Michael Roller

Color and Texture in Melbourne’s Docklands

Melbourne architecture is full of color and texture. The city seems to love adding color to public spaces, making for a very optimistic urban experience. I particularly liked Alexander Knox’s golden facade for The Nolan. It balances a complex result with a simple set of pattern rules. I couldn’t find info on the other projects shown here, does anyone know who designed them?

Tags: architecture, australia, color, texture

Glowing Lines, Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials from 2008

Photoshop Lady has a nice rundown of all the popular photoshop tricks from the past year. This is a really good list that covers most of the dramatic, colorful work we’ve seen from people like Chuck Anderson. Lots of them are glowing text, stars, or speed lines, but there are also some surprising ones, like drawing a MacBook Air from scratch.

After doing a few of these tutorials, the pro-tip is to carefully integrate your new found skills with existing work. Start with a concept and then use the skills to support the idea, not the other way around. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of a glowing starry night, but it won’t always make sense as a background for your renderings of detergent bottles.

Tags: design tools

Qantas + Marc Newson

I had the pleasure of flying with Qantas for my trip to Australia last month. They did a great job making the long flight  as enjoyable as possible with good food, entertainment, and hospitality, even from our economy class seats.

My favorite aspect of the flight was the unexpected attention to detail.  Qantas hired Aussie designer Marc Newson to create all the tableware. Apartment Therapy blogged about this awhile back, but they left out a particularly beautiful part of the line. The coffee cup and juice glass are derived from the same form, which is both clever and efficient. I like the balance between repetition and variation here. The truncated cone form is used for both glasses, but flipping it over adds some novelty and fun to the family. For improved functionality, the inward shape of the juice glass seems less likely to spill during turbulence, even if that’s just my perception. The fork, knife, and spoon nest into a low-profile shape, presumably more efficient to store and ship.

While other airlines are now charging for a single beverage, Qantas seems to have a good handle on how to use design without adding cost. Besides Newson’s products, I was also given a place mat that neatly converted into a trash bag.

It probably wouldn’t work for all airline brands, but Qantas is making the most out of it’s design budget. Hopefully next time I fly Qantas I can visit Newson’s first class lounge or sit in his A380 seats!

Tim Brown’s Four Activities for Design Thinking

Businessweek recently interviewed IDEO CEO Tim Brown. Check out his thoughts on design thinking and the future of innovation:

I’m glad that Tim Brown is leading the way in defining design thinking, because he’s one of the most qualified people on the blogosphere to be explaining design’s role within business. Defining design thinking is still pretty messy, and we need smart leaders like Tim to offer his insights. Besides reminding us that innovation is practiced by all aspects of a business (not just by designers or scientists), he does a good job breaking down four key activities for design thinking.

Four Activities for Design Thinking:

1. Turn problems into projects, give yourself constraints
2. Look for insights outside of your world
   
3. Make ideas tangible (quickly)
4. Sell ideas through powerful storytelling

While I still think the division between design thinking and traditional thinking is blurry, this is a good breakdown of the key steps one can take to balance convergent and divergent processes.

Tags: definitions, design thinking

Mastery

As a professor in Design Communication, I’m frequently asked about the best ways to improve sketching skills. I always tell my students to read the book Mastery by George Leonard. I go on to explain that the best way to get better is to understand that the path to mastery is not a straight line of consistent improvement. The path is an unpredictable series of plateaus, and the only way to improve is to work regularly and diligently to accelerate the path (see step 2 below).

The Five Keys to Mastery:

1. Surrender to your passion
2. Practice, practice, practice
3. Get a guide
4. Visualize the outcome
5. Play the edge

I’m probably doing a huge injustice to this great book, but i do my best to convince my students to check it out themselves. Having just wrapped up another school quarter, I thought I should revisit it myself and write a post about it. Read more about the five keys to mastery online or get the book. I highly recommend it and I’m glad I was able to revisit these principles through my class.

Tags: books, design tools, philosophy

Designer Bias: Novelty

To be a better designer, I try to identify the subconscious preferences we have for our work, opening up communication towards objective evaluation. I’ve written about designer bias in the past, and Design Sojourn currently has a related post that reminded me to do this again. A common bias of industrial designers is the Novelty bias. The Novelty bias is a preference for products concepts to be unique, regardless of how appropriate for this is for the project.

The Novelty bias is a preference for products concepts to be unique, regardless of how appropriate this is for a project.

For example, if you’re designing a new car, it better not have round headlights. It would almost certainly look like a Beetle or Mini (and that would be bad). New cellphones or laptops shouldn’t use rounded rectangles, because then they would look like Apple products (and that would be bad too). Selecting from a wall full of ideas, designers gravitate towards the most unusual, not necessarily the most appropriate.

We designers are hyperaware of products and details, much more than the average consumer. It’s a strength to have this sensitivity, but it becomes a weakness when our fifth bottle design project for the year starts to take its toll. We crave novelty, but we don’t need it. To regular people, a simple cylinder might be okay for a new energy drink, even though all the other energy drinks come in the same stock bottle (in fact, traditional forms help them understand new products). Consumers don’t cringe in disgust when HP and Apple both use rounded rectangles as a formal element in their products. Sometimes novelty is important, but sometimes familiarity is just as meaningful. To make smart choices, we designers must be ready to remove our hypersensitive lenses and evaluate our work in the eyes of our consumer.

Tags: designer bias

Strategic Aesthetics

In writing this blog, my intention is to not only capture my own thoughts but to also offer thoughtful and useful information that furthers the blogosphere’s discussion on design. I want to provide this community with something that leverages my strengths and is differentiated from my peers.

I have a new tagline: Strategic Aesthetics

Strategic Aesthetics represents my approach to being a design professional and leverages my ability to understand both the short- and long-term aspects of our industry. Strategy is defined as long-term thinking and planning. Aesthetics are properties that relate to beauty, and seem to vibrate between what is novel and what is familiar. Many designers think of aesthetics as the current trends in form, color, and texture, asking the question, “what is popular and relevant for my projects now?”

When you combine long term thinking with exceptional aesthetic execution, something powerful happens. This combination creates lifestyle products and brands, forming strong emotional bonds between businesses and consumers. I plan to study how design functions on multiple levels to create these successful experiences.

Tags: design thinking, strategic aesthetics

Design Philosophy

I’m always considering the definition of good design and trying to keep a sharp point of view on the subject. I compare my aesthetic preferences with current trends, integrating some new color, texture, or form language to my work when it makes sense. But some day, I’ll need to put down my pencil and let the kids take over. See, I realize my styling abilities have an expiration date, so it’s important to find ways to strategically impact design work before my sketches stop turning heads. Hence this blog and posts like this one.

There is no bad design. There is only bad context and bad execution.

This is my (current) philosophy on design. It came from a conversation with Lara, my interior designer wife. Her coworkers were evaluating criticizing another designer’s work (potentially the not-designed-by-me bias). They abhorred the tassels that were used as drawer pulls and promised they would never use them in a project. Lara and I found that to be a bit extreme, and we wondered if we wouldn’t find good uses of tassels at a place like Anthropologie or Design Sponge. It’s easy enough to find some, and this philosophy was born. You might not like a color, shape, or detail, but who knows when it could come into fashion or fit with a certain design theme. I prefer to maintain a relativist point of view and stay open to new ideas and executions.

Tags: designer bias, philosophy

Budgets, Proposals, New (Business) Relationships

Over at Noise Between Stations, Victor Lombardi has written a thoughtful post about the challenges of writing proposals in RFP situations. Many clients believe they should avoid giving consultants full disclosure of their budgets in fear of having it all used up. Along with many of his Twitter peers, he concludes that more disclosure could create transparent relationships, keeps the process efficient, and allows consultants to be more accurate. He writes:

Money is a great constraint for spurring creativity. And if the same budget were disclosed to all agencies, the client can still compare the relative value of each proposal.

As I think about my own experiences with this challenge, Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational comes to mind. The book documents a range of experiments that examine common (irrational) human behaviors, including a chapter on the differences between market and social norms. Since building a relationship with a new client is as much about the money as it is personality, this section becomes rather useful in further defining the problem.

According to Ariely, it’s the intersection of market and social norms that get us into trouble. As an example, he proposes the idea of offering your mother-in-law a few hundred dollars for her delicious Thanksgiving dinner. No matter what the actual cost, you’ve crossed over from social norm to market norm and caused yourself some strange looks and serious trouble.

The easiest clients to work with are either all about the money (market norm), or not about it at all (social norm), but most of our relationships fall somewhere in the middle. To resolve these, the best we consultants can do is feel out our clients and guide the relationship towards one norm or the other.

RFP opportunities present this same challenge. At once, you form both a social and a business relationship with the same person. The easiest clients to work with are either all about the money (market norm), or not about it at all (social norm), but most of our relationships fall somewhere in the middle. To resolve these, the best we consultants can do is feel out our clients and guide the relationship towards one norm or the other. What experiences have you had (good or bad) managing both the social and business sides of a client relationship?

Words To Design By

Based on a recent conversation at work, I find myself considering how these two philosophies are integrated with my life. I think I’m motivated by both equally, but they seem to oppose each other at times.

When I am happy, I do good design. When I do good design, I am happy.

Here are a couple examples of what I’m talking about. I can feel very satisfied after an allnighter cranking out great ideas for a tight deadline. I can be happy working with a group of fun, interesting people, but not doing my best work if I’m not challenged with the right type of project.

As with most of my blog posts, I don’t have this sorted out. I’ll park this post here until I can come back to it later with more insights. What is your mantra for doing good design?