From taking a proactive attitude to treating creatives like plants (it's true), seven tips for producing more successful design work.
Designers at all levels of experience could probably list hundreds of opinions about what makes design successful. After two decades of designing and leading numerous design teams I have quite a few myself. But I've filtered them down to seven core perspectives I like to call ASTRO Theory.
1. DESIGN is a point of view. Many people believe design equals the visual object or result of the presentation skills a creative person creates; pictures, models, sketches, photos. I believe that design happens prior to these results and is actually about taking an original idea and applying a point of view by translating it into presentable, tangible elements for ease of sharing with others. Good designers happen to have talents or skills that allow them to make their point of view tangible, but that's not enough. Designers should be engaged due to their ability to create and support a strong point of view first, followed quickly by their ability to produce the goods.
2. PEOPLE are our ultimate clients. As designers, we
collaborate with a lot of other disciplines to bring our designs
alive. We often come up with the vision for a program, develop the
details and then spend a lot of time protecting the original design
intent through production. But after these efforts are complete, they
matter little. The end results are all people see, experience or
remember. No one typically cares how you got to the result--the
battles, the compromises, the inspirations--they only know the final
product. Because of this, I believe that as the other disciplines
cover their specialties, designers should be the end-user advocates
through the entire program, reminding the team that people are our
ultimate clients.
3. EMPOWER individual creativity. We've all heard the term "design by committee" or possibly the old maxim that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. And I strongly agree. It's very difficult to create groupthink around multiple points of view. It's great to voice them, collect them and prioritize them, but to avoid camels, I recommend empowering one ultimate individual you trust to become the director and keeper of the vision. Empowering individual creativity also ensures a higher level of passion, focus, commitment and ownership for the results.
4. PROACTIVE over reactive. You can wait to be told what to do when someone else takes the lead and imposes their directives. Or you can identify opportunities, then take things into your own hands and provide options, ideas and leadership. A favorite mantra at ASTRO is "I'd rather get a speeding ticket, than a parking ticket." Of course, approval for certain levels of involvement are necessary, but I believe designers are leaders, and should be proactive over reactive.
5. DESIGN is not a democracy. Democracies are fine, mainly for collecting diverse input. But they can kill design. Often too many opinions water down the clarity of the design intent. I've had many clients where there are way too many brilliant people involved in programs. They find it their duty to provide all the alternative solutions or insights to every program--always broadening the thinking--instead of focusing on decision-making. If not for the benevolent dictatorship of the program director in these programs, they would never reach the goal. Design requires focused leadership, not democratic consensus.
6. CULTURE is the key to soulful work. Designers are kinda like plants (I know, I know...but it's a good visual). They really need an environment that supports their needs. I believe they need sunlight, nutrients, good weather, conversation, or music, maybe a hug, pruning, cleaning and sometimes transplanting. On top of all of that, they need space to express themselves individually, even while being part of a greater identity. Burying designers in cubicle-land, away from other creatives or off in isolation can be effective for those who have strong wills to survive, but for more relevant, beautiful, inspiring results, designers need a culture of design stimulus. They need environments that feed their visions and help them reflect and generate more soulful work.
7. CHALLENGE anything. I like to tell the designers I work with to simply ask questions: There are no bad ones except the ones you don't ask. And to not take everything at face value, especially if your gut tells you otherwise. It's always good to immerse yourself in data, but it's best to digest it like fuel for the process, not take it as absolute gospel. Notice I said challenge 'anything' and not 'everything.' The idea is to think about what you're creating, but not overthink it. Learn to trust your instincts and intuition, especially once you've digested all the information. I believe the magic of design can really occur when you challenge convention with confidence, then apply design talent and skills to make everything look super sweet.
That's current ASTRO Theory. But it's not the final word. I continually keep working to adjust, refine and apply it (see #7).
Brett
Lovelady is the founder and driving force at ASTRO Studios of San
Francisco, a company he launched in 1994. Brett created ASTRO to be a
pure design culture, where he and his talented crew could blend design
skills, innovative technologies and lifestyle influences into high
impact, supercharged products and brands.
Within a
short time, ASTRO has become an international design powerhouse by
designing industry leading products and brands for companies like Nike,
Microsoft, HP, Alienware, Herman Miller, Xbox, Virgin and many more.
Also, Brett and ASTRO recently spun-off a new company called ASTRO
Gaming, providing high performance video gaming equipment for pro
gamers.
In the
past decade, ASTRO has won numerous design and industry awards,
including 2 prestigious BusinessWeek/IDSA Design of the Decade Awards,
for both NIKE Triax Sportwatches and Kensington Smartsockets and was
featured as one of Fast Company's Fast 50 in 2003. Prior to
starting ASTRO, Brett did time as VP of Design at Lunar Design and
before that VP of Design at Frog Design on the mean streets of the San
Francisco bay area.
If you can play games, you can get paid. Believe it. Video gaming is way beyond the arcade, dark basements and dorm rooms. It's gone mainstream and big time. Don't get me wrong, it still includes your dungeon-dwelling, code-crunching roommate. But it's bigger and broader than ever. This is thanks to the leadership of hardware brands like Xbox, PlayStation, Wii, and Alienware. And let's not forget the games themselves like Guitar Hero, Rock Band or the online MMO (that's massively multiplayer online) virtual economies like World of Warcraft.
If you have a good understanding of how and why video games work and what they mean to their cultures, we are more valuable to most marketing, design, advertising, technology and software companies than people that don't know such things.
Video games have defined the culture of the last two generations (with another swiftly on the way). For more than 30 years, our culture has been reprogrammed to play differently with machines. It has taught us to expect more from our entertainment, more interaction, more feedback, more options, etc. To understand pop culture and technology culture, you have to understand video games and the people who love to play them.
The video games industry has over $50 billion in annual worldwide revenue and drives a number of additional technologies, hardware, and service purchases by savvy tech buyers who play games. And the video gaming industry is growing in double digits annually, while music and movies decline into negative numbers. The biggest reason, or differentiator seems to be the preference of "interactive" over "passive" forms of entertainment.
This type of growth has spawned many new elements to video gaming, including movie deals, merchandize and mainstream endorsements, like Warcraft characters in Mountain Dew commercials or pro gamers from the Major League Gaming Pro Circuit landing on Dr. Pepper bottles. In fact pro gamers and their leagues and teams are rapidly expanding into many fans' favorite "sport" to watch and follow. And sponsors are paying attention.
At ASTRO, we're living this explosion first hand via a unique relationship with Major League Gaming (MLG). Our first product is the ASTRO A40 Headset, currently the official headset of the MLG Pro Circuit for two years running, where designing for the pro environment we've had a front row seat to the emergence of the profession.
Much like any serious, professional sport, these gamers want the best performance equipment, so we spent time developing products that solved some of their communication and audio issues, while improving the sport and giving the players the most superior product possible. And this directly helps them win, translating into making more prize money, salaries and sponsor endorsements. That's right, it's now feasible to become a pro video gamer, making a good living on the way to international fame with millions of gaming fans connected and watching around the world.
In fact, earlier this year the World Cyber Games attracted over 29 million online for the their final event. The MLG attracts half a million viewers online direct and via ESPN.com for every tournament on the pro circuit.
Like many great youth-driven activities, video gaming has exploded into its own, culturally impacting many aspects of all our popular and professional lives. Some of the influences are brash and direct, some more patient and subtle. But if you take the time to understand video gaming, it can advance your career to the next level--and keep you entertained you along the way.
Brett
Lovelady is the founder and driving force at ASTRO Studios of San
Francisco, a company he launched in 1994. Brett created ASTRO to be a
pure design culture, where he and his talented crew could blend design
skills, innovative technologies and lifestyle influences into high
impact, supercharged products and brands.
Within a
short time, ASTRO has become an international design powerhouse by
designing industry leading products and brands for companies like Nike,
Microsoft, HP, Alienware, Herman Miller, Xbox, Virgin and many more.
Also, Brett and ASTRO recently spun-off a new company called ASTRO
Gaming, providing high performance video gaming equipment for pro
gamers.
In the
past decade, ASTRO has won numerous design and industry awards,
including 2 prestigious BusinessWeek/IDSA Design of the Decade Awards,
for both NIKE Triax Sportwatches and Kensington Smartsockets and was
featured as one of Fast Company's Fast 50 in 2003. Prior to
starting ASTRO, Brett did time as VP of Design at Lunar Design and
before that VP of Design at Frog Design on the mean streets of the San
Francisco bay area.
My family room is a hypermedia circus. At any given time there may be four or five technology-driven acts performing at the same time. The TV, of course, is alive and flipping channel to channel, I believe on its own. My high schooler (doing homework…ha!) is on the couch with her laptop in position, right hand on the keyboard while her left hand flutters over her smarty-pants text phone. And, I should mention her best friend is only two feet away, updating her MyFace SpaceBook Twit Feeds, while they text each other, laugh and video chat with some new emo kid from Texas they met online.
Then the third ring of the circus walks in, grabs the remote from under his sister's leg and shifts the display into AUX mode for an online Xbox Live Halo session with his team, only to be told by his sis that she and couch friend were watching that. So he plops onto the couch with his Skullcandy earbuds and Nintendo DS to wait out the chatfest rather than shuffing back to his room to crank up Garage Band and finish his latest chart-topper. Perhaps he's hoping for a spontaneous session of Rock Band to break out so he can be the drummer this time, while the girls front the band. It's hard to tell from his locked and loaded gaze into the DS.
And here comes my wife with her Kindle, looking for a landing zone on the couch to be near the family, absorb their love, and shoot a raised eyebrow reaction every so often. And, I must confess, all the while my MacBook and super sweet Astro A40 headset has buckled me into my lounger, ready for a game battle or possibly a Skype call to China.
It's these kind of sessions that confirm to me, we've left passive mode, we're skipping past interactive mode and are now well into hyperinteractive design mode. We've gone exponential and there's no turning back (unless you consider the frailties of power production and delivery).
Although I've been involved in countless techno-driven design programs at ASTRO--in-home, focus groups, designer lovefests, workshops etc.--where the use of technology is projected into the future, the real-time truth is that the future is now. The Jetsons are building their first house on stilts and design-enabled, hyperactive media is leading the way, hardwiring us differently, by the minute, sending us toward a reality of "if you think it, you can have it." Instant gratification, virtual or real, blurred together, filtered only by the small matter of time and space and sometimes money. What was an idea five minutes ago is on a your screen to play with now, and in your hands tomorrow, and so on and so on. It's not all good and it's not all bad, it just is.
As a designer of experiences, products, interactions, etc., racing through the technology landscape, I often look for the rest stops in programs to wash my hands and rub my eyes, to think, ponder and project what might come of the programs we're developing, what new wildfire are we sparking and where will they burn. I know as designers we're contributing to the hyper-speed of society and I hope we're also sensitive enough to the human realities that we can pace ourselves and those around us, to lengthen the plot and point our views in the right directions.
One design can create thousands of conversations full of millions of words. And now in our hyper-interactive states, we're having many parallel conversations, creating billions of words, that perhaps no one is listening to, because they may be too busy doing the same.
Brett
Lovelady is the founder and driving force at ASTRO Studios of San
Francisco, a company he launched in 1994. Brett created ASTRO to be a
pure design culture, where he and his talented crew could blend design
skills, innovative technologies and lifestyle influences into high
impact, supercharged products and brands.
Within a
short time, ASTRO has become an international design powerhouse by
designing industry leading products and brands for companies like Nike,
Microsoft, HP, Alienware, Herman Miller, Xbox, Virgin and many more.
Also, Brett and ASTRO recently spun-off a new company called ASTRO
Gaming, providing high performance video gaming equipment for pro
gamers.
In the
past decade, ASTRO has won numerous design and industry awards,
including 2 prestigious BusinessWeek/IDSA Design of the Decade Awards,
for both NIKE Triax Sportwatches and Kensington Smartsockets and was
featured as one of Fast Company's Fast 50 in 2003. Prior to
starting ASTRO, Brett did time as VP of Design at Lunar Design and
before that VP of Design at Frog Design on the mean streets of the San
Francisco bay area.
As a concept, American design is very tangible. It's unapologetic. It's a roll-up-your-sleeves and get your hands dirty, "show me" sort of design. American designers, engineers, entrepreneurs and inventors alike feast off an American license to create what's next. It's the boldness of a Corvette or Mustang plus their afterlife hot rod modifications. It's Jobs' confidence to create Apple's Mac, iPhone & iPod. It's Jack O'Neill making his first wet suit so he could surf in cold NorCal waters. It's the Yahoo! or Google boys living on air in college and then creating empires from their hard work.
For many, California is an American design Mecca. Where every decade since discovery, there's a new gold rush. Where pop culture is defined, where Hollywood meets Silicon Valley, beach culture becomes mainstream fashion, where car and music cultures define generations. California is where North America leaves the front door open, inviting the rest of the world to visit and try their luck.
For others, California is the "go west" personal freedom experiment gone off the rails. The land of nuts, dope smokers, protestors and speculators. Where movie stars reign and media moguls are responsible for developing our cultural ills. Where nature clashes with industry and where senseless trends and fads are sparked.
But from my vantage point, they'd all be right. And that's why I love it. California is about potential, where we help America and the world stretch their heads. Where we have the license to boldly experiment and drive toward innovation, then sometimes get it wrong and be okay with that, because the next one will be a monster hit. This is the core of the magnetic pull of California.
At ASTRO we live in and around San Francisco, California, at the epicenter of lifestyle, technology and design, on the edge of America. Bay Area design has become an international magnet for culturally-literate, youth-savvy designers, the kind of kids who were raised on sugary breakfast cereals, media-saturated pop culture and hardwired technology. The same things could describe many businesses here in the Golden State.
I'm pretty sure that some of my favorite design-infused brands would not exist if not for having California as a proving ground. Brands of all sizes like Apple and Google, Disney and Pixar, O'Neill and Vans, Nixon and Electric, and so on.
As we built the ASTRO design brand, we've embodied this "California license" and perspective. I've often been asked how we work with--and control the energies of--such creative, adventurous people. My response has been refined to the following: "You can't control them, but you can give them a unique identity, then ask them to focus their talent like a laser for a time to accomplish the goal, typically making them quite lethal, then release them back into the wild until called on again." (Sounds like a California answer, doesn't it?)
In closing, I hope that America keeps our California "go west" spirit alive. But I am concerned that America just isn't making enough of its own stuff. We're defining, designing and developing just fine, but we need to keep making things, too. We shouldn't let China, India and other countries have all the fun of getting your hands dirty or revising a prototype over and over until it's pounded into mass production. We need to do more than click "send" to produce something. We need to keep making things and making them better. As I said before, American design is tangible, and especially when it comes to something like California style, you need to feel it.
What do you think? Are there companies you think epitomize American design or California style?
Brett Lovelady is the founder and driving force at ASTRO Studios of San Francisco, a company he launched in 1994. Brett created ASTRO to be a pure design culture, where he and his talented crew could blend design skills, innovative technologies and lifestyle influences into high impact, supercharged products and brands.
Within a short time, ASTRO has become an international design powerhouse by designing industry leading products and brands for companies like Nike, Microsoft, HP, Alienware, Herman Miller, Xbox, Virgin and many more. Also, Brett and ASTRO recently spun-off a new company called ASTRO Gaming, providing high performance video gaming equipment for pro gamers.
In the past decade, ASTRO has won numerous design and industry awards, including 2 prestigious BusinessWeek/IDSA Design of the Decade Awards, for both NIKE Triax Sportwatches and Kensington Smartsockets and was featured as one of Fast Company's Fast 50 in 2003. Prior to starting ASTRO, Brett did time as VP of Design at Lunar Design and before that VP of Design at Frog Design on the mean streets of the San Francisco bay area.
2. PEOPLE are our ultimate clients. As designers, we
collaborate with a lot of other disciplines to bring our designs
alive. We often come up with the vision for a program, develop the
details and then spend a lot of time protecting the original design
intent through production. But after these efforts are complete, they
matter little. The end results are all people see, experience or
remember. No one typically cares how you got to the result--the
battles, the compromises, the inspirations--they only know the final
product. Because of this, I believe that as the other disciplines
cover their specialties, designers should be the end-user advocates
through the entire program, reminding the team that people are our
ultimate clients.
5. DESIGN is not a democracy. Democracies are fine, mainly for collecting diverse input. But they can kill design. Often too many opinions water down the clarity of the design intent. I've had many clients where there are way too many brilliant people involved in programs. They find it their duty to provide all the alternative solutions or insights to every program--always broadening the thinking--instead of focusing on decision-making. If not for the benevolent dictatorship of the program director in these programs, they would never reach the goal. Design requires focused leadership, not democratic consensus.
Then the third ring of the circus walks in, grabs the remote from under his sister's leg and shifts the display into AUX mode for an online Xbox Live Halo session with his team, only to be told by his sis that she and couch friend were watching that. So he plops onto the couch with his Skullcandy earbuds and Nintendo DS to wait out the chatfest rather than shuffing back to his room to crank up Garage Band and finish his latest chart-topper. Perhaps he's hoping for a spontaneous session of Rock Band to break out so he can be the drummer this time, while the girls front the band. It's hard to tell from his locked and loaded gaze into the DS.
And here comes my wife with her Kindle, looking for a landing zone on the couch to be near the family, absorb their love, and shoot a raised eyebrow reaction every so often. And, I must confess, all the while my MacBook and super sweet Astro A40 headset has buckled me into my lounger, ready for a game battle or possibly a Skype call to China.
Although I've been involved in countless techno-driven design programs at ASTRO--in-home, focus groups, designer lovefests, workshops etc.--where the use of technology is projected into the future, the real-time truth is that the future is now. The Jetsons are building their first house on stilts and design-enabled, hyperactive media is leading the way, hardwiring us differently, by the minute, sending us toward a reality of "if you think it, you can have it." Instant gratification, virtual or real, blurred together, filtered only by the small matter of time and space and sometimes money. What was an idea five minutes ago is on a your screen to play with now, and in your hands tomorrow, and so on and so on. It's not all good and it's not all bad, it just is.
As a designer of experiences, products, interactions, etc., racing through the technology landscape, I often look for the rest stops in programs to wash my hands and rub my eyes, to think, ponder and project what might come of the programs we're developing, what new wildfire are we sparking and where will they burn. I know as designers we're contributing to the hyper-speed of society and I hope we're also sensitive enough to the human realities that we can pace ourselves and those around us, to lengthen the plot and point our views in the right directions.
For many, California is an American design Mecca. Where every decade since discovery, there's a new gold rush. Where pop culture is defined, where Hollywood meets Silicon Valley, beach culture becomes mainstream fashion, where car and music cultures define generations. California is where North America leaves the front door open, inviting the rest of the world to visit and try their luck. 
But from my vantage point, they'd all be right. And that's why I love it. California is about potential, where we help America and the world stretch their heads. Where we have the license to boldly experiment and drive toward innovation, then sometimes get it wrong and be okay with that, because the next one will be a monster hit. This is the core of the magnetic pull of California.
I'm pretty sure that some of my favorite design-infused brands would not exist if not for having California as a proving ground. Brands of all sizes like Apple and Google, Disney and Pixar, O'Neill and Vans, Nixon and Electric, and so on.
In closing, I hope that America keeps our California "go west" spirit alive. But I am concerned that America just isn't making enough of its own stuff. We're defining, designing and developing just fine, but we need to keep making things, too. We shouldn't let China, India and other countries have all the fun of getting your hands dirty or revising a prototype over and over until it's pounded into mass production. We need to do more than click "send" to produce something. We need to keep making things and making them better. As I said before, American design is tangible, and especially when it comes to something like California style, you need to feel it.
