Category Archives: designing

Sir Ken Robinson on TEDTalks

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Ideas Worth Spreading. 

That’s a topic near and dear to my heart.  And one for which I’m more than happy to play a willing accomplice.

In this particular case, it’s both a pleasure and a duty.

 

 

At the TED2006 conference earlier this year I had a peak life experience in the form of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson.  He stirred my soul and reminded me why I was here on the planet. 

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I encourage you to take 20 minutes to listen to Sir Robinson.  If you’re engaged in any kind of creative endeavors in your life (and
we all are), you must see this.  And if you’re responsible for the
care, feeding, and education of another human being, you must see this.  See his video (and many more) on TEDTalks.

(plus, it’s all sponsored by one of my favorite producers of cool products, BMW)

Unabashed Gearhead Gnarlyness

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Ah, the scream of a Ferrari motor at full boogie

In this case a twin-turbo V8 from a F40LM expertly pedaled by none other than French F1 hotshoe Jacques Lafitte.  How about that recalcitrant shifter trying to move gears around in a cold box?  At about the 60 second mark you can hear Lafitte really get into the turbos, and I just can’t get enough of the exhaust spitting, burping and rip snorting as he heels and toes down the gearbox around the 90 second mark.

Sacrebleu!  Forza Italia!  It’s like, visceral, dude.

thanks to the crazies at Winding Road blog for the link

Fiat 500: Open Source Marketing

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Just over two years ago I wrote a post about the Fiat Trepiùno concept car and mused a bit about cultural influences on design.  Design thinkers are particularly adept at reaching a point of empathy for users, but I do think that one’s own sense of culture and surroundings does — and in most cases should — end up embedded in the offerings one design.

In other words, designers of small cars should live in cities.  Hummer designers should hang out in shopping malls.  And suburban pickup designers should hang out at Home Depot.

The good news is that Fiat is shipping the Trepiùno as the new Fiat 500.  It is to the great Dante Giacosa’s Fiat Nuova 500 what the  New Beetle is to Professor Porsche’s original Beetle — a retro reskin of a modern front-wheel drive platform; an exercise in style more than in the extreme engineering packaging and rational beauty that characterized the originals.  But hey, I’ll take it — the iconic 500 look (inspired by the Isetta, a descendant of refrigerators, by the way), is just such a winner.

On to the marketing bit: lifting a page from Ducati and Virgin, but on a much grander scale, Fiat has set up www.fiat500.com, where you can go "design" your new Fiat 500 as I did above.  Of course, you’re not really designing it — you’re just optioning it out with lifestyle and go-fast-boy-racer accessories, a la Mini.  But it’s fun, it’s good for getting some buzz out, and if Fiat is clever, they’ll be data mining the results to guide their manufacturing production mix.  Clever.

On Authenticity

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I’ve been thinking a lot about authenticity lately.  It comes up in just about every conversation I’m in around the subject of designing things to spread, or creating infectious action.

As is the case with quality (the visceral, emotive kind, not the six-sigma variant), I believe authenticity is best understood via immersive experiences.  I’m not so interested in articulating what authenticity is or isn’t, but I do appreciate it as an experience, and I think knowing what that experience feels like is the key creating things that are authentic as well as being authentic in one’s own trek across this planet.

So what does it look like?  Here’s a stab:  eggbaconchipsandbeans , by Russell Davies

Customized markets of one

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freddy&ma is a great example of how the web can be used to bring manufacturers and customers back together again, so that mass marketed offerings for many can become tailored — even bespoke — objects for one. 

While I’m not one to jump on the "in the future we’ll all print out products at home" bandwagon, I do believe that we’ll see the freddy&ma approach of "let me choose and then build it for me" take hold in other industries.  In a way, what Mini has done with the process of tailoring a car is a first, web-enabled step toward this world.  I hope to see the day when I can use the web to order custom bodywork for a Ferrari coupe from an authentic carrozzeria panel beater working with a hammer and tree stump, sipping lambrusco while he pounds out the web-enabled fenders of my dreams…  of course, the car will probably be made of carbon fiber and constructed in a clean room, but the other reality is just so romantic.