Bradley Derry

Setting Ambition Like a Pro

Bradley Derry — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 23:12:27 +0000

One of the most critical skills that separates a designer from a design leader is the ability to successfully dial up ambition levels in a company. Being able to provoke a team to consider alternatives to current status quo strategies that could potentially pilot a new generation of business growth is extremely valuable to organizations today.

Setting ambition is hot potatoes and business leaders everywhere invest a lot of time trying to excite workers into thinking about the company’s future. Designers are perfect for this role because they are the ones committed to studying future trends and utterly enjoy talking about intriguing brands and product designs.

Two things to turn ambition levels sky high.

1. Show them what successful brands looks like. Sometimes those examples come from within a familiar industry, but most of the time those examples come from a source that has nothing to do with the typical products a company makes. Show how these brands challenged the status quo, took a risk trying something new, and successful launched something that brought a lot of attention or revenue to the company. If a particular company is getting you excited then use that as fuel to challenge others in your own group.

I personally like what Puma is doing pushing the envelope of product design, new market direction, sustainable packaging, and overall brand image.

2. Show them what good design looks like. Collect anything that speaks to you and save it someplace readily assessable. Saving pictures off the Internet or taking photos with your mobile are great ways to collect inspiring images. Using these images to show what’s new in design and how it can be applied to your group’s efforts. This will quickly get people thinking and it’s much easier to explain how you want to address a trend if you have a dozen picture showing how that trend is forming.

I use a couple of different folders where I can quickly upload and access images to show someone an interesting product detail.

Designers are ultra informed about marketplace trends, but a design leader is well verse in presenting and making statements on how a company can address those trends to realistically adapt them to fit new business opportunities. Being able to back your efforts with real life examples makes it more realistic and tangible for both designers and non-designers to see.

Bradley Derry is an industrial designer and creative team leader whose specialty is to strengthen a company’s capability to delight customers through its product design and brand building. He currently leads a product development team at Innovative Office Products, a premier manufacture of workspace systems and furniture accessories in the Lehigh Valley, Pa. Be sure to visit his site BradleyDerry.com for post updates and connect with him on twitter @Derryest.

The 4 Types of Designers

Bradley Derry — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:55:10 +0000

Are you one of the majority of designers today who fall prey to a lack of strategy in a corporate design department? Are you mismanaged or underappreciated working in organizations that have no consistent approach to incorporating design into their strategic plans or processes? Perhaps you realize this and want to be focused on building a brighter future for yourself, your organization, and your world by leading design?

The book A Fine Line by Hartmut Esslinger is a guide to the design process, with the goal of encouraging business leaders and designers to join forces in building creative strategies for a more profitable and sustainable future. The book has been out for a long time, in fact, I read it over a year ago, but I was reviewing my notes and came across Esslinger’s thoughts on the four types of designers. I wanted to share his opinion since it is appropriate for this blog.

Esslinger’s four types of designers, summarized:

1. The Classic Designer (Dieter Rams, Kenji Ekuan, Ettore Sottsass Jr, Mario Bellini, Jonathan Ives). These designers can run their own studios or be corporate stars. They generate products that appeal to the heart and to the mind. They address the bigger goal of making products more usable, enjoyable, and safe.

2. The Artistic Designer (Philippe Starck, Karim Rashid, Ross Lovegrove). These designers create products with spectacular visual appeal. They draw attention, but not necessarily growth for a company. Their designs are artistic and complex to manufacture, but inspire others to create derivative products requiring lower levels of technical complexity.

3. The majority of designers today who fall prey to a lack of strategy and identity in a corporate design department. These designers are often mismanaged and underappreciated. They work in organizations that have no consistent approach to incorporating design into their strategic plans or processes.

4. The highly creative strategic designer. These designers are fluent in new technologies, social, ecological, and business needs. Their mission is to create objects that are inspirational in their usefulness, beauty, and social responsibility, while at the same time supporting the business’ strategic goals. They are focused on building a brighter future for themselves, their organization, and their world. They are a design leader.

You can see how many designers might start their career as the third type of designer working in an organization without a clear approach to design strategy. Only a select few of these designer will ever grow into the fourth type, the design leader. I believe it all depends on the designer and their particular initiative, but think that one person could certainly be all four of these types of designers throughout their career.

If you want to develop your career as a leader capable of simplifying and running creative direction then you should be taking appropriate actions for that future now. I hope these blog articles touching on my notes and experiences will help you reach your goals of building a brighter future for yourself and organization. You’ll want to tune in and read some of the posts I’ll be making, but certainly start by reading Esslinger’s book if you have not done so yet.

An Effective Way Designers Can Visualize Business

Bradley Derry — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:50:05 +0000

Leveraging your ideas of design across an entire organization can seem daunting. I have found the easiest way to tackle this is to mentally break up the magnitude into separate sections and think of an organization as a set of rings.

At the center of all the rings is the organization’s leadership with its unique ideas, strategy, and game plan. The surrounding rings are the various employees, departments, products, and brands that support that center. These rings are complicated in their own right, but they all work together to carry out the center’s strategy. The largest and last ring is the audience, the consumer, the revenue. It’s the most important ring because it is the ring that embraces all the other rings and holds them together. There would be nothing that protects and nourishes the inner rings without this last ring.

You agreed with me that design is special and helps form bonds between a company and their consumers? Then don’t you think design should be the center of these rings, the idea, the strategy? Of course it should. Design is the new center because business knows that design processes uncover real value, excites customers, and enriches experiences.

A design leader takes design and guides it into the center of all these rings, one ring to the next until it is the center. The design leader argues for distinction and raises the bar. A design leader is a design do-er and a design pusher. A design leader needs to be master of influencing other rings to support and fuel intentions.

Envisioning your company into separate rings will help break up the intensity of an organization into more manageable pieces. Tackle each ring, each person, each product one by one. I personally have 11 rings I manage in my efforts; production, vendors, sales, marketing, engineering, finance, management, products, graphics, distributors, and customer. Discover your rings and determine the best approach to impress them with your ideas. In the end all your rings will love you for it.

Where Are The Design Leaders?

Bradley Derry — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:19:19 +0000

Design is the most important aspect to happen to business in the last decade. Today’s shoppers are savvy and they pay attention to the details, noting the brands that produce remarkable products. Companies that can successfully get the attention of the customer are rewarded with years of their money and loyalty. Some of the most popular brands in the world are using design processes to uncover solutions that excite the customers and enrich their experiences. Design is quickly becoming the most important strategy for any modern organization trying to get ahead as more of these programs prove to be successful.

So why hasn’t every organization adopted design yet? The problem is the confusion organizations face when trying to understand these methodologies and implement them clearly in their business. I’m not going to pretend that understanding design is easy because, quite frankly, it is not. Design is hard work and it requires proficiency, analysis, and talent for it to be a viable investment. I do believe that part of the problem is the lack of design leaders who can address these confusions and bring clarity to these strategies. So where are these design leaders? Is there a lack of talent in the market place or are they working in corporate anonymity yet to fulfill their potential?

I decided to re-launch my site aimed at providing articles from my notes and experiences understanding the field of design leadership. The site is intended for both the designer and business person as a knowledge base and discussion point in a call to action, or at least a ‘get it out in the open’, sort of effort.

Designers, I intend to provide insight for those of you looking to become exceptional design leaders capable of implementing, simplifying, and running creative teams and processes. Leaders who can endorse design processes to drive serious direction in an organization are in high demand.

Business people, I intend on providing insight for those of you interested in understanding, encouraging, and using design leaders within your organization in an effort to drive meaningful change. Design is the difference that separates you from your competition and is a must have modern business strategy.

I hope this blog will be a good forum for communication so please stop back to comment, leave suggestions, and get involved. Let’s have some fun…subscribe to the RSS or bookmark the blog and help me make something cool for us to enjoy.