When Design Ruled...No focus groups...No marketing teams!

The other day, I was at the post office and saw a dapper gray-haired gentlemen get into the most exquisitely restored gray Lincoln Continental from the early 40's. Personally designed by T. 'Bob' Gregorie for Edsel Ford, this elegant model is a true icon of automotive design. I am certainly not a car person, but I know an icon when I see one and this car was such a thing of beauty that I felt compelled to yell out a compliment to a complete stranger. (Find more pictures of these beauties at HubcapCafe.)

As I look around me, every other car looks the same in that generic sort of way. How did car companies get to this place? Is it possible that marketing teams and focus groups are the culprits? Catering to the lowest common denominator is BORING and sales of today's BORING cars reflect that fact.

Art Inspires

There are days that our involvement with product development seems so mundane and we need a fix of inspiration. Art often offers that fix, especially when an artist, like Jennifer Maestre creates such exquisite beauty from a mundane manufactured product - the colored pencil.

It is the subtle details that make the difference. Manufactured products too, can be more than just ordinary.

Housing idea whose time has come

I grew up next to, what we then called a "nasty run-down rental" with a family living there that called their only son "Brother," the house was easy to ignore because it sat on a large piece of property with gorgeous old growth trees. The owner left the property to his daughter, and to our delight, she immediately restored the house to the charm of its origins - a Sears catalog bungalow. Today, beautifully landscaped, this house makes a good neighbor. My parents are ever hopeful that someone doesn't come along and tear it down to build a McMansion. (For more inspiration see a collection of the original plans from the Sears Catalog of houses at About.com on architecture.)

Bill Valentine of HOK, whose article Voluntary Simplicity: Making Smaller Better, I mentioned in November 07 is finally getting his wished-for form of housing. An article in the Wall Street Journal introduced developers Ross Chapin and Jim Soules from the Seattle area to the entire country in an article:The Newest Cottage Industry. They have been building boutique neighborhoods of a dozen of so Craftsman Style cottages ranging in size from 800-1,500 sf, about half the size of typical new homes. The cottages are built around a communal courtyard and are not cheap, they sell in the $600,000 range. The houses are well designed for optimal living in small spaces, for example, interior walls have been replaced with floor to ceiling bookshelves. It is nice to hear that the Bungalow aesthetic is finally making a comeback when sustainability is on the tip of everyone's tongue!

Designer as Therapist

More than a decade ago, I put together a series of special home furnishings inserts for a regional weekly newspaper called the TAB. Having never worked in publishing, I found the general atmosphere there much more poisonous than any other work environment that I had ever seen or experienced. Judging by what I was being paid, the pay scale must have been abysmal - what made it bearable for me was the positively delightful editor that I worked for. Coming off of a self-designed sabbatical, I had made a commitment to myself to try new and "fun" stuff and this gig - I thought - fit the description.

What jogged this memory for me was Home Is Where the Head in today's "New York Times Home and Garden" section. "Architects complain that they are asked to behave more like mental health professionals than designers, clients complain that their architects and their mates do not understand them, and the stories of couples coming asunder, or of clients suing their architects, are legion." Christopher K. Travis, an architectural designer in Texas has found a solution: "an exhaustive psychological and aesthetic compatibility exercise for would-be home builders that is part New Age self-help manual, part personality test."

I looked on my time at the TAB as a learning experience. What I learned is that the most successful residential designers had first been in some form of counseling - art therapist, sex therapist, sociology and even teaching. I finally came to understand why my initial forays into residential design had come to naught - I never found that counseling connection. In hindsight, a lesson learned - I finally understood why I found business much more interesting! (I also learned the few companies that were getting their money's worth from their p.r. agencies. I found small boutique agencies were happy to be helpful to a novice working with a circulation of 600.000, while larger agencies failed to follow up because they were busy putting out boilerplate releases. I am often curious whether anything has changed in the ensuing decade+.)

The "New York Times" story reinforces the importance of the psychological connection that we all have to our homes for those in the business of making and marketing products for the home.

Disney Innoventions Dream Home goes retrograde

David Rakoff puts it so well in his piece on Disney's new Innoventions Dream Home in the NY Times:
"...Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts styles, all wood, warm earth tones and nailed-down knickknacks — a mildly hopeful and unthreatening place. One like today, only better. The future, such as it is, is hidden in the wiring behind the walls."

Yes, the new "idea house" is aspirational only in the McMansion sense, but the optimism of the 1957 "Future House" is missing. The images of the "Innovations Dream Home" have an insular bunker mentality about them. The company appears to be stuck in their successful past, rather than shooting for the stars in the idea world, as Walt Disney would have done.

Disney House of the future...very "Twilight Zone"

It is interesting to contrast this 1957 version of Disney's "House of the Future" with today's. Product placement is certainly not a new idea.

ROOM (Happenings in the box)

Is anyone living in this box? Life informs art and art informs life. An interesting take on the impermanence of materials.

Newly revived Wright Palette

When I purchased my 1890's Victorian house, the interior colors were comfortable and tasteful, if not exactly to my liking. I knew that the colors were not Victorian, but couldn't quite figure out their provenance until I toured Wright's Unity Temple in Oak Park. There was the palette that the previous owners had used throughout the house.

Suitable for today's organic aesthetic, Pittsburgh Paints has introduced a palette of Wright colors - the Fallingwater Inspired Colors. These colors have the same spirit that is present in Oak Park, with the inspiration that Wright found in the central Pennsylvania mountains. The colors have been authenticated by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, the caretakers for Fallingwater. The area and house are well worth a weekend adventure.

Time Travel with "Classic Ad Watch"

As boomers approach retirement, marketers are asking: who are they and what do they want to buy today? Humans prefer the exciting and novel with a touch of the familiar. A good place to begin to get in touch with boomers psyche is on the jalopnik.com website - there you can watch the top 10 car ads of the 60's, 70's and 80's. The narratives, images, music and voice-overs truly allow you to travel back in time.

Germaine Kruip's "Counter Composition"

Germaine Kruip's kinetic art at the Armory in 2007.

Minimalism Lives On

The New York Times weights in on the new Jil Sander store in SOHO..."not a bag, shoe, or double-faced cashmere coat in sight," with an aptly titled article: It’s About...Nothing. Despite several changes in ownership, the new creative director Raf Simmons continues to respect Jil Sander's spirit of minimalism in his approach to both fashion and interior design. He collaborated with Germaine Kruip, a Dutch artist who works with space and light to create the interior of the new store. Although Sander stores have always been spare, it remains to be seen how long the space will show simply nothing.