Design Driven

Professor Tom Barker/UK

Tom BarkerA threefold multidisciplinary model of design - inventor/entrepreneur, professor, and practitioner, Tom Barker is an exemplar of practice what you preach.

This London based global academic, educator, businessman, designer and technologist, has achieved extraordinary success in all areas but is most challenged by continuously innovating fusions of each method, skill and discipline with a liberal dose of sustainability to earth the process outcomes.

Already a respected industrial designer and consultant with several patents to his name, at the remarkably young age of 36, he was appointed Professor and Head of Department School of Architecture & Design, Department of Industrial Design Engineering, Royal College of Art (RCA). He immediately set about restructuring the college’s MA programme to embrace a two-year collaborative multidisciplinary format jointly taught with London’s Imperial College. With

60 multidisciplinary students from 20 countries, it is now listed in Business Week World’s top D-Schools. Tom also teaches in the Design Research Lab (DRL) at the Architectural Association.

His celebrated architecture and design collaborations ambitiously blend art, academia, industry and technology introducing new materials, electronics, digital software and advanced engineering structures to rethink design solutions.

Project works include: the London Eye Ferris Wheel, Zaha Hadid Architects, Richard Rogers Partnership, photovoltaic solar products for BP Solar, Reggiani and Targetti Lighting; Ove Arup, Atelier 1 (engineering), Wilkinson Eyre (architects), Hussein Chalayan (fashion), digital artwork for Langlands & Bell, modular housing, new technologies, alloys and systems on 5 zones of the Millennium Dome; Bluetooth mobile phone headsets and composite technologies for construction in Curvatex. A prolific and commercially successful inventor, Tom holds over 20 patents and is CEO of SmartSlab Ltd., the company that owns his SmartSlab Digital Display system, licensed worldwide.

Tom Barker 
Already a published author, his Weird Scenes From Inside the Goldmine (2007) references the famous Doors of perception in discussing futuristic technologies and his design heroes of old, whilst a new tome on advanced design innovation is due for publication in 2008.

He is an architect of innovative teaching concepts such as “Massclusivity”, Renaissance 2.0, the ‘Marketing Casino’ and the introduction of Myers-Briggs type testing in workshops to breakdown stereotypes and enhance the collaborative process, seminars with a focus on engaging children in design invention such as the recent programme for the RMIT Design Research Institute. Since 2005, his GoGlobal programme has harnessed the goodwill and design skill of both graduate students and professionals around the world in an effort to assist creatives of countries with low GDP’s to drive economic growth through design collaborations and e-commerce delivery.

This all makes for a switched-on leader, engineering the design process in new directions, training the design entrepreneurs of tomorrow, and driving a model in which design practice makes perfect business sense.

You spend a lot time travelling overseas and working collaboratively on a range projects and in diverse locations. Is the life of the design practitioner/educator at this level necessarily a nomadic one?

It’s half nomadic and half intensely communal. Just the base of travelling and staying hotels is nomadic. But usually wherever I am, I’m doing projects with lots of people, either collaborations with colleges or the business work.

How do you choose collaborators, or do they choose you? And what makes a good collaborator?

Good collaborators are people who have a lot of things to offer that are different to what you have yourself. So you are looking for complementary skills. For example, I haven’t done many projects in the US recently because there is not that much that you get from working with US companies and academia that you can’t get in Europe. Whereas Australasia, the African continent, that’s quite different.

Choosing [collaborators] has been a mixture of people approaching me and me identifying areas. For example, with the GoGlobal initiative, I wanted to look at the way in which design could generate wealth in an economy. And so we began that project by looking at the GDP’s of different countries. Quickly, you’re drawn to Africa because of the low GDP. We were unclear about which country to go to, so I got in touch with the United Nations and it turned out that they had a creative industries initiative which had just begun to focus on Africa. We teamed up with them, got some expertise and after research, trips and meetings we settled on doing a pilot study in Ghana. Now, Ghana is not the poorest African state but it does have some very pronounced difficulties and challenges.

There wouldn’t be any point in doing GoGlobal in South Africa for example, because [that country] is doing well on that level although it has some huge equality issues. But one has to be quite realistic about what one can achieve in design terms: Yes, design can generate wealth but it can’t solve things like inequality in a society. But what I have found in graduates, young designers, is that they do want to do something other than just buy Fair Trade coffee. They are interested in seeing if their discipline can make a difference. So they’re more receptive. Interestingly, big business is as well. In many of the projects I have done recently, both in practice and in college, big business has put sustainability and ethics as part of the brief.

Could that be construed as a case of the high end corporate world marketing an ‘easy environmentalism’ to prevailing consumer trends or a genuine response?

Well, I did read somewhere recently that many corporations were spending more marketing the fact that they were sustainable than actually spending their sustainable budgets. And [the Press frequently] questions whether ‘Sustainability is the New Lifestyle Choice’. Because you have to pay more for it. But that said you have to start somewhere.

Wealth creation is a bit easier to measure and I’ve always been interested in helping young graduates get going in my hometown of London, but seeking also to determine if we can give advice to people in other countries, and conceive strategies for how to do it. London is interesting in itself - 28% of London’s economy comes from creative industries but there isn’t anybody who can claim that it is their efforts that have made those industries successful, it just happens that there are a lot of conditions that make it right.

Is that attributable in some way to a view that designers have a mute voice as an industry group or representative confederation?

Yes, I do think so to a degree. There are a lot of older generation designers in the UK at least, who maintain quite a narrow focus, a narrow range of interests. Apart from a few superstars whose names indeed pop out.

What you see now is a younger generation of designers who are much more flexible. They are starting to tap into vehicles like e-commerce, they are looking at things like batch production and they are travelling around the world to find people to make things. I think they are getting more entrepreneurial and that to me is really exciting. Because when disciplines reach a crossroads, they sometimes shrink back into their shell and other times they embrace change. And although design education is still quite traditional with product design, many of the graduates are getting quite adventurous.

Despite having unprecedented skills in global connect and awareness of B2B technologies, is every new graduate an entrepreneur? Can you actually teach creative enterprise/business ingenuity?

The first thing you have to do is to teach designers to be curious. There are certain skills that designers have to learn, but one way to get people to go beyond their basic skill set is to encourage curiosity because it will start bleeding into other areas and generally, they’ll do better things.

One of the things I do when I give talks around the world is to ask the audience who would like to set up a business when they leave. I did that at Tama [University in Japan], to an audience of around 200 students, and one hand went up. If I do it at the RCA, I see maybe 60 hands raised. So there is a huge cultural difference. I think in Australia, UK and most of Europe, the students want to do it, the majority are interested in the entrepreneurial aspect. But it’s certainly the case that they are not getting those skills at [design] college.

I think the biggest mistake is when it is done wrong. It’s one thing to say to someone, just get a job in a consultancy and think about business in 5 years when you know what you are doing. That’s not particularly positive but is it better than telling them to start a business the minute they leave college based on one idea? The reality is that the hit rate is very low.

The trick with e-commerce is that you can basically fly a kite – you can put a web site, sell the prototype of your design, get 100 people interested to invest a $10 deposit, and then off to China to get it tooled up – then the investors can have one. That can work as well. Whatever it takes to get going, do it.

So people might say, well work for someone for ten years, learn from his or her business experience and then set up on your own. But the older one gets, the more is it at risk. You have nothing to lose when you are a graduate.

I do believe though in giving people strategies – and in effect they are rather like life strategies anyhow – how can you get somewhere you want to be? And give people a good understanding of the options.

You look at some of the ‘designerly’ High Streets in Australia – Oxford Street in Sydney, streets in St.Kilda, and in Melbourne city, you’ve already got kids opening stores and selling things in a way that you don’t get in London, largely because it is too expensive.

So [in the UK], we’ve all been forced into the e-commerce model whereas maybe the cost of renting a storefront in Australia is a little bit less – nonetheless, I think there is something going on here that is facilitating the [physical space].

You have a unique position in the triumvirate of design origins and applications: education, entrepreneur/business and design practitioner. How do you rank their compatibilities in the current and emerging landscape?

Five years ago it was really difficult to balance them all. I was effectively trying to hold down three full time jobs. Although I’d done some teaching before, taking on the professorship was quite a shock. It was a course that needed a lot of rejuvenating and attention… Over time, I have worked on the synergies between them all.

So, for example, sometimes I do consulting work and persuade the client that they want to get some sort of futurology work done by the Department. Some of my research has been looking at digital interaction, which is part of my business. So I’ve become much more comfortable about blending elements. Back then, the only way I could get through life was to compartmentalise and I’ve been told that that’s generally how company executives get through the day. I don’t, however, think it was very good for the people around me.

A couple of years ago, I changed the model to allow for much more interference and overlaps between those activities and I think that’s worked out. From a professional point of view, I think my commercial clients quite like that I am a Professor and can give a broader perspective on things.

I was 36 when the RCA made me a Professor, which is very young - probably too young actually. But I had worked so hard in practice that I’d probably gained a lot more experience than most people.

And immediately with my own research, basically I just decompressed - I had almost force-fed design through my own system - suddenly, I had ten years of work and theory I had to try and process. And attempt to work out intellectually what it all meant.

A number of messages came out of that. One, was that I realised I was at least as interested in the collaborative process as I was in the output, but, however great a design process was, for me, it would never excuse a bad output. And the other was a very profound interest in narrative as part of design. Now, narrative as a marketing tool, well, it’s fine, but actually narrative as something that helps you build a solution is even better. If you do that well, then the marketing people use it.

Narrative as brand story is an effective method of differentiation from the competition. Marketing and design: How should they work together?

Well, I was having a similar conversation with Ford a few weeks ago. They have a department that deals with near futures work so they come up with various ideas that get fed into development programmes.

They’re very highly developed with focus group research and information like that but Ford found that they don’t deliver enough innovation. So this near futures material is sort of a skunk works, which puts out a lot of ideas they can’t use, but a few things every now and then become quite useful. I have a love/hate relationship with marketing. Bad marketing is disastrous for everybody including the marketing departments. But good marketing uses the synergy of design, creativity, design ideas. Good marketing people know that you can market a great product brilliantly, but you can’t market a bad product brilliantly. It’s just not possible. I think too that the intelligence of consumers has grown exponentially.

The internet has helped that. Every consumer is a reviewer now.

Absolutely. For me, now I’ve got quite a good reputation, so my clients will generally give me the benefit of the doubt if I am trying to persuade them about something. But even so, a lot of talk can be checked out very quickly. You can’t just stand up and say ‘Believe Me… x thousand housewives are going to buy this because…’ which one could do 10 - 15 years ago. Anyone can go to the internet today and examine those reports. Access to information is encouraging both marketers and designers to be a little more coherent in their claims and aspirations.

One of the things I find so wonderful about design is that you can never know whether something is going to succeed in the marketplace. You can do your best but there’s still a lot of risk involved.

Let’s talk about the origins of SmartSlab, your digital interface blocks. Why was it deemed such a professional risk?

I suppose it was. That’s one that began on the back of a napkin in a dining room. The idea is very simple. A lot of architects wanted to use media in their projects. There wasn’t an easy way of doing that so we sought to develop a digital brick, like a piece of a building that you could build with. Initially, we just used a small amount of money to set up a little company and develop it in parallel with my consulting work.

It did become a risk at a certain point because there comes a stage when your time and financial commitments move from consultancy work where you only do the work if you are paid to something where you are speculating on the basis of jam tomorrow.

So I did see my personal wealth moving from paychecks to shares, which had value on paper but you have to sell them to somebody. And I think that came to head around 2002-3, I was working very, very hard, very long hours, suffering from the stress…

Everyone thinks it’s very exciting being a swashbuckling entrepreneur, but you have to cope with the stress. There were probably 6 periods over 8 years where SmartSlab could have gone under. And there were a couple of incidences where I had put my house up for collateral… but that’s what you do. Once again, you cheat failure.

That’s an interesting turn of phrase to use – ‘Cheating failure’ rather than achieving success.

Yes! It’s about endurance. My bank manager used to call me ‘nine inch nails’, and when I asked him why, he said, ‘whenever you get knocked down you manage to pop back up. It’s like someone’s put nails through your feet.’

So you spring back up again. After four or five years of this, I just did it because it’s what I did the day before and it’s how you live.

But, in a way with these stories, when you’ve lived it, there are two approaches to take. One, is you hide it all and just give people the good news story which isn’t such a bad strategy because if anybody had gone into these sorts of things knowing what was involved, they wouldn’t do it so you don’t want to deter anyone. Or the other, is you give people the Realpolitik and at least warn them about what’s going to come up.

In terms of the dialogue discrepancies between business and design, if you can talk to a businessperson of your own experience in the realm of commerce it may in fact heighten the commonalities rather than the historic communication differences.

It’s in the realm of life skills of designers. One of the things that I advise designers to do is only talk about what you know. And all of those things matter in a presentation. So go and find out about the company, about the product, don’t ever ‘wing it’. Don’t answer questions you can’t. These days I’m used as much as a dog-and-pony show for investors or potential clients with SmartSlab as for what I am actually contributing to the design development. But I do know what I am talking about. I have spent a lot of time with business people.

At the end of the day, most people in business are fairly bored a lot of the time, particularly in finance. When we go to The City in London, to raise money, we do the business meeting, but before and after, and sometimes during, they all want to talk about their collection of cars, or their interior architecture interest or art, and you can work with that. I think that sometimes people forget that.

I’ve never gone into a company to sell them an idea. I’ve always gone in to find out what they might be interested in and then quickly respond with an idea that has some resonance. The chances of going in cold with an idea that is going to hit all the right buttons are so slim that you may as well not bother. I think that designers tend to forget that any company has an annual model, so there are budgets committed each year, there are particular strategic plans and the MD is not going to want anything that doesn’t fit the plan.

Students are pretty smart about these things now. I’ve noticed that the quality of presentations by students is constantly getting improving. They don’t always present brilliantly themselves, but they are better at structured argument. And that is important as well, because whomever you are trying to persuade has to then report to someone else usually. And if you have made them feel good in a meeting but when you’ve left they can’t remember what the point was you were trying to make, then you haven’t succeeded.

You’ve talked about the dangers of an unmanaged digital future and when you designed SmartSlab, you addressed licensing agreements and ethical concerns. Is it the designer’s responsibility to build in controls or at least perceive the potential for commercial overtake, without censoring self or product?

Yes to an extent. We have projects that we have been discussing involving SmartSlab with China. On the ground, it is pretty much impossible to show live content because the government propaganda department need to check the content. There are a couple of media providers who basically have the franchise to do that for them. But real time footage is very hard. I think the Olympics will be a big exception to that.

Yes to an extent. We’ve got loads of media issues and one of the things we are doing with important large sites of development is making sure that we have veto over content in the last resort. But there are some realms we still can’t control. For example, we might be handing over 10% to public services, which might include local authorities and they can basically put what they like up in those situations.

The way I’m tending to view SmartSlab and those kinds of digital media at the moment is rather like a TV channel. We have the sections we are in charge of which is usually the programme content, and then there are the advertising components, or the components that belong to other people. We can limit the slots, and we can get them to sign contracts specifying certain limits as to what they can and can’t show. But, then it’s hands-off.

So most of the projects have maybe 10-15% advertising content. But what we do manage to do with the programming content is effectively set up a curated schedule so within the rest of it, we can have say, a third comprised of artwork, a third public information… We have a project going in Manchester at the moment where the BBC has given us access to their content for 40% of the airtime.

How important is technology in changing the designer’s purview? Is it an essential inclusion in the way we educate, create and produce?

I think technology finally, in my mind, is starting to become a means to an end but it has taken a long time. You see it, whether it is classics like Apple, constantly taking functionality out of their products. Even the Asian manufacturers are realising that they have overdosed us on features. The great thing is that then puts designers in quite a strong position. It means that rather than the technical department saying, you have to have this that or the other, they can actually cherry-pick the bits that may be interesting.

We’ve just finished a big project for Hutchison Whampoa [3 network] looking at the future of mobile phones. They saw the future not as mega-PDA’s but as a simple mobile phone that does one thing really well. They also saw the applications being driven by popular web sites. We had teams looking at a Facebook phone, and even a Second Life phone, that kind of interactivity.

You refer to a “living media”, driven by a kind of wiki-based content in relation to SmartSlab. How does this work?

With SmartSlab, ‘living content’ to us is about the fact that there are so many media outlets at the moment unless everyone on this planet is running a TV production studio; we are not going to generate enough content. So where is the content coming from?

One answer is much of the web 2.0 stuff, like youtube, is generating a lot but it’s still not enough. It’s also not contextual. One of the SmartSlab projects in development is for cubes to go into Squares in cities around Japan which during the day would be used for advertising and branding and then for a couple of hours in the evening, they’d basically be localised youtube sites. People can bring their photos, and images, video from their handset and beam them to display. But then you need automated programmes for the curating aspect.

So the ‘living content’ to us is a mixture of web 2.0 plus code that effectively becomes a curator. External sensors and responses are involved. For example, the cube knows whether it’s day or nightime, weather conditions, whether there is crowd or not.

We have a human tracking system- we can even work out if the person looking at the display is male or female because we can measure their body heat. We can follow their eyes… some of that is quite intrusive. But in the end, it just becomes another set of tools. The designer still has to come up with some great designs, still has to think about how the interactivity will work.

The real vs the ideal in design is particularly relevant in envisioning large scale design solutions like the London Eye Ferris Wheel. Did this begin life as a creative prototype or an engineering framework - the reconciliation of what is possible and what is practical?

Originally, that was a very broad stroke concept. David Marks, the architect I worked with said: ‘I want largest ferris wheel ever.’ Then he said: ‘we want the most elegant, the simplest.’ And everything just followed on from that.

We spent a lot time attempting to power it from the tidal Thames, which we couldn’t get to work because at low tide, the Thames is only 1 metre deep. We also looked at turbines. Then we got onto the capsules. David had always wanted ‘eggs’ that were contained rather than hanging gondolas so at the point that I was involved, that was a given. And it was an issue of trying to figure out how that would work. It demanded a whole new paradigm in terms of design solutions because the gondola is quite smart – gravity fixes problems of overturn. We had to figure out how to stop people falling into the Thames, stop them pushing each other into the machinery and it became a natural progression.

The thing about those sorts of projects, by the time they’re underway, the resources are so huge, every time you come to a problem, you crush it with man and mind power.

It was also a triumph against planners and city authorities. I’m still stunned that it got planning permission. At the time, there was nothing particularly interesting happening on the skyline of London and it opened the floodgates to everything. Now there are all sorts of interesting things happening on the river and the skyline. Being the first is a pain the backside actually.

In designing the Master-Planning Toolbox for Zaha Hadid, you adapted modules and code from first person gaming engines for ID’s Quake III, which then became a platform for the Langlands & Bell Tate Turner Prize piece in 2004. Does technology represent the new nexus of art and design?

Well, I’ve been peddling the phrase ‘Renaissance 2.0’. I think historically, the Enlightenment was more important than the Renaissance because that is the point at which experimentation started to drive creativity. And one of the things I advise a designer is to never stop experimenting. Otherwise, you risk becoming a dried out delivery merchant.

So the Renaissance was heavily focussed around a few key cities such as Florence, and parts of France, this Renaissance 2.0 concept I’ve been playing with is basically a digitised version allowing people to hook in all over the place. E-commerce also allows for the sale of bespoke pieces whether it is art, or small enterprises offering little services such as bidding for design job tenders.

In Thailand for example, we created some items around a concept called “Massclusivity” - mass–produced but exclusive goods, which tied together art and design and influences from different cultures. Some of these designs were produced in small batches up to fifty, produced in Thailand and sold in the UK. It’s also a tremendous way for students to get their designs manufactured.

Now there’s a lot more disposable income around the world these days, and it’s basically what people can do with their wealth to continue to differentiate themselves. Everybody wants to be unique and surrounding ourselves by a few one-offs is quite a helpful way of doing it. I’m seeing another symptom of the Renaissance, whether it is 1.0 or 2.0 in the emergence of the patron. And I really like that. You see this very much in London. The sudden appearance of some extremely wealthy people who want one-offs and are commissioning specialised design pieces. It’s Zaha [Hadid] producing a chair for £200,000, but there’s also kids doing it as well – you’re seeing [the patrons] hoovering these designs up at Art College shows.

Five years ago, I was imagining that flexible, low volume manufacturing was going to be the silver bullet for new designers, and that hasn’t really delivered. There aren’t many people selling rapid prototyping objects. Perhaps FOC (Freedom of Creation) is the only outfit that comes to mind immediately. What has really had an impact is the business of patronage, people genuinely wanting to commission and buy interesting pieces. I see this happening on a lot of levels. The model of using e-commerce to connect people and also sell direct to customers is thus very powerful.

Does the global marketplace and cultural relativism considerations impact on your creativity as a designer?

On one level, it’s pretty hard to come up with a product that has universal appeal. There are some basic differences, which are difficult to understand. For instance, the US consumer prefers the ‘clamshell’ cell phone to other models, which is a challenge for companies such as Hutchison Whampoa.

Now, from another perspective, I’ve been doing the GoGlobal programme in various countries around the world for some years now and we’re at the point where we are bringing the parties into a kind of loose federation where different institutions and different industries can opt into different nodes to deal with global issues. So the big one is Hot/Dry Climates which has particular resonance for Australia, Future Food is in there under Health and Wellbeing, Design Enterprise in developing countries, D-cities… so the point about this is that we see by bringing in the best from institutions around the world and enlisting inter-governmental support we can actually crack some really, really serious global issues through design, or at least have a really good stab at it.

So collaboration has a very broad and inclusive template now as the basis of challenging design propositions for future contexts. But can you teach collaboration?

Collaborating isn’t necessarily about sharing. What is easier for me to see and through teaching I think we can resolve this, is this kind of repression of creativity that goes on. From a fairly early age, we are encouraged to look at the world from an objective point of view and so daydreaming and fantasy gets repressed. It’s interesting actually because when we do the personality assessments, a lot of the personalities that we find amongst our students are the quite extroverted, intuitive, day-dreamy ones. You could say they’re stereotypical designers but they aren’t the sort of personalities that get squashed by education systems. I guess what it does mean is that there are lot of people who would make great designers but they have had it rather beaten out of them by the system, I suppose. They’re a little bit weaker when they are getting ‘led astray’ by teachers.

Having taught at lots of different colleges around the world, I can say that the Australian and European system doesn’t really have anything to worry about. The Chinese system is a bit disastrous at the moment, even at university level. The Korean system is disastrous up to university level, but because it is disastrous to that level they have problems at universities too. And Japan is quite troubled as well. It is curious though because at some point, I think the Japanese higher education system itself overcomes the problems of junior education. Korea doesn’t really know how to unravel the students at university. China is regimented all the way through.

We collaborate with a couple of universities in China and they are fantastic partners but it is interesting to see a country industrialising so fast and bringing in so many skills in terms of quality and manufacture but they’re using design education models from 30-40 years ago. So are a lot of countries in the West. It’s one of the things I have been trying to do and that is move on to the next generation [of design education].

In discussions just prior to this interview, you remarked that the educator’s challenge in design is how one frames the question.

It’s a fairly cruel process really, to say that for every 100 designers that graduate there’ll be 5 that manage [to be successful designers] – the rest should just go work in a bar…

What I have noticed as well is a lot of people going into design management and big corporations as well – to pursue design related fields. Then they may disappear and a few years later, they reappear as directors, or something quite important again, procuring design or directing it whilst the people who left college as superstars are still hacking out chairs in the garage. So, I think that it is recognising that there are many different routes you can take to success and I don’t think that the education is always that clear there.

Then there is the other kind of educative variable, which is the more personal, psychological element of how to collaborate and how to cope with the different personalities, disciplines... There’s also the more business orientated elements, what allows you to secure a fairly complex project from a client, what are the benefits of being able to - even if you are not offering a technical component – being able to find that, or resource that within the package that you are offering.

The culture of creativity is increasingly demanding multidisciplinary working methods. A, because the problems are getting harder and B, because the quality of the unidisciplinary approach is very high, so how do you get an edge?

Most great designs have some type of technical edge to them somewhere unless they are some kind of design classic. So there are all these elements to consider [in framing the question].

What are the challenges for the designer in the next ten years?

I think a really big one is learning to cope with randomness. As we are getting increasingly connected, world events are getting more and more random. Embracing it as well in their careers and personal choices. And that applies for everybody, I suppose.

Strategies for maintaining curiosity will also play a part, more important than skill sets and that sort of thinking. Once you’ve lost your curiosity then you have lost so much, you just become another delivery agent.

Getting used to the idea of travelling a lot too! There’s a lot of work out there but you have to travel to do it. I do about 20 long haul and 20 short haul flights a year. I’m based in London and most of my clients originally were in the UK, but the internet has actually expanded my client base internationally. Serious meetings still have to be done face-to-face. So, I think the irony is that the increased connectivity gives you access to more people remotely, but in the end, you still have to go to see them.

Related Links

www.designcreate.info
www.rca.ac.uk
www.aadrl.net
www.smartslab.co.uk

Lani Steinberg for Design Victoria
12 December 2008


Page Rating

Your rating:

More Hot Topics

View all
MSFW Breakfast Series 2009
The Melbourne Spring Fashion Week Breakfast Series invited retailers, business leaders, marketers and designers to find out what it takes to create and maintain meaningful customer relationships.
Design Capital 2009
Strategically balanced between commercial and design sectors, the 2009 Design Capital Speaker Series revealed an unparalleled line up of guests from around Australia and the world.
agIdeas 2009
Watch the video roundup of the agIdeas 2009 International Design Week, which highlights the diversity of speakers over the full three days.
Cool Hunting in Conversation
Presented by Portable, in partnership with Design Victoria, nearly 90 people attended Cool Hunting in Conversation to hear what key note speaker Tim Yu, Editor of coolhunting.com in the US, had to say.
designEX
designEX celebrated the very best in design innovation. Design Victoria launched What is Eco-design? at D4S – Design for Sustainability, and supported an impressive line up of speakers during Day 2.
Five Years On Launch
With over 100 attendees from the Victorian design and business community, Design Victoria launched the research publication entitled Five Years On. Victoria’s Design Sector 2003-2008 on 5 December 2008 in Melbourne.
New Retail Report
Although Melbourne is well-known as a shopping destination with its winding laneways and charming arcades, speakers at Design Victoria’s recent seminar shared fresh insight into some of the innovative retail experiences on offer in Melbourne and overseas.
Growth By Design
To tap into the mindset of the top 100 Fast Growth Start Up companies, download Professor Kosmas Smyrnios’ research paper “2008 Fast Starters: Adoption of and barriers to the Application of Design”.
Sense Of Place
Woodhead Architects presents 21st century design trends that define the airport ‘place’ to an integral social and commercial urban hub.
AGIdeas 2008
AGIdeas ‘Advantage’ Business Breakfast presented case studies and guest speakers that articulated the tangible benefits good design can offer to business, building links between design and business communities.
Design Talks
The online forum to discuss the research report Designing Our Future has now closed. Read what interested parties had to say about the findings.
Commercialisation Australia
The new Commercialisation Australia program offers hope and help for organisations trying to develop innovative new products, processes and services.
Accelerating Business Competitiveness
According to a recent report, failure to innovate will see Victoria fall behind the rest of the world on a range of economic and social measures.
Design for Everyone 2010
The State of Design Festival is seeking expressions of interest for events to be included in the 2010 Design for Everyone program.
Our Designers of Tomorrow
Visit designingourfuture.info to contribute your thoughts and feedback to the conversation.
2009 Design Challenge: Winner Announced
The Polytactics team has been announced as the winner of the inaugural RMIT Design Research Institute’s 2009 Design Challenge.
A Sprinkling Of Grants Wisdom
Intent on growing her fashion design business, fashion designer and entrepreneur Sprinkle applied for a grant through the Textile Clothing and Footwear Small Business Program.
Can I Get Assistance?
There are a number of ways you can find out about grants that are right for your design business.
A Year In Design
A Year In Design, the official 2009 Australian International Design Awards Yearbook is now available.
No Introduction Required
A name synonymous with knitwear and homewares, Luca Missoni needs no introduction.
Etienne Mineur
French graphic designer Étienne Mineur has developed websites for top fashion houses Issey Miyake and Chanel.
Make Design Key
Successful companies use design to create great products, distinguish themselves from rivals and build loyalty and credibility.
321 Water is a Crowd Favourite
321 Water recently received the People’s Choice Vote on the ABC program, The New Inventors.
Get Me Out Of Here!
There is plenty of support to help designers get export plans off the ground (and overseas!)
The 2009 Melbourne Design Guide
Special offer: Design Victoria members can purchase the guide at a special discounted price of $35 (RRR $40).
Paper Trail To Success
The first book to be published on carbon neutral stock created a watershed in the paper industry.
The Silver Bullet
Companies that are succeeding on a global level are putting design at the centre of everything they do.
So Suite
AGDA’s new blog encourages design comment and review and gives graphic designers an opportunity to share their thoughts.
Amanda Levete
Amanda Levete has galvanized an international reputation as an architect at the vanguard of practice and research.
Sustainable Shopping
A unique shopping trolley design may be the solution that ensures reusable bags are truly green.
Abundant Australia
'Abundant Australia' featured at the 11th International Venice Architecture Biennale.
Shanghai World Expo 2010
Australia’s $83 million pavilion at Shanghai World Expo 2010 provides local businesses with exciting opportunities.
For Alessi
Thousands of designers from all over the world compete for the opportunity of designing for Alessi.
Protect Your Assets
A recent high profile court case highlights the importance of IP protection for Australian designers.
The Politics of the Plate
Food trends create opportunities for design.
Five Years On By Design
Michele Azzopardi, Director of Design Victoria, speaks to ABC By Design about Five Years On.
Design Innovation Ladder
The number of businesses in Victoria investing in design is positive however greater opportunities exist.
Design in Turbulent Times
Companies looking to beat the global economic downturn and improve their financial health could benefit from design.
Design and SEO
So you think you’ve got a well-designed website? Brilliant graphics and a cool bit of Flash. Big deal. Unless it appears on page one of a Google search, it doesn’t mean a thing.
Creating Sustainable Business
Businesses that include measures to meet ecological concerns in their planning are finding that they not only sleep better for it, but that clients have more reasons to choose their offerings.
Design Anthropology
What can design anthropology add to your design practice?
Creating Master Minds
From the multi-layered artworld of Fluxus to the strata of design research, Professor Ken Friedman’s contribution to the knowledge economy is globally renowned.
Design Thinking
Design-led thinking can transform the way businesses develop products and services. Tim Brown explains how increasingly more companies are embracing design for competitive advantage
Guerilla Warfare
As the senior visual designer and concept artist at Amsterdam-based game development studio Guerrilla Games, Roland Ijzermans maps parallel universes and charts visually arresting cinematic backdrops.
The Real McCoy vs. Copy Cat Acts
Take your pre-existing ideas about intellectual property protection out of the too hard basket. You can protect your designs if you know what you’re doing – and you do it right first time around.
How Ab Sees Design
Whether through nature or nurture, design is certainly elemental in Ab Rogers’ stock in trade.
Dressed for Success
You’ve registered a trade mark so you’re covered if a competitor copies your creative ideas and designs, right? Not necessarily. Have you thought about registering your designs? And what about patent protection and copyright?
Ahead of the Games
In the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games all eyes are focused on Beijing, and the visual identities devised and designed by Professor Min Wang, and his team.
The Changing Face of Retail
Within an architectural and design context, the Melbourne Retail Strategy seeks to establish partnerships to explore opportunities to create retail-driven landmarks within the city.
Trevor Choy — IP Case Study
It isn't easy to hang on to copyright ownership - clients will often insist that it is given immediately to them for free. In the last 14 years that Trevor Choy has been involved with the design community, he has worked with designers on a few strategies that can sometimes help a designer retain copyright.
SeyMour Ideas
Behind the expansive, original thinking and creative ingenuity of Richard Seymour is a profound design common sensibility.
Culture Klatsch
Still fuelled by the feather-ruffling politics, creativity and collaborative adrenaline of its core members, multidisciplinary pioneers Chicks on Speed, take their self-proclaimed ‘project’ to new highs.
Growth by Design
Find out the seven key design applications featured in BRW 2008 Fast Starters Flagship Edition from interviewing the 100 fastest growing start-up companies.
Ideas to Inc.
The award-winning business Cato Purnell Partners has experienced extraordinary success with offices in four continents around the world. Regardless of culture or context, it seems that design distinction speaks a universal language.
Law and Design: Do you use protection?
Trevor Choy, a Leading Lawyer for Australian Intellectual Property, presents us with a current example of some of the challenges faced in protecting corporate identities.
Championing Design — Sir George Cox
When Britain’s Treasury commissioned Sir George Cox to lead an examination into creativity in business, it did not anticipate the findings the crusading knight would ultimately table.
Designing for a Sustainable Future
A more sustainable future depends on businesses working together with designers says Professor Ryan.
PIQET
Victorian innovation is providing designers around the world with a tool to inform their decisions on packaging.
Design is on the money
While few have the luxury of taking money for granted, how many of us think about the design that goes into the banknotes you hand over at each purchase?
Innovation leader backs design
Why design? George Pappas, Chairman of the Committee for Melbourne, has joined the growing number of Victorian leaders recognising the essential role of design in a company’s ability to innovate and respond to change.
Springboard — Entrepreneurship for Australian designers
Springboard is a mentoring program that will enable Australia’s most promising furniture, accessories and homewares designers to develop their professional careers in local and international markets.
State of Design 2008
The State of Design Festival is Victoria’s peak design event. The Festival will cover many cross-disciplinary design agendas relating to the profession of design and the marketplace that it provides to.
Premier's Design Awards 2008
The Premier’s Design Awards recognises excellence in the realm of design practice in Victoria and communicates the value of good design to a broad public and business audience both locally and internationally.
Shanghai Design Biennale — September 2008
The Victorian Government is seeking expressions of interest from Victorian design firms to take part in an Industry Capability Mission to the Shanghai Design Biennale in September 2008.
Design Gets Down to Business
AGIdeas ‘Advantage’ Business Breakfast presented case studies and guest speakers that articulated the tangible benefits good design can offer to business, building links between design and business communities.
Jeremy Moon — AGIdeas Review
At just 25 years of age, Jeremy Moon founded the company that has become New Zealand’s leading outdoor clothing producer and exporter.
Richard Seymour — AGIdeas Review
Richard Seymour is one of Europe’s best-known product designers. Founding their award-winning design consultancy in 1984, Seymour and partner Dick Powell have built Seymour Powell into one of the most powerful ‘change engines’ in the design business.
Professor Min Wang — AGIdeas Review
Professor Min Wang is Dean of the School of Design at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), one of China’s most prestigious art schools and is Design Director for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Committee.
Calling all writers...
Design Victoria is seeking to establish a pool of writers that will work on a casual basis to write content for our website and other media - for more details and to apply please read on.
Energise Enterprise 2008
Victoria’s Small Business Festival comprises an extensive program of events throughout metropolitan and regional Victoria aimed at providing inspiration, ideas and information on how to start or grow a business.
Melbourne Spring Fashion Week Breakfast Series
Learn what it takes to create and forge a relationship between your customers and your brand – from the temptation and seduction of courting, through to love and marriage, and how to ward off separation.
Energise Enterprise 2009
Over 400 business events throughout Victoria during August!
Coming Soon - The Case for Export How to Kit
As part of the development of this exciting new resource we welcome your feedback. Please take a few minutes to complete this online survey to go into the draw to win a $50 voucher from Metropolis Bookstore.
Melbourne Spring Fashion Week
Design Victoria is pleased to announce its partnership with Melbourne Spring Fashion Week.
New Retail Report
Although Melbourne is well-known as a shopping destination with its winding laneways and charming arcades, speakers at Design Victoria’s recent seminar shared fresh insight into some of the innovative retail experiences on offer in Melbourne and overseas.
Education Survey
Design Victoria is calling on students to participate in an important study on design education in Victoria.
Design Challenge — bushfire solutions
RMIT Design Research Institute invites you to contribute your creative thinking to the urgent and topical issue of bushfire events.
Fast Starters — Fostering Design & Innovation
To tap into the mindset of the top 100 Fast Growth Start Up companies, download Professor Kosmas Smyrnios’ research paper “2008 Fast Starters: Adoption of and barriers to the Application of Design”.
agIdeas 2009
Now in its 19th year, agIdeas is a major event on the design calendar, attracting a sell-out audience from the design and business community and the general public from across Australia and beyond.
State of Design 2009
State of Design is pleased to announce Festival dates for the next three years. Mark your diary for an annual winter design celebration: 15-25 July 2009, 14-24 July 2010, 20-30 July 2011.
Beware Free Riders
As a graphic designer, you expect to be paid for the work you do for clients and agencies. Payment disputes often arise when copyright and written contracts are afterthoughts to a design project. It pays to understand and protect your rights by acting early.
Eco-Design for Designers
Eco-design is not a future phenomenon - it is here now. The eco-design seminars and workshop series imparts strategies for the effective integration of environmental considerations into design and manufacturing. Register now!
The Business of Eco-Design
Sustainability is the key driving force transforming the global design and manufacturing landscape. The eco-design series addresses the fundamental issues of what sustainable design encompasses and identifies the driving forces behind this major market shift. Register now!
Springboard
Seventeen Australian designers across numerous design fields have been selected for Stage Two of the Springboard: Entrepreneurship for Designers program.
Find your way to 'To Three'
What do you get when you put an environmental graphic designer together with a feast of rich, international case studies?
2008 Premier's Design Awards Virtual Pavillion
Set up in the ‘virtual’ space on your computer, the amazing ‘Virtual Pavilion’ will guide you through the award winning entries of the prestigious Premier’s Design Marks as part of the State of Design Festival 2008.
© 2007 State Government of Victoria
State of Design | Terms & Conditions | Privacy | Copyright & Trademark Notice
A Victorian Government Initiative - Victoria - The Place To BeIn partnership with RMIT University