D. J. De Pree - Herman Miller Millwright Story

Beginning fall 2006, BarryBlog was once vibrant and daily, but now rather sleepy and sporadic. But if you look through the archives or Google Search Herman Miller and BarryBlog, chances are you'll find the many times I've spoken of the great company Herman Miller. I've gained a deep appreciation since I first experienced the performance and aesthetic of their wares at a small design firm in East Lansing Michigan, right out of college. The owner of that shop bought only Herman Miller, and I have been hooked since. Then while working as a senior art director in a small Grand Rapids marketing communications consultancy, I had further opportunities to learn about the company. While in Grand Rapids, I spent hours at their refurbished product store which at the time was called REMARK. I so miss that great store.

In the must read "The Design of Herman MIller", by my hands down favorite writer, Ralph Caplan, I learned how D. J. De Pree founded the company based on his Biblical worldview. As I read that, it was easy to compare with the current company who employs me, Tyndale House Publishers. Like D. J., Ken Taylor built a company with people as a priority. Like D. J., Ken realized how important people are to the overall day to day success of the business.

So tonight while I was further researching Herman Miller, I came across this wonderful example of how D. J. approached business, and more specifically, the people who worked for him.

Someday I would love to help grow Herman Miller using my God given skills. Like Tyndale, they are one of the few great companies left.

See for yourself, in D. J. De Pree's own words.

Future Magazine

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

The capacity to concentrate

Concentration is under-rated. Maybe it's just me, but it's getting harder to carve out quality time of late. Meetings. Projects. All important, necessary stuff. But when the rubber meets the road and deadlines draw near, concentration is key. Enter Ommwriter... interactive agency Herraiz Soto & Co.'s humble attempt to recapture what technology has snatched away: our capacity to concentrate. I've been using it a bit at home and on the road, and love it. Alot. In beta form, Ommwriter is a simplified, less-is-more text processor that makes writing your focus—and keeps the distractions at bay. If you spend a fair share of time writing as I do, you will love this.

Do you know what you want? Spielberg Does.

Incredibly easy for me to understand; not particularly easy to explain; and a complete lack of understanding (or a denial) by many businesses, are the myriad of reasons why senior design thinkers (Creative Directors, Art Directors, [not design stylists]) should be involved in the crafting of every day business, not just design. Spielberg says it best here. Knowing what you want is in large part the result of having spent years of your life imagining things from the inside out. Making things that are completely unrelated and intangible, that when connected in a new context, create a tangible whole. The supreme irony to the business bottom line is this: many people who can champion this often untapped business tool are themselves unable to picture it. The exact people who hold the purse strings literally don't see this potential, and by familiarity and lack of action relegate design to the important but marginalized business of aesthetics. As everyone looks to innovate, compete and pursue business in this new economy, I recommend looking close to home. As Spielberg says..."Can you see this?" For me, that's an easy answer. Vision is the ability to see. Seeing is the ability to think. And in companies wanting to prosper, top thinkers are given the chance to grow.

Coke Inhouse Design: Talking Design to Non-Designers

Coca-Cola's design chief David Butler was told 5-years ago: "We need to do more with design. Go figure it out." Butler describes how he has learned the most effective way to implement design strategy at a company as large and complex as Coca-Cola: avoid the word "design" as much as possible.

What a great article to help insider's speak the language of design in a language business will understand.

( via Business Week Insider )

1991: Oglivy at 80

"I am supposed to be the No. 1 creative genius in the whole world, and I don't even know what the hell the word 'creativity' means. But I'm not afraid to tell creative phonies that their commercials are utter nonsense. When I write an ad, I don't want you to tell me that you find it 'creative.' I want you to find it so persuasive that you buy the product -- or buy it more often. If you spend your advertising budget entertaining the consumer, you're a bloody fool, housewives don't buy a new detergent because the manufacturer told a joke on television last night. They buy the new detergent because it promises a benefit."

– Then, eighty year old David Ogilvy in his closing remarks at the 82nd annual meeting of the Association of National Advertisers, October 1991.

( Thanks BrandingStrategyInsider )

Steve Jobs on Paul Rand

Paul Rand and Steve Jobs worked together in 1993 on the NEXT logo for Jobs new company. This is an interview with Steve Jobs about the process and about working with Paul Rand.

( via swissmiss )

Product Designer Dieter Rams: A Flickr Pool

Unbelievable. A Dieter Rams Flickr group! If you're a regular reader of BarryBlog, you have heard of him when I pointed out similarities between his and Apple's Jonathan Ive's work in my Seperated At Birth post.

Weird thing is the "Less But Better" quote is one I've been using for the last year and a half. Okay, did I get this from him, or did I come up with it on my own? Who knows. Dieter's a household name, not I.

Hoefler, Frere-Jones, Heller: On Typefaces

Television interview I saw a while ago about typeface design. A rather 101 course that features Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones of Hoefler & Frere-Jones and Steven Heller.

Trajan in the Movies. Enough Already.

Since I'm perhaps the last blog to post on the overuse of the font Trajan in the motion picture industry, I thought I would throw in some trivia to have something somewhat original in this post. As for the font Trajan, it was created by Carol Twombly in 1989 for Adobe as part of their Adobe originals collection.. She based it on the inscribed characters from the Trajan column in Rome (AD 113). As you see from this movie, it's way overused.

More on Trajan from Stacy's thesis continuation in romanboldoblique:

The base of Trajan's column featured classic Roman letterforms. It is believed that these letters were first painted, then carved into the stone. This gave them a nice free formed feel and sharper serifs. The letters are called capitalis monumentalis or Roman square capitals.

History lesson complete. Enjoy the movie. You're welcome.

Manuel Lima: The Beauty of Visual Complexity

VisualComplexity offers this introduction:

Visualcomplexity (Manuel Lima) intends the site to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web. I truly hope this space can inspire, motivate and enlighten any person doing research on this field.

"Functional visualizations are more than innovative statistical analyses and computational algorithms. They must make sense to the user and require a visual language system that uses colour, shape, line, hierarchy and composition to communicate clearly and appropriately, much like the alphabetic and character-based languages used worldwide between humans."

Matt Woolman - Digital Information Graphics

See all 532 VC projects here. Or Manuel's whole portfolio beyond VC here.

Seperated At Birth? Dieter Rams and Apple’s Ive

Nearly every designer knows the name Jonathan Ives of Apple, Inc. But how many know the name Dieter Rams? Thanks to Onur at the great blog tuning slide, I’ve been newly introduced to this great talent.

I’d always heard that Jonathan Ives and his design tendency at Apple to "eliminate the unnecessary" was in some ways influenced by the design created in the mid-1960's at the German manufacturer BRAUN, but never new the face behind it all–Dieter Rams. It's really remarkable to see the similarities between Dieter’s work back then and the iconic Apple approach now. See here and here for two great examples.

I’ve been influenced by a great many people in my career as well. While I’ve never worked for a well known design company, I have worked with some incredible talents and have followed the work of many designers through the years. So I guess it should come as no big surprise that Jonathan Ives has been influenced by others as well. In discovering the similarity in design approach between Dieter and Ives, I find it quite exciting to look back nearly fifty years to shed some light on what was being considered back then in terms of design. In my research I found a quote from Dieter describing what was different back then. It really hit home for me. He stated...

At Braun they were always willing to take a risk - nobody could tell you if a product would become successful. We as designers cannot work in a vacuum. The entrepreneur has to want it; the people at the top of the company have to want it…What’s missing today is that these kind of entrepreneurs are no longer there. Today there is only Apple and to a lesser extent Sony, but not to the same degree as was the case with Olivetti and BRAUN, or Peter Behrens at AEG, or Herman Miller and Charles Eames, Florence Knoll with Saarinen and so on. These kinds of connections are missing today

Apparently I’m a bit late in the game here, and a lot of blogs have already discussed this very comparison between BRAUN and Apple design before. If you find this as interesting as I do, here are a couple more resources.

designboom’s take on the subject
37signals take
DesignMuseum article
The complete tuning slide post
Erik Spiekermann on the BRAUN Apple
37signals post on Ives

One more thing... Here's another forward thinking quote from the 1960’s by Dieter Rams...

Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design helps us to understand a product. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is honest. Good design is durable. Good design is consequent to the last detail. Good design is concerned with the environment. Good design is as little design as possible. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Who was forward thinking enough over 40 years ago to suggest a concern for the environment? Wow.

Innovate Faster by Melding Design and Strategy

If they’re to do their job most effectively, designers should be brought into the innovation process at the very earliest stages. Too many companies still make the mistake of keeping business strategy and design activities separate. Typically, marketers conceptualize a new product based on company strategy; the project team gets input from various areas of the company and creates a business case; and senior executives make a final choice from among the possibilities they’re given. Only then does the idea go to the designers.

Read the rest of the story, Forethought Innovation by Ravi Chhatpar, at The Harvard Business Review. You must accept their terms (click "I accept").

Great Creative: Honest

Contagious is a word that comes to mind after watching this video. The synergy between these two guys is unmistakable. They are cool in that they don't take themselves all super serious like so many people. They also don't claim to know it all, and I love the freedom with which they operate. I really like these guys and hope they continue to rock.

Fast Company: 2007 Masters of Design

Innovation and inspiration. Beauty and profit. Management and creativity. Fast Company October 2007 reports on the intersection of business and design. The online version has multimedia and a ton of things the print version does not (and visa versa, I know, as I finally broke down and subscribed). You can also find archives for years 2004, 2005 and 2006. Masters feature Yves Behar, Bob Greenberg, Sam Lucente (my favorite), Paola Antonelli and Philippe Starck. The website also includes resources, green design, elements of design and a newcomers section. What are you waiting for? Now get yer learnin' on.

( via Cameron Moll's Premium Linkage )

WAN: User Generated Architectural Resource

WorldArchitectureNews (WAN), billed as the world's leading supplier of news to the global architectural community, is one of the resources I cherish for all things Global Architecture. It's full of news, podcast interviews in mp3, project images, links to architects and lead architectural stories of our times. A great feature is the News In Pictures section. I had never heard of Zaha Hadid before, but after seeing this, I'm now a fan. If you're looking for an education on architecture, or are researching the latest projects on the horizon, this WAN is a great place to start.

Another nice caveat is the fact that their global project database is user generated by member architects who actively build and update the site. WAN offers a RSS feed, but they go a step further and explain what this is if you're a newbie.

(building image in post collage ® Zaha Haid Architects )

I'm a Design:Related Featured Designer. Cool.

Design:Related decided to make me one of the Featured Designers today. I don't recall if this is for a day, a week or what exactly, so depending on when you check this out, try here for my feature. Then this one for where my stuff is camped out more regularly. I was invited initially (a.k.a.: LinkedIn Connection Request) to check things out by Chris at Outwear, then decided to take it for a spin myself. It's been fun to work through some of the beta bugs with Matt, and I can see how this site has value into the future and of course I'm betting on Matt and Karen to make their internet millions one of these days. If they do, I am most certainly hoping they won't forget their early adopters and throw us some bones! So check me out, yo.

Internal Brand Building: Executive Buy-in

Interesting and rather comprehensive— a unique perspective on internal brand building obstacles and some ways to get executives to understand and support brand management from the inside out.

( via Brand Strategy: the Branding Blog )

Shtikl: Most Plans are Rubbish

An amateur cook needs a long winded recipe to prepare a dish and it still will be mediocre at best. The seasoned chef needs just the idea and he will turn it into a masterpiece......Einstein didn’t initially plan to discover relativity theory, Columbus didn’t plan to find America and Steve Jobs didn’t plan to invent the iPod.

( via swissmiss )

Rule 29: Refreshed and Ready

Refreshed and ready, the hyper self-promoters Rule29 give you even more reasons to love them (as I do). Justin, Josh, Kara, Kerri, Dan and the occasional guest blogger are at it full force. A newly finessed website, a brand spanking new blog, and crap you can buy, or if you ask nice, they might just give you (give them a good reason). Justin and the crew have one speed. FORWARD. And these new updates are but the tip of the iceberg.

Aside from the lame uber over done Office shtick and the all-Flash website, these guys are tip top creatively. And my man Justin also knows the real meaning of what serving is all about, which is really What Matters.

If you're looking for a communication design firm that can take you to a next level, and you understand that Creative Matters, hop on the R29 bandwagon.

Disclaimer: I have not been compensated by R29 for my opinion regarding their ability to knock it out of the park, creatively. I just personally believe they rock. However I will accept checks to any amount made out to Barry A. Smith