Key Design Trends

“Products are realized only as necessary artifacts to address customer needs.”
-David Report

Everything gets designed, even the product itself. To understand what should be considered in the process of design we should consider what the customer really wants. David Report would suggest that it’s only the experience that matters. That means that everything we do in design needs to start with the formation of an idea that addresses on question: What kind of experience is going to be pursued by your target audience?

Case Study 4

Archetypes are the collective images and associations that build an identifiable character in our minds. In design they are useful in that they can be used to create a personality for your brand that your target demographic.

When an archetype takes on a persona that the customer can identify with there is a bond that ties them together like would happen with two people who relate with one another. The need for people to make associations with strong identifying brands is key to the development of a personal identity. In the context of the new socially connected society that is being created as we speak brands that reach out to people from within their social structure are charged with the task of relating to an individual on such a personal basis that they will openly accept the new brand into their circle of trust. Once that connection has been made, however, that brand is part of a network of "friends" that share similar benifits as "real friends" such as trust and loyalty.

Professional skateboarder Tony Hawk has created a brand around the name he has made for himself. Through the graphic styles, events, and products the essence of his brand revolves entirely around the life of the underground skateboarder. For Hawk it was easy to keep his brand personality in line with everything he stands for because it is who he is. The lesson that can be taken from his brand strategy is that although not every company can have a real person to relate to they should all represent an archetype that can be personified as easily as Tony Hawk. Looking at the one line of cloths build on the Tony Hawk name it's easy to see the person he represents throughout his product line. You can see some Hawk clothes here: http://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/ourbrands/tonyhawk.jsp?searchTerm=hawk

Design is Central - Blog #3

One of the lacking aspects of design is in the failing to produce work for the purpose of innovative communication and just putting more junk into the pool of trendy pieces that have no value beyond their initial impact. Lasting design provides substance and tangibility. It starts to fall back to the old Bauhaus ideology that form follows function. Function isn't just a characteristic of physical products but of all things that take up any part of our busy days.

There are many brands that manage to keep your attention with flashy design, and sex appeal but what will the future of those brands be if they fail to provide a lasting vision and necessary value to people who are constantly bombarded with new possibilities to chose from. Here are a few brands that have, in some way done an exceptional job in getting their message across to the right people.

Scion
The car-maker Scion uses design to appeal to a youthful group of buyers who want to have the freshest ride on the road and have little concern for the vehicles performance and make quality. The sites and advertizements use very effective methods of customization and interaction to get people more involved with the experience and define the personality of the brand. You can see one gimmick that they cleverly add to their site that suggests that you will have some awesome interactive experience but to use it you must first log into facebook so that your friends will see that you've been to this site. To me this brings up questions about user privacy. Does Scion go to far by marketing an online experience in exchange for ad space via your social network?
http://www.scion.com/rstc/

DARPA
This defense initiative is a government run program that is well known for their use of community based programs to leverage the power of viral marketing, public research and events to push technological advancement. The quality of their design is in the communication of their message. They know that if you give people something fun and challenging to do you can delegate the legwork to the masses. The autonomous vehicle competition is an example of one such occasion where DARPA benefits from the hard work of hundreds of scientific minds work towards their cause. This article shows the commitment of those who participate:
http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp

Greenpeace
This activist organization uses gorilla campaigns to have their message heard loudly. As a business they do not accept funds from governments, corporations, or political parties (wiki). This is following suit with their civil disobedient brand personality that speaks to more than 2.8 million independent subscribers who make up virtually all of their funding. There is no apparent quality to the design of their brand outside of the fact that they are heard by the people who need to hear them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace

Case Study 3

Interaction with the customer can redirect an entire attitude towards a brand when it’s being used to connect to the customer on a more direct and personal basis. The toolmaker, Craftsman was for a long time a reliable and trusted brand but it became a good example of a brand becoming complacent in their connection with the customer. They went from that reliable brand to “that brand that’s not the best but not the worst”. The solution is to make a better user experience that resonates with the ideals of the customer though engaging interactive design on the web. http://www.craftsman.com/ . Now Craftsman is defined as the suburban middleclass handyman who likes to have sweet tools at a reasonable cost. The site is visually appealing and so keeps your interest long enough to receive their message.

By giving people a more compelling and interactive web experience user become engaged and invested on some level into the site and therefore the brand. Looking at the way Tag Heuer has done their site we can see how the user experience is enhanced to the point that there could be 20 to 30 minutes of exposure just enjoying the aesthetics and soothing motions. You can visit the site here:
http://www.tagheuer.com/eyewear/index.lbl?lang=en .

A good example of adaptable interaction of user interaction would be on the website:
http://www.hulu.com/ They allow you to choose your favorite channels and create a profile that adapts to your input so that you can weed out the things that you don't want to see. This type of media will soon take out cable TV that has poor interactivity and user interface.
A bad example of adaptable interaction would be on the site tigerdirect.com  http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/failedsearch.asp?keywords=gs4 . They put so much in your face at once and have no way of making it possible to track down the thing that you want to buy.

Brand Strategy and Identity

If a brand strategy needs to stay aligned with the highest levels of an organization then what are the limitations for creativity as a designer? In school we learn new techniques for implementing design tools but in the end when we land a job at some firm, is there creativity beyond creative director? If you consider that creativity is both new and useful and you aren’t the person working with the customer you can’t really consider anything that you do creative. You are just another pick ax in the salt mine. Perhaps it’s just a matter of semantics but what really needs to be focused on is your knowledge for how people view and perceive aesthetics and drop the pursuit of being a creative person. Beyond that your job is to be able to communicate with the people around you and show them that you can communicate with the end user.

To understand how this applies to branding we just need to consider some basic components of communication through design. Firstly whom are we communicating to and secondly are we speaking the same language. By creating an identity for the brand we are speaking the language of a specific demographic otherwise the message will never be understood. Does it even require creativity to brand for a specific demographic? If all we need to know are jocks like shiny fast metal-looking graphics and bikers like black leather jackets and a load of attitude than getting your message across is simply a matter of plugging in the right elements with the right intonations.

Case Study 2 - Google and Android

There has been an out break of Android phones since the open-source mobile operating system was released to the public in December of 2008. It's unprecedented growth after just one year, and 50 Android phones predicted to be available by the end of 2010, has lead analysts to wonder, if this trend can continue and surpass the smartphone giants like RIM, Apple, and microsoft.

Articles talking about Androids success are easy to come by, but one article I read with an argument to predict Andriod's failing was that of Mike Elgan, journalist for Datamation. He claims that Android can't overcome Apple if they can't surpass what he calls, “the only three rules that matter in today's market”: brand appeal, simplicity and applications. No doubt, the iPhone has those down but aren't there other rules that can make a difference? Do people not also enjoy utility, and versatility. What?! You mean you can use any media play available and not be tied to iTunes?! What?! You can plug in with a regular USB cable?! I don't want to say that any android phone can beat the iPhone because of that, but there are other reasons for people to care about what devices they buy. You can view the article here:
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/mowi/article.php/12069_3849121_1/Why-Android-Could-Fail.htm

Another important topic to address is that Android is not really Google's brand. Although the two are undeniably linked I feel it's important to look at what Android really is. Google purchased Android in 2005 and then in 2007 Google initiated the Open Handset Alliance (a consortium of 65 firms for developing open standards for mobile devices). When Android was launched it was through OHA under the open-source Apache License. Google is simply a member of the alliance. You can visit there site here: http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/

How is Google involved in the mobile device market? Google provides the same thing they've always provided: a simple reliable search engine, a rockin' map application, various other web-based productivity tools, and now a couple of cellphones (G1, Nexus One) that were designed by Google, built by HTC, and run by the Android OS. Okay, now we know where Google stands in all of this. The question I would ask is, “Does Android help Google's brand?”.

It seams to me that by creating the OHA and releasing Android through this consortium of companies who are committed to “greater openness in the mobile ecosystem”, Google has not only given themselves a backdoor in case Android flops, but they've also bolstered their brand image as the company who is working to bring fairness to the internet. Google isn't riding on Androids success, but they will need to solidify loyalty in their brand, and I believe that they know just the points to touch on to make that a reality.

Positioning and Brand Basics

If I'm going to be working as a creative in an industry that has such stiff competition will the methods that I've read about this week apply just the same when I brand myself, and how will I position myself to be the best at what I do in the minds of my costumers?

Something that I've been thinking about as I read through this is how is this information going to be useful to me when I get out of school. I definitely don't want to be a marketing person, but as I though about it I noticed a few things that could change the way I think about marketing. Firstly there seems to be a close relationship between how we sell a product and how we influence the people around us. We can position ourselves in the minds of the people around us to be, for example, the go-to-guy for answers about online shopping carts. I would simply need to announce that I have that sort of information and then label myself as that person, “eCart Andy”. As long as those people haven't already heard of a specialist such as the one I created I could become the one credible source for people's online shopping cart questions, and in turn make a profit when I offer e-commerce web services.