Sori Yanagi on designing for function over marketing:
“Things that are easy to use survive, regardless of what is fashionable, and people want to use them forever. But if things are created merely for a passing vogue and not for a purpose, people soon get bored with them and throw them away. The fundamental problem is that many products are created to be sold, not used.”
“This happens all the time,” said Bill Wolters, the president of the Texas Automobile Dealers Association. “Someone wants an exception to the franchise laws. If we made an exception for everybody that showed up in the legislature, before long the integrity of the entire franchise system is in peril.”
Oh the horror.
(HT @JamieVoorhies )
But if you want a leader to unlock the potential of their people, to encourage them to use their imagination, their initiative and be original and, well, creative, you’re best looking for an introvert.
Someone who likes to listen more than talk, someone who likes IDEAS, not MY idea.
Someone who isn’t intimidating, who thinks before they speak and doesn’t want to win arguments, they want the right answer.
Yet the model for agency leaders and heads of departments seem to be fancy pants model.
Sure it’s a business that rewards ideas, but it’s also a business that rewards sociopathic tendencies.
For the Journal of the American Revolution, Todd Andrlik compiled a list of the ages of the key participants in the Revolutionary War as of July 4, 1776. Many of them were surprisingly young:
Marquis de Lafayette,18
James Monroe, 18
Gilbert Stuart, 20
Aaron Burr, 20
Alexander Hamilton, 21
Betsy Ross, 24
James Madison, 25
Thomas Jefferson, 33
John Adams, 40
Paul Revere, 41
George Washington, 44
Samuel Adams, 53
Puts a different perspective on things. Buncha punk kids…
In product lore, high profile gadgets that get killed are often more interesting than the ones that succeed. The Kin, the HP TouchPad, and the Edsel are all case studies in failure — albeit for different reasons. Yet in the history of those killings, nothing compared to the Apple Newton MessagePad. The Newton wasn’t just killed, it was violently murdered, dragged into a closet by its hair and kicked to death in its youth by one of technology’s great men. And yet it was a remarkable device, one whose influence is still with us today. The Ur tablet. The first computer designed to free us utterly from the desktop.
This reminded me of an idea that Gareth had years ago (I think it was Gareth…?) about doing a presentation on everything that Apple has done wrong.
You know, since any deck about how to do anything right generally has an Apple logo in it. Probably next to a swoosh. Adjacent to Coca-Cola.
Maybe, if you’re lucky and IF you’re dealing with an innovator/rulebreaker in the field of slide-based storytelling, you’ll find yourself with a Red Bull logo.
From: Daring Fireball
