QUARTERLY OF THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA SUMMER 2017 Design IS Business SMA n CHAIR’S REPORT n SIT QUARTERLY OF THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA SUMMER 2017 ® Publisher Executive Editor Sr. Creative Director Advertising Annual Subscriptions IDSA Mark Dziersk, FIDSA Karen Berube IDSA Within the US $85 555 Grove St., Suite 200 Managing Director IDSA 703.707.6000 Canada & Mexico $100 Herndon, VA 20170 LUNAR | Chicago 703.707.6000 x102 [email protected] International $150 P: 703.707.6000 [email protected] [email protected] F: 703.787.8501 Subscriptions/Copies Single Copies www.idsa.org Advisory Council Contributing Editor IDSA Fall/Yearbook $50+ S&H Gregg Davis, IDSA Jennifer Evans Yankopolus 703.707.6000 All others $25+ S&H Alistair Hamilton, IDSA [email protected] [email protected] 678.612.7463 The quarterly publication of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), INNOVATION provides in-depth cover- age of design issues and long-term trends while communicating the value of design to business and society at large. DESIGN IS BUSINESS 20 Good Design Is Good 44 SIT as a Creativity Tool IDSA AMBASSADORS Business in New Product Design By Jeevak, IDSA By Frank Grunwald, L/IDSA, and 3M Design, St. Paul, MN Drew Boyd Cesaroni Design Associates Inc., Glenview, IL; 22 The Future of Innovation & Design—Newell Brands: Santa Barbara, CA Onward IN EVERY ISSUE Covestro, LLC North America, Pittsburgh, PA By James F Caruso 4 Chair’s Report Crown Equipment, New Bremen, OH By Megan Neese, IDSA Dell, Round Rock, TX 25 Business & Design Speak the Same Language 6 IDSA HQ Eastman Chemical Co., Kingsport, TN By Marlisa Kopenski By Daniel Martinage, CAE LUNAR, San Francisco, Chicago, Munich, 28 How Design Should Meet 8 From the Editor Hong Kong Business By Mark Dziersk, FIDSA McAndrews, Held & Malloy, Ltd., Chicago, IL Metaphase Design Group Inc., St. Louis, MO By Brian Matt 10 Design Defined By Brennan Gudmundson, IDSA Pip Tompkin Design, Los Angeles, CA 31 Three Ways Business TEAGUE, Seattle, WA Can Create Enduring Design 11 Book Review Solutions By Mark Dziersk, FIDSA Teknor Apex, Pawtucket, RI By Paul Metaxatos, IDSA THRIVE, Atlanta, GA 12 Beautility By Tucker Viemeister, FIDSA Tupperware, Orlando, FL FEATURES 15 A Look Back Charter supporters indicated in bold. 34 IDSA Student Merit Winner’s By Vicki Matranga, H/IDSA 2017 Showcase For more information about becoming an Element of Surprise: Sofia Frilund, IDSA Ambassador, please contact IDSA at 703.707.6000. Addressing a Real Need: Chloe Georgiades, IDSA The Fabric of Our Lives: Judy Leung, IDSA Driving Curiosity: Claire Puginier, S/IDSA Shooting for the Moon: Erin Rice, IDSA Left: Student Merit Award work by Judy Leung, IDSA. See p. 38. INNOVATION is the quarterly journal of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), the QUARTERLY OF THE INDUSTRIAL DESIGNERS SOCIETY OF AMERICA SUMMER 2017 Advertisers’ Index INNOVATION professional organization serving the needs of US industrial designers. Reproduction in whole or in part—in any form—without the written permission of the publisher is prohibited. The DESIGN IS BUSINESS SUMMER 2017 1 2LA Design IS Business opinions expressed in the bylined articles are those of the writers and not necessarily those 5 Autodesk SMA n CHAIR’S REPORT n SIT of IDSA. IDSA reserves the right to decline any advertisement that is contrary to the mission, goals and guiding principles of the Society. The appearance of an ad does not constitute 48 IDSA International Design Conference 2017 an endorsement by IDSA. All design and photo credits are listed as provided by the sub- c4 LUNAR mitter. INNOVATION is printed on recycled paper with soy-based inks. The use of IDSA and FIDSA after a name is a registered collective membership mark. INNOVATION (ISSN c3 Mixer Group No. 0731-2334 and USPS No. 0016-067) is published quarterly by the Industrial Designers c2 Pip Tompkin Society of America (IDSA)/INNOVATION, 555 Grove St., Suite 200, Herndon, VA 20170. 7 Prototype Solutions Group Periodical postage at Sterling, VA 20164 and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to IDSA/INNOVATION, 555 Grove St., Suite 200, Herndon, VA 7 Radius 20170, USA. ©2017 Industrial Designers Society of America. Vol. 36, No. 2, 2017; Library of Congress Catalog No. 82-640971; ISSN No. 0731-2334; USPS 0016-067. A LOOK BACK ODD BUSINESS, THIS INDUSTRIAL DESIGN “The industrial designer, once just a cosmetician to industry, now offers a ‘total service.’ This can include anything from the redesign of a product to redesign of the corporation that produces it. ” —Seymour Freedgood, “Odd Business, This Industrial Design,” Fortune, February 1959 oday’s industrial designers advise clients who face Designers as Stylists and Salesmen global complexities and intense competition in a Peace provided a golden opportunity for designers as industry T digital world that requires fewer physical artifacts. At returned to production to propel an expanding consumer the same time, designers try to balance as the ground shifts economy unseen since 1929. A few years after two nuclear under their feet in their own operating environment: teens bombs ended the war in 1945, designer and author George launch products and companies, business schools embed Nelson, FIDSA, explained the value of design to business design thinking and established design firms are acquired under these new conditions. He had introduced the flamboyant by giant management consultant agencies. As experiences founders of the profession (and no doubt inspired many young replace three-dimensional products, designers, trained to be men to enter the field in hopes of earning those quoted fabulous form shapers, might ponder, “This isn’t what I signed up for.” fees!) with his February 1934 article, “Both Fish and Fowl,” in How did designers get on this path? Looking back at Fortune magazine. In July 1949, to this same readership, he the road traveled uncovers some signs missed along the suggested a more fruitful partnership for design and business way. The industrial design profession is nearly 100 years in his article “Business and the Industrial Designer”: old. The first practitioners emerged after World War I and It has been the glib assumption of most manufacturers and coined the term “industrial design” by the late 1920s for their designers that the prime function of industrial design is the talent in improving the appearance of machine-made goods creation of added sales appeal. Actually this is a temporary to entice purchasers and build sales. World War II changed and superficial aspect of the designer’s activity, far less culture and business, and designers evolved from stylists important in a long-term sense than his part in the job of to strategists. During the late 1940s and ’50s, designers reintegrating a society shattered by the explosive pressure explored possible alternative futures for their work. of a new technology on institutions unable to cope with it. … It is entirely possible for a man with the ability and the integrity to establish a position as a member of a company’s policy-making group, with freedom to make his influence felt not only on product design but on all matters of general policy that affect design. It is at this level that the topflight designer can really earn his fee, for his design activity can then be integrated with the long-term, consistent policy he has helped to make. If the designer is to exert a genuinely Left: Futuristic Desk Clock, c. 1944, by Jon W. Hauser, FIDSA, an indus- trial stylist. In 1937, when he was 19, Hauser was the youngest designer hired by GM. He came to Chicago in 1943 to work at Sears. This chalk and ink drawing likely dates from the wartime years when many design- ers, who considered themselves stylists, imagined exciting products for the future. He joined Barnes & Reinecke in 1945. Author’s collection. INNOVATION SUMMER 2017 15 A LOOK BACK Class led by Alexander Kostellow at the Pratt Institute, c. 1949. MaryEllen Dohrs (foreground) came from California to enter Pratt in 1948. When Harley Earl phoned Professor Kostellow to ask for “a girl,” the only female student had a job waiting at GM before she graduated in 1950. She left GM in 1952 to work at Sundberg-Ferar, where she was on staff until 1957 and continued there as a freelancer for another five years. Courtesy of MaryEllen Dohrs. constructive influence he has to occupy a position in which The Greatest Generation: Organization Men he can operate over a broad range, but the manufacturer Unlike today’s high school graduates with the freedom (and is not going to ask him to do so (there is no reason why he the anxiety) to pursue many directions, most midcentury males should), nor will the designer make the necessary moves shared the common experience of military service. Until the until he sees himself and his profession in the light of this mid-1970s, a young man’s draft status determined his job tradition and its enormous social potential. prospects. For the male-dominated field of industrial design, …the designer will not fulfill his complete function unless these experiences shaped character and provided valuable he sees these trends in advance of the manufacturer and skills and leadership opportunities. During World War II, young assists his client in the formulation of policies that will take designers from small towns saw Japan and Europe (and them into account. This is why industrial design belongs in discovered minimalist design there). And during the Korean the research and development of a manufacturing enterprise War and Cold War years, they created navigational devices and (as some of the leading designers have pointed out) instead instruction manuals or worked as cartographers and draftsmen of being tied completely to sales.