“The Marble Answering Machine demonstrates the great potential of making digital information graspable.” This project by Durrell Bishop is from 1992. 1992!
Stories, moments, people and ideas of interest from within the worlds of innovation and design, spotted and written about by Helen Walters, design writer, editor, and ideas editor at TED. Attitude, errors and opinions obviously all the writer's own.
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March 14, 2013
February 18, 2013
Oh, Olafur Eliasson, how I heart you so.
[via Creative Review]
February 14, 2013
"I think our ego is like the bark of a tree – but there is something else in us, an energy that makes us feel we are not alone."
— Ok, so truthfully, I’m not entirely sure what Mariko Mori is driving at here, but I like the sound of it, don’t you?
February 14, 2013
“A growing, living artwork.” I love this.
(via Alison Prato)
February 13, 2013
"Management is the opportunity to help people become better people."
— Smart words from the always-sage Clay Christensen, featured in a Q&A with Wired’s Jeff Howe. Imagine if all managers thought about their role in this way.
February 11, 2013
"I saw the original."
—
So says “The Shooter,” the protagonist of the extraordinary Esquire story, The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden… Is Screwed. This is his typically dry, pithy response to watching the movie, Zero Dark Thirty, and the story is packed full of his wry humor. What’s not funny is the disgraceful way in which veterans are being treated once they return home. As writer Phil Bronstein puts it:
The Shooter will discover soon enough that when he leaves after sixteen years in the Navy, his body filled with scar tissue, arthritis, tendonitis, eye damage, and blown disks, here is what he gets from his employer and a grateful nation: Nothing. No pension, no health care, and no protection for himself or his family.“
Bronstein touches on the idea that the business community would be smart to tap the skills of retired SEALs for less violent settings. He details discussions with (now former) Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Orbitz chairman, Jeff Clarke. "It would be great to get a panel of CEOs together who are ready to help these guys get hired,” says someone associated with the Navy SEAL Foundation. Yes, yes, yes. Make it happen!
February 8, 2013
"Did you know that vital parts of the US law are secret, and you’re only allowed to read them if you pay a standards body thousands of dollars for the right to find out what the law of the land is?"
— Read Liberating America’s secret, for-pay laws by Carl Malamud. It’s chilling and inspiring in about equal measure. Ok, fine. More chilling.
February 8, 2013
"Strategy is a singular thing; there is one strategy for a given business — not a set of strategies. It is one integrated set of choices: what is our winning aspiration; where will we play; how will we win; what capabilities need to be in place; and what management systems must be instituted?"
— Fine, so Roger Martin is a friend of mine, someone I’ve edited over the years and who’s also essentially published me (by means of the magazine at the business school of which he’s dean, Rotman School of Management, part of the University of Toronto). Nonetheless, conflicts aside, for anyone involved in innovation, design, planning, budgeting, or really the world of business, his piece, Don’t Let Strategy Become Planning, is a smart read. I’ve also just started reading Roger’s latest book, coauthored with former P&G CEO, A.G. Lafley. More on that later.
January 15, 2013
This takes me back to my days with a teeny tiny flower press, marveling at the fragile and delicate dried and pressed flowers that even I, an entirely ham-fisted child, could somehow produce. But of course this project has a far more serious goal in mind–to document and barcode every plant in existence. I love the spirit and soul of this project–and Ellen Jorgensen, of the Brooklyn-based biohacking lab Genspace, is a rockstar.
January 15, 2013
"Downloadable music is just a fad and people will always want the atmosphere and experience of a music store rather than online shopping."
—
As HMV calls in the administrators, it’s worth taking a look back at Why Companies Fail–The Rise and Fall of HMV, published last August. In the piece, former HMV consultant Philip Beeching gives an inside scoop on working with the iconic music retailer. The quote above comes courtesy of then-managing director Steve Knott, commenting right after HMV went public in 2002.
Beeching describes his reaction to this response with a thoughtful reminder: “the dotcom bubble had just burst and many people were mistaking this stockmarket meltdown for an internet meltdown.” In other words, hindsight is always 20:20 and it’s easy to scoff at those who turn out to have got something wrong. Nonetheless, the inability to imagine a different way often proves to be catastrophic.
As such, this is a useful take on a sorry and sadly somewhat typical story. Just remember: any time anyone writes something off as a “fad,” hear the alarm bells ringing. It may indeed turn out to be a gimmick of the highest order, but it's certainly worth taking the time to take another look.
[Story via Tom Weaver.]
January 14, 2013
"Simply having the idea is not enough. Crafting a beautiful solution is not enough. Doing a dramatic presentation is not enough. Convincing all your peers is not enough. Even if you’ve done all that, you still have to go through the hard work of selling it to the client. And like any business situation of any complexity whatsoever, that process may be smothered in politics, handicapped with exigencies, and beset with factors with have nothing to do with design excellence. You know, real life. Creating a beautiful design turns out to be just the first step in a long and perilous process with no guarantee of success."
— Michael Bierut is a partner at Pentagram and a simply wonderful writer. In Graphic Design Criticism as a Spectator Sport, he takes on the thorny topic of untrained amateurs daring to voice an opinion on graphic design. Thankfully, he doesn’t come to the traditional designerly conclusion that such interlopers clearly don’t get it, but instead offers a nuanced argument and a call to action for design professionals to step up and do a part of the job they too often don’t consider or relish. As he writes, “perhaps the question in these logo discussions could be more than: could I do better? Perhaps we could also ask: what was the purpose? What was the process? Whose ends were being served? How should we judge success? But we seldom look any deeper than first impressions, wallowing instead in a churning maelstrom of snap judgments. Should we be surprised when the general public jumps right in after us?” Important questions, all.
January 9, 2013
"There is a tendency to view the site, the poster, the logo or the product as the purpose of design when it is not. We will only make design a force in creating the future if we see it not as an end in itself, but as a tool, a medium, a lever in a process of ongoing transformation—and if we take full responsibility for the transformation we engender. “What will we accomplish with this?” is the question we must never forget ask, and to honestly answer. That will be the work of the designer of the future."
— I have had many conversations with the inestimable Cheryl Heller about the meaning and purpose of “design thinking.” She’s a smart thinker and writer – not to mention the founder of the new Design for Social Innovation program at SVA. Where Design is Going, and How to be There is her manifesto for future designers, and it’s well worth a read.
January 7, 2013
“If we can enhance the experience, more people will spend more of their leisure time with us.” So said Thomas O. Staggs, chairman of Disney Parks and Resorts, in this piece about a huge investment the company is making to streamline the process of visiting the mega themepark. In At Disney Parks, a Bracelet Meant to Build Loyalty (and Sales), writer Brooks Barnes details the efforts Disney is making to move visitors away from having to use cash or credit and encourage them to use a connected wristband. Disney can then mine insights into what its visitors are actually doing when they’re at the parks. It’s not a small investment: analysts figure it’ll cost the company up to $1 billion. But I guess that’s the price you need to pay these days to get first-hand, reliable data on your customers.
[Photo via Flickr/Sam Howzit. Story via Amelia Dunlop.]
January 7, 2013
"We thought that one way to communicate respect would be to always be on time to meetings with entrepreneurs. Rather than make them wait in our lobby for 30 minutes while we attended to more important business like so many venture capitalists that we visited, we wanted our people to be on time, prepared and focused. Unfortunately, anyone who has ever worked anywhere knows that this is easier said than done. In order to shock the company into the right behavior, we instituted a ruthlessly enforced $10/minute fine for being late to a meeting with an entrepreneur. So, you are on a really important call and will be 10 minutes late? No problem, just bring $100 to the meeting and pay your fine."
— Another great piece by Andreesen Horowitz founder, Ben Horowitz: Programming Your Culture is a smart take on an important topic, filled with common sense. I also loved this line: “The world is full of bankrupt companies with world-class cultures. Culture does not make a company.”
January 4, 2013
"Ideas, in a sense, are overrated. Of course, you need good ones, but at this point in our supersaturated culture, precious few are so novel that nobody else has ever thought of them before. It’s really about where you take the idea, and how committed you are to solving the endless problems that come up in the execution."
— Simply lovely. In Be Wrong as Fast as You Can, New York Times magazine editor Hugo Lindgren lays it all out on the line, in a first-person confessional with a moral for us all. Now, please excuse me but I must stop procrastinating and reading Everything On The Web and get back to it.