Origin of ideas

Came accross this information about the world’s top ten ideas being generated in the following places

1. In the toilet (no. 1 on the list)
2. While commuting to work
3. In a boring meeting
4. While exercising
5. Waking up in the middle of the night
6. While listening to a church sermon
7. In the shower
8. While falling asleep or waking up
9. While performing manual labour
10. While reading for leisure
    

I for one will pick no. 10 as my most effective period spent generating good ideas. What is yours?

Redesigning the bookstore

The other day, I was at a bookshop and then walking through the shelves, I came across a book I had read a few months before and it brought back memories of what the book was about and what I was going through at the time, career wise and all. The same thing happened with a second book I recognized and then a third – each one I touched; each a unique piece of me. In a manner of speaking each book was like a (computer interface) window which when you clicked on open up this universe of sensory and cognitive experiences.

The truth is this experience was entirely personal. In a way, the bookstore created – with its shelves, cool décor, books and their arrangements – expressions, raw materials which together with the input of my past memories brought about a specific experience. In other words, the bookstore had inadvertently played a crucial role in “designing” this experience.

The design of the bookstore has stayed essentially the same for many years. Shopping for a book hasn’t changed significantly even with the advent of the internet (alright I give up, there is Amazon.com). Perhaps this is largely on account of the pristine nature of books themselves.
Should we really trust blurbs and book summaries to help the consumer make an informed choice? Most bookstores tend to be conservative in their architecture and décor. Next time you take a walk through a bookstore, notice how people interact in that environment. In all happens in their minds. There is a huge divide that consumers can be helped across, especially those who do not have experiential knowledge of the books and thus have no idea what lies behind that “window”.

Perhaps, stores should have book consultants (not attendants who shadow you asking over and over if you have found something you liked) who can relate with the client. Better use of interactive media could help. I admit that book clubs have come in handy. But if what is really purchased by the consumer is the experience, then more needs to be done to bring them home.

Judging a book by its cover (a case for design in enterprise)

Tom Peters, the management maverick, is one of the most vocal proponents of getting design to have its rightful place in corporate strategy. Not only in the creation of products but in the development of what he calls “Beautiful systems” as well. In short, he speaks of design as being a pervasive philosophy in strategy (Check out his book, “Re imagine!”).

It is as important for the small business as it is for the blue chip company. It is at the interface of the consumer’s interaction with the product, service or company. Thus it is an important frontier for the battle for the consumer’s mind space. From print adverts to invoices, product packaging to corporate culture; design has the capability of creating a level playing field (just as websites or “internet real estate” has come to be) among competitors.

Apple did it with their sleek designs and the birth of the celebrity creatives like Jonathan Ives while for a company like Bang and Olufsen, it gives wings to its poetic flight. Thankfully, the idea has trickled down form product development to a new way of thinking. As a conceptual model, design’s essence is revealed and can be readily seen in everything the organization does.
Everybody loves good design. They want to perceive things as affirming their sense of form without compromising functionality. They want something truly beautiful.

About FinBank brand

Came accross this article in Vanguard online about FinBank's new brand (http://www.vanguardngr.com/content/view/18063/49/). I think it is a nice article. I even find the new appreciation for design in corporate strategy laudable. Again branding is serving as a new frontier for competition among banks which offer similar services anyway. However, I do not think it is limited to logo design or a new website. Though it is yet to be seen if there will be excellent execution of the brand strategy document which I am sure would have come with that colourful logo, I believe we can only wait and see it go beyond lip service. About the logo, I do not see all the qualities listed in article without help. If a logo is a symbol and should be representative of certain features then it should not "need an instruction manual" for us to understand it. Or at least it should be simple enough for us to grasp.

In all we wish them the best

For more, check my post on "Logo design:a consumer's perspective" below

Mask as metaphor

This write up was inspired by a paper I came across entitled “Brand as Mask”. Written by Nikhilesh Dholakia and Detlev Zwick, their idea examined the nature of the brand as an interface; as a symbol through which consumers may interact with the product. Tracing the evolution of branding from its place as testimonial of the quality of manufacturing, distribution etc of the product and service, they followed it down to what it has now come to represent – itself.

The increasing power of global corporations and the need to maximize profit have led to practices that certain consumers might consider to be less than honourable. From the cheap labour procured through outsourcing partners in third world countries to the environmental consequences of their work habits, the practices of these organizations have under closer scrutiny. Thus the birth of a new kind of production. This does not take place in factories in India or the rungs of a service company but in the creative enclaves of advertising agencies and brand consultancies. Naturally, this leads to the creation of another “product”, a carefully crafted message and philosophy which interestingly might bear no resemblance to the physical product or service. Here is what I think of as equivalent to a bi personality disorder.

Perhaps, this dissonance may come to some form of convergence now that the message becomes the product itself. In other words, the brand is the product. Thus we return to the era where it all began, when the brand was the product but not without our experience with creating that unique brand “philosophy”.

Take the green strategy prevalent in the western world. It reveals a symptom of this conflict and an attempt at resolving it. The increasing support among consumers for environmental causes has caused a rethink in the board rooms. Thus corporations are not just voicing their support for environmentalism but showing this in the creation process of their product (e.g. use of environmentally safe chemicals) and even the product itself (e.g. Electric cars).

May be what is needed is the brand as a mask with a clear patina which guides our perception of the truth. The brand becomes the image of the corporation – an icon. Where this return to the core of branding allows for honest appreciation and a more complete brand experience for the consumer.

Logo design: a consumer's perspective

There is so much talk about logo design being such a big deal. Talk of a logo symbolizing the brand and all. You should see designers go on and on about how the yellow in the lettering symbolizes this and that, the arrow indicating that and this…the truth is a logo which has to come with an instruction manual has had its purpose defeated. After all shouldn’t a logo say it all?

The design of the logo should not begin from the standpoint of the designer but that of the audience. Therefore it would be a good idea to ask: how does the psyche truly respond to symbols and colours?

If we understand the templates of the unconscious, the notion of the preconceived notion; then
aesthetics wins over design for designs sake.

People naturally perceive things as a whole first before they begin to deconstruct it. The Gestalt principles of perceptual organization grants useful insight into how we perceive logos.
The key is to get to better understand the language of the human mind. As a whole a logo might give us certain impression (different symbols interacting with each other in the context of colours, fonts etc) breaking it down into separate symbols, colours and fonts will obviously elicit another interpretation. Yet isn’t it possible that we look at it as a whole first before deconstructing it; perhaps bringing to our interpretation of the component parts, insight from of perception of the whole? Any way it is possible that a striking individual component might first catch ones attention when we interact with the logo but then a single actor doesn’t make up the entire story now does he?

Design is the frontier at which art meets functionality. Thus any creative license must be peppered with the empiricist’s eye. A logo might be corporate art but like a fork or stapler it is used. It is imperative we come to develop better understanding of how consumers perceive logos. It would certainly make for better design.

The customer owns the brand.

Therefore to articulate the brand one must go to the customer.
A Brand is not totally you". It may be an aspect though. it is a perspective of you which focuses on certain
Distinct qualities (thus other qualities are relegated to the background or blurred)

Characters in stories are brands and we find them interesting cause we have come to associate
Certain distinct qualities with them. They are strong brands extreme is employing allegory as a genre). That is why these characters are often 2 dimensional because we only see them in relation to specific people in certain contexts to get the story going e.g. Bourne identity
Same goes for celebrities...

Perhaps every business relationship is an interaction based on values; in the face of which other business stuff is less primal
e.g. my business with my bank involves the exchange of the values of trust, customer service, excellence...the product/service
I use are merely vehicles through which these values are delivered. Essentially, a brand trades in the currency of values

For a brand to seek an infinite number of perspective (in other words to be all things to all people)
; it would fail to articulate the few qualities it possesses. In a manner of speaking it would become a commodity, it would self destruct

if branding is about relationships and relationships are sustained through communication/interraction, then you communicate what? Value!

A brand is ultimately determined by the consumer. Like a piece of painting or poetry, there are at least 3 stages in the development of a brand: conceptualization (by consultant or business owner), medium (product or service or company) and the interpretation (by the consumer or brand audience). A brand only takes a life of its own within the members of the audience. Therefore, neither the brand animal nor the medium is the star of the show but like a piece of art being subject to diverse interpretation (independent of what the artist might have intended), it’s the consumer and what he makes of the brand that matter. Now each consumer is different. Thus a specific brand (e.g. coca cola) has a unique meaning to every person who interacts with it.

About MTN - their campaign "go start something" connects to the ongoing trend of entrepreneurship and optimism in Nijar (it further cements their position of essentially marketing two product - an aspirational philosophy and telecoms service at par with the competition)
it is in sync with the Nigerian spirit and captures the secret trappings of a Nigerian dream (?). Their move of inviting Chris Gardner to Nigeria as a speaker at an inspirational seminar is testament not just to his iconic status as the poster child of the rise
Form "rags to riches" (immortalized on the big screen in the movie "the pursuit of happiness" starring Will Smith) but the will and spirit of the Nigerian to remain unbroken. Simply put the "go start something" campaign is consistent and spot on trend