“Embrace constraints”, “practice restraint”, “adopt the beginner’s mind”, “check your ego at the door”, “focus on the experience of the design”, “become a master storyteller”, “think communication not decoration”, “obsess about ideas not tools”, “clarify your intention”, “sharpen your vision & curiosity and learn from the lessons around you” and, finally, “learn all the rules and know when and why to break them”: those should all be part of our mindset when working in the actual business world.

Reading the “10 Tips on how to think like a designer” reminded me the times when I contributed to the design of many products and to their winning Design Awards all around Europe.
My approach was always on the maximum respect to design experience (it’s a mindset, developed through application on diversified markets and products) and my expertise was mainly in my ability to storytelling and communication.

But the start was always in

• clarifying the overall intention, which was mainly the service we wished to supply to people, being it a brand new one or a evolved one from a traditional approach;
• be very serious on finding ideas beneath tools, becoming a creator and not a technician;
• and curiously searching the market for any inspiration, which could be trans-functional or trans-national, always looking at things with the simple sight of a child, leaving aside the formal aspects and concentrating on substance.

Note: taking into account that I’m more a marketer than a designer, my most important function in the designing group was to keep it strictly connected with the market’s reality, avoiding that creativity could start prevailing by itself, ending the process in a concept product / service with very much immediate ROI.

But the most difficult part of the job was to “embrace constraints”, “practice restraint”.
Being the first phase a mixture between research and brainstorming, the difficulty were in keeping the creation of the idea within limits of the ambient where it was conceived. Creativity is richness, finding an idea is always powerful, but those two media frequently are “against” reality, which needs them but within the limits of economics.
Once a very good friend of mine told me that “an idea is not such if it’s not transformed into something real”.
A clear imagine of what the market asks for, of what we’re able to do, of the time involved into the process, of the involved resources is the basis of any designing process and the greatest enemy to creativity, at least of free creativity. But we live in a well constituted world, where rules are set and cannot be changed either without a great investment (in money or time) or with a very good idea.
So, reality is sometimes a limit but sometimes it’s a boundary that creativity is able to surpass.

When the latest case occurs, then “breaking the rules” is really fun.

It’s important to know I spent some years working in a lighting appliances company, also acting as head of lighting designing service; that’s why I may know what I’m talking about.

I read an article on the recent project for Corpus Christi Church in London: that remembered me the similarity between lighting design and communication: both act as highlighters of something that may be bright or dark, many be black white or coloured, but cannot be changed by the light or the way we communicate it.
Seems such a silly issue, but that has a couple of important consequences:

• ethically communication should work as a light on product/company, without adding anything besides what are the real and most deep values inherent the process;
• we never give the right importance to lighting: in the retail industry its function is to floodlight the product, when we know that details are more important for individual, in digital communication we never consider that everything is dramatically and unvaryingly shown on the screen, in paper communication we never know where and when our message will be seen.

I wish that communication could gain the dramatics of lighting design and the former could learn a more creative way of designing our spaces.

http://www.psfk.com/2008/12/ice-cream-truck-of-the-future.html

MERM (Modular Electronic Retail Minivan) is an electric vehicle that can power itself with integrated solar panels. A big opportunity at sites like markets or events where quick set up is necessary.

Merm è un veicolo elettrico autoalimentato con pannelli solari. Una bella opzione da usare in mercati ed eventi, quando è necessario un montaggio immediato.

http://www.psfk.com/2008/10/sound-design-a-safe-bet.html

It seems a product’s ’sound’ may be of equal importance to its visual and tactile qualities.

Pare che le qualità sonore di un prodotto siano importanti tanto quanto quelle visive e tattili.

Please recommend a book that you have found particularly inspiring or meaningful to your development as a creative person?

Puoi per cortesia raccomandare un libro che hai trovato particolarmente ispiratore o significativo per il tuo sviluppo come creativo?

http://gdnss.com/blog/?p=464

http://adage.com/video/article?article_id=131213

It’s the first new terminal built in the U.S. since 9/11.

È il primo terminal costruito dopo l’11 Settembre.

http://www.psfk.com/2008/07/canned-wine-design.html

The prototype swept the Swedish Design Awards with the Best Environmental Adaptation and helped its designers earn the prize for Best Design Student.

Il prototipo ha vinto il Swedish Design Awards come migliore applicazione ecologica ed ha fatto vincere anche i designer nella categoria studenti.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TJFntVSzd0

714 metal balls cascade, seemingly floating unaided midair in BMW’s kinetic sculpture. This piece is one of 125 exhibits on display at their museum in Munich.

714 sfere metalliche, apparentemente fluttuanti nella scultura cinetica di BMW, uno dei 125 pezzi in esposizione nell’omonimo museo di Monaco.