Nick Garrett

Category: Nature in Design

  • Design drift UK – Steve Jobs supakudos!

    “To design something really well you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something – chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people have. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions, without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have.”

    – Steve Jobs

    This convergent thinking is crucial to divergent invention and evolution.

    The world thrives on this type of end result.  A great product, service new mythological commerce led environment.

    Yet as these end points are judged winners and losers so too are those creatives who make them – judged without groking what they are all about.

    A great HR/recruiter will have instinct… they will get what you are about… 

    This quote above swings me around to the key challenge facing diversely experienced creatives.  Those key individuals are often the first to go – why?  Because others find them challenging.

    They are the ones who are curious, instinctive, analytical,  smart and yet something about them is annoying (they are different and it shows).

    Protectionism

    One of the biggest disasters in the creative career industry to emerge over the past 30 years is institutionalised unprofessionalism.  Those guilty posses finite ability to fill in boxes and jealously guard too much risk.

    As a trickle down designers have been generally heading in a few directions for practice none of which do a lot for UK when compared to the music industry or the Mary Quant/Conran prime era – excluding architecture, salvation resting with  Mr. Dixon and McQueen of course.  UK design loss includes creatives working in:

       Other work

          Niche/industrial

             Academia

                   Retail

                        Overseas

    That we have so few examples of UK design success belies that fact that we are a nation with huge reserves of creative sav.  There has been a cultural shift that has affected the way we view ourselves.

    We have been taken from one primarily unique British industrial place to another corporate peer approval setting… led by a rounding down, politics and banking… we now we are conditioned to act more than ever as they do… as administrative peers

    1960-70s UK design and manufacture decline 

    FACT: In the past 10 years there has been an high loss in University teaching positions matched by high university administrative employment drives.  Many talented teachers and creatives now work in bars and offices.

    The key decline and design death of the UK automobile industry is a great example of UK old school corporate getting it catastrophically wrong.  This coincided then with the ‘Common Market‘ approach and today in the deplorable migration of design and manufacture to Asia and China.

    UK design has always included the making and proving.

    Prime example here is the death of the British icon the Morris, Austin Mini. It’s subsequent reinvention by German car maker BMW has lost the orginal delicate refined features for the sake of an overly aggressive profile. The follow on from the Mini the Austin Allegro and Morris Marina sank the British car design industry because 1. the new models were plumb ugly. 2. there was little in the way of innovative processes to support the growth of new ideas after the furor of the mini (the Range Rover gave us the flipside of the coin – but no new design coped with the main challenge to create a mid range,  family 4 door saloon car).  In the 60s and 70s the nation followed British Leyland because BL became our new design beacon – along with furniture store Habitat (the inspirational fountain of Ikea).  The loss of this I believe has affected ‘brand’ UK design psychology till this day.

    But what really died was the public perception and pride in design talent of Britain.  

    USA don’t suffer that today with the likes of Steve Jobs do they?

    Stagnation Trend

    Today our UK design industry flirts with the modern.  And it ends there.

    One of my concerns is that a core human right to knowledge (which is a thing entirely based on the imagination and creativity) has been farmed out from those who need it most to those who can pay through the nose for it.  UK youth 14-24 age group. Our employment psychology is mapped out on lines that still denigrate creativity and preference the tick in the box.  We have few examples of as Ken Robertson puts it serves the modern era.

    Steve Jobs can be and exceptional pain to work for yet supakudos inspirational – because he is the perfect visionary designer who believes in risk and change.

    Jobs succeeded not to solely form up stunning planet changing PD but to cut through the wall of hostility to get through each day – his world is one of the most hostile commercial corporate environments.  

    I got this quote from the book The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun. What he says about that Jobs quote above is flawed:

    “The only criticism I have of this quote is that it implies something special about creative people that can’t be obtained by noncreative people. I don’t believe people are born into one of two exclusive piles of creative geniuses and unimaginative morons.”

    It’s flawed because it is scared of saying something pragmatic, and risking rebuke and peer group rep. It is like saying you can use any cheese in top Italian cuisine… this is patently bull – 36 month Parmigiano Reggiano is very different to Kraft cheese slices.  Mother nature creates difference: our better ideals preserve equality – best we can.

    What Scott fails to address is the reality: most of us have our creativity overrun by poorly perceived education and lack of creative vocational training initiatives.  

    “In other words at the age of 3 most of us have the same faculty as Stephen Hawkin… at the age of 10 virtually none of us do.”

    What happens in the intervening years?

    Don’t rock the…

    The boat is capsized – if we don’t push hard it will sink.  Boat rockers turn into great oars(people)men and women.

    I saw a job ad the other day for an Industrial design position in UAE stating only applicants who have studied at RCA may apply.  That is frankly a disgrace for both client and HR – but mostly HR for not having the savvy to bite the bomb, point out the obvious and scrap the ad.  

    For designer like me, who can look at a successful career on one side and today at not much work on my table on the other, my senses must remain as keen as ever to win the next client.  Gaining employment as a senior mid weight is incredible difficult for me because my CV shows too much “deviation” in the minds of HR – there’s not enough retail… they tell me.

    And that is exactly what Steve Jobs is not saying.  Without a depth and range of experience (including LIFE experience) and reflection the design industry is at risk of remaining rudimentary and populated by those that cannot grow across the deep and wide potential they possess.

    Give me another Job any day.

    Perhaps life experience gives us the greatest cue: live twice the life, work twice as hard and dig away at the creative world.  There are a lot who are no longer able to do so.

    God bless you Steve Jobs.

    Nick Garrett

    Thanks to http://fgiasson.com/blog/index.php/2005/07/23/what_creativity_is_for_steve_jobs_it_is/

    BMW brutalism overbearing compaired to Fiat’s sensitive Fiat 500 rebirth?

  • The secret of IKEA's success

    The secret of IKEA’s success

    Lean operations, shrewd tax planning and tight control

    Feb 24th 2011 | MALMO | from the print edition

    THE paragraphs below are arranged randomly; you will have to assemble the finished article yourself.

    Just kidding. But if you shop at IKEA, you are no doubt familiar with the hassle and frustration of assembling its flat-pack furniture at home. Millions of customers endure it, for two reasons: IKEA’s products are stylish and they are very, very cheap.

    “We hate waste,” says Mikael Ohlsson, who took over as chief executive of IKEA Group in September 2009. He points proudly at a bright-red “Ektorp” sofa. Last year his designers found a way to pack the popular three-seater more compactly, doubling the amount of sofa they could cram into a given space. That shaved €100 ($135) from the price tag—and significantly reduced the carbon-dioxide emissions from transporting it.

    Thrift is the core of IKEA’s corporate culture. Mr Ohlsson traces it back to the company’s origins in Smaland, a poor region in southern Sweden whose inhabitants, he says, are “stubborn, cost-conscious and ingenious at making a living with very little”. Ever since Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943, the company has tried to allow “people with limited means to furnish their houses like rich people”.

    IKEA presents itself as a green company with a social mission. Mr Ohlsson boasts of its charitable work and its aim to use only renewable energy. He says he wants his “co-workers” to be happy, honest and inclined to think for themselves. He is proud that 40% of the company’s 200 top managers are women.

    Business is good (see chart). In the fiscal year 2010, IKEA’s sales grew by 7.7% to €23.1 billion and net profit increased by 6.1% to €2.7 billion. Conforama, Habitat and other rivals do not come close. IKEA’s strong brand and low prices helped it to weather the downturn, even though 80% of its sales are in crisis-hit Europe. In 2010 its sales rose by 8.2% in Spain and 11.3% in Italy. The firm is doing well in Bulgaria and Romania and planning to expand further in central and eastern Europe.

    Thrifty Germans are IKEA’s best customers, accounting for 15% of sales. It has become part of German culture: in 2009 a Hamburg theatre staged an opera about it, “Wunder von Schweden” (“Miracle from Sweden”), a biography of the “furniture messiah” set to Swedish folk tunes.

    Yet behind IKEA’s clean image is a firm that is very Swedish, secretive by instinct and, some say, rigidly hierarchical. All six members of the supervisory board are Swedish. (Mr Kamprad, at 84, is a senior adviser.) Over the years the company has been accused of using child labour in Asia and of buying feathers plucked from live geese. Journalists revealed that Mr Kamprad had backed a Swedish fascist group in his youth; he apologised in an open letter.

    More recently, IKEA has had problems in Russia, where it has 12 stores. Having campaigned against corruption and even frozen its investments there for a while to protest against poor governance, last year IKEA was itself involved in a scandal. It had to sack two senior executives in Russia for allegedly turning a blind eye to bribes paid by a subcontractor to secure electricity supplies for its St Petersburg outlets.

    When damaging news breaks, IKEA has an admirable habit of coming clean. But the firm’s ownership structure is opaque. Critics grumble that its set-up minimises tax and disclosure, handsomely rewards the Kamprad family and makes IKEA immune to a takeover. The parent for IKEA Group, which controls 284 stores in 26 countries, is Ingka Holding, a private Dutch-registered company. Ingka Holding, in turn, belongs entirely to Stichting Ingka Foundation, a Dutch-registered, tax-exempt, non-profit-making entity, which was given Mr Kamprad’s IKEA shares in 1982. A five-person executive committee, chaired by Mr Kamprad, runs the foundation.

    The IKEA trademark and concept is owned by Inter IKEA Systems, another private Dutch company. Its parent company is Inter IKEA Holding, registered in Luxembourg. For years the owners of Inter IKEA Holding remained hidden from view and IKEA refused to identify them.

    In January a Swedish documentary revealed that Interogo, a Liechtenstein foundation controlled by the Kamprad family, owns Inter IKEA Holding, which earns its money from the franchise agreements Inter IKEA Systems has with each IKEA store. These are lucrative: IKEA says that all franchisees pay 3% of sales as a royalty. The IKEA Group is the biggest franchisee; other franchisees run the remaining 35 stores, mainly in the Middle East and Asia. One store in the Netherlands is run directly by Inter IKEA Systems.

    After the airing of the polemical documentary on Swedish TV, Mr Kamprad retorted that “tax efficiency” was a natural part of the company’s low-cost culture. Yet such diligent efforts to reduce the firm’s tax burden sit uncomfortably with IKEA’s socially conscious image. Mr Ohlsson is trying to defuse criticism of IKEA’s opacity by providing more information on its finances. Last year the firm published detailed figures on sales, profits, assets and liabilities for the first time ever.

    Mr Ohlsson argues that IKEA is more competitive as a privately owned company. Instead of sweating to meet the quarterly targets the stockmarket demands, it can concentrate on long-term growth. Mr Ohlsson plans to double the pace of store openings in China, where IKEA already has 11 outlets. Undeterred by the firm’s headaches in Russia, he plans to open perhaps three more stores in the Moscow area in the next few years. Mr Ohlsson hopes to move into India when the retail market opens up there. He even sees room for expansion in Britain. An Englishman’s home is his castle, and castles need furniture.