Thursday, 7 October 2010
Friday, 24 September 2010
Tuesday, 21 September 2010
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Sunday, 8 August 2010
Monday, 26 July 2010
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Monday, 28 June 2010
Calling all creatives: design the future we need!
Forum for the Future:
The creative industries are in danger of being caught “napping” on sustainability, according to Lord Puttnam. They risk waking up too late to find the world "has changed out of all recognition".
The filmmaker and politician was speaking at our Creative Industries Sustainability Beacon event, last week - the launch of a challenging project to bring together leaders from the world of fashion, performing arts, film, architecture, design and all the other creative industries, to examine the future of their businesses in a rapidly changing and uncertain world.
Photographer Chris Jordan, using shocking images to make his point.
The creative industries are in danger of being caught “napping” on sustainability, according to Lord Puttnam. They risk waking up too late to find the world "has changed out of all recognition".
The filmmaker and politician was speaking at our Creative Industries Sustainability Beacon event, last week - the launch of a challenging project to bring together leaders from the world of fashion, performing arts, film, architecture, design and all the other creative industries, to examine the future of their businesses in a rapidly changing and uncertain world.
Photographer Chris Jordan, using shocking images to make his point.
Monday, 21 June 2010
Malcolm Gladwell: 'Speaking is not an act of extroversion'
Journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell tells Sarfraz Manzoor about the rise of the real and live over the recorded experience and being an introverted public speaker...
Friday, 11 June 2010
LA Times: Koh Byoung Ok @ Solway Jones Gallery
In 1962, Andy Warhol used a stamp technique to reproduce 210 bottles of Coca-Cola on canvas as they might appear in a big supermarket cooler, 30 bottles across and seven rows high. Some were pictured full, others empty and still others only partially filled.
In "Naked Coke," sculptor Koh Byoung Ok ups the numerical ante while adding a considerable degree of mystery. Eleven rows high, his aluminum shelves feature 264 unprinted, silver cans, polished to a high reflection, in regimented rows of 24. Their tops have not been popped. Whether the mute, light-reflective array of stripped commercial goods is full or empty is a question inducing an unexpected state of meditative stillness and tranquility.
Follow the link to Christopher Knight's article...
In "Naked Coke," sculptor Koh Byoung Ok ups the numerical ante while adding a considerable degree of mystery. Eleven rows high, his aluminum shelves feature 264 unprinted, silver cans, polished to a high reflection, in regimented rows of 24. Their tops have not been popped. Whether the mute, light-reflective array of stripped commercial goods is full or empty is a question inducing an unexpected state of meditative stillness and tranquility.
Follow the link to Christopher Knight's article...
iPhone 4...
The product designer in me cant help but love the way Johnny Ive talks about the materials in Apple's new iPhone...
Slick production once again but get a new T-shirt!
Slick production once again but get a new T-shirt!
Design Management from Business Week
Design management is an approach whereby organizations make design-relevant decisions in a market and customer-oriented way as well as optimizing design-relevant (enterprise-)processes. It is a long-continuous comprehensive activity on all levels of business performance that effect design, from the fuzzy front-end to the design execution. Design management acts in the interface of management and design and functions as link between the platforms of technology, design, design thinking, corporate management, brand management and marketing management at internal and external interfaces of the enterprise.
Design Management is part of Business Exchange, suggested by Itamar Medeiros. This topic contains 83 news and 116 blog items. Read updated news, blogs, and resources about Design Management. Find user-submitted articles and reactions on Design Management from like-minded professionals.
Design Management is part of Business Exchange, suggested by Itamar Medeiros. This topic contains 83 news and 116 blog items. Read updated news, blogs, and resources about Design Management. Find user-submitted articles and reactions on Design Management from like-minded professionals.
Thursday, 10 June 2010
"But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses."
— Robert Ardrey
— Robert Ardrey
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Inner Circle - Article 2010
Design as a profession has no one point of origin, growing from different industries, along the way developing a rich mix of thinking in craft, politics, mathematics, engineering, science, writing and salesmanship.
I was formally educated as a product designer with a background in small business; now teaching management and researching design thinking, metadesign, and design management. I find a natural discomfort in the idea of focusing on one thing and like to challenge this status quo.
The pre-conception of design just as a marketing tool is naive. Design is a tool for business in its departmental role as a function, a managerial concept in its own right, and beyond the paradigms of business.
Design is the relationship between the ‘manmade’ and people, humanly focused and experientially driven. This is a very important concept. Design is an evolutionary trait to control one’s environment. The made environment is a phenomenally complex system, which we humans, have imagined and constructed. I believe, therefore, we have the ability to act on it; we made it so we can make it better.
Generally speaking we struggle to comprehend and react progressively to issues of magnitude such as social injustice, environmental damage, and economic flux, however as a designer I am paid for changing things, mostly for me, as an educator, it is the way people think and act on decisions. Designers are in their very nature ‘agents of change’ and the great thing for designers is that the world radically needs change. This is the new paradigm of design; not making better things but making things better!
A very important understanding in change is the complexity of the systems we all operate in. We can no longer afford to ignore the effects of our actions and this means the understanding of our doing.
To understand what we do, and what happens when we do it, we must appreciate the diversity of the world. It is this diversity that gives us resilience against losses (economic and ecological). It is seemingly apparent that diversity in ecology and economics is becoming less and thus our resilience too. The idea of building resilience is a fundamental point in the future of the designed world and this resilience must come about via change, managed by design thinking. We are emerging from a recession illustrating very clearly what happens when we have little ability for resilience. Design thinking, a now common concept with business leaders and academics, requires an open-minded approach in problem solving and a great empathy for specialist knowledge.
Designers are specialists in using specialists. I believe that the idea of the ‘specialist’ or the ‘professional’ is a dangerous focus that can neglect to see opportunities beyond a problem; designers however are by their nature not navel gazers. There are many parts to a problem (or as a designer sees it ‘an opportunity’) and this requires a holistic approach in understanding. I don’t teach design management students to understand in great depth all areas of a system but rather appreciate the breadth of the subject and join up the dots. With this way, of what I like to call ‘knowledge grazing’, you can start to make associations and begin to understand the complexity and opportunities for change.
The great minds of the past where not marked in their time by a single profession. Da Vinci, Galileo and Newton held academic rank and specialism in different fields giving great wisdom. Buckminster Fuller, a great multi-faceted mind of the last century, stated that birds are specialists in flight and fish in swimming, humans however have built the airplane and the submarine. These are extreme characters of human ability and thought, but the appreciation of wisdom via connective knowledge and the ability to see the world holistically is what I prize as the key to designing the future.
The ability to see complex relations and build perspective from different sides is the offering of design, however this is reliant on specialism, highlighting the importance of design thinking with areas of specialist knowledge. Serendipity in design comes from curiosity and systemic thinking, making associations within our complex world.
An important part of our student’s education is the skill set in natural-collaboration, multidirectional research, perception, empathy, ideation and presentation. I say with absolute confidence that in the current ‘paradigm’ of being productive, thinking is not thought about enough.
Design thinking requires a nonhierarchical structure in collaboration, and the education of design management is around progressive positive relations. The pancake structure is an example of how companies like Pixar, Apple, Google and Phillips innovate with such success. I see the future of business as a collaborative process, enhanced by open source information, made possible by technology, made accessible by design.
Design instills an upbeat attitude, working on constructive and reflective criticism, seeking constraints as positive commodities. We have all experienced the difference in our productivity when working with and without constraints; Charles Eames described design as being mostly of constraints. The great design thinker Tim Brown of IDEO outlines these as desirability, viability and feasibility. If you are a business leader, teacher, scientist, or politician you have understanding of these factors. Designers find ways around issues using creativity as a tool for navigation.
The lifestyle of a designer is wonderful, with flexibility and variations from one day to the next. It does come at a price and that is a constant desirer to improve the world (also taking yourself a little too seriously sometimes). Designing is a never-ending quest and a life in education.
Language often fails design leading to the creation of new words, in effect designing design (adding change to the changer) adapting with, and for, resilience. I’m confident that there is an unspoken element in the act of designing that is innate in all of us. What is vital is that the progressive character of design, in acting for positive change and thinking open-minded, is appreciated and embraced by all.
Our undergraduate students, on the Global Business and Design Management pathway, are gaining design thinking power within a business school, which is almost totally unique across the world. We have brought design to BA business education, eradicating preconceived discipline barriers, developing power thinkers and future makers. The design management pathway is now influencing beyond its origins at Regent’s Business School with a new element within the MA program in Global Business Management, and partnering in a directing role in the successful validation of the new MA at EBS in Luxury Brand Management.
Our graduates are entrepreneurs in the truest sense, acquiring skills in systemic comprehension, switching from big to the small parts of the same issues, finding opportunities in making things better and ultimately generating resilience to loss. We are working in exciting times at Regent’s, and I am confident that we are pioneering areas in business education and beyond, shifting the paradigms of what is a business school and dexterity in thinkers.
We face ecological and economic uncertainty, generating great social and commercial strain. I am confident that the way forward is in the appreciation of wisdom for change; building resilience… the design thinker offers exactly that!
I was formally educated as a product designer with a background in small business; now teaching management and researching design thinking, metadesign, and design management. I find a natural discomfort in the idea of focusing on one thing and like to challenge this status quo.
The pre-conception of design just as a marketing tool is naive. Design is a tool for business in its departmental role as a function, a managerial concept in its own right, and beyond the paradigms of business.
Design is the relationship between the ‘manmade’ and people, humanly focused and experientially driven. This is a very important concept. Design is an evolutionary trait to control one’s environment. The made environment is a phenomenally complex system, which we humans, have imagined and constructed. I believe, therefore, we have the ability to act on it; we made it so we can make it better.
Generally speaking we struggle to comprehend and react progressively to issues of magnitude such as social injustice, environmental damage, and economic flux, however as a designer I am paid for changing things, mostly for me, as an educator, it is the way people think and act on decisions. Designers are in their very nature ‘agents of change’ and the great thing for designers is that the world radically needs change. This is the new paradigm of design; not making better things but making things better!
A very important understanding in change is the complexity of the systems we all operate in. We can no longer afford to ignore the effects of our actions and this means the understanding of our doing.
To understand what we do, and what happens when we do it, we must appreciate the diversity of the world. It is this diversity that gives us resilience against losses (economic and ecological). It is seemingly apparent that diversity in ecology and economics is becoming less and thus our resilience too. The idea of building resilience is a fundamental point in the future of the designed world and this resilience must come about via change, managed by design thinking. We are emerging from a recession illustrating very clearly what happens when we have little ability for resilience. Design thinking, a now common concept with business leaders and academics, requires an open-minded approach in problem solving and a great empathy for specialist knowledge.
Designers are specialists in using specialists. I believe that the idea of the ‘specialist’ or the ‘professional’ is a dangerous focus that can neglect to see opportunities beyond a problem; designers however are by their nature not navel gazers. There are many parts to a problem (or as a designer sees it ‘an opportunity’) and this requires a holistic approach in understanding. I don’t teach design management students to understand in great depth all areas of a system but rather appreciate the breadth of the subject and join up the dots. With this way, of what I like to call ‘knowledge grazing’, you can start to make associations and begin to understand the complexity and opportunities for change.
The great minds of the past where not marked in their time by a single profession. Da Vinci, Galileo and Newton held academic rank and specialism in different fields giving great wisdom. Buckminster Fuller, a great multi-faceted mind of the last century, stated that birds are specialists in flight and fish in swimming, humans however have built the airplane and the submarine. These are extreme characters of human ability and thought, but the appreciation of wisdom via connective knowledge and the ability to see the world holistically is what I prize as the key to designing the future.
The ability to see complex relations and build perspective from different sides is the offering of design, however this is reliant on specialism, highlighting the importance of design thinking with areas of specialist knowledge. Serendipity in design comes from curiosity and systemic thinking, making associations within our complex world.
An important part of our student’s education is the skill set in natural-collaboration, multidirectional research, perception, empathy, ideation and presentation. I say with absolute confidence that in the current ‘paradigm’ of being productive, thinking is not thought about enough.
Design thinking requires a nonhierarchical structure in collaboration, and the education of design management is around progressive positive relations. The pancake structure is an example of how companies like Pixar, Apple, Google and Phillips innovate with such success. I see the future of business as a collaborative process, enhanced by open source information, made possible by technology, made accessible by design.
Design instills an upbeat attitude, working on constructive and reflective criticism, seeking constraints as positive commodities. We have all experienced the difference in our productivity when working with and without constraints; Charles Eames described design as being mostly of constraints. The great design thinker Tim Brown of IDEO outlines these as desirability, viability and feasibility. If you are a business leader, teacher, scientist, or politician you have understanding of these factors. Designers find ways around issues using creativity as a tool for navigation.
The lifestyle of a designer is wonderful, with flexibility and variations from one day to the next. It does come at a price and that is a constant desirer to improve the world (also taking yourself a little too seriously sometimes). Designing is a never-ending quest and a life in education.
Language often fails design leading to the creation of new words, in effect designing design (adding change to the changer) adapting with, and for, resilience. I’m confident that there is an unspoken element in the act of designing that is innate in all of us. What is vital is that the progressive character of design, in acting for positive change and thinking open-minded, is appreciated and embraced by all.
Our undergraduate students, on the Global Business and Design Management pathway, are gaining design thinking power within a business school, which is almost totally unique across the world. We have brought design to BA business education, eradicating preconceived discipline barriers, developing power thinkers and future makers. The design management pathway is now influencing beyond its origins at Regent’s Business School with a new element within the MA program in Global Business Management, and partnering in a directing role in the successful validation of the new MA at EBS in Luxury Brand Management.
Our graduates are entrepreneurs in the truest sense, acquiring skills in systemic comprehension, switching from big to the small parts of the same issues, finding opportunities in making things better and ultimately generating resilience to loss. We are working in exciting times at Regent’s, and I am confident that we are pioneering areas in business education and beyond, shifting the paradigms of what is a business school and dexterity in thinkers.
We face ecological and economic uncertainty, generating great social and commercial strain. I am confident that the way forward is in the appreciation of wisdom for change; building resilience… the design thinker offers exactly that!
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Inner Circle
In this article I have outlined our vision of Design Management at Regent's College and the future orientation of design in the world of management.
Wednesday, 2 June 2010
Monday, 17 May 2010
MINDMADE
MINDMADE - consciously shaping the future
design Orientation @ MINDMADE
This website is a space to introduce our ideas and future research proposals to our readers and others interested. By sharing them with you and welcoming you to question/challenge us during next month, we hope to bring our ideas to another level. In the end of May we will have an event where we will get the chance to share our ideas in person. After this you will be able to follow our progress further on this website.
design Orientation @ MINDMADE
This website is a space to introduce our ideas and future research proposals to our readers and others interested. By sharing them with you and welcoming you to question/challenge us during next month, we hope to bring our ideas to another level. In the end of May we will have an event where we will get the chance to share our ideas in person. After this you will be able to follow our progress further on this website.
Thursday, 22 April 2010
Labour's castles in the air
Rowan Moore
The Observer
Sunday 18 April 2010
As Britain prepares for possible political change, we ask whether New Labour delivered on its promises of a bright new dawn for architecture
The Observer
Sunday 18 April 2010
As Britain prepares for possible political change, we ask whether New Labour delivered on its promises of a bright new dawn for architecture
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Sunday, 11 April 2010
The UK election is finally presented to the public and politicians are now in full rhetorical whirlwinds. This is a great opportunity to see rolling branding at work…
Some parties with organizational heritage or baggage, others with hard-line policy, younger than the established… individual charters slipping under the media strangle, not toeing the party line… damage control, spin and reactive shifts in style to appease critics.
There is a complex dimension of individual politician, constituent, party, ideology, ethics, nation, economics, environment, social health, media, business, security…
How will they present and change their delivery?
As designers we have a key interest in this election…
On the outside…
How will they present and communicate to the electorate?
On the inside…
Where will the political attention focus for future tenders; economic reform, environmental strategy, health and social cohesion plans?
Even bigger are the issues we designers discuss being brought to the forum?
Do politicians design democratic responses to governance of our environments or do they design their careers?
Will design be used well or defectively?
Will the victorious party of this rhetorical scrap design itself or a better future?
Does design really go beyond branding in contemporary politics; are politicians and civil servants on par with the organizational design brains of industry?
Design Thinking in Politics…???
http://www.greenparty.org.uk/
http://www.conservatives.com/
http://www2.labour.org.uk/
http://bnp.org.uk/
http://www.snp.org/
http://www.libdems.org.uk/
http://www.plaidcymru.org/
http://www.ukip.org/
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
From Tokyo to Hyde Park: seven years of Sanaa architecture
One of architecture's top honours, the Pritzker prize, has been awarded to Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, otherwise known as Sanaa. Jonathan Glancey looks back at some of the duo's greatest designs, celebrated for their 'experiential richness'
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Thursday, 18 February 2010
E A D 09 Keynote Videos...
To see the keynote speeches from last year's EAD Design Connexity conference, follow the link...
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Why Design Matters
By Diego Rodriguez
Good business outcomes treat design as a holistic process that pulls in savvy marketing and research, as well as smart ideas, says IDEO's Diego Rodriguez
Good design does not always equal good business. But good business outcomes—especially when the goal is to create new sources of value in the world—are most often achieved through a well-structured design process that is more holistic and inclusive than the notion of good design.
All of the energy fed into the debate about the value of good design to the world of commerce would be better spent building ways to make holistic design a routine activity in business—and society. Here are three ways to get us there:
Follow the link to Business Week!
Good business outcomes treat design as a holistic process that pulls in savvy marketing and research, as well as smart ideas, says IDEO's Diego Rodriguez
Good design does not always equal good business. But good business outcomes—especially when the goal is to create new sources of value in the world—are most often achieved through a well-structured design process that is more holistic and inclusive than the notion of good design.
All of the energy fed into the debate about the value of good design to the world of commerce would be better spent building ways to make holistic design a routine activity in business—and society. Here are three ways to get us there:
Follow the link to Business Week!
Monday, 8 February 2010
The MP on the estate...
Channel Four show the clear divide between what people on the bread-line know about politics and what politics knows about them.
Thursday, 4 February 2010
Monday, 1 February 2010
Friday, 29 January 2010
Albert Exergian's modernist TV posters
Television imagery and artwork is rarely of a quality worth hanging on your walls. Welcome, then, Austrian designer Albert Exergian, who's created a series of modernist images inspired by TV shows that echo recent online reinterpretations of Saul Bass and Pelican Books. Go to art store blanka.co.uk, where there's also a selection of natty film posters by other graphic artists.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
What are your top green books?
Cambridge academics have compiled a list of their top 50 books on sustainability. Which books would make your own list?
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Chipping away at graffiti!
I took this behind the Truman Brewery in East London...
... property developers take note!
... property developers take note!
Monday, 25 January 2010
The No Money Man
Jon Henley spends the day in Bath with Mark Boyle, who last year decided to stop spending money … on anything … at all … ever. And guess what? He's doing rather well for himself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2009/oct/28/live-without-money
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/green-living-blog/2009/oct/28/live-without-money
Saturday, 23 January 2010
Animation Africa!
Tinga Tinga Tales is a animation coming out of Nairobi, Kenya. The art work is sensitive to the local style and 'illustrates' a future industry for Africa. This BBC report highlights the amazing fact that animation from overseas is cheaper and restricts local production from being aired. We often overlook Africa, much to our shame, and this story shows off the great wealth of talent and creativity in continent often being reported for different reasons. Lets keep an eye on the creative industries in Africa and with proactive support from overseas this could be a rewarding economic stimulus to the region!
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Breaking the mould: Brit Insurance Design awards shortlist
20 January 2010: From Beth Ditto to an army of pandas – check out the highlights of the third annual Brit Insurance Design awards at London's Design Museum, which features 'the world's most compelling and progressive designs' across architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics and transport. Antony Gormley will chair the jury, which will reveal the overall winner on 16 March 2010
Monday, 18 January 2010
Sunday, 17 January 2010
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Making Green Work
A Strategic Approach to Climate
by Michael E. Porter and Forest L. Reinhardt
Leaders need to understand both the impact of their firm's activities on the climate, and the impact of the changing climate on the business environment in which the firm competes.
Sustainability — The Only Strategy
Adam Werbach, Global CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi S, former Sierra Club President, and the author of Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto.
(To listen to the "ideacast" follow the link...)
by Michael E. Porter and Forest L. Reinhardt
Leaders need to understand both the impact of their firm's activities on the climate, and the impact of the changing climate on the business environment in which the firm competes.
Sustainability — The Only Strategy
Adam Werbach, Global CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi S, former Sierra Club President, and the author of Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto.
(To listen to the "ideacast" follow the link...)
Analysis catalysis
Designers think they can teach MBAs and philanthropists a thing or two
Dec 8th 2009
From Economist.com
TIM BROWN, the boss of IDEO, a consultancy that helped shape Apple’s first mouse, does not have solutions to daunting global problems such as climate change, epidemics and persistent poverty. But he believes he knows how to find them: with “design thinking”.
By design thinking, Mr Brown means the open-minded, no-holds-barred approach that designers bring to their work, rather than the narrow, technical view of innovation traditionally taught at many business and engineering schools. Firms that think like designers, he claims in a new book, “Change by Design”, stand to win huge new markets and profits. The concept may sound pat and woolly, encompassing everything from savvier marketing to radical technological leaps. Yet design thinking is winning many converts in both industry and philanthropy.
Follow the link for the full article...
Dec 8th 2009
From Economist.com
TIM BROWN, the boss of IDEO, a consultancy that helped shape Apple’s first mouse, does not have solutions to daunting global problems such as climate change, epidemics and persistent poverty. But he believes he knows how to find them: with “design thinking”.
By design thinking, Mr Brown means the open-minded, no-holds-barred approach that designers bring to their work, rather than the narrow, technical view of innovation traditionally taught at many business and engineering schools. Firms that think like designers, he claims in a new book, “Change by Design”, stand to win huge new markets and profits. The concept may sound pat and woolly, encompassing everything from savvier marketing to radical technological leaps. Yet design thinking is winning many converts in both industry and philanthropy.
Follow the link for the full article...
How to change the system
In praise of the ideas of Russ Ackoff
Nov 3rd 2009
From Economist.com
IT IS hard to imagine a less enticing title for a book than “Introduction to Operations Research”. Yet Russ Ackoff, one of the authors of this tome of 1959, who died on October 29th aged 90, did not just help to define a nascent branch of industrial engineering. He wrote 30 other books, becoming one of the most influential management gurus of the 20th century in the process. His ideas about systemic thinking are vitally important today if the world is to come out of the current economic crisis in better shape than it went into it.
Follow the link for the full article...
Nov 3rd 2009
From Economist.com
IT IS hard to imagine a less enticing title for a book than “Introduction to Operations Research”. Yet Russ Ackoff, one of the authors of this tome of 1959, who died on October 29th aged 90, did not just help to define a nascent branch of industrial engineering. He wrote 30 other books, becoming one of the most influential management gurus of the 20th century in the process. His ideas about systemic thinking are vitally important today if the world is to come out of the current economic crisis in better shape than it went into it.
Follow the link for the full article...
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