strategic aesthetics
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.
Dyson DC24 Blueprint
We recently upgraded to a Dyson DC24 Blueprint. Rather than the traditional golden and metal colorway, the blueprint comes in white and has added printed details about range of motion, stress testing, and more technical information. It’s a beautiful product, inside and out, so I decided to document some of the less expected angles and share the design.
Admiring Dyson’s from afar, I always imagined that part of the beauty was in a “secret” level of detail where the appearance of deceptively simple volumes with tangent intersections were actually more sophisticated curvature surfaces (like an Apple laptop). In reality, they’re really just the simple forms we’d expect. Why do you think this works? Is there something cognitively “right” about assigning this vocabulary to tools like a vacuum cleaner? Looking at the Dyson in person reminds me of Gray Holland’s hypothesis on surfacing can relate to functionality. It will be interesting to see how Dyson products evolve now that they’ve become a lifestyle brand. Anyway, here are the pictures:
Swiffer WetJet
Swiffer’s new WetJet recently hit the shelves and Kaleidoscope played a big part in the design development. The redesigned device looks purposeful and powerful; and it backs it up through new usability features.. In terms of aesthetics, we gave the design a darker, more professional purple palette and reflective wave detail to create an experience more in line with other Swiffer products. We packed in lots of usability improvements, including tent-pole construction, dual spray heads, new bottle release, stronger handle ergonomics.
From the Kaleidoscope website:
The redesigned WetJet is more marketable, easier to use, and performs better than its predecessor (which was very successful in its own right). The aesthetic improvements and enhanced performance help it win at shelf and delight in the consumer’s home, while the human factors optimizations set WetJet apart from imitators.
Ziba’s Strategic New Office Space
Ziba recently moved into their new, beautiful office space in Portland’s Pearl District. Lots of writers have already covered the space, designed by Holst Architecture. There’s lots of good coverage by Core77, including this video:
Inside Ziba Design’s New Headquarters from Core77 on Vimeo.
More interesting than the space itself, an inspiring and attractive studio is a strategic move. There are a few drawbacks to a space like this, mainly that the investment might not attract the types of clients and projects they’re looking for, but I’m pretty confident that won’t be a big issue. I’m going to take some guesses here, but I’m pretty sure Ziba created this space for one or more of the following reasons:
- To attract and retain the best design talent (Who wouldn’t want to work in that office?)
- To attract the coolest clients (both new and existing), probably ones who care about a strong aesthetic point of view
- To generate a more consistent and diverse revenue source through the first floor retail space
- To inspire themselves to do their best work
- Walking the talk; showing the value of investing in design to their clients first hand
- To become a more visible part of the Portland community
- Proof of their long track record of successful projects
What do you think of Ziba’s new office? What do you think is the best reason for design consultants to have a good space?
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?
Drew Smith Responds to my Mazda 3 Love
A few weeks ago, I professed my love for the new Mazda 3 production, saying it was a great translation of the Nagare theme that Mazda has been using to impress car show attendees. To get a better perspective on the subject, I asked transportation design strategist Drew Smith for his thoughts on the subject. His comment was so thoughtful that I thought it deserved it’s own post. Here it is:
For me this car is a physical embodiment of the massive challenges that automotive designers face when translating a conceptual design language into something that can be produced to a (low) cost.
The whole Nagare series of cars was predicated on the development of a premium – read more expensive to produce – surface and form language that was designed to shift Mazda upmarket. A succesful, authentic production implementation was always going to rely on high levels of attention to detail and manufacturing skill.
With that in mind, I’m not sure that this implementation of the Nagare achieves those goals. Where the concept cars almost universally reminded me of the unbroken surface of a fast-flowing stream (carrying with it connotations of Japanese natural beauty etc.), the implementation on this vehicle is somewhat less high-minded and a lot of it comes down to the way cars are made.
If you separate front, middle and back of the car there are three different games being played.
At the front, it’s clear that they’re trying to cram in as much Nagare-ness as they can to get the facial recognition synapses firing in the prospective buyer. The front clip is actually the cheapest place to play with lots of form and depth, so it’s really no wonder they went to town with it. The fact that it comes across as pretty overdone, however, runs completely counter to the underlying theme of the Nagare – flow – language.
The side surfaces of the car are far more successful in communicating the intent of the language, with the crease in the lower door being particularly nice to let the eye linger on. Funnily enough, these are the most expensive surface to do well, and although they lack much of the magic of the show cars, they’re still nicely resolved.
The rear of the car is probably the biggest disappointment as it doesn’t really speak of anything intrinsically Mazda or Nagare and is an uncomfortable amalgam of many other cars. This isn’t a problem unique to Mazda, however.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about my first run-in with the new Mazda 3. I thought it was a great translation of the Nagare design theme that Mazda has been using. To get a better perspective, I asked transporation design strategist Drew Smith for his thoughts on the subject:
They’re far from alone in letting the back of the car get away from them, as evidenced by the new Mercedes E-Class, a car that has almost no rear-end identity.
The front lamps, as you point out, do have some lovely detailing in them that support the theme, but a look at the rears shows none of the same deftness of touch. Similarly, the grille insert pattern is a nice little detail that is let down by the discordant crossbar and number plate placement.
At the end of all this, I come back to my opening statement. The car is representative of the massive challenges we face and the compromises that must be made to make something at a cost that the market can take. If Mazda hadn’t spent so many concepts teasing us with stunningly resolved surfaces, details and proportions, this car would not disappoint me nearly so much, as truth be told, it IS a good piece of production work.
The problem was that, as an industry tragic (and please, dear Strategic Aesthetics reader, remember that that is what I am. I am not a normal person 
), my expectations had been set much higher.
If I put my consumer hat on, I think you might have nailed it Michael. At the end of the day, Mazda is still (despite all their work to the contrary) as mainstream producer selling cars to mainstream consumers. And on that front, I think that the 3 provides a startling new face that deserves to do well in the market place.
I’m still holding out hope for a Mazda that really does justice to all their hard work, however. A new, electric RX-7 based on the Taiki would do nicely!
Thanks again, Drew!
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!
Through Thonet, Muji Becomes A Brand
Thonet has collaborated with Muji to modernize some of their classic pieces through designers James Irvine and Konstantin Grcic.
This is an interesting shift in strategy for Muji, who typically favors anonymity in both their products and their designers. Anonymity is their true strategic differentiation over other design-focused companies. By naming Irvine and Grcic outright, they acknowledge that their “no brand” is a powerful icon, but it comes at the expense of their key differentiator. A large part of Muji’s global audience is designers and design connoiseurs, so these pieces of furniture may bring a level of credibility to Muji’s furniture offering and open them up to doing more of it (with nice margins, probably). On the other hand, this fickle audience could reject these products and claim that Muji is selling out. To be successful, Muji will need to balance their new transparency while retaining the core equity of their brand.
Muji isn’t the first to grow it’s brand in this way. IKEA has taken a similar approach with their PS line, creating higher end products through higher end designers. The work is beautiful, but I think consumers will be skeptical that IKEA can produce these higher priced items at an equally higher quality. Muji, on the other hand, could have more success with their strategy. Unlike IKEA, they’ve never been known for their low cost position. Price was merely a feature of their “no brand” execution. By choosing designers like Grcic, who respect utility and anonymous beauty, they can grow this part of their business and stay true to the vision that brought them here.
Orient Fan in Color
While we’re on the topic of color as a product differentiator, check out these high velocity fans from Orient Fan. From the looks of their website, they’re a quality-oriented manufacturer. But they may have stumbled onto something pretty interesting – lifestyle industrial products. Is there a big market for fans in bold colors? Probably not, but seeing these makes me wonder how many categories are currently under utilizing color as a strategic design tool.
Check out more photos of the 2009 Housewares show over at Core77.
AiAiAi in Color
These AiAiAi Pipe earbuds over at DijitalFix are hot. The colors are impressive and the packaging is sleek and simple. I especially like how the minimal 3D forms help celebrate the color choices. Most mainstream manufacturers treat earbuds and headphones as functional products, missing the hugely expressive component they have for many people. More intuitive lifestyle brands like AiAiAi, WESC, and Skull Candy understand this. Major brands take note, this is a great example of how color can be used as a product differentiator at little to no cost to the bottom line.
via NotCot
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