Archive for the ‘Design’ Category

Lately, there’s been nothing short of hyperbole surrounding a few notions of Michael Jordan. He’s turning 50. OK! He’s being compared to Lebron James (and vice-versa). OK! I see this as a result of a slow news cycle — I mean, football season is over. I get it. But examining the vignettes associated with MJ’s birthday this past weekend, I was able to glean a point of inspiration that was perhaps less obvious than a career of clutch performances. Or was it?

Once upon a time, Jordan was king of basketball and the world was his oyster. The Chicago Bulls had just completed a three-peat. Nike was cranking out Air Jordans (and had been for some time), selling them all over the world to a culture of hypebeasts. The merchandising of Jordan was unprecedented and would forever reshape the world of sports marketing.

And then Michael retired. We know now that he came back (for another three-peat!), but at the time it was unexpected and almost unbelievable that he would walk away, and he made it sound so convincing. For many, it was time to shelve a multitude of basketball memories alongside ten versions of the Air Jordan and wait for the next big thing. But that was before the team behind Air Jordan had a say in things.

Photo courtesy of Nike

 ”I started designing the Air Jordan XI during Michael’s first retirement — I kept saying he would un-retire. People at Nike gave me a hard time, so I wanted to show those assholes that we could make the best Jordans ever. The XI was the first basketball shoe to have a carbon-fiber plate in the sole and patent leather. By the time I showed Michael, he’d started playing again.”

~ Tinker Hatfield

And so it began. Again and again. Hatfield and his design team worked on engineering a shoe they had every reason to believe might never be produced. And per Tinker’s quote, they didn’t aim low. They aimed to create the best that had ever been designed. Many still argue that the XI is one of the most pivotal Air Jordan designs in the line’s illustrious history.

So instead of hanging it up, the designers stuck to their guns and innovated their way to a new solution worthy of production. And as it turns out, it was also worthy of un-retiring. Years later we see multiple athletes now signed to the Jumpman line with shoes and all sorts of gear being churned out for the inner athlete in all of us. One could argue a lifetime of clutch performances, or designs, has risen from the dust of Jordan’s first retirement.

Some compelling stats about the seemingly “doomed” Air Jordan:

+ According to UBS, Jordan Brand sales increased 89% year over year in 2012
+ The Jordan brand controlled 58% of all basketball shoes sold in the US in 2012
+ LeBron James is the top-seller among current players with shoe deals — Jordan still outsells him 6 to 1

Looking at this story of design and gumption, one might assume sticking to one’s guns can often pay off ridiculously well. That’s true. But it’s duly noted that it doesn’t always work out so well — see any list of other athletes who received shoe contracts that lost money for the labels. It would also seem that we never know where new opportunities will surface. All of this seems to point to instinct. Trust yourself. Trust your vision. At its origin, the allure of  the Jordan brand was all about the shoes. In the end, it became a full line of unexpected offerings, a full-fledged brand. Take a look at espn.com from earlier this week.

They call it XX8. So instead of poking holes in the process, I’m happy to imagine the scene when the team said to one another, “It’s time to fly.”

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  Dave Alsobrooks, Partner

The PARAGRAPH Project is a marketing research and strategy firm based in Durham, NC. We are, at times, a strange brew. But this is what works for us — and inevitably, it works for our clients. The types of people who work at PARAGRAPH are strategists, anthropologists, artists, engineers, entrepreneurs, negotiators, students and builders. Herein lies our value. We are able to look at problems from many different perspectives and apply this diverse point of view to solutions for our clients. After all, if we conduct the same research in the same ways as our competitors, what advantage do we gain? By using old research methodologies in new ways and inventing new methodologies unique to each client’s research objectives, we quickly explore more territory to find insights often overlooked. We believe creativity is the missing link between useful information and actionable inspiration.

In my time, I’ve always enjoyed making things. When there’s an idea or inspiration in mind, it’s hard to leave it there. Without making them, ideas never make it to the real world. A few years back I found myself landing in the idea business, and everything changed. Or so I thought.

At The PARAGRAPH Project, we help all sorts of clients from retailers to manufacturers to advertising agencies by bringing them good ideas. We do our homework to know a client’s business and understand their problems as best we can and then turn our knowledge into ideas. That could be a social media strategy or a brand positioning or a creative brief. But in the end, they’re just ideas. We don’t hammer the nails. But if you’ll recall, I like hammering the nails! And that’s OK. What I’ve come to realize is that artifacts are the currency of the idea business.

Without artifacts, no one knows how much effort went into crafting a positioning
of the 3 most perfect words. Ever.

Without a physical representation of an idea, no one recalls the tingly inspiration
that shot through the room during the big reveal.

Without something to hold onto, understanding is as shallow as the thoroughness
of your notes.

I recently heard an example of this idea in action. The Carolina Panthers are an NFL franchise based in Charlotte, NC. I grew up playing football and I lived near the Queen City, so I admit I’m a fan. Sam Mills was an immensely popular player for the Panthers and eventually became a coach for the organization. He was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in his early forties. During the Panthers’ lone run to a Super Bowl and his own personal battle, he gave an inspirational speech imploring his teammates to “Keep Pounding.” It became a battle cry for the organization and was solidified as an unofficial team slogan as Mills and Mark Fields, another Panther player faced a similar battle at the same time.

Fast forward to 2012 and Nike has taken over the production of uniforms for the NFL. In a unique gesture, they are inscribing the inside of all Carolina jersey collars with the phrase, “Keep Pounding.” Every time a player puts on his jersey, the idea, the inspiration and the legacy of Mill’s speech will be brought to life all over again. In a very commercialized environment, dripping with endorsements and contracts beyond the imagination of most of us, the inscription serves as an inspiring artifact that captures and perpetuates a powerful concept.

Those of us in the idea business need artifacts to do our good work justice. And they should be as beautiful, inspiring and (of course) strategic as any of the ad campaigns they later spawn. An idea is a beautiful thing. And a terrible thing to be wasting away in the ether of a random conference room. Consider translating your ideas into more than voiceovers or even slides in a conventional deck. They’re your ideas, so you most likely have a vision of what they look like, right? And a desire to see them as something more than a PowerPoint slide, right? Your clients will appreciate the specialness of deliverables that do more to inspire and energize their teams. And they’ll also be even happier to sign the check that’s coming your way.

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Examples of artifacts we’ve created to capture our research and our ideas.

Not every creative brief involves assembly. But sometimes it can help jumpstart the creative process. This antique physician’s bag was a creative brief helping inspire a design firm in the creation of  a website and identity collateral for a clinical research organization.

A series of magazine covers we created captured the diversity and specific thoughts of a panel of women bloggers to help a retailer develop a year-long strategy for engaging customers.

We are all unique. To bring different targets to life for a client, we captured our ethnographies in “personal geographies” that illustrated how these people navigated their own world of health, nutrition and fitness.

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  Dave Alsobrooks, Partner

The PARAGRAPH Project is a marketing research and strategy firm based in Durham, NC. We are, at times, a strange brew. But this is what works for us — and inevitably, it works for our clients. The types of people who work at PARAGRAPH are strategists, anthropologists, artists, engineers, entrepreneurs, negotiators, students and builders. Herein lies our value. We are able to look at problems from many different perspectives and apply this diverse point of view to solutions for our clients. After all, if we conduct the same research in the same ways as our competitors, what advantage do we gain? By using old research methodologies in new ways and inventing new methodologies unique to each client’s research objectives, we quickly explore more territory to find insights often overlooked. We believe creativity is the missing link between useful information and actionable inspiration.

Outside of architecture, “facade” tends to be a four-letter word. It conjures up ideas of intentional and obvious pretense. But in advertising and marketing, brands have to maintain some sort of buffer between the truth of how they operate and the reality that they present to customers. The purpose of that veneer is not to pull the old bait-and-switch, but simply to ensure a positive customer experience.

Think of it this way: When a customer walks into your store, she doesn’t want to see the underbelly of what it takes to create a perfect retail environment. The end-result of that all the effort that goes into running a successful business should appear inevitably seamless, as if it couldn’t have come together otherwise. When crafted this way, spaces of all kinds have the power to transport us to new times, places, and emotional states.

But when a branded environment isn’t presented as an airtight package, a rift enters into the customer experience. The enchantment fades and it becomes abundantly clear that alternate realities exist — that the world can work in different and better ways. When that bubble bursts, the customer suddenly has to work to stay engaged. Instead of eagerly awaiting what that brand will produce next, he notices the company’s cracks and opens his mind up to other possibilities.

Fickle shoppers will always come and go, but brands have a huge say in how pleasing or frustrating a customer experience they create. Normal people don’t just storm out of stores for no identifiable reason; somewhere along the way, there was a final straw. The challenge for most brands is not to keep a pristine track record of customer loyalty; it’s to understand the key fault lines that are preventing a passable store environment from being better.

More often than not, those breaking points are in plain sight for the customer. But actionable opportunities for improvement might not jump out as readily to those within the company. And no matter how big a fan favorite your brand is, continued success means regularly assessing whether your latest efforts will dovetail with the experiences your customers want and expect (ahem, Facebook and Netflix).

Wherever you are in the process of fine-tuning the way people experience your brand, the tips that follow will help.

Take advice from people who know your customer.
It can feel irresistibly easy to institute changes from afar, but knowing which policies have a chance of working means staying close to the ground. Start by hiring someone at each of your stores to study how local consumers actually experience your brand.

Remove elements that detract from the customer experience.
Clutter is the enemy, especially when it conflicts with the brand identity you’re trying to sell to customers. If your main benefit is supposed to be convenience, for example, anything that screams inconvenience will stick out to shoppers like a sore thumb. Customers might come to expect long lines at a popular store, but avoid the appearance of needless inefficiency by re-designing your checkout area to include only as many cash registers as you have employees to operate. Same principle applies to disarray in the online shopping experience.

Make customers feel like you are listening.
There’s a lot of room to maneuver between being at consumers’ beck and call, on the one hand, and paying no attention to them, on the other hand. The first approach leads to brand chaos, the second to brand arrogance. Find the middle ground by developing smart ways to show that you know your audience. For instance, whether you run an independent small business or a national chain, host local in-store events that give you and your community a chance to exchange ideas.

In every direction, we see nostalgia for the good old days of analog — when budding technologies were splendid in their simplicity and romantic in their rough-around-the-edges appeal. (At least, that’s the view from here. My pink plastic film camera was, in 1989, undoubtedly more decrepit than fabulous.)

Seemingly with no boundaries, we’re breathing new life into old charmers, from Polaroid and Lomography to turntables to rotary phones. Even hand-written letters have been experiencing a resurgence. In large part, it’s no wonder why we crave slow, tangible pleasures; an always-on digital life can be maddening. And if we allow ourselves to be fully caught up in that existence, impatience for everything to operate like clockwork can lead to burnout.

But that trend hasn’t kept on going and going and going just because we are sentimental creatures craving escapism from the world as it is. There has to be more to the story than just that.

From at least one angle, the most interesting part of returning to analog rituals is how they can reinvigorate our hectic business and creative routines, giving brief respites from chaos that help us put our hands back in the fire with fresh enthusiasm.

There’s no shortage of research supporting activities of this kind. Says NYU psychologist Joshua Aronson, keeping our minds nimble is crucial to keeping and growing mental capacities:

“A decade ago, we thought you got what you were given at birth and that was pretty much it. But now we know the number of brain cells can increase throughout your life through neurogenesis. There’s great evidence that shows if you really work on a skill, the part of the brain associated with that skill grows. The mind is like a muscle. If you don’t keep exercising it, it will atrophy.”

But science aside, people engage in restorative mental activities — and keep on doing so — because they work. Plan and simple. If they didn’t work, I doubt even the most patient among us would be choosing peaceful ashrams and monasteries as vacation destinations or engaging in daily meditation at home.

Of course, rituals work differently for each of us; it doesn’t matter how you slow down as long as the experience inspires you to get back in the game.

Lucky me, I recently came into possession of a 1937 Remington typewriter that creates just that kind of experience. When I tap-tap-tap on that thing, old facilitates new. You see, each of the keys is connected to a circuit that, with the help of a USB cord, feeds my typing into an electronic document on my computer. The typewriter physically slows my hands down, which slows my mind down, which helps me feel more satisfied with what I have so deliberately produced. It helps me focus on the task at hand, not least because I know I have a digital copy to go back to and edit whenever I want.

But slowing down doesn’t necessarily require tools.

A cliche though it may be, I go on walks to get ideas. It worked in college when I drew a blank about the paper I had to write for my German philosophy class. And it works today when I want to write something creative but feel like my mind needs room to spread out. So I leave the digitally charged air of my apartment and venture out. More often than not, I arrive home with something I’m dying to commit to paper.

They say we must “slow down to speed up.” And by finding our own ways of keeping the creative juices flowing, this modern life can be a sustainable thing.

What are your rituals for coping with and making the most of a fast-paced life?

Impatience can be a sticky wicket: when allowed to run amok, it can lead you to fume over a situation seemingly out of control, spinning your wheels in distraction. But when you manage to take your impatience in stride, you can channel that nervous energy into something productive. So, the next time you’re feeling ants in your pants, return to this chart [download a pdf] for help in telling the difference between a constructive response to impatience and one that, to put it bluntly, promises to blow up in your face.

We didn’t forget. If you’ll excuse the analogy, we got impatient to move on before these were complete. Take a look and download below at your leisure. And don’t forget to take a look at the intro to this fourth Virtue of Small Thinking here.

DOWNLOAD THE SET HERE.

Includes:
1024 x 768
1280 x 800
1280 x 1024
1440 x 900
1680 x 1050
1920 x 1080
1920 x 1200
2560 x 1440

DOWNLOAD THE SET HERE.

Includes:
640 x 960 (iPhone)
1024 x 1024 (iPad)

Thanks for traveling with us through a year -or so- of #smallthinking. For those just joining us, we are taking our faithful following (I can say faithful because we oblige an intimate crowd) through the process of ideation and execution. Our notion is that smaller ideas get to live, breathe, evolve (and we discuss this in more depth over on Facebook). Whereas, big ideas get to fester, fabricate and #fail. Not always. But the reality is, to coin a phrase, “It’s a mad, mad world.” A world that’s waiting for you to either a.) blow up (in a good way) or b.) just blow up. We are all citizens of this impatient world. In fact, some say today’s Gen Y-ers never even learned patience. The push forward is intense, even crushing at times, from the news cycle, to the sports world, to the art world, to the advertising world, and so on. It would seem impatience is a universal truth. What do you think?

Let me be clear. We’re not advocating impatience by way of thinking smaller. We are, however, acknowledging it. And attempting to learn from it, understand it and use it to our advantage. With any project there comes a time… like now if you’ve followed our #smallthinking project… when one can get into a bit of a rut. The optimism that accompanies the launch of any project is accompanied by a healthy dose of adrenaline. In my case it is also accompanied by this, or this or these. Once the going gets tough, our instincts, which we’ve mentioned before, compel us to reevaluate the strategy, move the goalposts or maybe just cut and run. This is the point where we need a strong stomach. Second guessing a project’s worth is one of the the first major hurdles to success. And let me just say there will be more.

So how can we channel impatience toward something positive? Well, it starts by realizing that our impatience is healthy in the early stages of a project’s development. We are still hungry. We wish to see our idea through to fruition. But we haven’t trended yet. Yet! What does that mean? The short answer is it doesn’t mean our concept is dead. It may be dying for a number of reasons, but it’s not dead. Check the airway! Begin compressions if needed! Once we acknowledge we’re still in the game, we can reassure ourselves that our impatience isn’t a calling card for the endeavor at hand. In many ways it’s a reassurance that we still care.

So take a deep breath. Not every musician works with Cole Haan before they release a major label album. Not every artist is an international superstar at the age of 22. Not every US President is elected in his forties. These folks were impatient with their reality, for sure. They found a way to channel their impatience into next steps. So we are aiming for practical impatience here, not the meteoric kind.

The cold reality is that impatience can lead us to failure if we give in to its whims. And then we move on to the next thing. And the next. You get the picture. Sometimes a slow burn is where the magic’s at. In the end, nothing is really finite, except as they say, death and taxes. BTW, if either of these are a problem, we have bigger issues to face. Anyway, we should be just as impatient with failure as our own optimism. And we needn’t view these difficult teaching moments so much as our defining moments. We should see them for what they really are — teaching moments. Where we are in the process (early on, mind you), we are allowed rebuttals and recourse. But we will hopefully learn from our miscues. It should be easy to see how impatience and conjecture and ambition and failure are good things. At least for now.

Along the way in our discussion of ingenuity we met Johannes Gutenberg, a gaggle of DIY-ers and a few other characters concerned with the business of forward thinking and making things in new ways. Gutenberg was a good place to start as his storied work with moveable type ushered in a new age of learning and thus the advancement of society as a whole. Let’s leap forward to the here and now where we are experiencing another great leap in publishing, the magazine app. Is it just a glorified PDF or the way forward? We are in the early stages but I believe the ingenuity of developers and end-users of this medium alike will usher in a new age of publishing.

About a year ago, Wired jumped out in front of many other publications with a much-ballyhooed edition of their magazine for the iPad. There was a distinct wow factor at the time. Talk about moveable type! It was fun to flip through a magazine again. There was plenty to love, but the critics who knew plenty about UX, publishing models and so on were able to poke a few holes in the initial release. Essentially they were split on like/dislike, but where was the precedent? Who was right? Well, a year later and Wired is still pushing the evolution of the medium. And it’s getting better. They’ve been an integral part of the initial thrust of magazine apps alongside the likes of Popular Mechanics, Sports Illustrated, Self, and Oprah. Just like in the 15th century, it would seem we are witnessing a publishing revolution.

The magazine apps have opened up new possibilities for making content stickier. We still have many of the same columns and guest appearances by our favorite writers, photographers and illustrators. But how about embedded video and audio files to go along with our text? Additional links to other relevant content? We can now do these things — and under a familiar masthead, one with equity. These capabilities foster a new kind of immersion in topics of interest to readers everywhere. At least those with tablets. What about the tactile experience? To be honest, not everything needs to be tactile to our fingers. A little mental stimulation is just fine, thank you very much.

But as the critics pointed out, a few growing pains persist. And these are not all tied to the developers — some of them fall back onto us marketers. For example, in a recent Wired edition for the iPad I noticed several static ads that looked as if they’d been “ripped from the headlines,” or maybe more appropriately, “ripped from the print edition.” These were certainly a missed opportunity to take advantage of the technology being employed. Also, a few with QR codes. QR codes in a magazine app? It’s easy to surmise that no one has really figured out how to best implement these codes. But seriously, am I going to take out my mobile device, scan the QR code from my tablet, and find myself enlightened? I’m more likely to find myself mildly annoyed without even scanning the code. This before I swipe through to the next article. These electronic editions are a specific medium and so they require a bit of attention in how they are utilized. We’re learning, just as Gutenberg’s contemporaries did before they began spewing forth centuries of learning into the world, fostering a new generation of luminaries. So with a little ingenuity on the part of developers (and a little help from us), new ways of capitalizing on this burgeoning technology will continue to surface. But I digress. We were speaking about magazine apps, not QR codes.

From the business side, ingenuity has already served many of the tablet ‘zine companies well. The apps have served as new ways of hooking additional readers when they were being lost to browsing online. Sure, the big publishers still manage to get folks signing on for year-long subscriptions. But now, they can also sell more one-off editions because they’ve wiggled their way into the lifestyle of today’s consumer and made it easy for them to access content (except <ahem> for those long download times). And a few publishers like Condé Naste are now offering discounts over print subscriptions. Call now! At the other end of the spectrum there are smaller niche publications who serve a specific clientele (more likely to have already invested in tablets) who can now play on the same field with the Wired‘s and Time‘s of the world. So the electronic edition makes a lot of sense for them as well.

Time will tell whether the electronic edition is here to stay. Ingenuity will foster new ways of evolving this technology and what it eventually becomes. And even where it lives. Textbooks, car manuals and even more, I’m sure. It will be exciting to see — and read.

This may be a stretch but walk with me for awhile on this one. We recently introduced Instinct to the world as the second virtue of #smallerthinking. As such, we defined the moment at which instinct kicks in: when we decide if something is worth our time and effort and we begin charting the course of our events. It’s internal and we essentially make it up as we go. We also talk a lot about the link between instinct and trust. Or at least the need to trust our instincts more often in our professional lives.

This all reminds me of a story. Sort of. As it turned out, this happened to me. While in college, I finished a decently-sized (approx. 5′ wide), mostly white abstract painting and hung it in my apartment. I liked it well enough. About 6 months later, a tiny voice said take it down and start painting on it again. Since we’re on the subject of instinct, I’ll say that’s what was at work. Several all-nighters and a few tubes of paint later, I had a completely different painting. OK — it was still white, abstract and of a decent size. But the newer version really did transcend the previous version (and my concept of painting at the time). I ended up working in that style for 2 or 3 years, and the final phase that I’d discovered became the most important sequence of every painting during that period. The white painting is still afforded a prominent space in every home I’ve lived in since those heady days of higher learning. For me, it’s a reminder to keep listening at every step along a path.

Leapfrog a decade or so to our current conversation about instinct. A lot of times we’re guilty of perceiving instinct to be a tool of judgement. It’s true our instincts factor into practically every decision we make. But it doesn’t have to be a yes/no answer or a right or left turn. It can be a maybe/if answer or a long slalom. What I want to believe is that our instincts spur our creativity. Or maybe it’s the opposite — perhaps our creativity is the thing that opens the door for instinct to make a call. Or maybe they’re the same, because they’re both about possibilities, growth and trust.