What do you think a designer can bring to a company at board level?

More designers are taking senior positions in business. What do you think a designer can bring to a company at board level?

It’s simple, Designers create value and more businesses should recognise this. We excel at Design in this country, it’s an under-exploited competitive advantage, great designers provide a clear vision for a brand and the means to communicate this to the consumer, when we get it right this makes brands magnetic. I was invited to join the management board at Mulberry in 2008 and left in 2012.  Over 5 years turnover tripled and the share price rose from £1.50 to a high of £26.00; that’s what designers can bring to a company at board level.
Georgia Fendley, founder and creative director, Construct; Brand Director Mulberry 2008-2012

Design can now make or break a business so the benefits of active representation at boardroom level are compelling and already being demonstrated by design driven organisations. Boardroom level designers can help organisations stay relevant and flourish, help shape create and realise new opportunities, convert brand intention into reality through customer experience and ultimately drive profit. With the physics of entire sectors being rewired, design in the boardroom is also about survival.
Lee Sankey, design director, Barclays

It would be unusual to find someone with the years of experience you’d need to operate at board level still being called a designer. So if we’re talking about experienced design practitioners, and by that I mean those from either the creative (right brain) or administrative (left brain) part of a design/branding consultancy, then what they should bring is design leadership. They should be capable of linking the ambitions and objectives of the board (having helped to develop them) to the day-to-day activity of the business that leads to those objectives being met. That is how you get design into the boardroom. That is how you use design to solve boardroom challenges. And in my opinion, no “designer” should agree to undertake a project until they are clear about what aspect of the board’s business strategy they are fulfilling. Always ask.
Deborah Dawton, chief executive, DBA

The quick answer is a huge amount. Not because we have unique skills, but because we come from a different viewpoint - in particular a customer-centric one. However, for us to attain board membership and for our views to have effect, we must appreciate that boardrooms are focused on financial, legal, strategy and risk issues, not customers or design. Therefore, a softly, softly approach is necessary. We should also remember that directors from non-design backgrounds can make superb non-execs for design businesses – the traffic should be two-way.
David Worthington, director, Creative Boardroom; chairman, Holmes & Marchant

Great ideas are fragile; it takes more effort to make them work than it does to shoot them down. Having a designer at board level gives them the responsibility to champion great ideas and ensure design is integral across the business. To be successful, companies have at their core a great understanding of their design identity, which they use to create great physical, digital or service based experiences and to strengthen their brand. Delivering design thinking at the heart of a company is not easy, the design process is disruptive, non linear, and can be a scary! A successful designer has all the right experience to manage, communicate and deliver this thinking.
Ben Watson, associate design director, Seymourpowell

We’ve just undertaken some research on this topic and we’ve found that there are some consistent attributes and benefits that designers can bring to a business at a senior level. At their most impactful, designers were involved in shaping business strategies and leading business processes. Companies like O2 told us how the design team knits together diverse parts of their business, facilitating collaboration and encouraging teamwork and creativity. The research will be discussed at our Design Summit on 12 February. We also need a few more people like Christopher Bailey who has gone from Creative Director at Burberry’s to become their new CEO.
John Mathers, chief executive officer, Design Council

As designers, we know that good design can add significant value, not just in terms of the final product or service and its appeal to customers, but in terms of the development process, manufacture and making the best use of resources. Working at board level means you’re in a greater position to impact every part of the process.
Paul Priestman, director Priestmangoode and Creative Director CSR Sifang

Outwardly at board meetings people nod and smile the way they always do, while inwardly they feel pushback and discomfort. The strength of the creative at this level is they will ask that, stop them dead in their track question, that needs answering. This is because of their very being they tend to be curious and have a conscience and soul, as they understand the difference between what is right and what is wrong. Equally important they can navigate the two worlds of logic and magic and help a board throw away the traditional scripts and harness their imagination to do the impossible.

(Thu, 28 Nov 2013 | By Tom Banks)

The Design Museum celebrates the 80s and 90s

The Design Museum and District MTV.com have joined up for a one-night-only celebration of the 80s and 90s.

On the one hand it’s a nostalgic look at subcultures like goth, new romantic, acid rave, and pop, but given how these decades continue to impress on the DJs, directors, photographers, designers, and makers of today, it will also look at what’s going on now.
The evening, which takes place at the Design Museum will be hosted by fashion journalist and director Paula Reed and co-hosted by curation agencies Double Decker and Rewind The Tape.

Source: (c) Anita Corbin

The Cloth, Summer Summit: 1985The Cloth, Summer Summit: 1985

Rewind The Tape will present the modern day practitioners influenced by the 80s and 90s.

Source: (c) 1985 Monica Curtin

Bodymap, A/W 1984, Cat in the hat takes a rumble with a techno fish. Model: Scarlett Cannon, 1985

The bill includes Reed in conversation with emerging fashion designers, work by emerging photographers, illustrators and film makers, a poster room of iconic pop stars from the 80s and 90s, screen printing by Oscar Whale, a live catwalk show of emerging fashion and talent, and a bunch of DJs and MCs.
District MTV Takeover, Rewind The Tape, 80s and 90s night, takes place at the Design Museum, Shad Thames, SE1, on 6 December between 6.30-10.00pm. For booking information head to: https://www.ticketweb.co.uk/event/94797

(Thu, 28 Nov 2013 | Tom Banks)

Sony raises the stakes in wearable technology with ‘SmartWig’ plans

The Japanese firm has made an application in the US for a ‘wearable computer device, comprising a wig that is adapted to cover at least part of a head of a user’.
The device would feature a sensor, a processor and a communication device, which would all be ‘at least partly covered by the wig in order to be visually hidden during use’.
Sony says the wig could be used to monitor the wearer’s brainwaves, blood pressure or pulse, or even combined with ‘artificial muscles’ so that ‘if the user is excited, the hair dynamically changes’.
Areas in which the ‘SmartWig’ could be used, Sony suggests, include, healthcare, the games industry or helping blind people to navigate.
Sony says, ‘The usage of a wig has several advantages that, compared to known wearable computing devices, include a significantly increased user comfort and an improved handling of the wearable computing device.’
It adds, ‘The user can wear the wearable computing device as a regular wig while looking natural at the same time’.
Brands have been investing heavily in the wearable technology sector, with Google planning a further rollout of its Google Glass, and Samsung and Nissan investigating smartwatch technology.

(Wed, 27 Nov 2013 | Angus Montgomery)

White Light / White Heat

A new exhibition in London rather boldly links glassblowing to the ‘formation of the universe’, linking their shared naissance in ‘light and heat, the components of fire’.

Source: Courtesy of the artist

Marta Klonowska, The Fish, 2013

It’s this light and heat (and The Velvet Underground) that has leant the exhibition its sub-heading, White Light/ White Heat – a presentation of works in glass by a number of well-know designers and artists collectively curated under the title Glasstress.

Hussein Chalayan Frozen Monologue, 2013 Glass

The show is split between two London gallery spaces, the Fashion Space Gallery  at London College of Fashion and the nearby Wallace Collection; and isa continuation of the Glasstress series, previously shown at the Venice Art Biennale in 2009 and 2011.

Source: Courtesy of the artist

Shih Chieh Huang, Seductive Evolution of Animated Illumination, 2013

The only brief given to the designers and artists, co-curator James Putnam tells us, is that the work must use glass in one way or another.

Source: Courtesy of the artist

Thomas Schu¨tte, Geister, 2011

As such, the work on show is lively and diverse, moving way beyond what we’d expect of the medium, which is often dismissed in the unforgiving art world as rather erring on the side of ‘tweeness’ and craft.

Source: Courtesy of the artist

Stuart Haygarth, Glass House, 2013

Most opted to design their piece and leave the fabrication to a professional glass practitioner, though a few of those taking part chose to blow the glass themselves.

Source: Courtesy of the artist

Shirazeh Houshiary, Flicker, 2013

Adraino Berengo, director of Berengo Studio Murano and Glasstress co-curator, says, ‘By allowing artists to come into contact with this known but seldom used material (in aesthetic terms), I like to think Glasstress has created for each artist the idea conditions for limitless experimentation, open to failure, to second guessing, and to the elation of new discoveries’.

Source: Courtesy of the artist

Whitney McVeigh, Solitude a breath away, 2013

He adds, ‘No one has simply expected to use glass as an interchangeable material with commonly used ones; each, in the end, has found a way to assimilate glass into his own poetic theme, expressing it concretely in the final work’.

Source: Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler

Mona Hatoum, KAPANCIK, 2012

Glasstress: White Light/ White Heat runs until 23 February at Fashion Space Gallery, London College of Fashion, 20 John Princes Street W1G and The Wallace Collection, Hertford House, Manchester Square, London, W1U

Source: Courtesy White Cube, London

Jason Martin, Chimera (Azul), 2013

(Thu, 28 Nov 2013 | Emily Gosling)

New Google Glass could be heading to the UK

The product was initially made available to around 10,000 people in the US – mainly developers – who applied to be a ‘Glass Explorer’.
According to Google the ‘Explorers’ will now have ‘a one-time option to swap out their existing Glass for a new one’.
The company says, ‘This hardware update will allow your Glass to work with future lines of shades and prescription frames, and we’ll also include a mono earbud.’
This means that users will be able to integrate prescription and sunglasses.
Any Explorers who bought a device before 28 October will be eligible for the swap. These people will have paid $1,500 (around £927).
Meanwhile Google is ramping up production for the new Glass product and will roll out its invitation business model used for Gmail, where early adpoters invite people to use  - or in this case buy - the product.
Google says, ‘Over the next few weeks, all Explorers will have the opportunity to invite three friends to join the program. They’ll be able to buy Glass online and can have it shipped to their home, office, treehouse or igloo.’
This could see the Glass available outside the US, which has not been the case previously.
The Financial Times has reported that Google Glass will be available to the general public next year.

(Tue, 29 Oct 2013 | Tom Banks)