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The right profile; square pegs in round holes and T-shaped people.

Met a couple of very interesting folk the last few days. Both very different, hugely different backgrounds but crucial things in common:

One is an old friend, the other I worked with briefly (I'll keep them anonymous)...

One trained in ergonomics and product design at Loughborough, the other studied English at University. The product designer spent nearly 10 years in transportation and ergonomics, then started up a design consultancy in Singapore. The English grad went in to the music business, organising band nights and managing acts.

The product designer then spent a while in branding with Wolff Olins. He was in his time, also a very serious racing cyclist.

The English grad then went back to study at Central St. Martins and became a very accomplished animator (which is how I met her). She also discovered that she loves standing up in front of large groups of people, teaching and leading workshops.

So what ties these brief stories together? Both have expressed to me that they no longer feel challenged, that there must be something else to give in their creative lives. Both have user-centred leanings (one as trained ergonomist, the other discovering user research). Both are intrigued about my recent career path from IDEO, through Sense Worldwide to Engine.

Both have also articulated (like myself) that we feel like the proverbial 'square peg in a round hole' and that the established design community is struggling to provide adequately for them. Recruitment consultants on the whole don't know how to deal with these non-conformists.

So why is this interesting?

Because we need more people like this. People like this are the future. Tim Brown calls them 'T-shaped people' Whatever shape they are - for me, they're the right profile.

They're not 'Jack of all trades, master of none' but neither are they the sort of precious creatives who only design for themselves.

Props to Jeff Howard for this piece by Richard Seymour (ex Seymour Powell) from InterSections 07 'Richard Seymour: Leviathan. The rise of the Polymath'.

"Reflecting on his discipline-busting career, Richard believes that designers need to adopt a wide-spectrum approach to the future, encouraging them to broaden their bandwidths. In a lightning tour covering Leviathan, lasagne and Dan Dare he argues that we now have a unique opportunity to reinvent our future and that designers need to start focusing on the real problems that matter..."

It's a super challenging but also super rewarding world out there... I wish us all the very best of luck.

Brainstorm rules and getting a lot of ideas.

The other week I was asked to run a brainstorm in a global digital ad agency. They were particularly interested in innovation around their existing methodologies What this mixed group of creatives, client services, planners and marketing folks found most interesting and surprising was that a structured approach yields really good results.

And I know why - for such a creative, free for all ideas extravaganza; rules seem an anathema. Surely for the free flowing of über creative thoughts you only need to 'light the blue touchpaper' and stand well back. In agency land that's pretty much what happens - Planner writes brief, Creative Director signs off, brief creative team... and wait for concepts.

Of course there are implicit rules and guidelines at work here, even if the creatives are not aware that they're aware of them. They're buried deep in the creative psyche, honed by years of understanding what wins awards and what doesn't.

In agency land - 'Creative is King'.

And as 'creativity' comes from the right side of the brain and the left side delivers order and reasoning, it seems logical to expel as much left brain stuff from the creative process as possible.

Not quite.

My experience suggests that the best brief in the world is not the totally open one, the blank piece of paper - that even the world's greatest artists need somewhere to start, that we need something to 'bounce' off - something to give them feedback and direction something to give them a sense of what is right and wrong. Something to help channel energies, not merely drain them.

So back to the agency  and the brainstorm - there's far more to it than 7 rules.

I had created an agenda with the client in order to make the most of our 2 hours together. This included intros, overviews, the all important questions ('How might we....s')  3 or 4 15 minute brainstorms, a brief warm-up brainstorm and voting. We also had to get used to other technoques - using post-its and flip-charts for capturing, facilitating, timekeeping and the all important refreshments (caffeine and candy).

That's not forgetting a good space, and obviously a good mix of punctual and committed brainstormers.

So, overall this tightly orchestrated session combined a little demo a good deal of explanation and some real hard work.

The result? Two-fold: Firstly, ideas we developed were actioned and actually used. Secondly, the client team was blown away by the success of such an organised, structured approach and (this is the important bit) the sheer number of resulting ideas.

Of course there's no secret where much of this wisdom comes from - Tom Kelley and IDEO, but then again you need to figure out what works for you. There are no guarantees, just opportunities to prototype and innovate.

For as Linus Pauling, Nobel-prize winning Biochemist said "The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas".

(Building upon an original link from Disambiguity - thanks Leisa)

The obligatory 2012 Branding post

As the rants continue to flood the blogosphere, I'm getting asked for my opinion on the new marque for the London 2012 Olympics, designed by Wolff Olins.

I'm not going to focus on the design itself - that's being covered very well over at Logic and Emotion and at Coudal Partners (what is it with Chicago?) and elsewhere.

I'm going to look at some of the issues that I think this raises.

Nowhere to hide: the online launch and subsequent blogosphere frenzy is yet more proof that these days there's nowhere to hide. Brands are finding that transparency is all and that a groundswell of opinion either good or bad can be generated within the briefest amount of time and seemingly little effort. In this instance, maybe LOCOG and Wolff Olins might have been prepared for a backlash, with at least a contingency in case public opinion was negative. But they appear to have gone to ground. I can't help but wonder what effect this will have on Omnicom owned Wolff Olins. Today's consumers have a good memory, check out Krytonite who were eventually forced to replace product.

Who owns the Olympics? This raises questions around ownershipo and responsibility. Do the Olympics belong to the IOC in Lusanne or does it belong to the people of the World? Is the UK merely borrowing it, entrusted with it's safe-keeping for 4+ years? If so, what right do we have to change it's direction, it's essence, it's meaning? We, the public are stumping up cash so what say can we have in what it's spent on?

Reinventing the Olympics: Maybe there's a sub-text here. The Olympics needs to innovate itself, connect with new audiences, it's time to be a modern multimedia brand - more, much more than a sports event. So out with the old conservative and static, in with 'Dynamic, Modern and Flexible'. But that's just a hypothesis.

Olympics as cultural 'tool': If the Olympics is more than a sports event then it's long been used for other, loftier  purposes, national identity, civic pride, urban regeneration. In the 21st century it's a money-spinner and a cultural tool for re-stimulating a love of sport amongst the 'playstation generation'.

Communication tool: As a brand, the marque must serve as a visual communication tool. It must function to communicate effectively, appropriately and hopefully in a visually arresting way given it's symbolic nature. If this were 'art' not commerce you could say that 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder', but it ain't art - it's got a job to do, pure and simple.

That said, from a craft perspective and when seen alongside the marques of the next 2 games (and indeed most from recent games) it certainly breaks the conservative mold. My first impression was that it is slightly clunky, a little aggressive and I still have problems reading the '2012'. I don't hate it but nor do I love it. However it's very early days yet, and I'd like to think that WO know a thing or two about these things having created the identity for Athens 2004 and many other world class identities.

System not static: So the marque is only the start-point for a whole system, an identity ecology reaching out across multilple touchpoints over time and through multiple media. Part of the event that will enrich the experience (try and stop me going; the last thing I want is another press destroyed debacle like the Dome). That is when it will truely come to life, when it will sing and we'll see the marque's true colours.

So ask yourself, what could have been done better? For me it's this whole launch thing - the promotion has been badly executed. Us, the audience have been underestimated and over-looked. The language used is all too 'design consultant gobble-de-gook' and does nothing to help explain or suggest what's to come and it's tone is all too 'top down'.

So after an akward launch the rest of the journey, I'm sure, will be a success.

Imitation vs. Flattery

I guess in a way you could alternatively title this post 'Service Envy' (although not necesssarily in the way that live | work defined the phrase).

In October 2005, Bank of America launched the 'Keep the Change' service. It's an innovative service where for those of us that find saving challenging, the bank will automatically 'round up' card transactions, then put the difference into a savings account. Nice.

Fast forward to December 2006 and I began to see ads for a new service from LloydsTSB called 'Save the Change'. Fundamentally the same idea. Again nice.

Now if you look at the screen shots from their websites (BOA on top, LTSB below) explaining the service, both banks do a good job of visualising the benefits, using similar day to day shopping examples and, well startlingly similar amounts. in fact the amounts 'saved' in the visualisations are exactly the same.

OK, I might be biased, but given the similarity in name, proposition and explanation I can only generously repeat that 'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery' but it does raise interesting questions:

As brands look more towards consumer experience to define a point of difference, can we patent a service in the same way that products can be, or do we have to rely on the unique qualities of brand, audience, market etc. to differentiate?

What does this mean for our client's ROI if their competitors are just going to rip off their hard earned innovation?

Interesting questions that possibly only have subtle legal answers, but none the less, I'd love someone from LloydsTSB to comment...