Michael Roller

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!

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!

Tags: definitions, interviews, philosophy, strategy

Strategic Aesthetics Top Five Posts (out of 100)

I just finished my 100th post and wanted to revisit my most popular work. Before I get into that, I wanted to revisit my initial objective for writing this blog. On the About page, I said:

Design’s role within business is still relatively new and undefined. As a result, so much of what we do in the design world is intuitive, unexplained, or inconsistent…I created this blog to try to explain how I use design thinking to help people and businesses. This site will serve as a documentation of my thoughts on design and the products I’ve created as a result.

I think that statement still holds true, although there is more to it than that. If I were to rewrite it now, I would say:

Because so much of the design world is intuitive, unexplained, or inconsistent, this blog explains design to designers.

I hope to write more within this theme, and provide more insightful, inspiring ideas and executions to share with others. So without further ado, here are my top five posts to date:

5. The Strategic Aesthetic Top Ten

Here are my picks for the best businesses using strategic aesthetics. Within their categories, these brands use aesthetic design in a unique, differentiated way that helps their business. I plan to update this list when appropriate, so please weigh in with your opinions and feedback.

4. My Favorite Things

To understand my intuitive design sense, an important step was to identify my favorite pieces of design. I’ve tried to analyze these picks to understand my preferences on a deeper level but am still searching for the right way to organize them. Any ideas on how I should do it?

3. How to Win a Design Competition

This was my 100th post, so I was sure to make it a good one. I’ve had some good experiences and some good luck entering design competitions, so I created 5 rules as a guide for how to be successful.

2. Four Essential Members of a Great Design Team

Although not the most popular, I’m most pleased with the thought put into this post and the feedback I’ve received. I’d still like to validate this idea with some sort of segmentation of creative professionals. Anyone want to collaborate on that?

1. Orange & Kaleidoscope Create Solar Tent Concept

Leave it to designers to pick the post with the coolest pictures. My friends at Kaleidoscope and The Greener Grass collaborated with Orange to develop a solar tent for Glastonbury, so I showed my support by sharing some images of it. This is a good example of how design must be thoughtful and visually compelling to be truly successful work.

Thanks to all who’ve supported me through this first 100. I hope to surpass each of these posts as I continue to think, write, and design over the next year. What is your favorite post? What else should I write about?

Tags: kaleidoscope, philosophy, strategic aesthetics

How to Win a Design Competition

Whether you’re trying to win some money, gain exposure, or just build out your portfolio, design competitions are a great way for young designers to develop themselves. Over the past few years, I’ve entered many competitions for many reasons. I’ve even won a little bit. From my experience, here are the five keys to winning the next design competition you enter.

1. Enter for the Right Reason.

Why are you entering a design competition? Before anything else, make sure that you’re doing it for the right reason. Is it to get yourself more exposure or to make money? If you’re trying to get more exposure, consider the other options and compare the possible value of each. Starting a blog, becoming more active on twitter, or just promoting your own concept product to sites like Yanko Design could be more beneficial. Think hard about entering the competition just to make money. What if you don’t win? Go for freelance work instead.

The best reason to enter a design competition is to build out your portfolio, keep your skills sharp, and experiment outside of whatever professional work you do. The chances of winning can be pretty slim, so the exposure and prizes that come with success should be seen as a bonus, not the goal. Design competitions are about some form of self-improvement.

2. Pick the Right Project.

You’re about to invest a bunch of your personal time into this competition. How do you pick the right one? Again, the answer to this question should be form of self-improvement. There are a ton of opportunities, so make sure you pick a project that will make you a better designer even if you don’t win. When I was a student I entered one of Design Engine’s Photoreal Competitions. It was a great way to do a great rendering for a product I’d already designed. In the end, I was able to use it in my portfolio. Later, I entered Scion’s Floorplan Competition to experiment with environmental design. I didn’t win either of them, but entering both competitions helped me improve my skills.

3. Be Passionate.

Why would you enter a competition if you weren’t interested in the project? Building off key #2, you’re about to spend a bunch of your own time towards this. Designers live off passion and die by apathy, so don’t waste your time on something if you aren’t really excited about it. Plus, who do you think has the best work, the best chance of winning, the best exposure, the most success? Once you’re passionate, everything else falls into place for a designer.

4. Make sure you can do it quickly.

A lot of students ask me how I manage personal projects and design competitions in my free time. You might disagree with this point, but my experience tells me the competition you’re most likely to finish is the one you can complete effectively and efficiently. Read the brief carefully and decide if your skill sets are a good match to complete this project in a timely manner. Once you have the passion required (key #3), finish the project before it fizzles out.

One of my favorite competitions was the Bombay Sapphire Designer Glass Competition. Young designers are invited to create martini glasses inspired by the well-known gin. The brief is easy to follow and I was able to create a finished concept over a weekend. As a result, I entered three years in a row (eventually winning finalist & second prize honors) because I was excited about the opportunity and able to complete the project quickly. Follow this rule, your family and friends will thank you for it.

5. Find a partner in crime.

If there’s one final thing that will help you, it’s a close friend that shares the same excitement for entering design competitions. You might encounter a lot of naysayers in your quest for design honors, so friends act as as support network to help you maintain your energy for a project and help you refine your work by giving you an outside opinion. Think of them as your design competition creative director. They should give you helpful feedback to make your project the best it can be. Your friend can carry you when your passion wanes, and if you enter together, the projects can come together quicker than if you entered alone.

Two of my partners are Brandon Lynne and Finn McKenty. Brandon and I worked together in school at UC and we’ve used these competitions as a way of staying in touch and working together. Finn and I collaborate on projects at Kaleidoscope, where he has a design background but now focuses on business strategy. With both partners, our points of view overlap enough that we are efficient but different enough that when we work together we do better work than any of us could do on our own.

Even if you follow these five steps perfectly, I can’t guarantee you’ll win every competition you enter. However, putting yourself in the position to win is all you can do. The rest is a bit of luck, in the hands of the judges and their personal biases. Remember that the value to you shouldn’t come with winning, it should come with entering. If you want more information, check out Coroflot’s article on the subject. Have you had success entering design competitions? What other tips do you have to share?

Tags: concepts, experimentation, philosophy, teams

Wanderlust: Kaleidoscope’s 2009 Furniture Design Trends

Earlier this year, the Kaleidoscope team attended the ICFF and the Salone in Milan to check out the furniture. Collecting and organizing our observations, we put together this trend document, now on slideshare:

At Kaleidoscope, we think trends are great, but identifying them isn’t enough. We believe that documents like this one are only as useful to the extent that they’re actionable. With that in mind, we supplemented the trends themselves with three guidelines for applying them (slides 40-44): Assess how the trend overlaps with your work, Immerse yourself in the trend, and last but not least, Create something informed by the trend.

We hope you enjoy this document and welcome any feedback!

Tags: design tools, furniture, kaleidoscope, philosophy, presentations, strategic aesthetics, trends

Because

I recently met the guys at Open Field Creative at a DAAP alumni gathering. Naturally, I was interested in learning more so I found their website. The work is solid, but I was most impressed by their section titled Because.

Open Field’s Because piece is a series of slides that simply answer the question, “Why?” It succeeds in delivering their point of view in a clear, easily digestable format. As ironic as it seems, we design consultants struggle to create a strategic point of view for ourselves, even though we do it every day for our clients. Congrats to the Open Field team for having an opinion and having the confidence to put it out there.

Tags: marketing, philosophy, presentations

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

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