What Corporate Creatives Can Do Better
The design process that corporate and consultant design teams follow are really no different from each other, but there are many facets that make these two groups completely distinctive. In-house teams typically can influence the organization’s brand better than a removed contacted consultant could, but these teams can sometimes struggle to find their mark [...]
How To Enhance Your Project Scope
Ah, the project scope. The crucial document many of us follow as a guideline while we’re designing or engineering the next greatest thing. Its entire existence is to keep the focus by describing in detail the new product’s soon to be features, costs, and milestone dates. Love them or hate them, many of us [...]
Overcoming a Designer’s Hardest Challenge
One of the hardest challenges for many designers to overcome is learning how to be a better salesman. Many designers freeze up when they see their project being taking in a different direction or get frustrated when colleagues don’t fully understand the concept. As designers, it is very important to remember that we need [...]
Connecting To a Specific Audience
Take a change of pace with me and see a completely different side of manufacturing. A side where designers don’t worry about being first to market or appealing to the largest consumer base possible. I’m talking about a side where products are produced specifically for individuals who appreciate the novelty and the art of the [...]
NeoCon 2011 Survival Guide
NeoCon is North America’s largest design exposition and conference for commercial interiors. Major product launches are featured every year from large furniture manufacturing companies like Steelcase, Herman Miller, and Knoll to smaller independent designers trying to make their first impressions. Over 40,000 design related professionals will pour into Chicago and The Merchandise Mart from [...]
Chris Bangle Interview
I met Chis late last year in Germany and we had a pretty good conversation about design. We recently connected again over Skype to talk about a narrow set of topics like what design leadership can bring to the table. We agreed the conversation would be recorded is so I could share it with [...]
60 Details Not To Miss at ICFF
I originally posted this on SolidSmack.com “Design is details. Design is the tiny elements in a product that work their way into final production from hours of sketching, prototyping, and CAD. Details are what the designers agonize over and what the manufactures spend so much time trying to get just right. This post is a [...]
Why You Should Mentor Right Now
Design awareness is apparent as manufacturers throughout the world increasingly recognizing design practices as an essential competitive advantage. This global change has driven the popularity of design degrees as new generations of students flood classrooms, eager to learn all the necessary skills that will hopefully launch their fruitful careers. Early student development in cross-collaboration mentorship [...]
You’re Boring
You’re boring. Sorry, someone had to say it. Your products are predictable. Your insights are recycled. You don’t bring surprise with you when you enter a room. That’s why people are ignoring you. Which used to be fine, because you could just buy attention for your brand or your company or your sales efforts. But [...]
Stop Designing and Start Uncovering Meaning
Want to know a secret? Companies worldwide have adopted design to differentiate themselves, but very few are using design to its full potential… to uncover product meaning. Yes, design is about product styling, generating ideas, and getting closer to consumers, but design can also be used to investigate why people buy products on a social [...]
Drawing Insight
What inspires us defines us. The joys we experience and share with others speaks of who we are as an individual. People get excited by all sorts of things, but a good designer will collect, draw insight, and use this personal inspiration as a catalyst for getting others to be more creative in the design [...]
The Hidden Advantage of Understanding Personality Types
An individuals’ personality can be used as a tool and resource to invigorate creative direction. Understanding what makes people tick is important because not managing these personalities could become a huge deficit to your project. Learn to use an individuals’ personality as an asset to motivate, give purpose, and energize them.Each one of us is [...]
The Perceptions of Creativity and Leadership
Every organization wants creative juice, but nobody wants to place creativity at the top. In a recent survey of 1,500 CEOs by IBM’s Institute for Business Value, creativity was named the single most important attribute for success in leading a corporation in the future. It’s no surprise that corporations are using everything in their [...]
Talking Design
Here is a brief video of me and some of the guys talking about our latest design, the Evo monitor arm. Bradley Derry is an industrial designer and creative team leader whose specialty is to strengthen a company’s capability to delight customers through its product design and brand building. He currently leads a [...]
How Design Leaders Engage the Executive Level
Designers stopped being stylists years ago and now drive the projects they once were hired to just make look good. Top notch designers that can lead and coach others on the why and how of design are in serious demand. These design leaders are pros at reassuring and encouraging executives more used to financial analysis [...]
Design for Conviction Not Compliance
Conviction is your faith, your belief, and your perception. It is a set of principles that separates you from the other members of the development team. Conviction is knowing what design decisions you will not compromise and is the most important element that defines you as a designer. Compliance is the complete opposite. Compliance allows [...]
How Designers Make Product Photography Stick
Product photography is one of the most important ingredients of any company’s marketing effort. Potential customers will not always have the ability to experience your product in person, so most customer interaction will come from images. The more attractive your product images look, the better chance a company will have to convert shoppers to sales. [...]
Setting Ambition Like a Pro
One of the most critical skills that separates a designer from a design leader is the ability to successfully dial up ambition levels in a company. Being able to provoke a team to consider alternatives to current status quo strategies that could potentially pilot a new generation of business growth is extremely valuable to organizations [...]
The 4 Types of Designers
Are you one of the majority of designers today who fall prey to a lack of strategy in a corporate design department? Are you mismanaged or underappreciated working in organizations that have no consistent approach to incorporating design into their strategic plans or processes? Perhaps you realize this and want to be focused on building [...]
An Effective Way Designers Can Visualize Business
Leveraging your ideas of design across an entire organization can seem daunting. I have found the easiest way to tackle this is to mentally break up the magnitude into separate sections and think of an organization as a set of rings. At the center of all the rings is the organization’s leadership with its unique [...]
Where Are The Design Leaders?
Design is the most important aspect to happen to business in the last decade. Today’s shoppers are savvy and they pay attention to the details, noting the brands that produce remarkable products. Companies that can successfully get the attention of the customer are rewarded with years of their money and loyalty. Some of the most [...]
