David Kelley is well-known for his astute application of design thinking to many of life's intractable problems. Less known is that he's also a veritable Dr. Phil of good advice about life, careers, and the importance of not being a jerk.
"If you ask people, was there ever a teacher or mentor who changed your life, many hundreds of people would say that was David Kelley. I'm one of them," his brother, Tom Kelley, told me. "If they spread the word....you can figure the exponential effect."
In this spirit, we asked former students, co-workers and friends to share their favorite Kelley life lessons. Here's what they said:
"Success tends to focus your efforts, failure assures me that you try something different and eventually better." -- from Perry Kleban, CEO, Timbuk2
"You're the best version of yourself when you manage to have fun doing your work." -- from Chris Flink, Ideo
"You can't think your way through every problem. Trying things and engaging people helps you get unstuck." -- from George Kembel, executive director, Stanford d.school
"The greatest responsibility of any leader is to make new leaders. David knew that neither he, himself, nor any one person has all the answers. He empowers others to do stuff." -- from Tom Kelley, Ideo
"When I was going to design school in Chicago, at IIT, in 1989, a friend of mine and I went all the way to Evanston, a suburb that seemed unbelievably far away from school, to hear this guy David Kelley present at Northwestern University. The thing that was amazing to me was that he was talking about HOW designers should work, not about WHAT they should be working on. I remember thinking how right it sounded, and that it was a pretty fresh message among all the others I was getting about what it meant to be a designer in this world. I still hold true a lot of what he was saying then. -- from Ilya Prokopoff, Ideo
"The true brilliance of the human-centered design process is that it keeps us humble. I am in awe of his humbleness." -- from Susie Wise, Stanford d.school
"'Do not allow hierarchy and status into your teams, and your workplace because it will destroy collaboration." -- PK
"David can take the nature of any experience--from 'Let's go to the zoo to let's go to football game, to let's hear a speaker, to let's have cancer'--and bring the same intensity to all of them. He's in the moment like nobody I've ever known. He can take the naïve view of that moment and see what is unique about it, see its virtue and see what he can learn from it." -- from Jim Hackett, CEO, Steelcase
"David is one of those magical people who beams not only generous permission, but pure optimism, into anyone who works with him. His ability to empower others is built-in to the way he is, and the way he engages with people, and yet it is often nearly invisible at the moment of contact" -- from Tom Eich, Ideo
"There is no challenge, big or small, in the world that could not benefit from a healthy dose of cavalier creativity." -- CF
"Make the human element as important as the technical and business elements." -- GK
"Your failures interest me far more than your success." -- PK
"Leaders don't have to be scary. Or egomaniacal. Or people you have to watch yourself around. I've always felt like myself around him. I chalk this up to his being genuinely curious about what others have to say. -- IP
"David helped me realize that it's not what you work on, but whom you work with that makes all the difference. This, ironically, resonates even at a company that tackles some of the most exciting creative challenges in the world." -- CF
"Think with your hands, build something or try something, then talk about it, NOT the reverse." -- PK
"You don't have to choose between doing what you love and making a living." -- GK
"Better to be a jack of all trades than a master of one' (you will see more possibility then, you will be an empathetic leader to the experts, and you will be a more interesting person.)" -- PK
The first Google doodle happened late on a Saturday night in 1999. As Marissa Meyer, Google’s chief experience officer remembers it, she was in the office at 3 a.m., trying to finish up some work before leaving on vacation when Sergei Brin came running in, all excited, shouting, “Marissa! Marissa! Look what I made!”
When we were out in Mountain View a while later, talking to her about a story on simplicity in technology, she told us how the Google doodles were born:
Mayer: “Sergei forwarded me a url on the company’s little internal network, and I punched it in and saw his handiwork. It was the Google logo and it had these two incredibly sad clip art pumpkins in the O’s.”
He: “It’s a Halloween logo!”
She: “Are those clip art?’”
He: “Yeah, I found them on the Web. I cut them out. Isn’t it cool?”
She: “You want me to put these on the home page?”
He: “Yeah, yeah! Our users will like it. We’re all excited for Halloween!”
She: “You can see all the pixels. You scaled it up, right?”
He: “Oh, no matter!”
She: “On the yellow ‘O’ you don’t seem to have covered it well. I can still see it peeking out there.”
He: “Post it! Post it!”
She: “You really want me to post it on the home page?”
He: “I do!”
She: “OK. “
“So we put it up,” she told us, “and Slashdot went crazy, and a tradition was born.”
Any kid who’s ever been intrigued with Google’s playful holiday logo-decorating antics can now get in the act–with the potential for winning lots of loot for the best efforts.
Appearing on the Today Show, Marisa Mayer, Google’s chief experience officer, announced the second annual contest to redesign Google's logo for a day. This year's competition encourages kids in grades K-12 to riff on the topic of “What I Wish for the World.” The top four designs, along with 40 regional winners, will be featured in an exhibit at New York’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum, a partner in the project.
A panel of Google and Cooper-Hewitt judges will pick the top designs in each age group, then let the public vote on the final four. The grand prize winner will be announced on May 20, and the doodle will have pride of place on the Google homepage the next day. That’s 100 million viewers, kiddos! Not a bad line on a third grader’s resume!
But, wait! There’s more. The champion doodler will win a $15,000 college scholarship and a $25,000 technology grant for the student’s school. The school district with the greatest-quality participation will also earn a $10,000 award.
So, art teachers: Here’s your chance to prove your mettle. Marshal those kids to start doodling, and win funding for construction paper and markers—not to mention respect at budget time–for the next year.
Teachers may register their class online by going to google.com/doodle4google. Registration closes March 17 and all entries must be postmarked by March 31. Further information, competition details, videos and past doodles are also available at google.com/doodle4google. Last year’s winning image, called “Up in the Clouds,” was created by Grace Moon, a middle-schooler from Castro Valley, California:
Google itself has been doodling since 1999. The chief doodler at Google is Dennis Hwang, although the first Google doodle was created in honor of Halloween—out of sad little clip art images—by Google founder Sergei Brin, late one Saturday night in 1999. Here's how it happened.
A bold experiment in online shopping plastered an “Out of Business” sign across its virtual mall today when the Publicis Groupe announced it would suspend David Droga’s creative brainchild, Honeyshed.
The site, which paired Droga’s agency, Drogat5 and LA production hot shop, Smuggler--had a rocky launch in beta in November 2007, and never really found its footing. "It's fine to be optimistic and bold about something that's new in this space, but given the economic climate, the promise of certainty is more responsible than the allure of massive potential," Droga, the former worldwide chief creative officer of Saatchi & Saatchi, told Ad Age.
Before we went to LA to check out Honeyshed for a story, prior to its launch, then CEO Andrew Essex told us the site's concept was to be a sort of “MTV meets QVC.” The idea was to field an ensemble cast of hip young people who could shill the merch (sexy underwear, trendy running shoes, lots of makeup) with the appropriate attitude and the more-than-occasional frisky innuendo. But the site was buggy, advertisers (mostly) were skeptical, and the comments section--which was supposed to replicate the thrill of shopping with a friend--most often had snarky posts dissing the whole thing.
Publicis CEO Maurice Levy was a huge backer--to the tune, it’s estimated, of more than $25M--but even he was worried. “Call me when you get back from L.A. and let me know what you think,” he told me when I saw him in New York before the site’s launch. Even the help of Publicis sibling by proxy Digitas couldn’t get the thing chugging, nor could a new CEO Stephen Greifer, who came from the digital shop.
There’s Toyota and Nissan and Sony and Nintendo. Next, there may be Inaba, Monacca, Satsuma, and Kawaguchi i-mono.Those companies are among the few dozen that recently auditioned for prime time in the West at an exhibit in New York.
The Japan Brand: Unfolding show at the Felissimo Design House was designed to showcase indigenous brands from the 30 distinct regions of Japan. These are contemporary products ranging from furniture to cookware, home accessories to eyewear (including the manufacturer of Sarah Palin’s eyeglasses!) that are largely unavailable in the U.S.
But, if American audiences are enthusiastic, you may soon find them on a store shelf near you. The exhibit debuted in Paris before its swing through New York. Attendees in both cities were asked to vote for their favorites.
Think of it as a sort of Japanese Idol. Tell us which ones you like the best, and we’ll make sure the show’s organizers get your feedback. (Click here to view the photo gallery of products from Japan Brand.)
The Island at the Center of the World may have lost some of its luster recently, as the city’s profligate bankers squandered the nation’s wealth in pursuit of watches, jets, and beachfront property. But the ‘hood will soon get a new architectural bauble to help restore that glow.
Last night at MOMA, the friendship between the Netherlands and New York was celebrated with blue Curacao cocktails, as the two toasted a snazzy new pavilion soon to be built in Battery Park by the renowned Dutch architect Ben van Berkel.
Van Berkel and his firm, UNStudio, are the brains behind the Mercedes Benz Museum in Stuttgart, the Mobius House outside Amsterdam, and an 18-story flagship store in Tokyo for Louis Vuitton. He designed the intriguing “black and bendy” luxury condo Five Franklin Place in Tribeca–a project that is now said to be in default on its acquisition loan. But that’s a story for another gloomy day.
Today we’re toasting the fact that the Dutch are so eager to keep relations between the two countries warm and fuzzy that they ponied up “a major grant” for the project. Good thing the project wasn’t counting on income taxes from bonuses paid to the aforementioned bankers.
The New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion will be a hub for food, information, and general gaiety for the 70,000 daily commuters and 2 million annual tourists who roam the area. ("Plein," we're told, is Dutch for 'stone-paved civic platform.')
Expect much more Dutch-themed news this year as Manhattan and The Netherlands ramp up their festivities pegged to the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in New York harbor.
What does it take to convince NFL superstars like Patriots All-Pro offensive lineman Matt Light (6 ft. 4inches, 305 pounds), New York Giants’s 274 pound defensive end Justin Tuck, and Baltimore Ravens's 250 pound tackle Ray Lewis to don tights and execute a pas de trois to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” during the Super Bowl? In 3-D, yet?
I’m guessing a giant pool of money, and a chance at Super Bowl glory -- although not the kind their coaches were hoping for way back in August.
(Above: SoBe's Super Bowl Commercial "Lizard Lake")
Light and Tuck were on hand to kibbitz about their whirl as prima ballerinas who deploy their fancy footwork in the service of flogging Pepsi’s SoBe Life Water (for a Super Bowl 43 commercial) at a press conference the beverage maker held in the New York offices of its new agency, TBWA/Chiat Day.
“I want you all to know: I wasn’t drinking” when this was filmed, Light quipped. He also confided that he had learned something important about himself, like how to apply NSDs: nipple suppressing devices, so his little bitty titties didn’t ruin the line of his leotard. “I’m glad I got that off my chest,” he said.
Tuck had his own revelations. “The part where the (SoBe) lizard hit me – we did that shot, like 30 times,” he said. “He was actually hitting me. I wanted to go back and hit people on the football field!”
(Above: The making of SoBe's Super Bowl Commercial "Lizard Lake")
Pepsi is passing out 130M 3-D glasses at outlets where customers can buy Pepsi or SoBe water in advance of the Super Bowl. The spot, which doubles as a promotion for a new film, "Monsters and Aliens," from DreamWorks, will air in the first pod after the second quarter. Pepsi managed to lock up all the non-alcoholic beverage spots in the first half of the game; Coke will rule the 3rd quarter, said Pepsi CMO Dave Burwick.
PepsiCo will also air spots for Pepsi, Pepsi Max (diet soda for calorie-counters of the male persuasion), and G—the product formerly known as Gatorade – although executives declined to say which ones. “We have more spots than we have time to run them,” says PepsiCo North American CEO Massimo D’Amore, a comment that irritated The New York Times’s advertising writer, Stuart Elliott. “I’ve never heard you guys be so evasive so close to the Super Bowl,” he said before bolting out of the meeting.
Can’t afford a Zaha Hadid Aqua Table from Established and Sons? Then how about something similarly swoopy and a little more modestly priced? Just in time for spring kitchen remodeling projects, the Pritzker Award-winning architect has designed a curvaceous faucet for the British company Triflow Concepts.
The design, which looks like a free standing, stainless steel sculpture, started with a study of the fluid geometries of water in motion, the designer said. That’s not surprising, given that Hadid’s signature style generally involves some swooping, fluid curve –- the kind of shape architects and designers have long been able to envision, but only recently been able to construct, thanks to the miracles of modern 3-D software.
The trick in this faucet is not just its shape, but the fact that it dispenses water three ways -- conventional hot and cold water streams, and a separate, dedicated waterway for filtered drinking water. An electronic button activates the filtered water; a green halo light changes to red when its filter needs replacing.
Why stop here? Can the Zaha Hadid refrigerator line be far behind?
Philippe Starck, resplendent in black leather pants, came to New York’s Soho House this week to promote his latest project –- a set of sleek stereo speakers he designed for Parrot, a French wireless technology company whose CEO, Henri Seydoux, is one of the designer’s oldest friends.
The technology behind the speakers is first rate –- they’re topped with an iPod loading dock, and can wirelessly stream music from a PC or Mac. But it’s the neck-snappingly cool design (not to mention great sound) that creates product lust. The $1500 speakers, available later this spring, are striking for their simplicity, functionality, and beauty.
We spoke with Starck about why designing for men is like boxing, and designing for women is like aikido – and why simple, intuitive design is just so damned hard.
The new commander in chief's not-so-secret weapon proved her power yet again yesterday when Oprah sparked President Obama’s call to volunteerism by backing Starbucks’s new “I’m in” campaign. The initiative promises a free cup of coffee between now and Sunday to anyone pledging five hours of community service before the end of the year.
Starbucks launched the campaign with a TV spot, backed by a catchy tune created specifically for the project by yoga master/hip hop artist M.C.Yogi, who had been recruited to the task by the company’s agency, BBDO New York.
By mid-morning, on the East Coast, more than 600K hours had been pledged to service. Starbucks’s goal is to garner one million hours of service. Oprah urged her viewers -- and all Americans --- to double that goal.
Mayer: “Sergei forwarded me a url on the company’s little internal network, and I punched it in and saw his handiwork. It was the Google logo and it had these two incredibly sad clip art pumpkins in the O’s.”
