How to Succeed with Style

The October issue of Fast Company magazine features the annual conversation with Masters of Design. Among them, Yves Béhar of Fuseproject, where design brings products to life. Béhar was born in Lausanne from a German mother and  Turkish father and grew up in Switzerland. He studied industrial design in Europe and in the US -- there is plenty of inspiration in both places, I can attest to that.

When asked to describe his style in an interview with designhboom, he responded, "the fusing of storytelling and fluidity, where the potential for technology and poetry, commerce and culture merge with the physical world." His favorite designer from the past was Achille Castiglioni, the co-founder of Castiglioni brothers studio.

The brothers worked from the viewpoint that design must restructure an object's function, form and production process, and applied this maxim to every work that they produced. Castiglioni described this process with these words: "Start from scratch. Stick to common sense. Know your goals and means". [emphasis mine]

That is golden advice and the foundation of today's post at The Blog Herald on The Seven Secrets of Highly Successful Bloggers. Maybe it's not by chance that many of my reflections on branding and marketing for blogs are rooted on design. I consider the medium a place where we can create fluid conversations and stories, where the ending resides in the imagination of the user, writer, commenter, and reader.

Design is subjective, just like success. One doesn't set out to become a famous designer -- it's usually the passion and love of the expression that drive the experience out of the pen on paper and prototype to life.

Given the subjectivity of experience design, should our organizations and businesses be created from the inside out, with an eye to the human experience first? Should there be a VP of human design instead of a VP of human resources?

The seven axioms of design according to Béhar:

1. Design is how you treat your customers. If you treat them well from an environmental, emotional, and aesthetic standpoint, you're probably doing good design.
2. Design must be integrated throughout the organization. Design-driven businesses foster creativity and innovation at their core and reward factions typically at odds (marketing and operations or engineering) for working together.
3. Design is not a short term fix. It's a long term engagement that requires you to think about how design affects everything that touches the consumer -- form product to packaging to marketing to retail to take home experience.
4. As in marketing or operations, you must be willing to fail at the design level.
5. Design must be driven from the top. CEOs in most industries must have a true relationship with, and understanding of, the creative side of business.
6. With design, the solution to a problem will be different every time. Doing what your competitors are doing is not the answer. The connection to your customer has to be unique, not formulaic.
7. Never ask the consumer about the future. You can ask them what their aspirations are, but you will not get an answer about what you should do. Design will bring those stories to life.

Whatever your definition of success, however you choose to celebrate, be aware of what it means to you and take the time to celebrate, especially when you know you have persevered through personal setbacks. Béhar's success (in style) is based on a work-for-equity model. What is yours?

[Castiglioni: the Mezzadro Chair; and Paro from Alessi. Hand blown, crystal glass, can be reversed]

Comments

[Karen Hegmann]

Valeria

Great post on a timely subject. I love Yves Behar's description of his work. The fact that his designs combine elements of storytelling is quite interesting. He seems to take an integrated approach to design and is concerned about the way things "flow" together.
To me, design belongs everywhere - not just in products. I love the idea of having VP's of Human Design vs. Human Resources. If more companies were designed in the way that Behar describes, the gap between the worlds of business and creative design would be much smaller.
Co-incidentally, I wrote a post on this subject on my blog yesterday quoting Roger Martin in a previous Fast Company article.

[Carolyn Ann]

I appreciate good design!

I'm just not sure that great design can ever come from a committee. When I think about the history of design, I notice that a single person is usually responsible for the really great designs: from Enzo Ferrari to Raymond Lowey, Frank Gehry to Stephen Holls, via Frank Lloyd Wright and maybe the Greene brothers.

Adequate design and good design can come from a committee, but that's not the same as "great". So I can't agree with Béhar that design should be integral to a corporation. Somebody needs to do the mechanical functionality!

The more I think about that point, the less I like it. When a Wall St research firm, or a ratings agency, or anyone producing financial information, needs to communicate information they need to do it with as little design as possible. The information needs to be presented in as abbreviated a style as possible; this is a design choice, but not in the sense that Béhar means.

I'd also contend that great design deals with the emotional before any consideration is made of the environmental. I consider aesthetic to be part of the emotional "stuff". Environmental concerns are a contemporary political issue, but imposing that as a constraint on good design seems a bit arbitrary.

I vehemently disagree with the idea that CEO's must understand their creative departments or groups. CEO's must know how to get the best out of the people in those departments; they must ensure that the designers understand the corporate strategies and so on. CEO's manage the corporation; they don't design the products. If it's a small company, the CEO is likely to be involved with the design group, but in a large corporation - the CEO probably knows where they sit and that's all.

Steve Jobs, who might be the inspiration for that particular bit of sageness, is a little different to the average CEO. He understands design - but he's a rarity. (They do exist; Enzo Ferrari was another who understood what design means. The Texas-Pacific Group (the guys that used to own Ducati) didn't have a clue about design (and didn't care, either), but the man they put in charge thought he did. He didn't: a consequence was a series of bikes that didn't sell as well as they should have. They were awkward, and obvious and not very exciting. It nearly brought the company down. So, Béhar's contention re CEO's and design needs to be considered with a little suspicion.

Oh, re your really interesting article over on the Blog Herald... I guess I'm the contrarian! :-)

Thanks, as always, for an interesting and informative article.

Carolyn Ann

[Valeria Maltoni]

Karen -- I also love the way he talks about commerce and culture mingling in the physical world. We've gotten so far away from seeing and employing the art of people at work. Often it is about process and system and people serving it, vs. it serving people. I'll have to check out your post and ideas now ;-)

Carolyn Ann -- I'm honored that you would disagree, it means the post was thought-provoking and I am always inspired by your knowledge and ease of conversation. If we stand back from the term CEO for a moment, and substitute "business leader" maybe we can see a different idea. Design and creativity do not happen in a vacuum, and cannot be slapped on like lipstick or a coat of paint. They need to be part of the business plan. The ultimate test of great industrial design is user experience. Is it aesthetically pleasing only, or is it actually functional?

[mvellandi]

I think CEOs should understand design strategies and stay abreast (through visits or correspondence with leaders) of activities within the department when they affect major company actions or movements. An effective CEO is always cognizant of the contributions of each department to company goals and cash flow.

Regarding Design - It's one big word that encompasses so much more. Just like Science, or the mother of all human knowledge and activity: Philosophy.
The more we apply hypotheses and conjectures to meta topics, the more footnotes, asides, and contextual background is needed to provide reason and rationality.

Our perceptual differences of opinion about design, stem from its connection to two schools of thought: Romanticism (mostly form) and Classicism (mostly function).
So we have semantic differences for one, which are somewhat compounded because there's only one word for it in English, and it's modified by an adjective. German, on the other hand, has at least 2-3 words for design. In all, I'd love to go on, but must eat breakfast now.

[Carolyn Ann]

Your articles are always thought provoking, Valeria! :-)

Okay, let's examine the assumption that the CEO, business leader, whomever needs to understand design.

The job of a manager is to set the direction and goals of the firm, and facilitate the completion of the various tasks. They can do this by employing the right people (skilled in the job, etc) ... and I see where the point comes from. And I think it more incorrect than I did before!

Béhar is, maybe, making the assumption - because he's a designer - that all managers should understand design. But he mistakes the role of the manager. I think, and I could be (and probably am) wrong, but I think what he's doing is imposing his understanding of his role into a more general situation; this sweep of the arm betrays his bias.

To continue Béhar's analogy, any CEO I worked for would have to understand network design and operation. They don't: they hire me for that! (With a bit of luck, that is!) The CEO (business leader) just has to understand enough that they can see if the business is served by the network, or not. Likewise, design.

Sorry, I've got to dash. A blog that everyone said "yeah, that's right" wouldn't be much fun would it? Provoking discussion and thought is essential. We can't assume that because someone like Béhar says "it is", that it actually "is".

I'm enjoying this discussion, Valeria! :-)

Carolyn Ann

[NW Guy]

Valeria,

I'm not qualified to pick linguistic nuances but that may be some of the rub on this post. The leader can understand and drive design in two fashions -

1. Be great at design like Jobs, very few of these people.
2. Understand the value of design (like Carolyn Ann suggests) and hire great designers. Ikea? Target? Unfortunately these are also few and far between.

Both of these examples drive design top down, it's just one is hands on and one is hiring the right people. They both "get design" don't they?

Thanks again for the great posts Valeria. If you keep this up I may have to really join the Conversation.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Mario -- ah, you touch upon my sweet spot of language and semantics. Words, or symbols are rooted into history and borrow their efficacy from context. Yes, indeed this is a broad and potentially deep topic. I may share some of the thoughts put forth at the annual philosophy festival in Modena, which my mother attended and blogged about ;-) I know your distinction of form and function resonates with some of my dearest readers (Mike W. for example). I studied (and love) the classics, yet am a Romantic by instinct. Perhaps someone else is willing to pick up your thread and continue the conversation?

Carolyn Ann -- of course, the answer to every question is communications from the communicator's seat, marketing from the marketer's seat... you get the idea. What a great closing you gave us! It brings me back to the main reason for this blog -- the conversation. Thank you.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Bruce:

Yes, if you're not careful, you get involved with us here ;-) Hmmm... the way you explain it one might event substitute design for execution. I'd be curious to see what ideas others have. Would it work?

1. Very few managers can also do/execute it all perfectly. They need to learn to cede some of that control to others/specialists (Carolyn Ann's point)

2. Understand the value of content experts; hire them; get out of their way.

Does it work?