Monday, October 6. 2008Design Zone Qatar
The geography of economies is changing rapidly. At the same time people's expectations are getting more demanding. How to move forward in a fast changing world and yet keep the value and essence of local culture? How to react to sweeping changes in markets and the environment? We can see that one-sided approaches are unable to tackle the complex issues of the 21st century. We need a fresh start. This is why Qatar Foundation is creating the Design Zone. We believe that we can rise to the challenges of our time with integrative, connected thinking, new viewpoints, and a true global cooperation of outstanding creative minds with a genuine respect for local culture and the environment. The Design Zone will be a place to inspire, a platform to learn from the best, and catalyst for design thinking and innovation. We are building the Design Zone as a global forum for creative minds and entrepreneurial leaders in a large-scale area exclusively dedicated to international creative industries. We are creating a new international design center, a design incubator, studios, workshops, shops and residences for all people creative. It is the first major project in the Gulf dedicated entirely to creativity and design, and as such a major impetus for the future. And most importantly, the Design Zone will give imaginative young people in Qatar and all over the world the possibility to shape the future - because it is their future. Design Zone Qatar Saturday, July 26. 2008ACH: Observations on ArchitectureACH (Ansichten zur Architektur) is an architecture publication against the stream of glossy magazines. It comes as a newspaper and puts emphasis on quality content with intentionally very few pictures. Published by the Institute of Public Buildings at the University of Stuttgart, the latest issue, No. 33, is out now with a delightful article of architect Max Baecher together with my images of the Tomba Brion-Vega by Carlo Scarpa (pages 2 to 5). Friday, June 20. 2008A little Bit of Design History
A little bit of earlier writing on design history:
On history and its rewriting in Vienna, about the Eiffel Tower and modernity, about the beginnings of industrial design and the influences of functionalism and Art Deco, about a famous struggle in the Bauhaus (PDF) and about the history of design organisations (PDF), also in Korean (Monthly Design): "세상과 멀어지는 디자인" For something contemporary on design and organisations, here (doc) a few of my articles (Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations, University of California, Irvine). Sunday, June 15. 2008The Four Ps
The latest issue of Harvard Business Review features an article titled "Design Thinking". The message of the article by Tim Brown of Ideo is not new for designers, but it is for conventional managers. The innovation here is not design thinking per se - it was practiced and explored by designers since there is design - but that it makes its way into the business mainstream. In terms of trend research, the fact that an article on design thinking is published in Harvard Business Review shows that it is finally coming out of the fringe. It took some time - business guru Tom Peters was advocating for design since at least 10 years, which makes him already part of the avant-garde. Less discussed, but perhaps the most challenging goal for design thinking is how to transfer its approach into everyday organisational practice. This is because in everyday organisational life it is often the unquestioned, taken-for-granted attitudes and reactions which turn out to be barriers to design thinking. What to look out for? I have started to put together a list: Preconception: "My idea is GREAT" Prejudice: "These guys are wrong, I am right" Sunday, June 8. 2008More Designers, but Less Design: Designers Need to Think and Act Globally
Although there are more and more designers, products with design quality are hard to come by for most consumers on the globe. This is because developed design capability is not where there is production capability - an important observation, considering that design products are the largest chunk of creative industry exports worldwide. In Europe, where design is getting recognized as an important corporate asset, there is little large-scale production capability left, while it will take some more time once China has a design capability to match its massive industrial output. For premier companies, design is considered a vital corporate asset which has to be protected - not least as these companies have substantially invested in design. These pictures illustrate part of the problem: Chinese car designs, looking quite familiar. Mercedes and BMW obviously don't like it.
Some Chinese companies are getting aware of the importance of design, such as Gangzhou-based GAG, which started to develop a - kind of "not intended for production"-looking - prototype with a young car design studio in Shanghai. Above-mentioned Shanghai Auto also recently came up with a new "Roewe" which was designed and engineered in Britain and is not based on the old Rover designs. Also Chinese brands Geely and Chery did show new concept cars. There is no defined identity or design language yet, but it is a start for Chinese companies to understand the importance of developing design capability. Early learning in design, especially in Asia, works via imitation - see also my articles Alchemy of Cultures (2001) and Imitated, Commodified, Experienced (2005). LG Prada phone, Samsung Armani phone, Apple iPhone, Samsung F700 Saturday, June 7. 2008The Chasm
There are not only brand and product life cycles, also design is subject to life cycle phases which, when strategically deployed, add value. More radical, innovative designs are most useful in the introduction phase. Once a brand or product is in the maturity stage, the target will be the majority of consumers in the middle of the bell curve, so designs are usually more toned down to appeal to the mass market - think HP or Dell. But is that the right approach? The issue is the “chasm”, as Geoffrey Moore calls it. This chasm is bridged only by a handful of masters of the life cycle such as Apple. The trick clearly is to bridge the chasm, to be innovator and mature player at the same time. Wednesday, June 4. 2008Social Netwoking 1.0 and Name Evolution
I got several questions lately if I am on Facebook, LinkedIn or similar websites. I am not. While social networking is a promising concept in principle, current sites - social networking 1.0, if you want - seem quite generic. Their mass appeal is at the same time their promise and growing problem, and I think they will soon be replaced by more specific networking services with a better user experience. An interesting topic is name and identity, especially when you share the same name with other people, as many people do. Also both Mario and Gagliardi are, while not terribly common, popular enough Italian names. There was an interesting incidence lately where a Mario Gagliardi joined as a member of a more high-profile LinkedIn group of the Norwegian Innovation Conference Innotown. However, it was not him who spoke at the conference, but myself. While the chap was banned from the group after I remarked that this Mario is not that Mario, it made me think that names and identity are indeed a central topic for social networking. In the pre-net age, it did not matter when you share the same name with some others in your town. People know you, your physical presence and characteristics, and you are identified as a whole person. On the net, you are a string of bytes, and what identifies you is your name. As a thought experiment, when names would be adapting to its social environment, unique, unusual names will have a selection advantage simply as they have a lower likelihood of being mistaken for somebody else on the web and in social networking sites. The rules of branding - being unique and differentiated - will become an evolutionary rule for names. Perhaps there will also be something more sinister such as UPLs - "Unique Person Locators", a similar concept as URLs, verified with online iris scans. Airport security will shortly rejoice, and soon contact lenses with hacked iris prints will become a highly profitable business. Thursday, May 1. 2008Mario Gagliardi | biography
Chronology Mario is originally trained as an industrial designer. After having studied in the master classes of Alessandro Mendini and Richard Sapper in Vienna and having won, with three entries, the first three prizes at the Post Shop telephone design competition in 1989, Mario got his first job as product designer at Philips.For his concept for digital interior fabrics he got another design prize from the Italian architecture magazine Domus, and he went on to work as design director in the telecommunication, fashion, and banking sectors, in between designing interiors, products, and tableware which sold at premier department stores such as Bergdorf Goodman and Takashimaya. In the mid to late nineties, the time when Korean design was only just emerging, he contributed in shaping a design vision and a design culture as a consultant for the Korea Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP) and the Innovative Design Lab of Samsung. In 1997 he was the first non-Korean national appointed to a management position in the LG headquarters in Seoul. As chief designer, he developed the future design direction, designed a host of best-selling brands and products and won design prizes such as the Good Design Mark of the Korean Republic. As head of the design strategy task force, he introduced innovative design processes and established strategic design as a driving force. In 2001, Mario founded allevio design, later mg strategy, a first of its kind think-tank and multi-disciplinary studio for design strategy and design futures. There he pioneered and explored cross-disciplinary design collaboration models and groundbreaking design concepts such as user-generated branding, touch-screen mobile phones and generative/parametric design processes. He also worked as a special advisor to the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture, where he advised for nationwide knowledge systems and e-learning structures and designed new learning experiences. Mario taught at the International Design School for Advanced Studies in Seoul, at Aalborg University in Denmark, and at Salzburg University of Applied Science in Austria. As theorist, he wrote authoritative articles for publications such as the Design Management Review (US), Designmatters (Denmark) and Form (Germany), and authored the columns "Mario Gagliardi On Design" for Danish Designers (Denmark) and "Design Observations" for Korea's largest design magazine, Monthly Design. He delivered speeches at international congresses such as Innotown, the European International Design Management Conference, the Marketing Conference in Turkey, Era 05 world design congress and Tasmeem Doha, and held lectures and workshops at leading universities such as London Business School (UK), The University College for the Creative Arts (UK), Tsinghua University (China), Bogazici University (Turkey) and Zollverein School of management and design (Germany). Monday, March 3. 2008Design and the Real World
The new March 2008 issue of Monthly Design features my latest article "Design off the real world" - an allusion to "Design for the real world", the seminal book by Victor Papanek, the Austrian designer teaching in the US who was the very pioneer of ecological design in the 1960's. This is the updated Korean version of my article "Out of Touch" for Danish Designers - get it here.
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Mario Gagliardi is CEO of the Design Zone Qatar, a new member of Qatar Foundation and visionary development project for the first global creative hub in the Arabian Gulf. He crafted the strategy for the Design Zone while leading mg strategy, a think-tank for design.