interviews

The Ideal (Junior) Industrial Designer

Being a great industrial designer requires a nuanced balance of many important skills and personality traits, but which matter the most?

A few weeks ago, I initiated a project with the goal of uncovering information about how industrial designers process and evaluate the complex, nuanced combination of skills and traits that are thrown at them every time they look at a portfolio or meet someone for an interview. I sent out surveys to senior designers to get feedback that would help students and young designers understand where to focus their energy. After receiving 100 responses, I’m happy to say that this document confirms some things intuitively believed and also uncovers some interesting surprises. How important is good sketching relative to a good personality? As it turns out, they’re neck and neck.

Even though this document uses scores and percentages to organize the information, it’s important to remember that the study is still largely qualitative. With that in mind, I hope you’ll leave your comments and help me start a constructive discussion on what’s important to the young designers for which this project was created.
IDskillssnapshot

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Sunday, August 1st, 2010 Ideas, Implementations 14 Comments

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.

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Sunday, December 6th, 2009 Ideas, Uncategorized No Comments

Five Questions for Demetrius Romanos

I’m particularly excited about this latest interview with Kaleidoscope’s Demetrius Romanos. With a background in both corporate and consultant design, he has a great sense of empathy for both the needs of clients and those of his internal team. Empathy can be crucial to the success of design, and it has helped Demetrius be successful as a designer, design director, and currently as VP of Design. And just so that I’m being completely transparent here, Demetrius is my boss.

autodry

How do you define of good design?

I suppose that every year the definition of “good design” changes for me to a degree based on what annoys me at the time. Right now, for example, I just wish I had a phone that I could hear, one that would not regularly fail in the most basic functions. At the end of the day, I’m still sadly too aesthetically driven. To me good design is the considered detail. The special last button on a Ben Sherman dress shirt. The tag on the inside of my Scotch & Soda jacket that says “you look really great today”. The little rubber ring on the handle of a Swiffer that keeps it from sliding down when you lean it against the wall. Anyone can make something look great at 10 paces, but when you consider all the little things, that to me is good design.

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What is your favorite part of the design process?

My favorite part is getting to the root of what’s needed, then planning the strategy of what we’ll do and how we’ll do it. I love mashing design, fashion, architecture and looking to all sorts of areas for inspiration. Mostly I like to see people smile when they buy things and use things. Joy from joy.

What challenges you most as a designer?

At this point in my career, I would say relevance in the eyes of younger designers is the biggest challenge. While I might not be “on the board” anymore, I am so engrossed in consumerism and pop culture that I still want to not only share my own ideas and experiences, but to see them implemented. That’s my best way to contribute as a designer now.

In the context of your job, how do you define success?

I most define success by repeat business. I love to be trusted and relied upon. I want to be the go-to place for when you get a call like ‘I have this huge initiative to do and I only want to work with someone I trust and that’s you”. It is so affirming and hardly gets better than that.

febreze sport

What has been the most unexpected part of being a professional designer?

I suppose there are a few things. I guess what I think is cool to work on has changed over the years. Like packaging for example. You sort of have to suspend the moral part out of it, but it’s fun to work on. Being a consultant has changed me too I’d have to say. I get so much more of a thrill at building our business, strategically growing our offerings and client base and seeing our talented designers grow than any single artifact I’ve ever designed.

Thanks, Demetrius!

A University of Cincinnati grad, Demetrius Romanos is a driven design leader with 15 years experience as a design professional in both corporate and consulting environments. He has strategically focused his career for maximum engagement, beginning with working in the film and juvenile products industries, then as a key part of a high caliber corporate design team, and now as a leader building a world class product development team. As Vice President of Design for product development firm Kaleidoscope, Demetrius leads a team of multidisciplinary specialists in design, strategy and research for international clients including: Motorola, Procter & Gamble, Whirlpool, International Trucks, Staples, Evenflo and J&J. Demetrius’s work was selected for the Cooper Hewitt’s Design Triennial in 2000. He is an avid traveler, shopper, pop culture junkie and artist, all of which round out his creative eccentricity.

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Sunday, November 29th, 2009 Ideas 1 Comment

Five Questions for Jed Farlow

Born and raised in Boston, Jed Farlow studied human factors and ergonomics at Cornell University and then industrial design at University of Cincinnati. He currently works at DEKA Research & Development, creating smooth and understandable user experiences for life-saving medical and infrastructure (power, water) systems.

How do you define of good design?

Good design fulfills a stated need or solves a problem, efficiently and elegantly.

What is your favorite part of the design process?

The concept generation space between research and refinement, generating solutions to specific parts of the problem. At the moment, this involves a lot of back and forth with engineers about feasibility.

What challenges you most as a designer?

I’m having a major debate with myself about the sometimes subtle differences between design, art, and junk. A lot of what gets praised by the ID world at large seems off-base to me, and I’m trying to decide what’s reasonable to do about it.

In the context of your job, how do you define success?

Basically, success is how well-suited one of my products is to its users. We test this. Early involvement in projects is a big deal; the earlier I or my team get asked to provide research or input, the more successful we’re likely to be. I’m waiting for a few major projects to get released, so my definition is likely to get updated as I see how they are received and used (or not!) by their markets.

What has been the most unexpected part of being a professional designer?

The amount of subtlety and diplomacy it takes to protect design intent and user experience through the development process.

Thanks, Jed!

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Saturday, November 21st, 2009 Ideas No Comments

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!

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Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Five Questions for Michael Seum

Michael Seum is a Chicago native currently working from Italy. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Industrial Design program. Seum’s work as a Principal Designer for Global Consumer Design, Whirlpool Europe fuels his interest for highly complex design problems. In his current role in the platform studio, he is integrating design led innovations and demonstrating the role design can play in the early phases of planning and product development. Michael’s work is diverse in nature as he fluidly moves between setting a vision, leading complex, multi-functional teams to working the intimate details of a product. Michael’s past design experiences include the design of award winning products for Sterling, Kohler, Procter & Gamble, and KitchenAid.kitchenaid

How do you define good design?

It’s really not up to me to define good design as the designer. Although I have my opinions, I leave the final judgment to the person who purchases the product at the end of it’s creation.

What is your favorite part of the design process?

The parts I am most passionate about are the collaboration aspects. There are some really smart and talented people out there and my favorite projects always found a way to pull seemingly different minds behind a single objective. I also like the espresso breaks.

What challenges you most as a designer?

A pencil, seriously. I am not the best with a straight line or creating wicked sketches to say the least. I prefer clay, paper, glue, duct tape and interns.

How do you define success?

Currently, I am working from our Italian design studio so my measure of success is very much influenced by my recent transition from working in the states to now working in Europe. Success (for me) is earning the respect and trust of my colleagues outside of design.

What has been the most unexpected part of being a professional?

I am sometimes surprised at how geeky designers can be. Recently, I’ve seen one designer who wears silver shoes.

Thanks, Michael!

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Monday, November 2nd, 2009 Ideas No Comments

Five Questions for Michael DiTullo

I’m pretty excited about the latest Five Questions interview. Michael DiTullo is a talented and well-known Design Director at Converse. He also contributes to Core77.com where all of us have probably received at least a few pieces of good advice from “yo.” Thanks to Michael for talking with me and sharing his point of view on design.

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 is your favorite part of the design process?

It is difficult to say because there are aspects I love about every stage of the process. Every point is an opportunity to make the end product better in some way. From a pure fun standpoint, the early conceptual phases are high on the list. That blank sheet of paper moment is magical. Anything can happen on that page, anything is possible. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I enjoy going over the finer details of CAD drawings and models with tooling engineers to get a part line just right or messaging a section and even specifying a texture. There is something so satisfying about both extremes of the spectrum.

DiTullo

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.


Michael DiTullo is a Design Director of footwear at Converse. He started his career at Evo Design were he worked for a wide array of clients including Nike, Burton Snowboards, Timex, Becton Dickinson, Chantal, V Tech, Waring and Samsonite. Michael joined Nike in 2003 and worked in their Sportswear and Brand Jordan divisions before his current role at Converse. DiTullo is a contributor to the design website Core77.com and has given lectures and demos at universities, corporations and design conferences. His work has won several international awards and has been featured in many publications. DiTullo holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design and also studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art.
All images property of Michael DiTullo.

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Thursday, October 29th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

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!

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Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

Don’t Design A Logo: Five Self-Promotion Rules Industrial Designers Should Break

This article was originally written for and published at Product Design Hub. If you’ve already read it, thanks! If you haven’t, check out the conversation going on at Product Design Hub’s site.

So you just graduated this past spring, and now you’re looking for a job as an industrial designer. Times are tough, but you’re pretty confident in your work. You wish you had some connections, but the couple internships under your belt will only get you so far. First things first, you’ve got to build up your network. So you designed a “sweet” logo, started a new blog and twitter account, and bought a great new pair of glasses to interview in. You’re all set, right? Think again. Most of your peers are doing the same things, and your best chance to make a good impression is to stand out from the crowd. Here are five popular methods of self-promotion that I challenge young designers to reconsider.

Don’t Design A Logo

…Especially one that uses your initials. I’m not sure why we do this, but industrial designers feel a strong need to brand themselves with a logo, and they typically involve our initials in some sort of ligature. Because the majority of us aren’t good graphic designers, these logos typically fail to make the impression we’re hoping for on our websites and portfolio covers.

Instead, borrow a page from the 2D design playbook: type your name in a simple, classic font and let your work speaking for itself (like here, here, or here). Now that you’ve saved yourself a few hours or more, why not do something more productive for your portfolio? Enter a design competition, back sketch one of your old projects to make it more current, or learn a new piece of software. Whatever you do, make sure you’re investing your time towards something that helps you be a better industrial designer.

Don’t Write A Blog

Last time I checked, designers spend most of their time drawing and visualizing ideas, not writing about them. There are plenty of good reasons to start writing about design, but before you do, ask yourself why it matters to you. Blogging is popular and easy, but unless you’re a writer (and most designers aren’t), you can probably find some better way to promote yourself or refine your point of view.

Spencer Nugent, co-founder of IDsketching.com, offers this advice. “Think of something unique you can bring to the table. One of our most unique and popular posts was on microwaving prismacolor pencils to keep them from breaking. That post alone brought over 10,000 new visitors to the site. Stick to your guns and be prepared to defend your point of view. You’re putting yourself out there for EVERYONE to see. Not everyone will agree with you, so you have to be prepared to stick to what you believe in.”

If you do decide to write a blog, “post about topics, not yourself,” says Nugent. “We try to post things that people will find interesting. Sometimes we post about ourselves, but we try not to. Again, pick a theme, or concept for your blog and stick to it. Your blog is a design project too!”

Don’t Follow Me on Twitter

Twitter has exploded over the last year, so it isn’t a surprise that you’re on it, searching for the best designers to follow. Don’t rely on Twitter to make meaningful connections, because you’ll just be one in a hundred people following me. I’m not even that popular. Follow someone more popular and you could be one in a thousand. When you have this many followers, receiving messages could be more of a nuisance that anything else, and that’s not the impression you’re after.

Instead, consider commenting on my blog. More specifically, ask me a thoughtful question. It shows that you take the time to read the content and engage in a conversation that isn’t ruled by abbreviations and a specific number of characters. Even better, get me to follow you or do some fantastic design work deserving of a blog post! Remember, social media tools help you network with people, they won’t do it for you.

Stop Wearing Pumas

I can spot a young industrial designer from 100 yards away. Here’s the look, top to bottom: Eccentric eyewear (optional), simple graphic tee, bold watch and/or belt, relatively dark denim, and Pumas in a bold colorway. Don’t get my wrong, Puma makes some great products and I’m really just picking on them as an example. There are a few other designer stereotypes, one of which probably comes to mind for you. I don’t like the way designers so quickly adopt their own stereotype. We tell our clients to differentiate themselves, but we can barely do it ourselves!

We lose credibility when we can’t walk the talk. What we wear says a lot about who we are. Let’s be designers, but be ourselves too. If you don’t care about fashion then your work can speak for you. If you’re one of those people, you should at least consider buying a pair of tailored, non-pleated pants.

Stop Saving The World

…Unless you actually are. Designers have identified that their skills can help people beyond the mass markets of the first world, but we’re far from making a big impact on our own. The truth is, some designers like talking about making a difference more than they like actually doing it. Raising awareness is only a small first step towards fixing one of the world’s many problems. If you really want to make a difference, think about volunteering at a soup kitchen…or moving to India.

Ramsey Ford is an industrial designer who recently took on this challenge by moving to India and starting the non-profit Design Impact. “Last year, I attended the ‘Design for a Better World’ conference at RISD. What struck me most about the conference was that the common thread was not design, but entrepreneurship. The mantra for the weekend seemed to be, ’shut up and do it’.” Ramsey plans to make a real difference by gaining empathy for India’s true design needs. Admittedly, this is pretty bold, but what have you done lately to design a better future

I hope this article challenges you to reconsider some of the more popular methods for creating a personal brand. Before you pour hours of work into any project, think about your key strengths and what makes you stand out. Choose projects that will help show those off. After that, if doing some of these things still makes sense, then go for it. But seriously, don’t design a logo, especially one with your initials.

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Sunday, October 11th, 2009 Ideas, Links 4 Comments

This is Brilliance: An interview with strategist Neal Mabee

As a part of an upcoming project interviewing a broad range of designers, I had a particularly nice conversation with strategist Neal Mabee. Because I edited his interview for the project, I wanted to share it in full on the blog. Enjoy this uncut version!

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Neal Mabee moved to New York after graduating from the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP program in 2003. For the past 4 years, Neal worked at Studio Red at the Rockwell Group doing design and strategy. More recently, he began contracting with an internal Johnson & Johnson design team. His clients include Kodak, Palm, Coca-Cola, P&G, J&J, and his true loves are mid-century furniture, sneakers, and Skyline chili.

How do you define of good design?

Measuring the success of “good design” is a challenge. We get paid to produce solutions that meet our clients’ business goals. If our work doesn’t do that then we won’t have any clients So in a very curt way I could say that good design needs to be measured by whether or not it (what’s being measured) is successful in meeting the business goals laid out for the project. Traditionally, design’s goodness is defined by very academic evaluation of proportion, poetry, function, wit etc. I would argue these are tactics, things that we believe will help us to compel consumers. We have to recognize that in an economic environment design cannot really be measured independently of related marketing and engineering efforts. All of these efforts merge to yield a solution that either compels the consumer or doesn’t. If we are unsuccessful in compelling the consumer the product fails; if we are successful, only then could you argue that the design was “good”. At that point, however, you’re really talking about the collective effort, not just the design. This begs the question of whether good design is even related to the beauty of the solution or whether good design has more to do with collaborating with our partners in a way that ensures compelling solutions (recognizing that sometimes those solutions arent perfectly elegant from an academic or pure design perspective).

In short, in our business, design is good when it sells…period. Anything else assumes that design is inherently and independently valuable detached from economics. I know that’s risky to say and a lot of people will disagree but i don’t know how you can say design is good if you basically designed it for yourself and the subscribers to ID magazine.

What is your favorite part of the design process?

My favorite part of the design process is identifying and mapping the intricate dependancies and tensions in a project. Design to me is like a puzzle – in a sense figuring out what you can’t do is directly connected to what you can do. The more things you can accomplish in a single move the better you are at solving the puzzle.

What challenges you most as a designer?

The most challenging part of my job is related to the part I enjoy the most. Most designers would recognize that “designing” stuff isn’t a linear process. To really produce a great solution someone (ideally everyone involved) is able to see the whole picture, all of the variables, at once, and be able to recognize and manage all of the tensions, dependancies, and compromises in real time. On top of that you kind of need to be able to do it IN YOUR HEAD. Diagrams and strategic maps are only tools to help you remember and communicate your thoughts, ultimately you have to manage this stuff with your gray matter. That is a lot to ask of a human, but this IS the trick.

Brian Wilson claims to be able to manage six simultaneous harmonies in his head and adjust relative to one another without writing down a note. This is brilliance. The design equivalent is understanding all of the variables and managing them in your head all at once in real time.

I believe true brilliance to be the ability to see all things at once, brilliance is clarity. This is the hardest part though. Figuring out ways to manage massive amounts of information and all of the potential scenarios at once. It has been said that Mozart could hear the whole song before he wrote it. Brian Wilson claims to be able to manage six simultaneous harmonies in his head and adjust relative to one another without writing down a note. This is brilliance. The design equivalent is understanding all of the variables (consumer behavior and reaction, engineering realities, business goals, operations and distribution limitations, the impact of new productts on the market place) and managing them in your head all at once in real time. I will personally probably not get there but I try every day.

In short, understanding the connections between all relavent variables and being able to propose a solution that will optimize those variables is the hardest, and most enjoyable, part of my job.

In the context of your job, how do you define success?

Success really is different than whether the design is good. For us to stay sane, success has to be measured on multiple levels. On one level you have to ask if your efforts were successful relative to what was asked of you by your client (or yourself). This can happen not just at the end, but throughout a project. Obviously you can measure market success but a lot of projects never hit the shelf. We have to be able to celebrate the wins along the path. It is here that you might be able to say that a product that doesn’t sell is “good” design.

What has been the most unexpected part of being a professional designer?

Finding out that I actually like the business, not just the designing. Also (and maybe it’s just New York), where the hell are all the old designers? I better find something else to do. Everyone is 20-30 something….it’s scary actually.

Thanks, Neal!

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Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 Ideas 3 Comments

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