Following my post last week about the meaning of Ducati, here’s some breaking news on Ducati: a majority stake has been sold by Texas Pacific Group (an American firm) to Investindustrial Holdings (an Italian firm). 

What’s interesting about this from a meaning point of view is that Ducati is now owned by an Italian corporate entity, rather than by an American corporate entity.  Does it matter that the firm is now in Italian hands?  On the one hand, Ducati has certainly thrived for the past decade under American ownership.  On the other, the Ducatisti seem to think so — they’re already saying something along the lines of "Finally, Ducati is Italian".

I’m not so sure the nationality of ownership really matters to the meaning of a very nationality-centric brand like Ducati, so long as its deep roots in Borgo Panigale continue to be celebrated.  Mini, the quintessential British car, is owned and produced by a very Bavarian company called BMW.  Nor do I think it’s really important where the nationality-centric object gets made.  For example, the BMW M Coupe, perhaps the most radical expression of BMW brand values ever produced, was made in the United States.  But critically, it was designed in Germany, by German Engineers.

So what matters?  I think what matters is that the people designing the offering really "get" — and have control over — all the tacit cultural markers that end up embedded in any designed object.  To the extent that one needs to live in a culture to really understand it, designers should probably live there if they are engaged in creating offerings that are largely differentiated on the basis of meaning, rather than functionality.

What do you think?

Any startup is hard.  Startups involving internal combustion engines are even more difficult to pull off than the usual venture.  Demanding distribution, sales, service, and support logistics, not to mention the sheer complexity of a modern vehicle, makes a vehicular startup an endeavor for the very brave of heart, the very wealthy, or (hopefully) both.

The Motoczysz company of Portland, Oregon, is working to market the innovative motorcycle shown above.  It’s full of innovative mechancial design elements, and the aesthetics ain’t bad, either.

Let’s wish them luck.

My Cool Stuff blogroll is a dynamic mix of favorites and others which reflect topical areas of interest.

Here are some highly recommended additions:

• TEDBlog:  TED + Blog = cool
• Presentation Zen:  Fantastic know-how about being a better presenter, but much more than that, too, such as this post on Wabi-Sabi.
• english cut:  Everything you want to know about quality.  Period.

Is this beausage?

No.  Beausage is the confluence of beauty and usage.

This rusty Porsche 356 is just plain usage. 

What I can’t believe is that there’s a FastPass RFID beacon in the windshield.  Clearly the owner is an optimist.

The Brill Luxus 38 lawn mower

Time and design — what happens to your offering as it lives in the world?  How can you design with that in mind?  That might mean optimizing for beausage, or perhaps recognizing that the dynamic experience of your offering — as exemplified by the Rivendell SpeedBlend bike tire — can be so much more interesting than that provided by a static object.

And then there’s the Kumho Ecsta MX-C automobile tire, which puts an entirely new spin on tire smoke.   When spun faster than the corresponding groundspeed of the car they’re attached to, tires burn.  Burning rubber emits lots of smoke, generally of a bluish-white variety. 

Kumho’s innovation was to recognize that, as with SpeedBlend, the experience of a tire in motion could be designed.  In this case, that meant formulating the rubber compound such that it emits dense red smoke when burned.  Here’s a photo and video of the tire in action from Automobile Magazine (I highly recommend the video — if Pontiac made GTO ads like this, their sales would be oh so much higher):

Please recognize that while I find the Kumho tire interesting from a "how in the world are we going to differentiate our product in this market?" point of view, I’m not an advocate of crazy driving.  In fact, I hate it when people speed in the wrong context, such as all the cell-phone-porting-latte-quafing-fast-driving jerks who drive down my suburban street at ten over the posted speed limit. 

But for the time and the place where a well-laid patch of rubber is just what the doctor ordered, why not make it a red one?

"The guitar for me is a translation device.  It’s not a goal. And in some ways jazz isn’t a destination for me. For me, jazz is a vehicle that takes you to the true destination – a musical one that describes all kinds of stuff about the human condition and the way music works." 
– Pat Metheny

(Metheny’s take on jazz isn’t so far from how Ettore Sottsass thinks about design.  If there’s such a thing as "jazz thinking", I think it shares many elements with "design thinking".)

Bruce Nussbaum is blogging:  NussbaumOnDesign

I had a casual, brief water-cooler-type conversation yesterday, which went something like this:

Me:  I noticed you’re using Keynote instead of PowerPoint.  How do you like it?

Them:  It’s great.

Me:  Did it take a lot of time to make your presentation look so designerly?

Them:  No.  I think Apple designed it so that you can’t produce anything that’s not beautiful.

That really blew my mind.  What a simple yet utterly audacious vision for any offering: help your customers make their lives more beautiful. 

What if your car made you drive with the smoothness of Fangio?  If your food processor helped you cook with the elegance of Batali?  As Virgina Postrel has been saying for a while, the desire for beauty in our lives is more basic than we think.  Perhaps those of us who create things for other people to use should be going beyond functionality, usability and visceral aesthetic concerns to deliver the realm of the poetic existence. 

The 2006 Honda Civic Sedan

After seeing one pass me on the street, I have to admit I’m head-over-heels for the new Civic.  The shape and proportions represent a huge improvement over somewhat dowdy 2005 model, and there’s more than a little Alfa Romeo Giulia Berlina in the trunk section, which is no bad thing.  This is the first Honda sedan since the famed pop-up headlight Accord of the late 80’s to make you wonder why people bother with two-door coupes.  Sweet.

photo copyright Honda