This interview with former BMW Chief of Design Chris Bangle reveals some universal creative principles for creating and managing a culture of design.
Break down the walls between your teams, but ...
During the true development process there’s no reason to hide things. However, keep the board of directors and the marketing guys at bay - you can’t create life under an atmosphere of ‘no’.
Balance your race-horses with thinkers
First and foremost you want designers to bring energy to the table ... those are the race-horses - you just want to turn them loose. But you also want to make sure you get the deep thinkers in there, the artistic ones, who are sometimes shy and often intimidated by the aggressiveness of the other types. But they’re often the quiet sleeper ones that come up with that deep deep idea.
Having the power to let go
When you are on a model, you are the design chief - you have to know you have that power. Yet, design chiefs, if they do their job right, need to become experts at letting go.
Get deeper inside your team’s heads
My job is to help you do your job. However I’m going to open up your drawers and see what you’ve got stashed away that you’re not doing. What is it that you want to do that someone is not letting you do, that you’re dreaming of doing, but don’t have the courage to put up on the wall?
Open your horizons
If you like cars you have to appreciate all of them - for what it took to make them. Even the cars that are butt-ugly - there was a design team that put a lot of love into that. Try to understand it from their point of view - their limitations - and see what you can learn from that.
Rory Sutherland uses some comical examples to point out that small, inexpensive solutions can often be more memorable and effective at solving big problems than more forceful and expensive solutions.
He suggests the creation of a new role, the Chief Detail Officer — someone who can focus their attention (and budget) at creating multitudes of “cheap” tactical solutions
“A hypnotic mechanized puppet show with video projects”, was how a co-worker described a piece of the William Kentridge exhibit currently on show at the MoMA. Anyone who knows me knows that this is the kind of sound byte that gets my attention.
I was utterly blown away by the exhibit. It was some of the most moving work I have seen in recent memory. I particularly connected with his video work which combines his expressionist charcoal stop-motion animation with graphical collages reminiscent of the Brothers Quay.
William Kentridge: Five Themes is at MoMA through May 17th. Don’t miss it.
There’s two things you can count on in life. Death and taxes. And you can pretty much count on people not liking either, right? Well, actually, no.
Turns out the Danes love their taxes. That’s right, love.
This Planet Moneypodcast was a reminder to me to not be so quick to jump to assumptions. I’m not just talking about local and cultural differences. I’m talking about statements like “that’s never worked before.”
Don’t be afraid to question the obvious.
Or as George Clinton says, “Free your mind, and your ass will follow.”
According to the Financial Times Kodak has gone through the most radical business transformation in history.
Here’s a company snapshot to give you an idea:
Company employees 1988: 145,000
Company employees today: less than 20,000, 60% of which are new in the past 4 years
19 products drive almost all the company’s revenue, 11 of them are digital
Half of these products didn’t exist 2 years ago
In this video CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett is very open about the rapid pace and in-flux state of their brand transformation.
I have to say that I love this guy. In a very entertaining and humorous way he highlights the company bottlenecks that have them producing break-through products with meaningless names (i.e. Zi8).
In my opinion Hayzlett’s energy is just what this company needs if they’re ever to become a household name again. Seems like a great client to work for.