Marketers, engineers, and designers are people too, and they are as much a product of their environment as the next guy.  Their daily life experiences inform their way of thinking, which in turn shapes their professional output.  The culture in which a product is developed becomes embedded in that product. 

Fiat is a good case in point.  Throughout its history, Fiat has been able to make fantastic, tiny cars, like the 500 Nuovo (whose design was cribbed in part from competitor Iso, which eventually became a BMW, but that’s another story).  Its success in doing so stems from multiple factors, from the political landscape (tax laws based on engine displacement), to the state of the market market (expensive gas, relatively low per capita earnings), and culture (how and where do live and what do we value).  In terms of automotive design, I  find the cultural one to be the most influential:  if you live in a city with small streets and limited parking, you’ll naturally develop spidey-senses that guide you toward tight, elegant, low-mass vehicular solutions.  If, on the other hand, you dwell in the flat and open expanses of middle America, well, you’re going to have a hankering for lead sleds that can burn across Oklahoma all day long without jostling unbelted, DVD-watching kids lounging in the back three rows of seats.

In other words, it’s no wonder why the automotive marques who built their reputations for superior handling and braking all hailed from within shouting distance of the Alps and the kinds of switchbacky roads that make tires and grown men scream.

So, when putting together project teams, try and staff them with people who “know” from experience.  They’ll be able to put that experience into the end product, resulting in a better experience for users.

All of this is a long way of saying that I’m thrilled to death by Fiat’s new Trepiùno concept car.  It recalls the old 500 while being new, and it’s a fresh, compelling package for a small car.  While I’m not positive that it was penned by a native of Turin, whoever did it really gets what a Fiat is.  Let’s hope they can get it to market.

The concept of jolie-laide (ugly-beautiful) isn’t just about looks.  An experience, a product, or a service can be simultaneously ugly and beautiful in other arenas, too, such as taste, feel, and sound. 

As Seth Godin recently noted, having one part of your offering be ugly when all the rest is beautiful can be a bad thing for the brand experience you’re trying to deliver.  We’ve all had product and service experiences like this: the lobby of the hotel is incredibly clean, but your room reeks of marmot.  Or the food in the restaurant is divine but the waiter is an asshole posing as a jerk — you get the picture.

But a little bit of ugly isn’t always bad.  For instance, take the Finnish drink Salmiakki, which is a mixture of salty salmiakki licorice dissolved in a potent spirit, like vodka.  The resultant brew is something to behold: it is highly viscous, even oily; it is black yet translucent, like tired motor oil; it hits the tongue with a syrupy sweetness, then transitions to a mouth-wrenching salty state, and finishes with a whoosh of strong alcohol vapor that takes your breath away.  I’ve never been able to drink more than a thimble-full at one sitting (and wouldn’t want to), but when I do, it’s quite the rush, kind of like jumping off a roof. 

Again, why not design some good tension into your product or service?  Think jolie-laide.

Stephen Bayley, whose writing stoked my interest in product design in the late 80’s, writes:

“Presenting design as a self-dependent entity suggests that design is a transferable substance, inherent in some objects, but not in others. Instead of educating a public into an awareness that everything was designed, so therefore everything might as well be designed to please, the old-fashioned promoters of design suggested that only certain things were designed and that these were exclusive, precious, rare.

Of course, the truth of the matter is that anything which has been made has been designed: Whether it works well is a matter of engineering; whether it makes a profit is a result of strict financial controls. Whether it sells is a matter of comparative advantage and taste. All that really matters is the ability to make things, everything else is polite aesthetics.”

Everything was designed. Think about it: every aspect of the built environment you inhabit was shaped by another human being. So, when people talk about Design with a capital D, or if they attach adjectives to the d-word, such as “good”, “modern”, “low” or “high”, secure your wallet, engage your frontal lobes, and ask yourself, “what the hell are they talking about?”. Just because something was created by a designer doesn’t mean that its well-designed, even it is Good Design. If it works good, looks good, is a fit to nature and the environment, and adds to the sum of happiness on this blue planet, that’s good design. And if someone in a village in Thailand made it, that’s cool too.

Be wary of professional designers and their output. When it comes to aesthetics, creating an object or service or just a thang, is much like any other human endeavor; there are a few hideously talented individuals who make it look as easy as falling off a log, and then, well, there’s the rest of us. Eminent designers like Ettore Sottsass can just see and produce things better than the average schmo, which means that when a less talented individual tries really really hard to make something notable, you can smell the over exertion a mile away. This is why I’m so wary of the kind of “high” design that’s sold at museum shops and in expensive catalogs: it is generally so self-conscious, so determined to be beautiful and interesting, that it fails on all accounts.

Think of it this way: how many really interesting, timeless designs come out of the car industry in any given decade? I’m talking Porsche 911-quality designs here. One? Two? Then think about how cool the average race car or fighter airplane looks. Did a “designer” draw them? No! An engineer or some guy who just “knows” came up with their shapes. As Bayley says, it’s really about being able to make things. The other stuff is just “polite aesthetics”, fluff which is the realm of fashion.

Design is ultimately about the care and feeding of happiness. Designing something is not a self-dependent action, it’s an expression of interdependence.

Oh my goodness, I’m beginning to sound like the protagonist of an Italian architecture manifesto, so I’d best stop while I’m ahead. My apologies.

"In design there is styling, art, and other terms intermingled.  Design means to me that every designing engineer has the opportunity to become at some stage an artist… that every craftsman who can do more than what he is trained to do is an artist." — Ferdinand "Butzi" Porsche III

What is design?

Defining just exactly what design "is" can be a frustrating pursuit.  To begin with, is the word "design" a noun or a verb?  While I believe it is best used as a verb, I do like Butzi’s definition of it as a noun — and as the Porsche 911 is the product of his very capable hands, well, we should probably give his thoughts due consideration.  And it’s true: when you’re a design engineer and you get into a state of flow, odds are you’re going to crank out some tasty stuff.  How’d you get there?  Let’s call it art.

I’m posting this to all of you with a tendency to forget about cool stuff happening in your backyard (i.e., me):

The 2004 David H. Liu Memorial Lecture Series in Design at Stanford University is in swing through May 27. David was a great guy, and attending this series is a nice way to celebrate his life.