Intangible Value Creation: Hunter Summerville and Shreddies

Quite a fun video from TED by Ogilvy veteran Rory Sutherland.

He talks a lot of sense about how we perceive products and services and about the 'intangible value creation'. For an example of this see Hunter Somerville's ad campaign for Shreddies (to which he makes reference)...
http://cargocollective.com/huntersomerville/SHREDDIES

Scientific Creativity

Insightful TED talk by a surgeon who examines creativity, particularly musical creativity, through science.

Expressive communication and the language of expressive music.

"It's magical but it's not magic"

Curious? Watch this neat outline of Charles Limb's study of 'scientific creativity' and innovation in the arts.

Interesting video explaining: Just how small is an atom?

Animating Science

How do we communicate ideas of cells that are "smaller than the wavelength of light".

Good question.

Visually communicating these concepts must be a real challenge as it needs to show what is happening in 3 dimensions at molecular level of things we understand, but can't actually see. This video shows neatly how scientists can use drawing, illustration and animation as part of their thinking process. I find that this is where real design communication comes into its own. Design and illustration has always been fundamental to a process of thinking and not 'showing off'. Of course we need to show our thinking and that's where the presentation of our thinking turns into animations or infographics.

Unfortunately many infographics (or infocrapics) get lost in the delivery of their own beauty rather than using relevant information to make clear by way of an illustration. These infographics aren't used to work out complex ideas into simpler, more easier to understand graphics, rather they use information to force an outcome which is purely attractive without substance.

Take for example the following:
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2012/top-21-albums-of-2011/

In an effort to make the Top 21 Albums of 2011 more visually attractive the 'designer' has used different sizes of the name of the album to relate how popular it is. In addition they have used different fonts to differentiate the albums. The trouble is that the names of these albums are of different length so this skews completely the weighting given to each name by increasing its size! Why do this instead of producing a list or a simple bar chart? The creator hasn't used this as a thinking aid or a communication aid rather as a source of self gratification. Amazingly the 'designer' quotes the original source which is a simple list, not much larger in size than the infographic, but which gives more information…

Let's think about how we communicate and communicate what we think.

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

I've been looking at and thinking about design education recently so when I came across a piece on TED about creativity within education I wanted to see more. I'm glad I made time for this witty and informative video and I hope you do too.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining but powerful argument that the way we educate our children out of creative arts is misguided and sometimes, as he points out in his case study of Gillian Lynne could have been a terribly wasteful mistake.

His follow-up talk about an education 'climate crisis' and the real challenge of transforming education from a 19th century industrial model into a 21st century process based on different principles.

Mathieu Lehanneur's science based designs

Mathieu Lehanneur's talk for TED highlights some really fundamental principles of design. Is it colour theory? Typography? Is it perhaps the socio-economic impact of design?

Nope.

It's even more fundamental than that. It's about being human.

At a martial arts seminar once I heard a Systema guru speaking about styles and how to effectively make the techniques work. "Do you think this move is more like the crane style of kung fu or tiger style?" (referring to the idea that fighting systems have evolved after emulating certain animals in their habitat). The head honcho snorted and said, "Humans shouldn't need to imitate animals they should concentrate on being human".

In a similar way Lehanneur states in his opening part of this lecture how important science is to him: the science of being human because therein lies the answer to design solutions. He says,

"Science helps us understand how we see, how we hear, how we breathe, how our brain can inform or mislead us.

It's a great tool for me to understand what could be our real needs.

Marketing people have never been able to do that.

Marketing reduces things. Marketing simplifies.

Marketing creates user groups.

Scientists admit complexity, admits fluctuation and uniqueness."

Understanding how we perceive and interact with our world is essential for designing products or communications. What I find intriguing about his approach is that he looks at the real essence of the problem. Often designers talk about solving problems but really just create a make-over or 'paint it up' to look pretty (and in fairness often clients want this as a solution rather than any deep searching study into what is really needed!). This guy at least looks at the very heart of the problem and works in deep thought into the solution. Designing isn't about drawing pretty pictures it's about solving problems. Drawing helps us communicate ideas. Problem solution is about thinking. It's about seeing how we are as humans.

The Eight Principles of Success

Very neat, short film by Richard St. John outlining his ideas about the journey through to success.

Only 3mins 55-worth a look as it's straight-talking and inspiring.