The design process as it is usually taught and applied at the beginning of the 21st century is concerned with goals, aims and targets. It is dealing with business and industry, target groups and financial targets. It is looking at the often “wicked” problems found in all areas of life. It is, in general, working with – or trying to work with – the world, its structures and problems, including its systems, its territories, its politics and power struggles. But is this the only way the design process can be approached?
Continue reading
Principles of Design
Four collections of Design Principles: “It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous.”
Michael Faraday
Models of Innovation in Japan and Korea: MITI and KIDP
Korea’s strength in the creative industries, together with the strength of their multinational brands, is regarded as a model by other Asian countries. How did this model come about?
Continue reading
The 5 C’s: Design skills for the near future
CODE
Since the first introduction of CAD and 3d modeling systems, code is behind most products. With generative design, the code becomes the design itself. Big data about user behaviour in combination with machine learning and adaptive production methods (Industry 4.0) will make highly personalized and adaptive design solutions the new normal. To master code, designers should be able to write it.
CONSTRUCTION
With the Internet of Things, the division between interaction design and industrial design is about to disappear. A designer should know how to code, prototype, and build intelligent products with embedded applications. Starting points are the Raspberry Pi, Arduino or Nanode.
COMPLEXITY
Global economic, technological, social and environmental issues are getting increasingly intertwined. There are no simple solutions to complex problems. The ability to navigate complexity will be a key skill for the designer of the future.
CULTURE
In a globalized world, cultures can adapt, mix, or clash, and differences can be hard to handle. Deep-seated assumptions rooted in a designer’s own culture can lead to products which do not work in other cultures – psychologically or in terms of use. Openness, the ability to emphatize, and an understanding of different cultures and users will be as important as understanding economy and technology.
CYCLE
In a world of limited resources, knowledge of recycling technologies, biodegradable materials, and the ability to design for a circular economy – by considering disassembly and recycling already during the design process – becomes increasingly important. Designers should be able not only to conceive new products, but to plan the way these products are made, unmade, and recycled. What comes around goes around.
___________________________________________
This post was originally published in February 2014.
Design and Myth
In his 1957 book „Mythologies“, Roland Barthes analyses the Deesse (The nickname of the Citroen DS car, “goddess” in French) as a mythical object, and plastic as a mythical material. Plastic interests him because of its transformability, the metamorphoses it contains, being able to imitate everything. He finds it remarkable that plastics are given mythical names of Greek shepherds (Polystyrene, Polyvinyl) and writes: “The public waits in a long queue in order to witness the accomplishment of the magical operation par excellence: the transmutation of matter.”
Design for Sustainability
Design for critical thinking
5 projects designed to invite reflection and critical thinking.
Envisioning communities
The vision
In 2008, HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser wanted to explore designs for better communities in Qatar and the region: Diverse and responsible communities which would invite independent thinking and creativity. Mario Gagliardi, CEO at Qatar Foundation at the time, was tasked with providing proposals and consequently organised a workshop to explore innovative approaches to urban design which could inspire better building practices.
Tools to think with
Concepts and assumptions determine how an organisation and its environment are seen. When plotting a course of action, managers implicitly rely on them. These concepts are the foundation for both daily decision-making and long-term planning. Once concepts are taken for granted, they are held implicitly, possibly impeding innovation efforts. Leonard and Straus found that thinking style preferences are becoming “hardwired” into brains and reinforced over years of practices and self-selection. When, in the course of an organisational change, the new outlook does not conform with held assumptions, these concepts can be the reason why people are reluctant to change.
Art, Design and the Elements
Aristotle explained the elements in terms of what we might call sensual qualities: hot, cold, wet and dry. His main thought was that all materials are manifestations of different compositions of the elements. This idea – that the world consists of underlying elements – was fundamental in several ways. It implies that the world is not what it outwardly seems: A stone is not just a stone – it is composed of a mixture of elements which we cannot see. If the world consists of underlying elements, then materials could be transformed by changing their underlying composition.
Design and the real world 세상과 멀어지는 디자인
Korea’s most successful luxury brand
Whoo (后), the cosmetics brand designed by Mario Gagliardi, is now Korea’s most successful luxury brand, selected by the Seoul Economic Daily in 2017 (read more about its creation). The brand exceeded 100 billion Korean Won in annual sales in 2009, 200 billion Won in 2013, 400 billion Won in 2014, 800 billion Won in 2015, and annual sales exceeded 1 trillion Won last year. Whoo’s parent company LG Household & Health Care, part of LG Group, expects the annual sales of Whoo to surge to 1.6 trillion Won (US$ 1,4 billion) in 2017, making it the best-performing Korean luxury brand in history.
Designed at a time when Western cosmetics brands dominated the Asian market with narratives of Paris and New York, the brand was revolutionary in being the first cosmetics series to focus instead on Asian culture and history.
Innovating education
Government policies and interventions are powerful instruments that can change social and economic realities on the large scale. However, social reality is highly complex.
Continue reading
Analysing the Digital: Transformations, Territories, Frames and Uses
While the digital is explained in itself by computer science, important questions for the humanities – such as how the Digital affects human behaviour, or how it impacts society and economy – are outside its scope. Different disciplines have provided answers, but there has been no integrated concept bridging these insights.
Design with/out industry
Plato: Jim, do you think the end of the world will come at nighttime? Jim: Mm, no. At dawn.
James Dean and Sal Mineo in “Rebels Without A Cause”, 1955
It is a chilly late morning this spring in Berlin. Fitting to the temperature, a skier runs skis made from cardboard in a circular groove on a metal plate, around and around. Running in circles. The exhibit, called “Your personal career” is telling for a view of design as it was on display at the Designmai 2006 design show in Berlin.
Most exhibits are made in cardboard or plywood, taped or tacked, early process mock-ups rather than fully developed models. That reflects on the city, fragmented and patched as Berlin has been through history, it reflects on design as a process, on the budget of the exhibitors, and it reflects on a particular situation of contemporary design.
Evolutionary painter
What if your sketches would evolve and start their own life with algorithms inspired by biology?
Korea’s bestselling luxury brand in China
Korean cosmetics brand Whoo (后), conceived and designed by Mario Gagliardi and his team at LG Household and Health Care, has surpassed all competitors including Cartier, Louis Vuitton and Rolex for overseas luxury duty-free sales in Korea. It is the first time a Korean brand has become the bestselling luxury brand.
Chinese shoppers in South Korea shunning luxury brands like Louis Vuitton in favour of local goods
Chinese visitors to South Korea are buying less from global luxury mainstays like Louis Vuitton and Chanel in favour of cheaper home-grown brands, as young, independent travellers make up a bigger share of tourists. Lured by the “Korean Wave” of culture exports, from soap operas and K-pop music to food and fashion, price-conscious younger Chinese visitors are seeking a more authentic and less expensive shopping experience.
Conceptualizing brands: Metaphors of Brand Management
The management of brands is often biased by the way managers conceptualize and understand brands. We have identified four commonly employed metaphors of brands which, all in their own way, produce unwanted effects on the management and utilization of brands.