Week 04 - Origination

Class Format

Class began with a review and quiz based on Maeda's third chapter 'Time'. This was followed by group discussion and activities centred around defining notions of brand. Unfortunately I was not present for this and so will be filling out this entry with my personal exploration on the topic.

 

Group Exercise

Reading Quiz

Answer the following questions as succinctly as possible in your own words

1. What is the major benefit of saving time?
   - You can do more.
2. How do designers integrate time into their products?
   - The main examples given were the were the iPod shuffle which removed the time it takes to chose and the progress bar on a computer which shows the passing of time.
3. Explain the relationship between making waiting shorter with making waiting more tolerable?
   - Both have the same effect on the person waiting, a more tolerable wait feels shorter.
4. How can you use your timeline to increase your own efficiency as a designer?
   - A timeline improves productivity.
5. Briefly outline an event or activity in which you are adept at time saving?
   - This blog is a good example (apart from this week). By copy/pasting these questions and answering them here as they come up in class I save myself time later.
6. What part of your design/multimedia process do you need to improve at, in terms of saving time?
   - Hang on, I'll come back to this question. Procrastination.

Thinking Game – Analysing Patterns / Branding

Developing creative thinking techniques.

How many of these brands can you name? - I got seventeen.

 

Research

Video

The Invisible Bicycle Helmet | Fredrik Gertten from Focus Forward Films on Vimeo. I think the the designers here had a similar motivation to our own in that bicycle are for the most part ugly. Their solution for wearing an equally ugly collar is of course not the direction we went, we just decided to put a cover on it. I must say that their research was excellent. Having 10 million dollars to implement their design must have been handy.

Images

This came to me via an RSS feed from 9to5mac. An interesting article, at least what there was of it. This was essentially an excerpt from the original Wall Street Journal article where the link rabbit hole leading to the original was a little too treacherous even me, may have something to do with not being a subscriber. The most telling quote from the article for me was “The value of brand is both art and science.” I always get dubious when an accountant says that something they do is both an art and a science, just makes me think whatever number they are talking about was made up. I did dig a little in search of an ulterior motive, but apart from Interbrand being owned by Omnicom who also owns a bunch of big ass advertising agencies in the U.S... I have to stop myself here, before I follow a very dull train of thought. It was uncanny timing that this article come out of the feeds this week.
Edit : Found the original Wall Street Journal article. While not much longer than the excerpt which came to me it did emphasise the the fact that it is not what a brand is worth, more who you ask what it is worth.

 

Reflection

Brand identity is not a simple thing. It covers all aspects of how a brand appears to the public, both the positive and the negative. In the long term the owners of a brand use various people to manage the image of their brand and designers are just one of those people. Designers are however very important when establishing or forming a brand identity. It is standard marketing practice to spend some time and money on how a product will look before it is put to market.
Time I think was an important topic for Maeda to cover. It is a complicated at best topic for those working in a creative field. It was really tempting to slip in a cliché here, but instead here is a list of pretty much all of them. In this chapter I particularly appreciated Maeda's description of quantitative verses qualitative time. Waiting a short time for example can feel the same as a more enjoyable wait for a longer period.