Tim Brown is the CEO of innovation and design firm IDEO, taking an approach to design that digs deeper than the surface. Having taken over from founder David E. Kelley, Tim Brown carries forward the firm’s mission of fusing design, business and social studies to come up with deeply researched, deeply understood designs and ideas — they call it “design thinking.”
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
- Calvin Coolidge (via swissmiss)
by Seth Godin
It’s very easy to underrate the value of cultural wisdom, otherwise known as sophistication.
Walk into a doctor’s office and the paneling is wrong, the carpeting is wrong and it feels dated. Instant lack of trust. Meet a salesperson in your office. She doesn’t shake hands, she’s fumbling with an old Filofax, she mispronounces Steve Jobs’ name and doesn’t make eye contact.Visit a website for a vendor and it looks like one of those long-letter opportunity seeker type sites.
In each case, the reason you wrote someone off had nothing to do with their product and everything to do with their lack of cultural wisdom. We place a high value on sophistication, because we’ve been trained to seek it out as a cue for what lies ahead. We figure that if someone is too clueless to understand our norms, they probably don’t understand how to make us a product or service that we’ll like. This is even more interesting because different cultures have different norms, so there isn’t one right answer. It’s an ever changing, complex task. Cultural wisdom is important precisely because it’s difficult.
And yet… Who’s in charge of cultural norms at your organization? Does someone hire or train or review to make sure you and your people are getting it right? At Vogue magazine, of course, that’s all they do. If they lost it, even for a minute, they’d be toast.
It’s funny that we assume that all sorts of complex but ultimately unimportant elements need experts and committees and review, but the most important element of marketing – demonstrating cultural wisdom – shouldn’t even be discussed.
Seth Godin
(via Seth Godin)
Design Revolution (by Emily Pilloton) features more than 100 contemporary design products and systems–safer baby bottles, a high-tech waterless washing machine, low-cost prosthetics for landmine victims, Braille-based Lego-style building blocks for blind children, wheelchairs for rugged conditions, sugarcane charcoal, universal composting systems, DIY soccer balls–that are as fascinating as they are revolutionary, this exceptionally smart, friendly and well-designed volume makes the case for design as a tool to solve some of the world’s biggest social problems in beautiful, sustainable and engaging ways–for global citizens in the developing world and in more developed economies alike. Particularly at a time when the weight of climate change, global poverty and population growth are impossible to ignore, Pilloton challenges designers to be changemakers instead of «stuff creators». Urgent and optimistic, a compendium and a call to action, Design Revolution is easily the most exciting design publication to come out this year.
Follow Emily and her Design Revolution Road Show on Twitter.
Buy the book here
by Li Edelkoort
The world is focused on design and the discipline is gaining importance everyday. The auction house concept encourages and defends this young market of autonomous pieces, giving opportunities to the one-of-a-kind or vintage industrial to become the new object of desire for collectors. Design takes its place next to art and is quickly becoming the discipline of this century. Consumers will access design in a new way, and acknowledge not only the function, but also the investment value of objects and develop an emotional connection with them. With this growing enthusiasm for form, we will begin conceiving our homes and studios in a more artistic way with connoisseur connotations… Our homes becoming an atelier, gallery or even a private museum.
Li Edelkoort’s ‘wish list’ at Pierre Berge & Associés
(via designboom)
Papercraft is an extensive survey on the insatiable trend of innovative art and design work crafted from paper. It explores the astounding possibilities of paper and gathers the most extraordinary creations – from small objects and figures to large-scale art installations and urban interventions as well as three-dimensional graphic sculptures from a vast spectrum of artistic disciplines ranging from character design, urban art, fine art, graphic design, illustration, fashion, animation and film. The book also includes a DVD with fun DIY printable templates for creating your own paper characters and toys as well as a curated selection of the best stop-motion animations.
Get Papercraft here
by Petra Schmidt and Nicola Stattmann: “In Unfolded – Paper in Design, Art, Architecture and Industry paper conquers the third dimension and demonstrates the undreamed-of possibilities it holds today for lightweight construction, product design, fashion and art. The book presents paper as a high-quality contemporary and ecological material in numerous projects. A comprehensive directory of state-of-the-art paper products and innovative paper technologies give detailed information on the “high-tech” material paper. From Japanese washi paper and paper foam, to ceramic paper and carbon fiber paper, “Unfolded” presents the latest in research and development, as well as the most important methods and technologies in handcrafts and industry.”
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