When you head off to the nursery to ogle the impatiens, you're probably not thinking about the science behind those candy-colored posies. Turns out, the seed world is as secretive as big pharma. The folks at Swiss seed company Syngenta, a leader in the $3 billion global pot and bedding plant market, know this… and take precautions. When I visited them in Basel, Switzerland, I was shepherded through many locked doors before reaching the inner sanctums. But these seedmeisters, though proprietary, are proud of their products. For Mother's Day we cajoled them into revealing their most innovative '09 flowers and what gives them their special zing. We've included patent numbers, so you can verify their scientific chops for yourself.
If you're one of those impatient gardeners who can't wait to get out in the dirt, you should seek out this variety of Calibrachoa (trailing petunias to you newbies). The Callie is bred to flower early in the shorter days of winter, and the broad palette of 19 colors makes this variety popular with corporate facility managers eager to match the company's logo to its potting beds. Patent #pp19,865
Who knew a geranium could be ranked "Top Performing," like some mutual fund, or particularly talented MBA grad? But here you have it: Caliente's (or Cante Ros) been rated the Top Performing Geranium at the University of Florida Flower Trials, three years running. Heat tolerance is one factor that propelled it to the front ranks, but its disease resistance and big flowers pushed it to the head of the class. Patent #pp15,834
Poinsettias are hardly the first flower that springs to mind in May. But those of you who are long-term planners will be interested in this cutting edge (pardon the pun!) plant: the Mira poinsettia can grow at a temperature of only 16 degrees Celsius (that's 60.8, for those of you keeping track in Fahrenheit). That means it needs 20% less energy to grow than comparable varieties--great, if you're trying to force these babies to bloom in November. And the white variety is tres chic.
Patent # pending.
I am not a slave to design. I have an embarrassingly low tech cell phone. Carry a functional, non-designer handbag. Do not wear cool, Kazuo Kawasaki glasses. But I'm in love with my cleverly-designed water bottle. It's the envy of the office. A sleek, cool beach-glass blue, non-BPA number with a top you can pop off with a flick of the thumb and a funny little message ("Laugh often!") under the lid, it's an artifact I take to meetings with pride. No clunky bottle that looks like I just wandered in from hiking the Appalachian Trail for me!
My KOR ONE bottle was designed by RKS, a savvy crew of designers on the West Coast, led by Ravi Sawhney, one of the industry's leading thinkers. According to Ravi, a design succeeds or fails based on how it makes people feel not about the thing itself, but about themselves. This week, he'll be discussing that topic on his blog, Design Reach.
I first saw Ravi onstage last fall in Phoenix at the annual IDSA meeting. He was talking about the organization's Catalyst competition, a contest he originated to recognize excellence not just in design, but in the marketplace as well. In Arizona, he was announcing a new iteration of the program. Catalyst now will now also factor a product or service's impact on our lives and world into the equation. What's more, best cases are being collected so that others can learn from their peers' triumphs--and mistakes. The database will be "a living breathing organism of knowledge," Ravi told me later.
Ravi has always been ahead of the curve. In his first job, at Xerox, he worked with a team of cognitive scientists to develop the first touch-screen interface years before computers entered the mainstream. There he created an information hierarchy that is still seen in our computers today.
More recently, he invented the popular Psycho-Aesthetics® design strategy--a process by which companies can quantify sources of emotional demand in the marketplace. Harvard liked it so much they made it a B-School case study.
But Ravi's no hair-shirt guy. He and his team have that genius for uniquely Southern California innovation, cranking out designs for such disparate products as a next gen tattoo machine that's light weight, travel-friendly, and hurts less for Neuma; sexy little iPod speakers for Vestalife that open like Faberge eggs; the Smart Touch Salad Spinner for Zyliss; and a line of guitars, RKS Guitars, that are the favorites of folks like Dave Mason, Ron Wood, Moby and Rick Springfield.
Camden, Maine in October is a pretty laid-back place. But when I saw Robert Fabricant, VP of creative at frog design, there last fall, he was a pretty distracted guy. The initiative he had been working on for more than a year, Project Masiluleke, was about to debut at Pop!Tech, the annual in-gathering of digerati and the folks who love them, and Robert was the man at the center of the action.
Frog's involvement with Project Masiluleke grew out of a conversation between Fabricant and Pop!Tech curator, Andrew Zolli. "Andrew and I have known each other for a while and were looking for a way to work together to drive social innovation around mobile technologies. He knew Zinny (Zinhle Thabethe, Deputy Director of iTeach, South Africa's leading HIV/TB education, outreach and service organization) from her participation in Pop!Tech 2006 and the partnership emerged from that relationship."
Instead of doing the usual design firm drill of coming up with cool concepts that never make it to market, Fabricant wanted to do something that would truly make a difference. The Project M idea fit the bill. Fabricant then sold his firm on backing the project for what they'll only concede is a "significant" sum. Since the project's launch in December, the number of calls to the National Aids helpline have quadrupled.
Robert is no stranger to the area of designing for social innovation. Among other hats, he heads up the healthcare expert group, a cross-disciplinary team that builds frog's skills in that field, and shares best practices within the firm. And he's a black belt in designing for digital platforms, ranging from handheld devices to in-car info systems for such clients as Nextel, GE, Comcast, Nissan, and BBC.
But Robert is more than just a good designer. He's a humanist, an inspiring leader, and a first-rate thinker. Following Pop!Tech, he and I had an ongoing conversation about design's role in an imploding economy, as he and the frog team helped Juan Enriquez, a Pop!Tech speaker, hone his talk on a 10 Point Plan for Remedying America's Financial Ills for a wider audience.
This week, Robert is promising to write about everything from throwing out the playbook for traditional innovation processes to the tricky question of whether designers should be wiling exert some influence on consumer behavior through the products and services they design. They're fascinating topics, and ones that have particular relevance in this era of fraught consumption. Be sure to chime in with your own thoughts! Keep up with Robert's blog posts here.
Here are some of the projects that frog has recently brought to market.
About a year ago, I happened to be at breakfast panel at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, where Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo, was speaking. At the time, the topic, "What is Wrong with American Design?" was much in the air. Figuring this was as good a place as any to pose the question, I raised my hand and blurted it out.
Tim looked a little chagrined. "First off," he chastised me, "you have to define what American design is." Good point. There he was, a native of rural Oxfordshire, England, working at IDEO, one of the pre-eminent design firms in the country--but headquartered in Palo Alto. Down the road, in Cupertino, was Jonathan Ive, also a Brit, churning out lust-worthy products for Apple. Up the road, in San Francisco, Yves Behar, a Swiss, was crafting Jawbone headsets. In New York, Dror Benshetrit, an Israeli, was designing condo projects in Dubai. What is American design, anyway? D'oh!
In retrospect, I'm not surprised by Tim's response. Having led IDEO's San Francisco and European offices before becoming CEO, Tim has always been a global thinker, as comfortable mulling problems of irrigation pumps in rural Africa as he is the shoe-buying experience at Allen Edmonds. To him, parochial distinctions like nationality simply aren't relevant to the problems at hand, and no country has a lock on innovative design.
Since that breakfast, I've been following Tim as he brings that same incisive, grounded thinking to other design issues of the day. Most recently, I was engrossed with his astute explanation of design thinking in the Harvard Business Review. It's the best discussion of this important topic that I've seen.
Tim's new book on how design thinking transforms organizations, Change By Design, will be out in September.
Fans of Brown--of which there are legion--will be delighted to discover him this week as a guest blogger for Fast Company. Even better, they'll be engaged by his provocative series of posts on what he calls "The Participation Economy"--and how it might be a productive path out of our economic malaise.
Tim's first post asks why we're so obsessed with consumption when it's clearly been so bad for us. In subsequent posts, he'll propose a new way of thinking about a post crisis economy that might rest on something more sustainable. I was totally intrigued reading these ideas, and I suspect you will be too.
Borrowing from adventures in the Tanzanian bush, close encounters with some of the world's most innovative thinkers, and the harrowing early days of Fast Company, and Alan Webber, Fast Company's co-founding editor, took to the Japan Society stage in New York last night to discuss the new book in which he reveals what all that accumulated experience has taught him.
Appearing before a packed audience of friends, acolytes, and Fast Company staffers, v 1.0 (and a few of us v 4.0 folks as well), Webber's message was sober, yet hopeful. "America has always had a remarkable ability to rebound from economic hard times," he said. The process is often messy, and failure is to be expected, but our knack for innovation is a national strength that has gotten us through hard times before, and will likely fuel our rebound again.
Those who succeed in this environment, Webber said, are likely those who can assess the reality of the situation as it is--not the way they wish it would be--and act accordingly. "A fighter pilot I know told me that he was trained to operate by the OODA principle: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act," he said. "People can use that process in their own lives. The faster you can grasp what's going on, the sooner you can make the changes needed to adapt."
Discussing the meltdown of the newspaper industry, Webber also cited one of his favorite rules, #5: "Change is a math formula: change happens when the cost of the status quo is greater than the risk of change." Pushed to the brink of bankruptcy, newspapers, automobile manufacturers and other imperiled industries may finally be forced to make changes they resisted in happier times. That, he said, is when innovation really happens.
In response to a question from David Carey, publisher of Portfolio, about whether the economic crisis has really spurred a fundamental change for the better, as many have suggested, Webber laughed. "Whenever someone suggests that things are changing for good, I tend to lock my wallet in a safety deposit box. I don't believe it. It's soon to know if what's happening now will change the fundamentals, but it could--and this is my hope--change the questions we're asking. And that to me is the most important thing: Asking the right questions."
Noting that the book had arisen from his life-long habit of writing good advice he'd received on 3-by-5 cards, Webber suggested the audience do the same. "There is no big answer out there to the problems that we see as individuals and as companies," he said. "Solutions don't appear that way, fully formed. They emerge from these smart observations that cut through all the clutter and make sense of one thing, sometimes a small thing. But you know that kind of brilliant insight when you hear it. So our job is to look and listen for those, to weave them together whenever possible, and to share them. That's a strategy for figuring out the world around us."
Webber ended the talk by asking for Rule #53 from the audience. A woman in the front offered this pearl of wisdom: "Remember: it's a memo. It's not real life."
Earlier in the day, Webber appeared on Brian Lehrer's show on WNYC. You can listen to a podcast of the interview here.
Each spring, the design world descends like a flock of starlings (glossy, dressed in black) on the northern Italian city of Milan for a week of revelry in honor of the Milan Furniture Fair (which those with Continental pretensions prefer to call "I Saloni," "the event" in Italian.)
Milan is where designers and upscale furniture manufacturers from around the globe debut their lines--a kind of city-wide fashion show for chairs, sofas, lighting fixtures, and all manner of accompanying doodads. While the most concentrated action is at the massive fairgrounds, just outside of town, in reality, the entire city is given over to design for the week, with parties in shops, palazzos, garages, and alleyways at all hours of the day and night.
The trendier, cutting edge designers tend to prefer to show their wares in the slightly more bohemian district called Zona Tortona--think of it as the Soho of Milan. That's where big design operations like Moooi, Tom Dixon, and Foscarini tend to congregate, at a large facility called Super Studio Piu, and where folks like Nadja Swarovski, the Austrian heiress, sets up her annual Crystal Palace.
There's always a satellite show of young, up and comers and students, at the fairgrounds, where you can see such tastemakers as Murray Moss and Li Edelkoort, roaming the aisles, scouting talent.
Just as shows in Paris and New York set the trends for fashion, the fair in Milan sets the agenda for furniture. It's why, even in an era of austerity, we'll be devoting a substantial amount of the Design Channel to covering the event.
We have several writers, armed with cameras, haunting the streets, the aisles of the convention center, and, of course, the parties, to make sure you'll get to see the color and personalities that animate the show. And we have a dedicated team here in the U.S., monitoring reports from designers and manufacturers about what they're about to unveil, and putting it all in context. Mike Cannell's excellent post, on the future of design is a good place to start, and Cliff Kuang's post on how designers are reusing and recycling gives you an idea of how a rotten economy is finding expression even in Milan.
So, keep an eye on the Design Channel this week for news, trend analysis, and party pix. We've got you, and Saloni, covered. Ciao!
The world's favorite plastic party girl and the furniture industry's favorite plastic purveyor have teamed up in a brilliant collaboration to celebrate their respective birthdays at the big furniture fair in Milan.
Barbie, that high-stepping pony-tailed cougar, who turned 50 earlier this year has settled into a Dream House in Milan, furnished with a Bourgie lamp, a Charles Ghost stool, and Louis Ghost chairs by Philippe Starck, all by the Italian furniture manufacturer Kartell, which turns 60 this year.
The windows of Kartell's flagship store have been transformed for the occasion, into six room settings, each animated by a life size Barbie (occasionally accompanied by a handsome escort), decked out in vintage Moschino. Kartell is even issuing two Barbie style chairs, the Louis Ghost and the smaller Lou Lou Ghost, embellished with the Malibu charmer's distinctive profile.
The company is also producing some mini versions of the classic design pieces, which it will package up in boxes inspired by collectible Barbies. They'll be sold off at a charity auction to benefit Save the Children later this year.
But, wait! There's more! Why stop at furnishing your dream house like Barbie? Why not step out in her shoes? Kartell also teamed with shoe company .normaluisa to create a limited edition of pink and white plastic ballerina flats (sadly, for sale only at the Via Turati flagship store.)
The connection between the two brands was, at first, mystifying to Barbie's handlers. "At first I didn't see the genius behind the connection with Kartell," confessed Richard Dickston, svp, Barbie. Then "I remembered Andy Warhol's famous quote, 'I love Plastic. I want to be Plastic,'…and I saw the subtle connection between our brands."
About a year ago, I happened by the offices of Carbone Smolan, a design and branding agency here in New York. Their work for clients ranging from Morgan Stanley to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden was--is--wonderful. But I was most entranced by a collection of personal journals that co-founder Ken Carbone showed me.
They were a colorful lot, filled with sketches and images, book reviews and nature finds, riffs on news stories and collages of words and pictures. Carbone started the practice after a curator at the Louvre, where his firm was creating the wayfinding system, showed him one of Gauguin's own notebooks.
He's continued keeping a journal for some 15 years, not just as a diarist might--as a way of recording thoughts, feelings, and impressions--but as a wellspring of inspiration for his design practice. The side benefit, he says, is that the habit has now trained him to pay closer attention to his environment--to slow down enough to really see what's around him.
I was so intrigued by this practice, and so convinced that anybody in a creative line of work would find it useful, that I asked Ken to give a master class on journaling to the Fast Company editorial staff. A short version of his talk, which he has also given several times as a keynote address called Curiously Curious: Celebrating Analog in a Digital World, appended below, serves as Ken's introduction as this week's guest design blogger.
In Ken's blog, which he's calling "Yes to Less," Ken will critique some well known designs against his own standard. For Carbone, a design's success should be measured not only by its beauty, but by its ingenuity, and by how well it functions. Be sure to check out his postings to see which designs he finds "Flawless" (five stars), and which are deemed "Clueless" (one star.)
Join the fun by nominating your own choices along the spectrum from brilliant to bogus. In our estimation, Carbone is strictly five stars.
The Behance "99%" conference wound up on a high note with Pentagram designer Michael Bierut offering five sane and simple principles for maximum productivity. Given his track record--hundreds of design awards, work at MOMA, a faculty appointment at Yale, a hugely popular blog, and a book or two, (I'm exhausted just listing all his accomplishments!)--his was advice with instant cred.
In typical modest fashion, however, he denied having any particular genius: "I'm not creative. I don't have ideas I want to express. I can't think of any personal projects. I became a designer because I wanted people to come to me with problems to solve. I'm like a doctor who needs patients--the sicker the better--because I can't practice on myself."
A sweet thought, but really, Michael. Would that we were all so un-gifted!
So, if you're only a fraction as 'uncreative' as Bierut, you, too, can profit from his tips:
1. Keep a notebook. Bierut started this practice in 1992, and now has 86 of the things. But they're not some fancy Moleskins full of lush watercolor sketches. They're plain vanilla notebooks, filled with, well, notes and the occasional sketch. They seem to work as well as the high-priced spread.
2. Listen first, then design. Actually, you don't have to be a designer to take this advice. If you're selling office paper at Dunder Mifflin, or pitching an account at Sterling Cooper, listening is still a good way to get a project off on the right foot.
3. Don't avoid the obvious. The obvious can be your best friend. There are few new ideas, folks. Mostly just better iterations of the old ones. Trying to reinvent the wheel too often just results in a lot of wheel spinning.
4. The problem contains the solution. Read the brief or the specs, or actually pay attention to your notes from the client meeting (see #1, above.) Often, the solution is right there.
5. Indulge your obsessions. They're passion made tangible.
6. Love is the answer. There are worse things than leading with your heart. As Bierut has proven, you'll often be successful, do great work, and probably make money. And you'll likely be happy.
Here's a final round-up of other big ideas from the conference that may help you get from inspiration to action:
7. Don't let the urgent demands of today always subvert your plans for tomorrow. In other words, don't let the often trivial demands of an overflowing inbox consistently distract you from the more important items on your to-do list. Along those lines, keep two lists: one of daily tasks, the other of longer term projects with specific action items attached. - Scott Belsky, CEO, Behance
8. Don't underestimate the importance of staying organized. Chaos subverts progress. Creativity x organization = impact - Belsky
10. Hire the best lawyers. "I've met many people who run billion-dollar companies. They aren't that smart. They hire good lawyers. It's one of the things that made this project happen." Robert Hammond, Co-founder, Friends of the High Line.
11. Share ideas liberally. If you share quickly, you'll be more accountable. - Belsky
12. Surround yourself with people who motivate you, and write things down. Something as large as a presidential campaign was done simply by checking items off a to-do list. - Scott Thomas, design director, Obama for America
13. Nothing trumps hard work. "Many successful people don't want to talk about how hard they work. Even when you've made it, you've got to keep working." - Jill Greenberg, photographer
After surveying a large number of successful people, Behance found that those who have made things happen share several common principles. Midway through the conference, Scott Belsky, Behance's CEO, took the stage to summarize them:
We should know our tendencies--are we dreamers, doers or and know what gets in our way.
Share ideas liberally--if it's a really good idea, can it be replicated? If you share quickly, you'll be more accountable. Chris Anderson--every time he has an idea, he puts it on his blog. GE--have a policy, if you have a best practice--and you don't share, they call it stealing from the company.
Share ownership of ideas--don't be wedded to doing it one way. How to share ownership, but know when to interject. Co-owning an idea may increase likelihood of its happening.
Seek Competition.
Fight your way to breakthroughs. When apathy happens, somebody drops the rope.
Don't become burdened by consensus. Find the sacred extremes, and realize you have to compromise in the middle of the spectrum.
Present yourself (overcome the stigma of self-marketing.
I first saw Ravi onstage last fall in Phoenix at the annual IDSA meeting. He was talking about the organization's Catalyst competition, a contest he originated to recognize excellence not just in design, but in the marketplace as well. In Arizona, he was announcing a new iteration of the program. Catalyst now will now also factor a product or service's impact on our lives and world into the equation. What's more, best cases are being collected so that others can learn from their peers' triumphs--and mistakes. The database will be "a living breathing organism of knowledge," Ravi told me later.
Frog's involvement with Project Masiluleke grew out of a conversation between Fabricant and Pop!Tech curator, Andrew Zolli. "Andrew and I have known each other for a while and were looking for a way to work together to drive social innovation around mobile technologies. He knew Zinny (Zinhle Thabethe, Deputy Director of iTeach, South Africa's leading HIV/TB education, outreach and service organization) from her participation in Pop!Tech 2006 and the partnership emerged from that relationship."
Tim looked a little chagrined. "First off," he chastised me, "you have to define what American design is." Good point. There he was, a native of rural Oxfordshire, England, working at IDEO, one of the pre-eminent design firms in the country--but headquartered in Palo Alto. Down the road, in Cupertino, was Jonathan Ive, also a Brit, churning out lust-worthy products for Apple. Up the road, in San Francisco, Yves Behar, a Swiss, was crafting Jawbone headsets. In New York, Dror Benshetrit, an Israeli, was designing condo projects in Dubai. What is American design, anyway? D'oh!
Tim's new book on how design thinking transforms organizations, 
In response to a question from David Carey, publisher of Portfolio, about whether the economic crisis has really spurred a fundamental change for the better, as many have suggested, Webber laughed. "Whenever someone suggests that things are changing for good, I tend to lock my wallet in a safety deposit box. I don't believe it. It's soon to know if what's happening now will change the fundamentals, but it could--and this is my hope--change the questions we're asking. And that to me is the most important thing: Asking the right questions."
The trendier, cutting edge designers tend to prefer to show their wares in the slightly more bohemian district called Zona Tortona--think of it as the Soho of Milan. That's where big design operations like Moooi, Tom Dixon, and Foscarini tend to congregate, at a large facility called 
Barbie, that high-stepping pony-tailed cougar, who turned 50 earlier this year has settled into a Dream House in Milan, furnished with a Bourgie lamp, a Charles Ghost stool, and Louis Ghost chairs by Philippe Starck, all by the Italian furniture manufacturer Kartell, which turns 60 this year.
The company is also producing some mini versions of the classic design pieces, which it will package up in boxes inspired by collectible Barbies. They'll be sold off at a charity auction to benefit Save the Children later this year.
The connection between the two brands was, at first, mystifying to Barbie's handlers. "At first I didn't see the genius behind the connection with Kartell," confessed Richard Dickston, svp, Barbie. Then "I remembered Andy Warhol's famous quote, 'I love Plastic. I want to be Plastic,'…and I saw the subtle connection between our brands."
