Innovation

...just making something look nicer?

Just a mirage? Rick Poynor, in a beautifully honest article for ID Magazine ("Down with Innovation"), takes the "design thinkers," the "innovators through design," or the "design-ovators," as he calls them, head on:

"Design thinkers set great store by business targets, by driving the enterprise forward, because it is exactly what their clients want to hear and it gets them work. Seen from outside the cozy bond of service provider and client, this is a severely limited way of viewing design, and the total domination of current design discussion by this … Read more

SFZero: A new interface for San Francisco

Remember the movie The Game, with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn as unlikely brothers, shot before the backdrop of vertiginous San Francisco?

Well, here's a new interface for the city by the Bay: SFZero is "a new representation for the data that's already there. Your mind is full of inaccurate representations that are affecting the way you use the San Francisco data flow, steering you away from interaction and collaboration and toward unproductive reflexive data loops.

SFZero designers are working double shifts to engineer this next-generation interface that will bring you together with your cohabitants to experience … Read more

The future of business is social: notes from the Milken Global Conference

"The difference between the optimist and the pessimist is that the pessimist has more facts," said Jean-Paul Betb?ze, Chief Economist and Head of Economic Research Department, Cr?dit Agricole S.A., in a panel at the Millken Institute's Global Conference 2008 in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago. True as this may be, his statement stood in sharp contrast to the overall vibe of the event: Yes, we can, was the prevailing sentiment, and the overwhelming majority of attendees would probably have outed themselves as fervent optimists, despite an abundance of fact-featuring PowerPoint slides supporting … Read more

Design conversations, not products

These seem to be apocalyptic times for designers. If you happen to be a member of this threatened species, you better look for another calling. We had just put Pillippe Starck's "Design is dead" fatalism to bed, and then I read Peter Merholz's essay from 2007: "Stop designing products!"

What sounds like another shocker initially, however, turns out to be a milder riff on an old and well-known theme that Merholz himself has been promoting for two years now: "Experience is the product -- and the only thing users care about:"

"… Read more

Retro metro - the legendary New York subway map is back!

The 1972 New York subway map is back! Massimo Vignelli, the man behind this graphic design classic, was asked by Men's Vogue to update his legendary map for the magazine's May issue, reflecting more than 30 years' worth of changes.

When it was first released in 1972, the map was both beloved and hated for its high level of abstraction and artistic freedom (the 50th Street and Broadway stop, for example, was east of 8th Avenue instead of west). Some New Yorkers remarked that the map succeeded in its obvious intention to make it easy for tourists to … Read more

Rallying cry for innovation at Fortune Brainstorm Green and Milken Conference

Doreen Lorenzo, president of frog design, attended the recent Fortune Brainstorm Green and the Milken Global Conference and identified a common theme:

"In the past two weeks, I had the opportunity to attend two very interesting conferences. The first one was Fortune's Brainstorm Green, followed by the Milken Institute's Global Conference. Both of these conferences attract the who's who in the financial and business world. What struck me at both events was the rallying cry that innovation is key in solving many of the world's problems. I continued to hear that change is needed for … Read more

Adversarial blogging: the Brew Blog and co.

I recently came across another example of meta-marketing -- the phenomenon of PR becoming the actual story. The Wall Street Journal reports on the Brew Blog launched by Miller Brewing Co. It's about beer, yes, but instead of promoting Miller's products, the corporate blog focuses exclusively on every step of arch rival Anheuser-Busch.

One may wonder whether this fixation on the main competitor shows (over-)confidence or the lack thereof. In any case, it is a bold and unprecedented move towards leading and preempting conversations about the competitor in the blogosphere. And what might easily be derided as … Read more

Fake the fake!

This high-end designer boutique in a trendy part of Seoul sells these bags at higher than Louis Vuitton's full prices, which is not nearly as hilarious as Louis Vuitton's unique methods in fighting back counterfeiters these days. Just look at this fake set-up of a fake bag seller that sells real bags during a recent exhibit launch party in New York. (via Notcot)

Democratic exclusivity: micro-dining

After reading and talking so much recently about the concept of "democratic exclusivity" (first coined by Ed Cotton on the Influx Insights blog and then promoted by the relentless Piers Fawkes), I was delighted to finally experience it myself when I was strolling the streets of Paris last week. I spent a day (a micro-vacation!) in the not-so-touristy 6th district around Metro Vavin in Montparnasse (in fact, I rarely left it, which was a much more satisfying experience than zig-zagging from the left to the right bank all the time as I used to) and discovered "Le Timbre,&… Read more