ID students at the Savannah College of Art & Design are currently engaged in a hands-on project with local relevance: Helping a nearby vacation destination, Tybee Island, reduce its water consumption to preserve a local aquifer.
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Hell is not other people. Hell is being surrounded by free candy.
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From Core77:
SEE is a network of eleven European partners sharing knowledge and experience on how design can be integrated into regional and national policies to boost innovation, entrepreneurship, sustainability and social and economic development.
In a new policy document, they highlight six priorities for European innovation policy:
Stimulating demand for innovation can be achieved through ‘public procurement’ and public services as catalysts for ‘innovation in services’.
Fostering an innovative environment requires policy intervention in order to provide protection through ‘intellectual property rights’ and forging closer links between academia and industry by promoting ‘collaborative clusters and networks’.
Removing market barriers to innovation refers to creating favourable conditions for ‘lead markets’ to emerge, for example ‘eco-innovation’ and sustainability, as well as ‘broadening the scope of innovation’ in order to address societal challenges and champion a user-centred approach to innovation.
Angus Hyland, art director of Laurence King, shares some of his favorite books in Bibliographic. (via Pentagram)
The book also contains several Pentagram titles…Many Pentagram publications feature in Bibliographic: 100 Classic Graphic Design Books, a unique compilation of the best design books of the last 100 years. The book was designed and written by Pentagram alumnus Jason Godfrey and published by Laurence King. It covers a huge range of material; from historic titles by pioneering type foundries to the best of recent monographs from today’s leading studios, it provides a striking insight into the evolution of graphic design in the twentieth century.
More on Pentagram’s Litl from Fast Company (one new revelation that I didn’t realize- it has no hard drive!):
It’s baffling that no one’s really overhauling laptop design. They’re getting thinner and smaller, while capabilities and processing power swell, but the user interface stays exactly the same. Litl, a brand-new laptop, isn’t going to change the world—but it’s proof of what a set of excellent designers can do, if given a bit of breathing room.
The design pedigree is flagrantly high-caliber: One Laptop Per Child designer Yves Beharcreated the case; Abbott Miller designed the logo; and Lisa Strausfeld, our recent Master of Design, did the GUI, alongside Christian Marc Schmidt. There’s a joke about Voltron in there somewhere.
From Pentagram:
We designed an identity for the store using the MAD Face we created for the museum identity. This identity features on several groovy gifts, and the shop also offers apparel, books and unique products made by artists and designers. The 1200 sq ft space includes a window installation by Mia Pearlman, one of the artists featured in the museum’s current exhibition, Slash: Paper Under the Knife.
That’s a lot of cutting! Nice work, though.
Tom Johnson applies this design principle to documentation:
But is less always more? I’m not sure. But if Apple’s minimalistic designs are any indicator of trends, minimalism in documentation is something to pay attention to. Here are five ideas for minimizing documentation…
These turned out wonderfully— via Pentagram:
Faced with the task of designing 21 new covers for the works of Vladimir Nabokov, art director John Gall decided to ask 20 other designers for help. To create a series look—and to pay homage to Nabokov’s passion for butterfly collecting—he sent each of the participating designers a collector’s specimen box to serve as the centerpiece of the cover.
The one above is my favorite. See all 18 here >
My Opinion: No, You Shouldn’t
Back in early April, I read a post by Peter Madden on the Advertising Age “Small Agency Diary” blog about the benefits of doing pro-bono work during the idle time brought on by an economic recession (pictured in the screenshot to the left). What I think Peter was really trying to hone in on was the idea that though doing pro-bono work may have its good, altruistic purposes, it can also be a practical means to keeping minds and faculties productive and busy when they’d be otherwise unused. I completely agree with that sentiment; for a designer, staying in practice is well worth the investment. However, I did comment on his post in order to note one reservation I would have- I’ve copied my comment below:
“Peter, I think this is a great idea. We’ve done lots of pro bono work in the past, both for organizations we care about and for friends and family connections. The only place it can get sticky is if your business model includes long-term support. For us (we’re a web development firm), we host and maintain every site we build, which means that if a client got that initial site for free, we either have to consider everything we do for them moving forward as free, or deal with the tricky step of transitioning them from pro-bono to paying client. Even if that client is willing to become a paying one, the leap can be tough- when you’re used to getting something for free for a long time, suddenly paying what it’s actually worth is not that easy. To that point, we’ve negotiated that transition with varying degrees of success, such that we have to think carefully about how our business model will realistically impact our desire to do pro bono work every now and then.”
Journalists Love a Good Debate
I was a bit nervous about potentially being seen as a naysayer. After all, the predominant tone of the marketing industry in the current social media era is one of sharing and generosity. Amidst that, who would want to be perceived as a Scrooge? As you’ll see if you read through the comment string, there were opinions on all sides.
Then, in September, I received a call from Kasey Wehrum, writer for Inc. Magazine. He’d seen my comment on the AdAge blog while doing research for a piece he was writing on the benefits of pro-bono work for November’s issue and wanted to ask me some questions about our experience and pull some quotes for his article. We spoke for about thirty minutes or so, during which I stressed that though we’ve done much pro-bono work due to existing relationships with various causes that employees have had, the notion of using pro-bono work as a strategy to build business was never one we adopted for two reasons: (1) Doing so would be contrary to any consultant’s positioning. If consultants choose to give away advice, it should be because they truly care about the cause. Doing so with the expectation that it could be turned profitable would be disingenuous. (2) When your primary deliverable is incorporeal (advice, strategy, direction, etc.), getting a client to start paying for that kind of service after they’ve already been receiving it for free is very, very difficult- even if they say they are willing.
Requisite Benefits-of-Social-Media Interlude
I should point out that this scenario is a great example of the unplanned serendipity of social media. It’s become a habit of mine to actively engage with other blogs in my industry, so it wasn’t unusual for me to share my opinion on the AdAge blog. What was unusual, to me at least, is that the post that I had commented on, and indeed my comment itself, became research material for a journalist at a major publication. I was glad to share my opinion and experience with Kasey Wehrum, who was a pleasure to speak with, but was surprised that I might be of any help to him. There must be others more qualified than I. However, having commented immediately on Peter Madden’s post put me in the right place at the right time.
Still a Naysayer
As it turns out, the article took a different direction from what I thought it was going to be about. It’s titled Using Charitable Donations to Motivate Employees. Wehrum uses an example of a software company which built an offering for a pro-bono client and was then able to demo it to another company which became a paying customer. Pro-pro-bono, but no problem there- I think my point still stands when it comes to consultative work. In any case, the remaining reference to our conversation was disappointing:
“Keep in mind that beggars can be surprisingly choosy. Sometimes companies have to draw the line about what nonprofits can get for free. Newfangled Web Factory, a Carrboro, North Carolina, Web design firm, lets its employees work on pro bono projects of their choosing during slow times at work. Most of the projects consist of designing and building websites, which are then hosted on Newfangled’s servers.
These ongoing relationships, in which the charity becomes reliant on Newfangled’s continuing service, have led to some problems. Occasionally, one of the nonprofits the company helps will undergo a reorganization, and the new staff will want to revamp its website. “They’ll get in touch with us and want to make a whole lot of changes,” says Chris Butler, Newfangled’s vice president. When the requests are too great, Newfangled politely but firmly says no.”
Oh well. We’re really not Scrooges here at Newfangled! I did leave a clarifying comment, which I hope won’t be seen as overly defensive:
“One point I’d want to clarify is this: In the past when we’ve chosen to do pro-bono work, it has been because we’ve believed in the cause, not in order to gain a potential paying client at some later point.
When it comes to service-oriented firms and consultants, transitioning a pro-bono client to a paying client is very difficult as you’ve already been giving them your best advice for free. For any agency, this should be a serious consideration when entertaining the strategy of getting a foot in the door by offering free service. However, if the scope of the offering has been limited to implementation only (i.e. a website), there could definitely be potential to expand the scope of your service when the client is able to pay.
Also, we do politely say no once the client’s need exceeds our ability to subsidize it, but we also almost always connect them to someone else who can help them.”
Here’s a scan of the article. Click to open it in full size:
If you want to break a client’s heart, sell what you don’t know how to produce. Bill your client the time necessary to learn the tools you need to make them happy. Wow them with your big thinking and static comps, but be coy about how your ideas can be realized in the appropriate delivery technology.
This is a slide from Russell Davies’ dConstruct talk:
He writes, of this slide:
But this is probably the most interesting aspect - we’re finally moving past the twin elephants in the room of technological conversation. Infatuation with everything shiny and digital, and that nostalgic, ‘Lead Pencil Club’ clinging to the past. We’re finally getting to the point where we can decide which are the appropriate technologies to use based simply on their actual merits. And, we’re starting to understand how to combine the analogue and digital in effective ways.
My favourite example is this: Things I Word Rather Read On Paper. Is it combines what the web does well; publishing, gathering, discovering and curating content (via instapaper) with what print does well; being readable, durable and portable.
Davies was the first person to expose me to the idea of print on demand, believe it or not. Since then, I’ve printed three different “anthologies” of web content that I’d bookmarked, but like his example, would rather have read on paper.
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Even if authenticity is hard to define, this is not true for its opposite. If authenticity is subtle, inauthenticity is flagrant. It’s easy (and effective) to channel Supreme Court Justice Brennan with “I know it when I [don’t] see it.” We’re certainly able to determine when something is not authentic (and there’s probably an evolutionary biologist out there who can tie that pattern-matching skill to some fight-or-flight reflex). If we, as makers of something, strive to be authentic in the thing that we are making, is that really authentic? And yet if we fail to strive for authenticity, are we likely to fail?
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Amazing! This laptop is made from recyclable paper pulp.
Writeup from Dvice.com:
It’s something computer companies are already striving for, but designer Je Sung Park is taking the idea of a recyclable computer to its furthest limits. His Recyclable Paper Laptop is made from pulp and reprocessed materials, and would be broken down into the same when all is said and done.
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