Design quotes

I heard some nice one-liners on the last conference I went to.

"Mass Communications has become so expensive that design is a much better priced alternative." - If design is used as a tool to communicate, and not as a sauce. Design in this sentence means design thinking. Unusually simple solutions with talk value.

"It's faulty if a door handle needs to have a push or pull label. [It should be self explanatory]" - Oscar Peña, head of Philips Design. Mr. Peña called great designers 'translators' since they translate an idea into shape and material. They express the product identity in material qualities. And the best translators, translate ideas so powerful, they change society.

"I know I've designed an icon when I don't get the discussion about marketing etc. when launching the product," said Erik Tjepkema. I guess all designers wish they'd design icons all the time... Erik went on to compare design to Jazz (it's a similarity I've seen before). He didn't go into details but I think there are comparable concepts.
song theme = brand&identity
improvising = assocaiation, creating new outings
groove = ambiance
scales/chords = input, brainstorm methods, aesthetic rules of thumb

Erwin van Lun said "Brands love to build relations with people, but if you ask them people don't want relations with brands!" Still he demonstrated that relation building is an automatic process whether we want it or not. People build relations wih aibo dogs, electrical dinosaurs, tamagochis and their iphone. The core of a relation is relevant responses. If you have to explain your name address and occupation time and time again: no relation. If you are recognised, treated as a person and get relevant reactions, responses in your own language, a relation starts to build. With all the emotions that go with it. This is a double edged sword since those relevant answers should be accompanied by enough trust or you get the Orwellian Big Brother feeling.
His presentation is online for download...

Jean-Pierre Raes started off with a small statistic in the room: "Where did you have your latest brilliant idea?" Nobody mentioned the office. :D He went on talking about the creation of new new business going from Insight to Idea to Plan to Business. The hard part is getting relevant insights, you can do research for that or talk a lot to your friends about what they run into. I believe the best insights come from people solving their own problems like the people at 37signals or someone with a Seth Godin-style otaku. If you need to do research, qualitative and observative is best in my opinion. Statistics aren't usually very inspiring. Although a friend of mine who recently discovered pivot tables and used that to ask questions to a huge dataset said the opposite was true.
Jean-Pierre's own personal insight was that many people have a lot of ideas, but they fail at writing and implementing a healthy business plan. He set up his own company to help them.

Erik Kessels showed some work with a lot of humor and great communication power. I should book a night at citizen M at Schiphol, the pictures look great. He collects peculiar photo albums from flea markets. They contain really funny stories and some great amateur photography. He explained how he looked for funny details, authenticity and the man in the street for inspiration. To illustrate that he showed for years of ad campaigns for the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel and some really funny videos. My favorites are these: Goal! and Rugby.

H&M had a pretty monotonous presentation about their history, way of working and all the great names they worked with. To find out what they are experimenting with, check out their concept stores at Collection of Style.

All in all this was some good inspiration again.