitor, and—a staple of any trendy designer’s desk—a modern desk lamp.

Some of my favorite “why didn’t I think of that” products include the self watering plant pots and the cup sponge.

Closer to the ‘graphic design’ category are two nice examples of packaging design: Method cleaning supplies, which always attracts my attention while walking the aisles of Target, and an Ikea-esque wine packaging solution which is both unique, and incredibly practical, as it turns into a modular wine rack.

And I’d like to make my own honorable mention for this thermometer—not for the quality of the product itself, but for the photography—perhaps the nicest photo of a rectal medical device ever produced. ;o)

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ENTRY DETAILS
ARCHIVE ID 2354 FILED UNDER Critique
PUBLISHED ON Jun.29.2005 BY darrel
WITH COMMENTS
Comments
Christopher Gee’s comment is:

Has anyone seen business focused articles on graphic design? If not, why is that? Should the AIGA be calling up Business Week and making a pitch for an article?

I made the exact same observation. Even much of this new attention and focus by the likes of Tom Peters on design and his calls that designers should be more involved in business matters, tends to focus more on product designers and less on interaction deisgners or print designers.

Should the AIGA be pitching stories? Yeah RIGHT! That's really the problem, though. The ID industry is far more organized and is better able to sell their worth to the business community. We're more of a cottage industry made up of hundreds of thousands of independents, all moving in separate directions.

That there is no one organization who could or would take the initiative to try and get such a story into a magazine like Business Week is a big part of the problem.

.chris{}

On Jun.29.2005 at 06:59 PM
Ravenone’s comment is:

The thermometer pic is uhm...

Interesting.

But it gets the point across.

I *need* one of those plant waterer-things...

On Jun.30.2005 at 01:59 PM
Doug Bartow’s comment is:

I think industrial design translates to the postage stamp-sized annual magazine awards better than graphic (or surface) design does. Maybe it's the implied sense of scale one gets from looking at products reproduced at very small sizes compared to looking a print design (for example) which almost alway requires a phyical measurement of the piece itself in the description to understand it. The July/August issue of I.D. (51st Annual Design Review) handled this issue in an interesting way by showing the graphic design winners being physically held and photographed with hands shown holding the piece itself.

On Jun.30.2005 at 03:03 PM
Gunnar Swanson’s comment is:

Product designers design line items—things that sell and show up on the plus side of accounting. They are the design equivalent of manufacturing. Graphic designers tend to design stuff that supports line items and often stuff that supports un-measurable (or at least unmeasured) aspects of the business. We are the design equivalent plant maintenance.

Add to that the fact that every time a story about product design comes out we act like it’s about us even while complaining that it’s not about us. We make grandiose claims about our importance but don’t seem to believe that we do anything that is convincingly about the goals of our clients (as evidenced by our recent conversation on certification.

Why would business week want to write about us?

On Jun.30.2005 at 05:08 PM
ps’s comment is:

We make grandiose claims about our importance but don’t seem to believe that we do anything that is convincingly about the goals of our clients (as evidenced by our recent conversation on certification.

what the hell has that to do with certification? nothing.

Why would business week want to write about us?

duh. maybe because its business.

On Jun.30.2005 at 05:21 PM
ps’s comment is:

Has anyone seen business focused articles on graphic design? If not, why is that? Should the AIGA be calling up Business Week and making a pitch for an article?

whithout thinking hard, what about the multipage feature in fast company's "masters of design" on brian collins, june 2005.

On Jun.30.2005 at 05:26 PM
Darrel’s comment is:

Nice find, PS. Looks like the article is online, too:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/95/open_design-collins.html

On Jun.30.2005 at 06:05 PM
Michael B.’s comment is:

I know from personal experience how hard it is to get the business press interested in graphic design stories as opposed to product design stories. This has less to do with the p.r. genius of the IDSA and more to do with the kind of subjects journalists like to write about.

Products are tangible. You can take a nice picture of them. The stories of their design always involve a lot of manly, businesslike sounding things like modelmaking, engineering, manufacturing, testing. Regular people see them in stores and sometimes buy them. Not to mention the fact that some of these same products appear in advertising in the magazines running the stories.

Designers making the case for design effectiveness fall back on the same bunch of usual suspects: the iPod, the new Beetle, the Dyson vacuum cleaner, OXO Good Grips. Hard to picture a graphic design icon that would be as compelling to the general public.

On Jun.30.2005 at 10:48 PM
r agrayspace’s comment is:

Maybe its also about the audience. People like stories about industrial design because its an extension of our middle class consumerist mentality. The beautiful pictures of the next great gadget instantly creates the "I want that" relflex that sells products and for that matter magazines as well.

Graphic design just can't conjure up that kind of reflex from the general public. Aside from the occasional poster or book, you can't own graphic design. You can't covet it.

Simply graphic design is more the road than it is the car.

On Jul.01.2005 at 09:17 AM
Doug Bartow’s comment is:

>>People like stories about industrial design because its an extension of our middle class consumerist mentality.

Most Americans (and the press) are more in tune with fashion design than product design, and that has little to do with either middle class or consumerism. Anyone watching a runway show knows they will never get to wear those clothes, and those familiar with the industry, know that most of those clothes being modeled will never go into production. I think that industrial design (and architecture) annuals are more of a 'fashion show' than graphic design because of the ease of entry for the viewer in 3D design. They can 'imagine' themselves wearing new fashion, pushing a Dyson vacuum, or sitting in an Eames rosewood lounger (with feet up on the matching ottoman, of course). This real world 'ideal' is rarely shared by the other design arts...

On Jul.01.2005 at 10:56 AM
Gunnar Swanson’s comment is:

Peter—

what the hell has that to do with certification? nothing.

I referenced the conversation, not the subject.

Why would business week want to write about us?

duh. maybe because its business.

So are a lot of things that there isn’t room for in a magazine. If you picked up Business Week and it had an article on the ratios of candy sales to cigarette sales in mini marts or the price of shipping liquids in railroad tanks cars vs. bottled would that make you buy the magazine? It’s business. Hey. How about something about the guys who print accounting ledger pads?

On Jul.01.2005 at 11:12 AM
ps’s comment is:

Hey. How about something about the guys who print accounting ledger pads?

yeah, why not. seems to me that business-publications are full of stories about all kinds of industries. sexy or not. if there is a story (and a good pr person) chances are that it will get published. even of the guys printing accounting ledger pads.

On Jul.01.2005 at 04:26 PM
marian bantjes’s comment is:

On a completely different note ... doesn't the future seem to be looking rather ... um ... white? Sortof plastic and white? How long til we're living inside an Ipod? ("MyPod"?)

On Jul.02.2005 at 02:24 AM
ps’s comment is:

On a completely different note ... doesn't the future seem to be looking rather ... um ... white? Sortof plastic and white? How long til we're living inside an Ipod? ("MyPod"?)

marian, check out the cloud, might just be the MyPod...

On Jul.02.2005 at 11:24 AM
Meryl Friedman’s comment is:

...perhaps the nicest photo of a rectal medical device ever produced.

Tragically, someone changed the photo of the thermometer... No more adorable baby butts for you sir!

On Jul.03.2005 at 07:30 PM
Brian’s comment is:

I am joining this stream late in the game, but it’s a good one. And I had some quick thoughts.

Michael is dead right. It's damn hard to get the business press interested in graphic design stories.

But one problem may be that we tell the press just that: graphic design stories. Instead, we should be telling them remarkable stories that happen to be about graphic design.

Frankly, it’s hard to get the press interested in any story. But one difference that works for our celebrated industrial design brothers is this: unlike many graphic designers, they don't talk endlessly about “design” itself.

Instead, when talking to the business press, industrial designers like to tell stories about making things work better. Or easier. Or less expensive. Or more profitable.

And the press needs good stories. But the ones they love the most are ones about people with problems who struggle, fail, persevere and, ultimately, triumph. Most industrial design stories have a built-in human component like this, so they can be quite compelling.

And industrial designers can be eloquent about the business opportunities they explore with their clients. They can discuss:

- how they observe people using their client’s products - and competitor's products

- what they are surprised to discover

- how they manufacture and test prototypes

- what insight they have to make something better

Industrial designers are also passionate about the results of their efforts. They obsess over questions like:

- did it work?

- what do people really like it about it?

- are new markets buying it?

- what have we learned?

Industrial designers understand that their success is ultimately measured by the marketplace - and within domains outside of their industry. If people don’t buy more of what they have lovingly crafted, they won’t get rehired. ( Yet if they only listen to what the market tells them, they’ll eventually fail, too. ) So smart, young industrial designers quickly learn to ask “what can we make happen?” as much as “what should I make it look like?”

In short, the best ones ask bigger questions. And get bigger answers.

They way I see it, too much graphic design is still obsessed with graphic design. We seek too much of our definition of success from within the industry itself, patting ourselves on the back. One result is that we end up talking to ourselves rather than our audiences. And we develop secret, dense, pseudo-academic languages to do so. A sort of Graphic Design Esperanto.

Typographic hierarchies of veiled, mutable meanings? Multi-valent visual allegories??

It’s like some weird, secret code only twins speak. And you can bet that the writers at Fortune just love listening to it.

If we really want solid standing in the business press like our ID peers enjoy, then we really need to expand our view of our craft - and our potential business and cultural influence.

We should see the artifacts we create less as the end of a tortured creative process and more as the start of something larger and, ultimately, more valuable. And asking bigger questions will lead to more original thinking, bigger results - and, hopefully, better stories about graphic design for the writers at Business Week, Fortune or Fast Company.

And Darrell: You asked “Should the AIGA be calling up Business Week and make a pitch for an article?”

No. Don't wait for the AIGA to act. You should.

No life boat is coming to rescue anyone. We're on our own.

And if you've got a story that is great, I'd be happy to tell you who to call.

On Jul.08.2005 at 07:40 PM