New KiBiSi is like a Danish industrial design Voltron (well, with only three parts, but still)

It is with great excitement that we welcome our newest Coroflot job board partner – Brand New – into the fold! Brand New is *the* go-to site for seeing and discussing new corporate and brand identity work. Topical subjects like the most recent Super Bowl identity receive scores and scores of comments from their community of design pros — not surprising given that Brand New is an off-shoot of the legendary online design community Speak Up.

So please extend them a welcome by joining the conversation at Brand New and, if you need some branding help of your own, post a job!

(more…)

Fighting after drinking in pubs in Britain has been found to cost over 2.5 million pounds to the British health care system as there are over 87,000 fights a year. The British Design Council enlisted a local design studio – DesignBridge – to make the glasses more difficult to smash and less dangerous to the victim. They’ve designed two prototypes, the Twin Wall and the Glass Plus. via

(more…)

To help mark their 10 year anniversary, San Francisco’s Method (the design firm) have launched a new initiative under the name 10×10. The series will include essays, salons and speaking engagements focusing on a variety of topics impacting brands as they search for new revenue streams today and in the future.

The first entry is Cable’s Lost Generation, a white paper looking at how young adults in the US are sourcing their media content – choosing broadband favorites such as Hulu and Boxee over traditional cable services. Does this mean it goes without saying that broadcast is dead?

(more…)

The original 7iinch ASUS eeePC.

One of the most misunderstood terms in the business world is disruptive technology. Too many companies—and the marketers in charge of bringing these companies’ innovations to market—assume that “disruptive” connotes a highly-sophisticated, high-end product with cutting-edge technology that will appeal to early adopters. Actually, Harvard’s Clayton Christensen argued the opposite in his groundbreaking book on business innovation, The Innovator’s Dilemma. As Christensen pointed out again and again, “disruptive technologies were exactly those that did not appeal to entrenched market leaders because they tended to under-perform existing technologies and served a less-profitable consumer demographic.” (Source: Dominic Basulto)

Taking Christensen’s insight on disruptive innovation (summarized so well by Basulto) as the starting point, we could just as easily extend that thought to say that those innovations that are simpler, cheaper and offer value to the less profitable—those successful at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP), in other words—are the ones which contain seeds of disruption in markets outside of their intended audience.

The original 7-inch ASUS eeePC is an excellent case in point. Inspired by the concept of the $100 laptop for the developing world, called a ‘children’s computer,’ sneered at for its teeny keyboard and bare minimum features, it was the wedge that has changed the computer market of today, creating an entirely new category—the netbook— and influencing pricing and form factor for personal computers for every market, rich or poor, in less than 3 years.

But it doesn’t stop there. Indeed, tomorrow’s consuming classes are beginning to show signs of a shift in perception of price/performance and value for money, as evidenced by McKinsey’s most recent report:

There’s evidence that the shift of consumers away from more expensive products is a widespread trend. In the consumer electronics industry, for example, McKinsey research found that 60 percent of consumers were more interested in a core set of product features at a reasonable price than in the bells and whistles of the latest and greatest technology at a higher price. Similarly, in the building-products industry, there is a trend away from premium-priced design features and toward simpler, more basic designs. Understanding this challenging shift in consumer behaviour is necessary for companies to compete successfully. It represents an opportunity for those that respond quickly and effectively to differentiate themselves from their peers.

This finding has been echoed by the likes of HJ Heinz’ CEO, The Huffington Report and even consumer research in Germany. Perhaps its time we took a closer look at a few more examples of such “underperforming” products designed and developed specifically for the less profitable consumer, along with their supporting ecosystem innovations in business models, distributions and pricing. Some have already begun showing the ripples of disruptive influence way beyond any particular product category or service.

(more…)

Business Week just came out with a special report on the value of design:

“IDEO partner Diego Rodriguez makes the case that good business arises from a design-centric process that incorporates marketing, research, and ideas. RKS Design’s Ravi Sawhney and Deepa Prahalad outline four specific areas in which design can create value: understanding the consumer; mitigating risk; boosting marketing and branding; and driving sustainable business practices.

Angel investor Dave McClure is heavily involved in the Silicon Valley community of consumer Internet companies and technology-driven startups. He writes a spirited argument in which he makes the case that design and marketing are, in fact, way more important than engineering for the firms with which he works. And Dr. Jay Parkinson, a pediatrician and preventive medicine specialist, outlines the role that design (and disruptive innovation) can play in retooling the U.S. health-care system.

Finally, we put together a list of the 27 most influential designers and design thinkers making an impact on business today.”

(more…)

It looks like the future of high-speed rail lies in China, which has both the geographical footprint to warrant it and the political will to embrace it. According to an article in The Economist, in the massive track-laying project China is currently undertaking, they’ll have 8,000 miles of high-speed track ready by 2012–three years ahead of schedule.

I love high-speed rail, but have cynically given up on the U.S. ever embracing it.

Two men that have not given up on it are Ron Kemnitzer and Bill Green, ID chair and ID associate prof, respectively, at Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture & Design, College of Architecture and Urban Studies. Kemnitzer and Green tasked four senior ID lab teams to come up with designs for high-speed passenger trains, in hopes of boosting U.S. interest; they presented their designs to the American Public Transportation Association’s annual meeting.

Click here for the PDF of the presentation, or click here to see web-based descriptions and images of the concepts.

(more…)

In the USA, cities that shelled out big bucks to learn Richard Florida’s prescription for vibrant urbanism are now hearing they may be beyond help.

While in Hamburg, Germany, the local administration been trying to woo the much-coveted “creative class” for years in a bid to secure its future. Now the city has become the front line in a bitter conflict over gentrification, with artists squatting buildings in protest against investment plans and members of the far-left scene attacking private property — and even police.

Photo: Flickr/Phillip Jeffrey

(more…)

Aquent just launched the ultimate Internet Online Website designed by The Barbarian Group. It’s the perfect link to send that friend of a friend who just needs a simple website – you know, nothing too complex – a basic homepage with a couple pages of text, a video, some of that social networking stuff, and a small online shop.

(more…)