Quentin
Tarantino's cult classic, Reservoir Dogs, with its cast of violent,
sociopathic killers with names straight out of a Crayola box--Mr. Orange, Mr.
Blue, Mr. Pink--was the inspiration for a 10-pack of rooms at the
recently-opened Paradise Tower at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. Like skulls stenciled on your bedroom
wall? Got that. A bed illuminated
by blue neon? Check. Wall-sized images of topless women enjoying a post-coital
smoke above the headboard? No problem.
"Everyone
was so afraid we'd look like another Morgans Hotel property," says Hard Rock
CMO Phil Shalala. "But we kept our brand." Indeed.
The
ten pool suites in "The Dime" were designed by South African designer Mark Zeff
of ZeffDesign and Las Vegas-based designer Mark Tracy of Chemical Spaces to be
decadent, party-like-a-rock-star spaces. Each one is outfitted with the accoutrements critical to the life of a
hard-partying young music or entertainment industry executive: direct access to the pool, 8-person
Jacuzzis, cast iron "Tea for Two" tubs, and iPod docking stations.
The
Paradise Tower's penthouse, with its interactive digital pool table and
platinum walls and hot tubs, is an homage to the lads from "Entourage."
The
Tower is part of a $770M expansion
of the existing property, which will include an entirely new, even more upscale
building, the HRH Tower, targeted
to the hotel's "more seasoned" guests (think: a tired Keith Richards.) It will
open in late December.
None
of this is so unusual, given Las Vegas' predilection for over-the-top
extravagance. What's remarkable is
that the project is proceeding at all, given the city's near economic collapse.
The words being used to describe what happened to Sin City's economy over the
past year have ranged from the crisp and straightforward "brutal," to the
flamboyantly hellish "financial apocalypse."
But,
says Shalala, the Hard Rock, buoyed by its blend of music industry guests, and bachelor
parties holding fast to the sacred belief in man's god-given right to party, is
soldiering on, despite the downturn.
"The
only thing down right now is the average room rate," he says. "There's no more
$250 rooms midweek."
But
revenues from food and beverage, accommodations, and gaming are up 25 to 30%
over last year, and the 475-room
Paradise Tower is sold out until the end of November. "Our demographic is sick
of being told the economy sucks," Shalala says.
The
375-unit HRH Tower Suites will include eight two-story mega-suites.They'll have direct access to the "nudie
pool," a European-style pool where swimsuits are frowned upon. If it's too chilly
for outdoor bathing, the
suites will provide interactive
pool tables by Digital Obscura or holograms of women swimming in your own
private pool. Blow-up dolls are so
2008!
For
those who prefer to enjoy their amusements while clothed, the hotel is
developing a real rarity in Vegas--a five acre version of Central Park. With
apologies to Frederick Law Olmsted, the place will be short on scenic bridges
and leafy rambles and long on motocross tracks and volleyball courts.
For
folks who are neither in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame nor a whiz at craps, we
got an exclusive look.
The folks at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG should be happy that Roger Martin likes his
job. Otherwise, he could cause them a heap of trouble.
As
it is, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of
Toronto is traveling the country, throwing down the gauntlet to companies who
hope to analyze and strategize their way out of a recession by bringing in
armies of management consultants. You'll get what you pay for, he warns, and it won't be innovation.
"The
business world is tired of having armies of analysts descend on their
companies," he says. "You can't send a 28-year-old with a calculator to solve
your problems."
The
problem, says Martin, author of a new book, The Design of Business: Why Design
Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage, is that corporations have pushed
analytical thinking so far that it's unproductive. "No idea in the world has been proved in advance with
inductive or deductive reasoning," he says.
The
answer? Bring in the folks whose job it is to imagine the future, and who are
experts in intuitive thinking. That's where design thinking comes in, he says.
"If
I didn't like my job, I'd go out and create a killer firm that would take on McKinsey head-to-head in their own
market. A company would get better
results, at a fraction of the price." McKinsey, a $5B company, bills out freshly minted MBAs at $1M a year, Martin says. Their billing structure is 10 times what a design firm typically gets.
We
spoke to Martin about why MBAs and designers should learn to get along prior to
his coming to New York for the Rotman School of Management Design Thinking Experts series with IDEO's Tim Brown and Target's Will Setliffe.
Fast Company: As we slowly climb out of
the recession, everybody's looking for where the next innovation will come
from. Why does our pace of
innovation seem to be slowing?
Martin:
Most companies try to be innovative, but the enemy of innovation is the mandate
to "prove it." You cannot prove a new idea in advance by inductive or deductive
reasoning.
Fast Company: Are you saying that the regression analysis jockeys and Six Sigma
black belts have got it all wrong?
Martin:
Well, yes. With every good thing in life, there's often a dark shadow. The
march of science is good, and corporations are being run more scientifically.
But what they analyze is the past. And if the future is not exactly like the past, or there are things
happening that are hard to measure scientifically, they get ignored. Corporations
are pushing analytical thinking so far that it's become unproductive. The future has no legitimacy for
analytical thinkers.
Fast Company: What's the alternative?
Martin:
New ideas must come from a new kind of thinking. The American pragmatist
Charles Sanders Peirce called it abductive logic. It's a logical leap of the
mind that you can't prove from past data.
Fast Company: I can't see many CEOs being comfortable with that!
Martin: Why not? The scientific method starts
with a hypothesis. It's often what happens in the shower or when an apple hits
you on the head. It's what we call
'intuitive thinking.' Its purpose is to know without explicit reasoning.
Fast Company: So, if you're not getting these Newtonian moments from your management
consultants, where are they likely to come from?
Martin:
In a knowledge-intensive world, design thinking is critical to overcoming the
biggest block: overcoming analytical thinking and fear of intuitive thinking. The design thinker enables the organization to balance exploration and exploitation, invention of business and administration of business, originality and mastery.
Fast Company: Who's been brave enough to embrace that idea in this market?
Martin:
When he first took over, A.G. Lafley at P&G was brilliant enough to realize
they were missing a lot about the holistic consumer experience by sticking to
things that were rigorously quantified. For example, when the company moved into beauty products,
they were looking at face cream. And the scientists decided it must be about
pore coverage. So they analyzed the hell out of pores and said 'We can cover
pores better than anybody.' So when women in their research started talking
about wanting to feel beautiful and desirable, they'd say, 'Don't talk about
that. We don't know how to quantify that!' And they couldn't understand why
stupid women would go off to department stores and pay ten times more when they
could cover pores just as well. Ten years ago, P&G couldn't prove they could sell women billions of dollars of Oil of Olay face cream at $30-$60. They could imagine it, but not prove it. Lafley took it as a management challenge to see across the divide.
Fast Company: If you don't have A.G. Lafley or Steve Jobs at the helm, how can you
sell your organization on the idea of an intuitive leap instead of a scientific
leap?
Martin:
You don't have to convert the
whole organization to design thinking.
Propose a little experiment--say, three months in length--where you
test out a bite-sized chunk of a problem using this method. If you have a little success, be sure
to then attach metrics to it. In that way, you turn the future into the past in
a way they understand.
Fast Company: We're a little biased toward the designers here. Don't they bear some
of the responsibility for the gap in understanding?
Martin:
Absolutely. Like anybody who takes a job in another country, and needs to learn
the local language in order to function, design thinkers need to learn the
language of reliability, terms such as proof, regression analysis, and best
practices.
Fast Company: Sounds like there's a promising future for somebody who's bilingual
and can combine both approaches.
Martin: This is
a fascinating time, and there's an interesting battle coming. One of these
smallish design firms might combine the best of the analytical from the business world and the best intuitive thinking from the design world and become gigantic. There would be massive traction for it. It wouldn't be the
first time that a little company in a garage saw things differently.
The view from the second floor of the Museum of Jewish Heritage at the tip of Manhattan is spectacular: It faces the Statue of Liberty, who lifts her torch over the harbor, close to Ellis Island, the first landing point for many immigrants to these shores. Overlooking that inspirational scene, a new museum exhibit captures those refugees' voices as they recall seeing America for the first time, as well as the experiences that caused them to flee their homelands and the joy and angst their arrival here
engendered.
While the museum is designated as a "Living Memorial to the Holocaust," the exhibit, "Voices of Liberty," is not limited to Holocaust survivors. Voices of Rwandan genocide survivors, Soviet refuseniks, and others are also included, and some high-profile immigrants, among them architect Daniel Libeskind, Henry
Kissinger, and Dr. Ruth, share their stories.
Listen to Daniel Libeskind talk about first seeing the Statue of Liberty:
Andre Kessler, of Bucharest, Romania, arrived in the U.S. in 1951. He remembers the passage over, during which everyone was seasick but him. "I was always hanging over the railing of the ship," he recalls. "They were always afraid that I was going to fall overboard, but it was the first taste of freedom."
Celia Kener, of Lvov, Poland, arrived in the U.S. in 1949. She recalls the fear she had in her new land. "If I crossed the street against the light, I thought that I'd be punished or be put
away because I did something wrong and it took awhile for that to go away."
Jacqueline
Murekatete, who arrived in the U.S. in 1995 from Gitarama, Rwanda, says her first experience of America was stunning. "It was a huge shock. Adjusting to living in a house, with electricity, with running water, with cars on the streets." And, she says, "I
had fears, actually, about how I would cope once I got to America. I didn't speak the language. I didn't know anything about the culture."
"Voices
of Liberty," which opens on Nov. 6th, is part of the Keeping History Center, a wing of the museum devoted to showcasing the institution's ideas and collections as part of an interactive experience.
The exhibit, funded by a grant from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, and built on landfill from the World Trade Center, was designed both to take advantage of the museum's unique geographic and geologic connection to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Ground Zero, and to reinforce the idea
that "people should be part of the history that we keep," says Ivy L. Barsky, the museum's deputy director. Voices are culled from the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, the Museum's own collection, and other sources.
While most exhibits focus on artifacts, "museums and libraries don't just collect three dimensional things," says Jonathan Alger, a partner at design firm C&G Partners, who created the exhibit in league with the design and technology firm, Potion. "Remember things like the tapes of FDR's fireside chats, or videos of the moon landing."
This exhibit is an example of Web 2.0 in exhibition design, he says. "The content is not just distributed out. It starts a two-way conversation."
Visitors to the exhibit will be invited to share their own stories of coming to America, which will then become part of the exhibit. There's a computer at the site where guests can record their experiences in a kind of ongoing guest book, or people can contribute via the Web.
The exhibition design takes advantage of cutting-edge technology to deliver a simple, intuitive experience. Visitors are provided with a specially customized iPod Touch and headphones. They then walk through the exhibition, entering circles identified by themes --- "Leaving," "First Impressions," "Adapting,"
"Lost in Translation," and others. As they enter the circle, the audio system responds to the physical location, triggering corresponding images and voices. As a result, everyone in the same
circle has the same experience simultaneously.
"The idea was, 'How can we make something where the user interface is all about walking around,'" says Jared Schiffman of Potion. "We knew that if we put a lot of touch-based functionality in the guide, it would distract from the audio. Now, the primary UI is not on the iPod; it's your body."
Older patrons without a lot of tech experience are finding the exhibit as easy to navigate as younger audiences, Barsky says. But the younger ones are particularly intrigued by the refugees' tales.
A group of fifth graders previewed the show before it opened. "This is New York City," Barsky says."Every school kid is at least first-generation. I was surprised how much the
kids enjoyed this."
"Godmother of Punk" Patti Smith didn't go to Pratt. She didn't have the money and, she says, she was "too erratic a student" to get past the admissions office. That didn't stop her, however, from enthusiastically accepting an award from the art and design school Thursday night at the Pratt Legends 2009 gala (click for pics of the event).
Karim Rashid, Richard Meier, Stefan Sagmeister, and Carlos Zapata were among the artsy crowd sipping cocktails on the 49th floor of 7 World Trade Center--whose jaw-dropping views make it the city's current glam party venue.
Smith, in her signature pegged jeans, white shirt, and jacket, joined fellow honorees fashion designer Marc Jacobs, clad in his favorite red tartan party kilt, and architect David Rockwell, decked out in a work-a-day blue shirt for the event, which raised $400,000 in scholarships for Pratt students.
Smith said her fondness for the school dated back to 1967, when she met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who was a Pratt student at the time. Mapplethorpe encouraged Smith in her art and even encouraged Pratt professors to critique her work. "I can't remember their names," she confessed. "We were a marginal crowd. But who I became came from being around students at Pratt, so I was touched by their world."
Speaking to the many students in the crowd, she urged them to value their good fortune and knuckle down. "If I had been a good student, I would have loved to have had a real education. I'm proud to be part of the Pratt community even though I never went."
After the dinner of short ribs and s'mores, Smith went on to demonstrate that creativity and drive can overcome early educational disadvantages by performing half a dozen songs, including her best known, "Because the Night." Her World Trade Center gig was a rehearsal for a bigger stage: Two nights later, Smith reprised her act by performing the song for a slightly bigger crowd--with U2 for the 25th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert at Madison Square Garden.
The unemployment numbers continue to rise. The pundits are predicting a slow--some say 'jobless'--recovery. If only you could get on some hot shot headhunter's radar, you'd be all set, right? Not necessarily, says a contrarian new book by Nick Corcodilos, aka the "Ask the Headhunter" dude.
In How to Work with Headhunters...and Make Headhunters Work for You (downloadable for $39.95), Corcodilos, a
headhunter himself, debunks common fallacies about this breed, including the most common one: that headhunters find jobs for people. Not true! Headhunters,
first and foremost, he says, are paid to find the best candidates for their
clients--the companies doing the hiring--and often (cruelly!) the folks
they're stalking are already employed. Which may explain why the bastards won't take your cold calls, or answer your emails. (So if some headhunter promises to find you a job, Corcodilos suggests you approach with caution.)
Corcodilos is brutally honest about the numbers in this game. While working with a reputable headhunter can open doors, relying primarily on headhunters to find you a job will likely result in disappointment. Only a paltry 3% of jobs are filled by headhunters.
That said, a good headhunter with an attractive offer, can change your life for the
better, so it pays to know how to deal with them for best results. And that is what this book is all about.
In the engaging style that characterizes Corcodilos's column on the topic, he sets
out to provide 62 "mythbusting answers" to the common questions most jobhunters
have about this process. Here are some of the questions he addresses along with
(abbreviated) answers:
Are online job boards a good way to meet headhunters?
Here's a simple rule of thumb: If a position is advertised on a job board by a
"headhunter" it's probably not a headhunter. It's a recruiter in the mass
resume and mass job posting business. If you insist on distributing your resume
online, I suggest you go to companies' own Web sites and apply for jobs
directly.
What's the secret to getting on a headhunter's list?
The best thing you can do when you meet a headhunter is to establish a sound
relationship, regardless of how your first interaction turns out. Face it--the
headhunter is not likely to place you. So make sure you get something else from
the encounter: a valuable new contact. The odds of your getting placed grow
with time and with the quality of your relationship. Help the headhunter
complete her assignment (by sharing sources or industry insights) and you will
make it onto her list.
How can I avoid having my resume tossed in the trash?
Don't send your resume unless they ask for it. Headhunters don't spend their time
sorting through the unsolicited resumes of "people who come along." They
actively pursue the people they want. Headhunters invest time in people
referred to them by sources they trust. Those are the folks who end up in their
databases.
How can I make myself the headhunter's #1 candidate? Should I just answer questions, or tell her what I can do for her client?
Test the waters. If you're good at what you do, you owe it to yourself to show it.
Don't be arrogant, or dominate the interview. Learn to be compelling, but
diplomatic. The more you can focus the meeting on the work you can do (versus
reciting your work history), the greater edge you'll gain over your
competition.
Should I tell a headhunter who else I'm interviewing with?
A legitimate headhunter will not ask this question. But that's a common ruse used
by unprincipled recruiters who are looking for new clients and possible placements:
they pry for confidential information, then potentially use that against you.
Should I divulge my salary to a headhunter?
Divulge your salary information only if you have evidence that the headhunter will use it only for your advantage. If a headhunter calls you, and wants to know your
salary before continuing the discussion, Corcodilos suggests saying this: "Why
don't you tell me what kind of compensation we're talking about, even if it's
just a range. I'll tell you whether it fits my objectives, because I don't want
to waste your time or mine."
Chances are you know Joe Duffy's work, even if you don't know the name of the mastermind behind it. Every time you pick up a can of Diet Coke or Fresca, pour a glass of MinuteMaid OJ or a shot of Knob Creek bourbon, or find yourself dreaming about the Bahamas inspired on their cheerful brand identity, you're in Duffy World.
One of the country's pre-eminent graphic designers and an AIGA Fellow, Duffy, is founder of Minneapolis's Duffy & Partners. In 1984, Duffy was a pioneer in forging the integration of design and advertising when he partnered with creative advertising agency Fallon Worldwide. Along the way, he did memorable work for such clients as BMW, McDonald's, Starbucks, and Sony.
Duffy was years ahead of the curve in recognizing young Chinese students' design potential. In 2000, he and a band of designers from the One Club began a yearly series of treks to China to teach students techniques and practices of the Western advertising and design industry. In 2005, more than 1,000 students from 26 provinces angled for the chance
to attend the One Club's workshops, some traveling 30 hours by train for the privilege.
When the One Club first began this program, Duffy said, the kids were pretty inhibited, regurgitating designs they had seen, with little sense of their own voice. But within the last year or two, Duffy says, their progress has been dramatic. The rate at which these kids are catching up with--and to some extent surpassing--the West is a little scary," he told us last year. "Over the next 10 years, these kids will help bridge the cultural gap between East and West."
Most recently, Duffy and his team completed work for Herradura Tequila, new identity work for Wolfgang Puck, and a redesign for Jack-in-the-Box, which is currently rolling out across the country.
Next up: work on a new chocolate bar, a new whiskey brand, a big cosmetics brand in South Korea (oddly named "Innisfree"), as well as Sub Zero refrigerators, and New French bake and serve bread.
As winter sets in early in the upper Midwest, Duffy is most looking forward to perfecting the user experience for an Irish pub brand. An ideal place for this cross country enthusiast to unwind after a rigorous work-out on the trails around his studio. Strictly for professional reasons, of course!
Here are some samples of Duffy & Partners' latest work:
While he didn't know it at the time, Graham Button hit a significant career turning point the day that Grey Worldwide won the Frontier Airlines account. In the course of working with the airline, Button, the ad agency's creative director, became friends with Jim Adler, founder of the strategic consulting group Genesis Inc, and the guy behind Frontier's unique livery, which features bears, elk, and little wolf cubs.
In 2006, Button, who had done gigs as a creative director of FCB Toronto, and on the creative team at The Ball Partnership in Hong Kong under the celebrated --- and controversial--Neil French, packed up his Madison Avenue career and headed to Colorado to join Adler at Genesis.
Working from his new base in Denver, Button and his small band of colleagues, have provided strategic positioning and advice on user-centered design to a roster of clients that includes Kraft, Boeing, Quaker Oats, Steelcase, and Giant Bikes.
"Jim's mantra is user-centered solutions: bringing a design philosophy to business," Button says. That philosophy has been used for such disparate tasks as refining the vacation experience at Vail Resorts and designing a village in Transylvania for a mining company.
"We're in the create-an-experience business," Button says, "but when we engage with companies, we are looking to create something that's true from the center."
There's an inherent risk to that approach, he concedes, since if the company's culture doesn't align with the designed experience, the damage to the brand in the consumer's mind can be irrevocable.
Genesis itself, Button says, has resisted growing too big, preferring to concentrate on work that helps companies and organizations make what Bain & Company Fellow Fred Reichheld (the consultant who developed the customer loyalty metric, the Net Promoter Score, "good profits."
Here are some examples of Genesis's latest work:
For Giant, Genesis creates the personalities and graphics for a world of diverse cultures.
To skiers, Vail is a marriage, not a date. Genesis is brand steward for the Beaver Creek brandtoo.
Newkraft.com was created for Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld, introducing her new worldview.
For client Steelcase, "The Next 100" symposium gathered leaders in architecture and design to celebrate Frank Lloyd Wright.
Better ballot design could have changed the results of the 2000 election. A better design for information sharing might have prevented 9/11. Now, could design thinking help fix something fundamentally broken in American democracy: how we engage in national debate?
Whether the topic is climate change, financial regulation, or health care reform, when asked to "discuss amongst ourselves," the conversation devolves into who can shout the loudest, hurl the nastiest epithets, or pervert the facts to fit their own agendas. Can this process be saved?
Fast Company: Lately, our national conversations about important issues seem to have reached a new low. Could design thinking improve how we engage in national debate?
Tim Brown: What’s missing from the debate right now is that much of our discussion is about what we have to give up, or how we have to make choices among unattractive alternatives. The role of design thinking is to put new choices in the world. We look at people and their needs, and create new ideas and insights. We do that all the time with companies. Right now, whether it’s health care or climate change, there’s a relative dearth of new choices, which means everybody is arguing from entrenched positions.
FC: One of the problems seems to be that there’s a lot of confusion about what various proposals mean. How could that be remedied?
TB: Last year at Davos, I got stuck in a big debate with world leaders arguing about whether there should be 50% less carbon, or 80% less. I thought, “This isn’t helping.” Nobody was talking about what life would be like in 30 years if we make our goals or not.So, over the summer we developed a Web site, called Living Climate Change, that shows what life would be like in 30 or 40 years with various scenarios showing changes in food, transportation, and other things, depending on whether we make our goals or not.
We need to have the same discussions in health care and other issues, with a way to describe what various options would be like. That would allow people to imagine their future and participate in it. Right now, it’s hard to imagine these things, and politicians exploit that.
FC: Certainly, that’s been part of the problem, hasn’t it? That so much of the information out there seems driven by ideology, industry lobbyists, or other forms of self interest. It’s hard to know what to trust
TB: What design thinking offers is that it enters the debate without an agenda. How do we make life better? So much of what’s out there now seems based on a world of 50 years ago.
FC: One of the things design thinking does well is prototyping alternatives. How could that work for something as complex as health care policy?
TB:Design thinking brings experiments to life quickly to see what works and what doesn’t. It also lets us put more options on the table. Google does this all the time. Instead of making judgments based on some political agenda, we should try to make one prototype better than the last.
FC: Good point. What else could the public sector learn from the private?
TB: That it’s important to actively manage a portfolio of experiments. In health, for example, we need to explore the issue of prevention, finance, increased productivity, etc. We can do this in a linear way – dealing, for example, with access now and prevention later.
FC: What could we learn from developing countries?
TB: A lot. In India, health care is completely driven from the grass roots, rather than from the top down. In America, much of our innovation is also from the ground up. There needs to be a way for government to understand the role it can play in encouraging grass roots innovation.
FC: Of course, all this presumes that there’s a willingness to think differently within government organizations.
TB: True. Culture plays a huge role. Great, innovative companies focus on building internal capabilities. We need to see that same capacity in public life. But there’s hope. Recently John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management – essentially the government’s HR agency – came to Silicon Valley to see how Facebook, IDEO, and Google went about building inquisitive cultures. The idea was how to make government service cool again.
FC: Maybe with the market collapse, smart young MBAs will start considering government service instead of Goldman!
TB: Recently, Universum, a talent strategy consulting firm that ranks the attractiveness of employers, called to say that in their latest survey of 6,200 MBAs, IDEO ranked #15. That’s ridiculous since we’re a tiny company, but to me it was indicative that kids in business school are fascinated by innovation. Imagine if we could get government thinking that way --- not just to serve but to innovate, to make the world a better place. p>
The greatest design innovations invariably have a story behind them: the insight that led to a radical new way to solve a problem, the failure that led to a breakthrough, the serendipity where colliding forces led to a profound creative leap. Today, at the opening of the Industrial Design Society of America’s annual meeting in Miami, Ravi Sawhney, founder and CEO of the design firm RKS, will announce the first case studies in the organization’s Catalyst Awards program--four compelling stories of breakthrough design and how they came to be.
This year’s winners include OXO Good Grips, the comfortable, functional kitchen tools that began as one man’s attempt to design comfortable tools for his arthritic wife; Whirlpool’s audacious pledge to be number one in its industry in innovation; Black & Decker’s Dustbuster, which created a whole new mass-market category; and Apple’s iPod-iTunes-iPhone system that completely upended the music industry.
The Catalyst program, which for years recognized design-driven companies for their financial performance, last year was revised to showcase design’s power to effect positive change in the world. “These insightful examples of design’s power to drive results and effect positive change will serve to capture design’s legacy and inspire design’s future,” says Sawhney.
“There are about 50,000 industrial designers in the U.S., and nearly four million business professionals who can benefit from hearing our stories,” adds Sawhney. “The Catalyst Case Studies are our best stories…our greatest hits.”
Over the past year, a panel of business, design and academic experts evaluated submissions that detailed design’s best thinking in this area. To encourage participation, submissions required no entry fee, and the person nominating a product or project did not need to have any involvement with it.
The studies will form a knowledge bank of best practices and creative strategies that will be available to anyone with an interest in how some of the great design breakthroughs of our time evolved.
The cases will be available for download as PDFs and MP3s, for a small charge, from the IDSA Web site.
Despite the eco-friendly cardboard centerpieces, the ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria, with its velvet draperies and glittering chandeliers was an uncomfortably swanky venue for the annual AIGA Design Legends gala in a year when the ripples from the financial mayhem on Wall St. had wreaked such economic turmoil throughout the industry
So AIGA president Debbie Millman, in a little black dress and long white gloves, addressed the issue straight up: "The guy who created my fabulous up-do asked me, 'Do people really have events like these anymore? In this economy?'"
Noting that the room had been booked long before last fall's market meltdown, Millman acknowledged the unease the space created, given the general state of the economy. "Not to be a buzzkill," she said, "but 86% of industries said they had cut back over the past year, the most in 42 years. Every state has reported upticks in unemployment." So, she asked, "Should we celebrate designers in this economy?"
You didn't have to be a "Squawkbox" forecaster to guess the answer. Citing a variety of examples of design innovation from past downturns, from Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper in the 1870s to Apple's iPod introduction in 2001, Millman affirmed that not only could the assembled crowd of designers eat their filet mignon without dissonance, but with pride: "We can't shirk our responsibility," she said. "Designers have the ability to make the world a better place. The world now offers opportunities and designers must respond."
Naturally, the remarkably upbeat crowd roared their approval as they tucked into their artfully arranged shrimp and artichoke appetizers.
Indeed, the mood in the room was decidedly merry, with a number of designers confiding little bits of good news between courses. Joe Duffy said business was picking up after a bleak six months, and he'd soon have killer news on a project with Coke. Brian Collins hinted about an upcoming award. Event co-chair (and FC expert blogger) Ken Carbone threatened to dance into the wee hours at the after party. And David Rockwell said he'd been flat out opening the new Disney Family Museum, and working hard on the launch of the new Ames Hotel for Morgans Hotel Group, then dashed off to tuck his kids in bed.
The rest of the evening featured a long and appealingly-produced celebration of the year's honorees, from corporate achievers to AIGA fellows, designers who have made significant contributions to the field in their own communities.
Jet Blue, introduced by Rockwell, was lauded for allowing its customers to feel "frugal and indulgent at the same time." Julie Gilhart, fashion designer at Barney's, introduced corporate winner Patagonia, and confessed to a huge crush on company founder Yvon Chouinard. She further demonstrated her affection by wearing a Patagonia trench coat with Balenciaga shorts and Manolo Blahnik heels. Noting that she was heading off to a Fashion Week party directly from the gala, she said, "There are times when I'm sitting watching the fashion shows on the runways when I have to fight the desire to run away and be a 'dirt bag hippie' like Yvon says he was."
But the big winners were the AIGA medalists, the organization's highest achievers. This year, the group honored three giants in the graphic design field: Pablo Ferro, the Cuban-born designer who created the opening credits for films ranging from Dr. Strangelove to Midnight Cowboy; Doyald Young, master of logotypes for John Deere, Charles Krug, and Shu Uemura, among others; and Carin Goldberg, who's designed books, album covers, and a variety of literary artifacts for nearly every prestigious publisher in the city.
Accepting his award, Ferro, in his trademark red wooly muffler, thanked his adopted land. "I was a kid from Cuba, where I wore no shoes, and came to America at age 12," he said. "Only in America could I go from admiring the Rolling Stones, to working with them. No matter how many times things like that happen, it still surprises me.
Young, 83, was lauded for his profound influence on students at Art Center College of Design, and Goldberg said a 6-week summer trip to Paris had inspired her to forsake her normal New York brittle repartee in her speech for humble, heartfelt gratitude. "Merci beaucoup," she said, clutching her trophy in tears as she left the stage for comfort in the arms of her lifelong friend, and presenter, Paula Scher.
"Everyone
was so afraid we'd look like another Morgans Hotel property," says Hard Rock
CMO Phil Shalala. "But we kept our brand." Indeed. 
The folks at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG should be happy that 
The
problem, says Martin, author of a new book, 
The unemployment numbers continue to rise. The pundits are predicting a slow--some say 'jobless'--recovery. If only you could get on some hot shot headhunter's radar, you'd be all set, right? Not necessarily, says a contrarian new book by Nick Corcodilos, aka the "
One of the country's pre-eminent graphic designers and an AIGA Fellow, Duffy, is founder of Minneapolis's 
In 2006, Button, who had done gigs as a creative director of FCB Toronto, and on the creative team at 
Better ballot design could have changed the results of the 2000 election. A better design for information sharing might have prevented 9/11. Now, could design thinking help fix something fundamentally broken in American democracy: how we engage in national debate?
The greatest design innovations invariably have a story behind them: the insight that led to a radical new way to solve a problem, the failure that led to a breakthrough, the serendipity where colliding forces led to a profound creative leap. Today, at the opening of the 
The Catalyst program, which for years recognized design-driven companies for their financial performance, last year was revised to showcase design’s power to effect positive change in the world. “These insightful examples of design’s power to drive results and effect positive change will serve to capture design’s legacy and inspire design’s future,” says Sawhney. 
Despite the eco-friendly cardboard centerpieces, the ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria, with its velvet draperies and glittering chandeliers was an uncomfortably swanky venue for the annual 
You didn't have to be a "Squawkbox" forecaster to guess the answer. Citing a variety of examples of design innovation from past downturns, from Cyrus McCormick's mechanical reaper in the 1870s to Apple's iPod introduction in 2001, Millman affirmed that not only could the assembled crowd of designers eat their filet mignon without dissonance, but with pride: "We can't shirk our responsibility," she said. "Designers have the ability to make the world a better place. The world now offers opportunities and designers must respond."
The rest of the evening featured a long and appealingly-produced celebration of the year's honorees, from corporate achievers to AIGA fellows, designers who have made significant contributions to the field in their own communities. 
Accepting his award,
