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The New Renu
We’ve always used Bausch + Lomb’s renu contact solution, so I was excited to see the packaging refreshed with new graphics in a clear, textured bottle. As a product, in hand, it’s great. However, there are a few things holding it back from being a truly great piece of strategic aesthetics.
Everything about this bottle felt immediately like a good move on B+L’s part: the clear bottle and friendly graphics are disruptive in a category filled with competition struggling to straddle the healthcare and CPG worlds. Pentagram, the agency handling Bausch + Lomb’s new identity, seemed to find category balance in part through the addition of a nice serif typeface. For more background on the graphic design, read about the work on Pentagram’s site or from the critics at Brand New. Beyond the graphic aspects, selecting a transparent PETE bottle over the opaque HDPE one gives B+L a better sensory experience. The thinner walls of the new bottle make it easier and enjoyable to squeeze. A slight texture prevents it from feeling too stock, and it probably helps a little bit functionally. Finally, a clear bottle works well in the store because shoppers like to see the product they’re going to purchase.
However, all the advantages of packaging contact solution in a clear bottle are erased by the paper box that covers it up. I’m not sure if this is a regulatory issue or if it’s an unwritten rule for the category, but every bottle of contact solution comes in a secondary box (image courtesy of The Dieline). Regardless, Bausch + Lomb may have missed an opportunity for more disruptive innovation and more category leadership. Clear bottles typically cost more than the opaque ones, so why invest the money if it’s not going to help the brand stand out in the store? On the other hand, one could substitute a clear acetate box for the paper one in order to celebrate the bottle inside. It would be a bigger investment, both to spec a clear box and to spend time working in a more integrated manner to make the entire package work together. This example, much like the Dove Go Fresh bottles, indicates that achieving good design today is much more of a management challenge than an aesthetic one. I’m confident Bausch + Lomb will have success despite some of these details, but I think the payoff would have been bigger had they achieved a more holistic vision of how they want people to experience their products.
2010 DAAP Student Merit Finalists
This week, the top industrial design students from UC’s DAAP program presented their work as a part of the IDSA student merit awards. A group of professionals judged the work and selected Tracy Subisak to represent UC at the upcoming district conference in Grand Rapids. Having worked with all of these students, I’m sure it was a difficult decision, even just to narrow it down to this group of seven. This is an extremely talented group of soon-to-be graduates, and I wish them luck as they prepare for their capstone presentations at DAAPworks this June.
Five Questions for Mark Gallagher
Over the past few months, many industrial designers have responded to my interview requests. I’m excited now to get a perspective outside of ID. Mark Gallagher started brand expression consultancy Blackcoffee in 1994. Using his background in communications and design, he helps brands tell strong stories, and he writes some good ones of his own on the Blackcoffee blog.
How do you define good design?
“Good” is defined by context. Good design considers the values of its audience within the context of how the brand will provide value to a given market. The more value it delivers, the better the design. The irony is that what is considered good design today may very well be considered bad design tomorrow, and by the same individuals.
Changes in consumer values change the context in how value and costs are perceived. New vs. Vintage, Handmade vs. Machine made, Natural vs. Synthetic, Sustainable vs. Disposable, Classic vs. Modern… A change in context changes everything.
What is your favorite part of the design process?
I enjoy being challenged and I enjoy collaborating with people who have different expertise and perspective than my own. Fortunately, I get to work cross-functionally with a highly diverse group of very smart and talented individuals. Each of them brings tremendous value to the brand and to me personally. Together we develop systems that allow the brand to grow and evolve over time without the appearance of change.
What challenges you most as a designer?
What works for you today can work against you tomorrow. The biggest challenge is creating brand systems that are rigid enough to maintain brand consistency, yet flexible enough to maintain relevance within an ever-changing world.
In the context of your job, how do you define success?
Award shows don’t define success—the market does. My job requires that I work towards a definition of success that is predefined by the brand team. Everything is then measured against that definition. Because each member of the team defines success the same way, we work individually and collectively towards the same ends. This encourages everyone to leave their egos at the door and allows the team to maintain momentum throughout the process.
What has been the most unexpected part of being a professional designer?
The unexpected is the norm, and yet I’m still constantly surprised. I’ve seen great designers get stuck carrying out production work and below average designers lead major redesigns. The difference is often presentation, being able to talk about design though the vernacular of business.
Thanks, Mark!
Brand Expressionist® Mark Gallagher graduated from Pratt Institute receiving a BFA in communications with a minor in industrial design. In 1994 he co-founded the brand expression consultancy Blackcoffee®, which helps consumer-facing organizations to unlock trapped value by clarifying, simplifying and amplifying their brand stories. Clients include: Acura, Showtime, Cannondale, Puma, Hasbro, Timberland, MTV, Reebok, Rockport, Tonka, Sperry Top-Sider, Seven Cycles, New Balance and Zildjian. In addition to building brands, Mark is a nationally certified high-performance driving instructor and competes in the BMW Club Racing series.
Fresh Coat of Paint
A neutral coat of paint has freshened up the Brutopia coffee shop in Cincinnati’s Clifton neighborhood. Artwork held up surprisingly well in front of the previously bright chartreuse walls, but the cool white they’ve selected looks professional and classic. Go get a great cappuccino this holiday season!
Speaking of holidays, artwork makes a great gift 
Here are some recent works that I have available, please let me know if you’re interested!
Five Questions for Colin Roberts
Colin Roberts is a Designer 1 at Fiskars Brands with a Bachelors in Industrial Design from the University of Cincinnati. He enjoys sneakers, reading on his back porch and drinking in daylight.
How do you define good design?
Good design is creating objects appropriate to their context that resonate with someone to the point of making life more enjoyable. Good design isn’t about a physical ethos or style.
What is your favorite part of the design process?
I don’t think I have a favorite part. It’s the process itself that I love, from exploration, to visualization and final development. When I’m getting too much of one and not enough of others I can get cranky.
What challenges you most as a designer?
I think our world is rich with ideas and lacking in executional ability. With all the good ideas floating around it can be challenging for a young designer to avoid being used simply for execution. Maybe even more so within a larger corporation.
How do you define success?
There are so many variables to successful products, even award winners can be failures in the market place. I think I’ll define success when I can look across my company’s product line and see a spread that’s given us the opportunity for success in the market place.
What has been the most unexpected part of being a professional?
I’ve been surprised by the lack of formality in the design process. It seems that with so much time in school, in books I’ve read, and on designer blogs devoted to exploring and perfecting processes, more emphasis would be given towards implementing those processes.
Thanks, Colin!
Five Questions for Michael DiTullo
How do you define of good design?
My definition of good design is broad. For me, good design is an object, service, brand or communication that successfully serves humans. There are many examples of good design in the world today. You can even get some pretty solid good design off the shelf from OEM manufacturers.
Great design is more than culturally relevant, it goes on to influence the culture it that created it. Great design kicks good design’s ass.
The more important definition is that of great design. Great design does everything that good design does, but it has a presence that makes good design pale in comparison. Great design is culturally and personally impact-full. Great design leaves an imprint on its owner. It not only creates the desire to buy it, but it also engenders the desire to keep it, use it, and take care of it. Great design is full of little things that you will never hear in a focus group and that you can not measure in user testing. Great design is more than culturally relevant, it goes on to influence the culture it that created it. Great design kicks good design’s ass. I think I’ve done some really very good design, but my goal is to do great design. Luckily I’ve only been doing this for 11 years. Fingers crossed, I have another 40-50 years more of work in me, so I’m hopeful that if I keep working at it, I’ll get there.
What challenges you most as a designer?
What challenges me most as a person is patience. If I had my way I’d design everything. After over a decade of doing this professionally, I am still as excited about design as I was in school. I have a “bucket list” of sorts of things I need to design before I hang up the six guns. I’d love to get a chess set into production, a furniture piece, some small electrics like a toaster and coffee maker, flatware, some more consumer electronics, a camera, a phone, a video game system, a laptop…. OK, really pretty much everything is on that list. I’ve been able to check off a few items on the list; a tea kettle, I collaborated with Icon on a production vehicle that is being shown at this year’s SEMA show, and obviously a lot of footwear. With patience I know I will get to most of it.
Patience is a big part of the game. As designers we have the ability to see, in both the literal and figurative sense of the word. We are lucky when we have the opportunity to collaborate with others that have this skill. When we don’t have collaborators with this ability, we have to have patience to find out what their strengths are, what is important to them, educate them, and bring them along with us to better design solutions.
In the context of your job, how do you define success?
I don’t define success as perfection. What I look for is progress. If we can look back on the products that came before and say we made progress with this design, then I feel pretty good about it. It is a very simple and personal measurable. Of course I want to have great
sales, and awards are nice, so are magazine write ups, accolades and other forms of recognition. They all look great on your resume. What really matters is that I feel I in some way made progress.
What has been the most unexpected part of being a professional designer?
One of the things that surprised me the most is how resistant designers can be to talk about design. I was at a design conference in which the keynote speaker was a photo-journalist whose opening line was “I have no idea what industrial design is or why you asked me here, so I’m just going to show my portfolio….”. I have never been to a convention for lawyers, but I bet they talk about law.
Designers can be so eager to learn the languages of business and engineering that it comes at the expense of their native design tongue. In the vacuum of designers talking design, we are loosing ownership of our language. Terms like Innovation, Design Thinking, Iconic, Modern are so miss-used that they are the verge of meaningless.
To be a successful designer it is important to understand how to speak to and influence business and engineering. As designers, we inherently have flexible thought patterns and a capacity for empathy that allows us to do this. As we learn these skills we must remember to educate others about our own language and the value of design.
I read that an article by a designer in a well known global design firm that said “Artifact making is dead”. Humans have been making artifacts since the dawn of our existence. It’s not a fad, it is hardwired into our spirit, as it is hardwired into a bird to build a nest and a beaver to build a dam. We tell stories through objects. We leave things behind for others to examine our lives. Are we proud of them? Can they represent the ideals of our age? Can they embody who we want to be as individuals and as a civilization?
The search for the answers to those questions are what keep me at it everyday.
Five Questions for Geoffrey Baldwin
To understand the meaningful similarities and differences between different types of designers, I’ve started collecting a series of short interviews with a broad range of students and professionals. The first was with Neal Mabee, and here is the second. Geoffrey Baldwin is an Industrial Designer at IDEO Chicago. He is a 2006 graduate of the University of Cincinnati’s Industrial Design program. Prior to joining IDEO, he made the internship rounds at Lexmark, Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Design Continuum, Nike, and The Rockwell Group. While Geoffrey is quite passionate about design it isn’t his first love – that would be baseball. He spends the Spring, Summer and Fall playing baseball all over the Chicagoland area, refusing to grow up.
How do you define good design?
Good design is a balance, it’s about what’s best without being too much. Two phrases that help me are… “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” “A design isn’t finished when there’s nothing left to add, but rather when there’s nothing left to take away.”
What is your favorite part of the design process?
Reduction. Whether its synthesizing research down to one salient insight or embodying that perspective into a simple object, I like simplifying information.
What challenges you most as a designer?
Making things tangible…“Design thinking” has created a lot of interest in “strategy.” Strategy is a fancy word for having a plan and no plan is worth anything if it doesn’t have an outcome. My passion and greatest challenge is having strategic conversations that end with a tangible outcome.
How do you define success?
It would be easy for me to say that success is when my client is happy. But I think making clients happy isn’t that hard, just do what they want. To me success is self satisfaction within the constraints of a project. It’s two questions: “did I help my client?” and “did I fulfill myself?”
What has been the most unexpected part of being a professional designer?
I’ve always been surprised to work with designers who, admittedly, cannot draw. This has been a circumstance I’ve found myself in at several studios and it never ceases to amaze me. In my opinion, sketching is the heart of what design is all about. It’s as much about imagination as it is about hard details.
Thanks, Geoffrey. Please check back to see how other designers have responded to these questions!
Why Isn’t Oktoberfest in Oktober?
Why isn’t Oktoberfest in Oktober? That’s what we asked ourselves while brainstorming themes for our upcoming party. Cincinnati has a strong German heritage, so we thought it would be fun to try and extend Oktoberfest for a little while longer by inviting our friends over to celebrate our 20th anniversary.
Here are the details:
Kaleidoscope OpenHaus. 205 W. 4th ST Suite 900. Cincinnati, OH.
October 22 from 4:00-??? (gotta have the questions marks)
On Display at Red Tree Gallery
Starting this weekend, I’ll have three paintings (including Twelve Apostles Windy, above) in the Red Tree Gallery’s show Scapes. If you’re in town, check out the show at their new gallery, close to their old one on Madison. Thanks to Red Tree for exhibiting my work!
Design Droplets Interviews Ralf Beuker
Like I’ve discussed before, I very much appreciate insight on design from non-designers. Ralf Beuker is one of those people, a Professor for Design Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Münster, Germany. Check out his interview with Design Droplets. Here are a few quotes to stimulate your interest.
My first job after graduating was as a university teaching assistant for the Chair of Management of Innovation and Technology. We acted as a bridge between design, business administration and information science. The idea was to connect all three in a better way – because design, business and information sciences needed the tools, the means and understanding of how to bring ideas to market. So I’ve been working with this overlap in thinking from the beginning of my career.
If you have the management of the design function you are in the operational area. When it comes to Design Management, then you’re on the corporate end. With the CEO you don’t discuss the tiny things of why a nob or a display is placed here or there. With the CEO of a company you discuss why Apple is such a fantastic company and how you think, for example, this furniture manufacturer can become the Apple in their industry. You are designing management and giving him recommendations about which triggers or levers to pull in order to allow the company to become more competitive.
Designers really need to learn, that usually, they do not have a choice about how they enter an organisation…After the basic business needs are satisfied like where do I get my money from (financing), how do I manage the money, how do I get my stuff produced(the value chain thinking), I’m not saying that this is the right view – I’m simply giving you a picture of what the management view might be, one tiny element is design. If designers have at least thought about the business persons situation and view, it makes it easier for you to understand why, as a designer, you sometimes don’t get to the high stakes table (the board room).
Ralf offers up a reading list and also has some good visuals over at his Flickr site. You can also follow him on Twitter.
On Twitter
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