February 10, 2012
"The editing function has been replaced by the filtering function. The former, addressing communication before it is released, is the responsibility of the creator or someone acting on her behalf. The latter is left to the reader or audience."

— If you haven’t yet read the book By Design: Why There Are No Locks On The Bathroom Doors In The Hotel Louis XIV And Other Object Lessons, then consider this the most exuberant recommendation ever. It’s a classic from 1982 (reissued in 2005) by Ralph Caplan, a god among design writers, who mastered the art of wry insight both as editor of I.D. magazine (RIP) and as a thoughtful commentator on design throughout the last many years. He’s still writing, and Running Out Of Running Time, his latest, shows he is as sharp and thoughtful as ever. We all talk a lot about the need for filters and curators and editors yada yada. Yet I hadn’t thought about the issue in the terms Caplan details above, which I found to be an incredibly helpful framing.

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Filed under: Ralph Caplan design criticism curator filter communication editing 
December 9, 2011
"Intense psychological stress tends to shut down the part of the brain responsible for innovative, creative thought. Instead, we tend to revert to the familiar and the well-rehearsed."

— What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 is the chilling story of the cockpit conversations aboard an Air France plane that inexplicably crashed into the Atlantic in 2009. Turns out the accident wasn’t so inexplicable after all. Instead, it’s a sad story of confusion and miscommunication. Innovation projects don’t tend to have quite such high stakes (lives are rarely at risk, though millions of dollars might be) but it’s interesting to think about the conditions necessary to nurture creativity and the idea that too stressful an environment might biologically impair those looking to innovate. See also designer Stuart Karten’s piece in Fast Company about innovation’s “secret sauce” — friendship.

1:18pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dxD0zGWC
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Filed under: innovation communication collaboration creativity working conditions 
May 11, 2011
"What passes as “communication” in most meetings is nothing more than people talking AT each other, not being clear how to create more value because we’re together."

— Strategist Nilofer Merchant writes a short but smart piece, Reinventing Meetings (or Making Meetings Suck Less). Goodness knows we’ve all suffered through too many long, pointless meetings, seemingly designed as a vehicle to air only egomania. Merchant has some sensible advice for thinking about what we bring into the room each time.

5:16pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dx51t6wv
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Filed under: meetings design communication Nilofer Merchant 
May 10, 2011
"As communicators we [designers] are poorly communicating our own value and if it continues, we will continue to be undervalued, underpaid and subjected to pitch work and crowdsourcing."

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In Crowdsourcing: Sabotaging our value, Thomas Wilder lays out the designer’s take on crowdsourcing. Understandably, he’s miffed at companies such as 99designs, DesignCrowd and Crowdspring coming along and taking the bread from professionals’ mouths. He lays out a pretty good argument that, thankfully, is not just a wringing of hands and shaking of fist at sky. Wilder acknowledges that designers have a responsibility to better educate clients in why they should pay for professional service. This, to me, seems like the crux of the matter. Until clients truly understand the value of good design, they’ll be seduced by the promise of cheap logo goodness. You can’t blame them for this. You can educate them.

But then Wilder falls back into the safe, aggrieved world of ‘should’. Banks and law firms are prepared to pay good money for professionals, he writes. “This model should also apply to the design industry.” Sure it should. But as Jeff Jarvis and others have repeatedly pointed out, there’s no business model in “should”. And that means designers have to stop whining, take off their gloves, step up and start educating. Else they’ll complain their way right into obscurity. (Story via Jason Santamaria.)

9:25am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZLv7dx4-V0Mw
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Filed under: design crowdsourcing communication value of design business model Jeff Jarvis no such thing as should