Melodies in Marketing

We’ve all seen this font before -it’s quite popular for use with books, magazines, posters, and billboards. The dead giveaway is the lack of serifs on the capital N’s top-left and bottom-right.

Trajan is an actual replica of ancient Roman letterforms found at the base of Trajan’s column in Rome. The specific style is called square capitals, and only uppercase letters are available. This typeface was used for inscriptions and signage for cultural events, decrees, imperial arches, architecture, etc. It was first painted on marble with a brush, followed by chiseling into the stone. Sometimes holes were bored into the etched type to support melted bronze subsequently poured in.

Here’s a quick mock book/movie title I’ve made with it - I was first thinking of going all silly and calling it “The Briefcase”, but “The Public Defender” looked better:

The name comes from the Roman emperor Trajan; the digital typeface was designed by Carol Twombly for Adobe in 1989.
Additional information available at: Wikipedia and Typophile

One more for the road…this video introduced me to the font and pokes fun at its ubiquity within the U.S. film industry:
Official YouTube Link

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The Age of Conversation had a great debut last year. Through our writers’ and friends’ collective efforts, our proceeds-from-sales to the children’s charity Variety amounted to more than $11,000.

Now we’ve been able to bring this fine book to Amazon, and if you buy this book today, your effort will radically help drive the book’s attention up through Amazon’s charts -> leading to greater potential proceeds.

So if you don’t have a copy of last year’s classic, or know someone who might enjoy reading it (while helping out a great cause in the process), visit or forward on this special affiliate link:
http://tinyurl.com/2drj2x

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In a major economic address at Cooper Union yesterday, Senator Barack Obama called for a modernization of our regulatory framework. He made the case that while markets are the engine of American progress, the government’s role as a steward is critical to the function of the free market.

While I was hearing the senator speak, I could not help but think about the parallels between the financial debacle today and the issues we’re facing with global trade. In his quest to get us out of a recession, Mr. Obama may have given us a framework to alleviate some of our international trade challenges:

1- Update Regulations: He says that “The evolution of industries often warrants regulatory reform – to foster competition, lower prices, or replace outdated oversight structures. Old institutions cannot adequately oversee new practices. Old rules may not fit the roads where our economy is leading… For the sake of our common prosperity, we needed to adapt to keep markets competitive and fair.” In 2006, Charles Fishman wrote something similar in his excellent book, “The Wal-Mart Effect”, in which he says that “[Wal-Mart’s] business model is built on the shopping cart, but in fact, Wal-Mart is a completely new kind of institution: modern, advanced, potent in ways we’ve never seen before. Yes, Wal-Mart plays by the rules, but…the rules are antiquated; they are from a different era that didn’t anticipate anything like Wal-Mart.” Fishman continues to explain that Wal-Mart is just a symbol of the era of mega corporations (i.e. ExxonMobil, GE, P&G, Toyota), whose operations are so large and dominant that they stand astride of Adam Smith’s market forces we rely on to harness them; suffocating inflation and driving manufacturing jobs overseas while mitigating their risk by developing new markets outside the US.

2- Risk Assessment: “Financial institutions must do a better job at managing risks. There is something wrong when boards of directors or senior managers don’t understand the implications of the risks assumed by their own institutions. It’s time to realign incentives and compensation packages, so that both high level executives and employees better serve the interests of shareholders. And it’s time to confront the risks that come with excessive complexity.” This reminds me of the various product safety scandals that the American consumer had to wake up to, due to risk assessments that many importers had failed to fully understand. U.S. manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors, or retailers who outsource from outside the U.S. need to ensure that the products they are bringing from overseas are safe. They are liable for distributing the tainted product even if they had no direct knowledge of the risk.

3- International Collaboration: “As we reform our regulatory system at home, we must work with international arrangements …The goal must be ensuring that financial institutions around the world are subject to similar rules of the road – both to make the system stable, and to keep our financial institutions competitive.” Here is where the U.S. needs to take leadership, and work with its trading partners bilaterally or through the WTO to create a regulatory framework, a chain of oversight covering the whole manufacturing and food-production process as well as labor and environmental laws, to regain consumer confidence and keep a fair playing field.

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One thing I love about product design is the ability to combine separate objects into something new and practical. I like to stress that last adjective. The concept of novelty can be applied liberally, and usually implies a sense of amusement. However, the degree to which the novel product (or aspect thereof) is ‘useful’ (in purpose and time-span), can be highly questionable depending on the end user profile, and our own qualitative value assessment.

All of this analytical reasoning lead to the questions like:
What is of Value? For whom? Under what circumstances?

While user profiles are excellent tools to expand upon basic demographic and psychographic modeling, there are two major considerations that affect the attractiveness of a multifunctional product: space and time.

Space - This involves the environments in which we live, work, relax, commute, etc. It includes the amount of physical space you have, shared spaces, and their salient and secondary aspects.

Time - What we all value and may sometimes feel deprived of. This includes dedicated time for particular activities, shared time for multiple activities (like often found in the multitasking workplace), and random time for the unexpected (pleasant, neutral, undesirable) situations and activities.

When examining both of these considerations in a particular context, look for what your allowances and constraints are. Doing this will help you find an opportunity to take advantage of.

Lifestyle changes (gradual and sudden), will serve as catalysts for utility and value in multifunctional products. Maybe we already have individual products that can currently do their job well, but in the new circumstance or lifestyle change, a single product with increased functionality that allows for time & space improvements can be of moderate to significant value.

One area where time and space are often limited is in urban areas, where living spaces tend to be smaller, resources and amenities may be geographically dispersed, reliance on public transit is greater, and people can tend to live faster. An additional factor that affects time and space is the blurring line between work and leisure. Flexible working hours and more individuals working from home has created opportunities for manufacturers to create products that can be catered for both environments.

Where there is a user will, there is a way. Change will force us to be creative - whether there’s a commercially available and affordable solution to the little things and bigger issues in our lives, or not. It is in this intersection where ethnographic research holds large value - identifying behaviors and looking for opportunities.

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While I’ve liked Futura for a while, especially having seen it around from street signage to books, I recently came across Avenir and liked the bit more comfortable look. Avenir was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1988. He described it as:

…intended to be nothing more or less than a clear and clean representation of modern typographical trends, giving the designer a typeface which is strictly modern and at the same time human, i.e., suitably refined and elegant for use in texts of any length.

What’s also special is that each of its varieties (sizes and weights), were uniquely designed for versatility in different contexts, especially print where it is well regarded for use in books with large amounts of text.

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Today I am tackling that big, illustrious word: Design

Why? A new course in my studies is on Design Management, and the first chapter describes for us what it is, and some of its roots and branches. Since my background is originally in Business Management, Marketing, and Logistics, my original conception (for years) was that design was about aesthetics, while everything else was engineering. This perceptual model slowly changed with time, especially after I came into my first job out of college and met with our industrial and packaging designers. Over the last six years, I’ve come to meet and befriend designers in a variety of fields who have taught and exposed me to a plethora of topics and principles common to their line of work.

But you know what the most valuable thing I learned was? There’s a big difference between Art and Design. The former is pure creative, while the latter encompasses: research, planning, creative, and testing. This deep insight has immensely expanded my appreciation for the roles that designers play in our lives, and their contribution to business and society.

Design is both a noun and a verb

Thus, Design implies both an Intention (plan or objective in analytical and creative stages), and an Outcome (model or form in execution stages).

While there are many design disciplines, each with their own objectives and serving different audiences (commissioners and users), these basic elements hold true.

A major difference among the disciplines is the degree to which each is oriented to either Art or Science. The design tree on the right (click on image) serves as an excellent model to this practical theory that design encompasses both.

While this diagram shows the traditional major design categories: Environmental, Product, Packaging, and Graphic…there are some additional categories not shown, that can stand on their own or act in conjunction with others. These include: Information, Interactive, Communication (nonverbal, written), and Process design (quality and time improvement).

Design is an activity that’s problem-solving, creative, systemic, and coordinating. This is identical to the role of Management, with the addition of Oversight, Leadership, and Strategic Analysis & Planning.

An additional element of design some people consider relevant, is cultural contribution. This implies that the objective of design is also to provide some societal or ecological benefit; it may be questionable based on the context of the situation, but at least we can subscribe to a primary rule of sustainability: First, do no harm.

When we now observe design from this perspective, well heck…there’s a lot of folks engaged in some form of design everyday; we just don’t recognize them as ‘designers’. One that comes to mind for me is supply chain planners who optimize the efficient production and distribution of goods.

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How do you see the role of design? Are there additional disciplines or other aspects of design you would like to share?

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