Design Eric Hillerns Principal + Pinch. A Design Office.
Marketing James Archer Managing Director Forty Agency For 2010, I think—I hope!—we’ll begin a conversation about balance in the marketing mix. Social media has been the “Next Big Thing” for a couple of years now, but despite the heavy hype, there’s been relatively little discussion about its place as a tool in a toolbox, as opposed to it being the salvation of marketing and branding. Print isn’t dead. Television isn’t dead. Radio isn’t dead. Billboards aren’t dead. Direct mail isn’t dead. Even newspapers aren’t dead. They’re all very much alive and there are great opportunities to use them in conjunction (instead of replacing them) with social media and other new media. By applying the fresh perspectives and philosophies found in new media to more traditional areas of marketing, we can uncover opportunities to innovate and extend beyond what others have done in the past. Here’s hoping 2010 is the year we dust off some of the great media vehicles of the past, and discover new and relevant ways to use them to connect with our audiences.
In recent years, “design thinking” has overshadowed “design doing.” And for good reason. Our role as designer is expanding as business and world leaders are looking to designers for models that extend beyond visual applications. The most vocal advocates have found new avenues to extrapolate their methods, while highly designed brands such as Apple, Chipotle and Virgin have demonstrated that traditional, also-ran formulas (Microsoft, GM or United) are illustrations of short thinking for short gain. While the surface (page, screen, media) is being reconsidered, to a greater extent that surface is being applied as a tactic, rather than as an idea. Experience is the new surface and social media will increasingly yield to social entrepreneurship. Craft will not remain in service to the limitations of media, but will rather be supported by doing, making and thinking about how craft is considered, defined and executed. Image making will become social making. Communicators will become community. Design will be about legacy and heritage, and will hawk ideas rather than hawking product. The implications of design to address issues of poverty, water, hunger and injustice—coupled with greater access to affordable tools and available communities—will continue to expand the creative and culturally-relevant perspectives from a vastly growing population of “designers” in China, Africa and points considerably more far-reaching. We all stand to learn, to be informed and inspired by this access to, and from, a shrinking—and design thinking—world.
In recent years,
design thinking has overshadowed
design doing. process
winter 2009
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