“THE EXPERIENCE OF DESIGN: FROM LOW TO HIGH”, OCT 23-24, LJUBLJANA
Allan Chochinov, Partner/Editor, at Core77, USA

Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, a New York-based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts. He is editor in chief of Core77.com, a widely-read website focusing on product design, Coroflot.com, a job and portfolio site serving designers and employers across all design disciplines, and Designdirectory.com, an online database linking design firms with corporations seeking strategic design services. Chochinov writes and lectures widely on the impact of design on contemporary culture, and teaches in the graduate departments of Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

According to Chochinov, as designers confront a future of growing consumer demand for designed artifacts, along with an alarming increase in the environmental, social, and economic consequences of producing, distributing, and using those artifacts, there is an urgent need to reassess the real imperatives and mandates of design. “Classically, it has been viewed as a way to “problem solve” in the built environment, but more and more, the discipline of design is seen as a way of creating value—through artifacts, systems, brands, and services”, says Chochinov.
Here, however, he points out, it’s important to examine just what we mean by the term “creating value,” since the word means different things to different people. “Value to a consumer will be different than value to a manufacturer, distributor, advertiser, or regulator. It is here that the design professional is perhaps most needed, since understanding, sympathizing, and navigating these often-contradictory needs and perceptions is key to determining the consequences of any design act.”
Since design is currently enjoying a big new or resurgence in interest, and since notions of “innovation” and “design thinking” permeate the business press today, there is now a greater curiosity about just what the design process is, and how it resonates through business and culture.
The short answer – according to him – is of course that good design is all about experiences: that a designed product or artifact is a prop in an experience that users move through. “Experiences can be enlightening or banal, satisfying or deflating, life-affirming or depressing. Designers – at least when they succeed – have the tools to modify behavior, bring joy, ease burdens, and yes, solve problems. But unless we take the wide view of experience and culture, it isn’t possible to create things – even if they’re things of beauty – that have resonance beyond their immediate materiality.”
If design is a tool to solve problems and celebrate life, “experience is the power” in that tool, Chochinov asserts. “It brings context, wisdom, humility and common sense to the process, and in so doing, ennobles both the designer and the design.”

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Design by Steven Haslip

EXPERIENCE IN DESIGNING SPACES, BODIES AND MINDS

This year, the Month of Design Conference offers a venue for interdisciplinary dialogue on the role of design in the contemporary world, focusing on the experience as a body/object, as a place and as a concept/mind. What is it that we experience when we long for & use something – at work, play, when shopping, communicating, eating, driving … and what is it that they are trying to sell to us when we are looking for new experiences?

The Design Conference 2008 will feature a pool of design professionals, managers and internationally renowned lecturers, who will discuss the ways of manoeuvring through the world of experience shocks. Ljubljana looks forward to hosting designers, fashion editors, theorists of desire, agents of consumerism, creators of web platforms, web designers, architects, interior designers, marketing gurus and consumer rights activists.

Speakers

DESIGN EXPERIENCE/DESIGN IMPERATIVES, Allan Chochinov, Core77, USA, TRIBAL ASPECTS OF THE BRAND, Nicolas Minvielle, France; HUMAN NATURE, Victor Gerardo Martinez, VGM design, Mexico; SILENT DESIGN, Frans Joziasse, Park, Germany; THE CITY CENTRE EXPERIENCE, David Charles Cash, Building design Partnership, Great Britain; EMERGENT TRANSPARENCY DEFINED THROUGH EXPERIENCE, Enrique Limon, Limonlab, USA; ENRICHING EXPERIENCE THROUGH STRATEGIC DESIGN, Kim Aalto, Mozo, Finland; David Carlson, Sweden; ARE YOU BEING SERVED? Richard Eisermann and Anja Klüver, Prospect, Great Britain; THE SPEED OF INNOVATION AND ITS IMPACT ON CREATIVE PROCESSES, Frederik Andersen, Story Worldwide (London), Denmark; WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE, WHEN CHANGE IS THE ONLY THING THAT IS CONSTANT, Christoph Böninger, Auerberg Design, Germany; Kunle Adeyemi, OMA, Nederlands; HAPPY PEOPLE TELLING STORIES, Jan Egil & Stefan Dahlkvist, Moods of Norway; Norway, OBJECTS AND USERS: DEMANDING INTERACTION, Paul Cocksedge, designer, Paul Cocksedge Studio, UK, DESIGN AS ESSENCE OF ENTERPRISE, Jakob Odgaard, Bang & Olufsen, Denmark, Carl William Kerchmar – Month of Design conference moderator

Conference fees

Regular fee – attendees from Academic Institutions and Industry: EUR 390
Reduced fee – PhD students: EUR 100

Contact

Zavod Big
Dunajska cesta 20
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia

Tel: +(386) 1 431 2222
Fax: +(386) 1 431 3174
Email: design@zavodbig.si

Registration form

“MOTIVATION AND MANIPULATION: INTERVENING IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND CHINA,” OCT 23-24, LJUBLJANA
Kunle Adeyemi, The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Netherlands

Kunle Adeyemi joined The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in 2002. As a Senior Associate of OMA he is presently in charge of several ongoing projects: the Qatar Foundation Headquarters, the Central Library and the Strategic Studies center all in the Education City in Doha, the new Headquarters tower for the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China, the Prada pavilion project in South Korea & most recently the 4th Mainland bridge & master plan project in Lagos, Nigeria.
In addition, Kunle has taught Design at Delft Technical University (The Netherlands) as well as been a visiting critic at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in America, the Architectural Association in London, and the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. In 2006 he was a guest speaker at the ‘Impure Architecture’ symposium held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

In order to successfully accomplish projects in the Middle East and China, the architect is increasingly confronted with a peculiar need to sensitively employ a variety of unusual strategies in order to negotiate the complex structure of various participants.
In the Middle East, architects who can promise to deliver uniqueness in an ever-congested culture of excess and hyperbole are proactively patronised and encouraged by ambitious clients to create environments limited only by the architects’ imaginations. Between ambition and imagination is an array of those dedicated to the process of interpretating and regulating the transformation of the former to the latter. So strongly is ‘process’ emphasized here – more so than the content – that it threatens imagination and all of the efforts committed to it.
While in the Middle East complexity arises from the process and not from the actual content of the project itself, rather the opposite tends to prove true in China. In China, the architect faces a reversed situation where complexity stems from a constant encounter of conflicting motivations; the ‘meaning’ in the content itself. China’s highly-complex social, cultural and political fabric challenges western architects’ preconceived ideas and motivations. Successful architectural collaborations are often futile without a considered understanding of the leadership’s own predispositions to the content or design, which is largely rooted in symbolism, metaphor & power.
Both China and the Middle East, however, share similarities in a desire for grandiosity and means. To overcome these challenges, the sensibility of an international architect working in the Middle East and China must be more strongly embedded in a deeper understanding of motivations and highly-strategic manipulations of human interactions, focused at bringing initial ambitions closer to the final accomplishment of great imagination.

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“ARE YOU BEING SERVED?”, OCT 23-24, LJUBLJANA
Richard Eisermann and Anja Klüver, Prospect, UK

Richard Eisermann has worked as a designer and strategist for over twenty years. He has had a hand in designing everything from insulin delivery systems to high-speed train services. In 2006, he co-founded Prospect, a London-based strategic design practice, with Anja Klüver. Prior to Prospect, Richard was Director of Design and Innovation at the UK Design Council, responsible for leading design campaigns in the areas of manufacturing, technology, learning environments, and design skills.
Anja Klüver is co-founder of Prospect with Richard Eisermann, and a visual communications designer with over 12 years of interaction design experience. She has collaborated with MetaDesign London, Icon Brandlab, FutureBrand Digital and Oyster Partners among others, leading multi-disciplinary teams on projects for Unilever, Dutch Telecom, MTV Europe, No. 10 Downing Street, the Victoria & Albert Museum, British Airways and The BBC.

“If the service economy is the defining paradigm of our current reality, then why”, Eisermann and Klüver ask, “are we so bad at designing and delivering good ones?”
Poor experiences abound – are designers responsible? Or have they just not been invited to the party? “With designers ever more keen to be involved in upstream strategic thinking, how,” they ask “can we make sure to not ignore those areas where a designer’s skills make a significant impact: at the sharp end of service delivery.”
Prospect looks at the role of design in the conceptualisation and creation of services as well as explores the methods and tools available to realise brilliant experiences. Looking at the issues from a user-centred perspective, we see how people might be involved in service co-creation and in the design of their associated communities, reinforcing the notion of “The Story Economy”.
Prospect offers up case Amtrak and makes their own case – “Designing the transition from operations focus to service focus”. Amtrak provides passenger rail services in the USA and had forever operated in the red. It was decided a design-focused management strategy was needed. Working closely with the senior management team, the design team helped to build a tangible vision, visualising a series of ideas that embodied the look and feel of the overall service concept. This, in turn, laid the groundwork for the specific service elements to be developed, within a framework dubbed “The Seamless Journey”. The design team developed the brand idea, the positioning, the identity and created a new name for the service: “Acela”.
Amtrak was able to offer an integrated passenger service through an organisation clear in its objectives and its identity. Ridership increased twofold within six months of service introduction. Amtrak’s Acela service is now poised to generate a $2 million profit – the largest in Amtrak history.

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“SILENT DESIGN”, OCT 23-24, LJUBLJANA
Frans Joziasse, PARK Advanced Design Management, Germany

Frans Joziasse is one of the two founding partners of PARK (1998), an international network of strategic design management consultancies that works with clients like Audi, LEGO, Roca, Siemens, Lafarge, Johnson Controls, Hyundai & KIA Motors, Bugaboo, Amsterdam Airport and Reckitt Benckiser.
He holds an MBA in design management from the University of Westminster (London) and lectures/teaches at several universities in Europe and the US and at the Conferences of the Design Management Institute on strategic design management issues.
He founded PARK in 1998. Joziasse has been cited for numerous awards for design excellence by the Gute Industrie Form in Hanover (Germany). In 2003, he developed the module ‘strategic design management’ for the MA design management at the INHOLLAND University (taken over by EURIB at the Erasmus University in 2005), in Rotterdam, where he continues to teach the module.

Design has developed into a mature profession and industry over the last 20 years. Globally the investment of companies in designers has dramatically grown. Companies like P&G have a few hundred design managers in order to manage their design projects with externals, while Samsung has 500 designers or so to boost the brand image and power up their innovation levels. Haier the Chinese multi-national has just opened design and research centres in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. Also the Indian conglomerate Tata has just communicated their plan to open design offices with 100 or more designers in Europe (Germany and UK).
The professionalization goes hand in hand with management practices, a part that is not really visible to the outside world. A company with successful designs is a company with successful design processes, said Peter Gorb already back in the 1980s.
So what, he asks, do these management practices look like? How are they linked with the long term direction of companies and how are they integrated in the other business processes? And how are other departments of companies involved? What are the main ingredients of what Joziasse calls silent design?
Joziasse offers three key points of departure: having a strong mission and vision; having processes in place; having the right culture and organisational alignment. On the first of these he points to the Dutch electronics giant Philips, long a champion of design, he maintains, with a vision that is strongly focused on the consumer, on society and the environment we live in. He maintains that innovation should be managed as an intentional and disciplined, reliable and repeatable business process. And finally, he asserts that design is becoming increasingly a bridge between technology and consumers, and that to realise that bridge companies have to create the right culture and organisation around their design community. Therefore design has to think out of their design black-box, which means teaming up with their peers as well as with the consumer.

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“DESIGN AS ESSENCE OF ENTERPRISE,” OCT 23-24, LJUBLJANA
Jakob Odgaard, Bang & Olufsen, Denmark

Jakob Odgaard is Managing Director of Bang & Olufsen’s Expansion Markets division. From the company’s headquarters in Struer, Denmark, he and his team support an extensive dealer network covering some 40 countries, including Russia, the Middle East, Latin America and India among others.
Odgaard has been 13 years with Bang & Olufsen, with particular expertise in Expansion Markets. He began his career as a consultant with the Carl Bro Group, one of the largest players in the European consultancy market, providing management and strategic counsel to companies.
Today Odgaard also heads Bang & Olufsen Enterprise, a leading provider of custom AV installations to luxury hotels and condominiums, and most recently, took on the role of heading the company’s marketing division, setting the strategic direction for the brand globally.

Founded in 1925 in Struer, Denmark, Bang & Olufsen is world renowned for its distinctive range of quality consumer electronic products including televisions, music systems, loudspeakers, telephones and multimedia products which are sold in 60 countries around the world.
Bang & Olufsen is unique as a brand that bridges the home electronics and lifestyle-luxury categories. The company prides itself on its idea-based products that combine technological excellence with emotional appeal. Many of these products hold places of honour in the permanent collections of the world’s greatest art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
To create products with appearance and functionality the company has evolved its unique design and development processes that give designers free reign to create new products which, at the same time, challenge engineers to find a way to manufacture them.
Starting out as the vision of two enterprising young men and their first creation, the ‘Eliminator’, the company’s design process and the evolution of its distinctive product range make it a unique design- and experience-driven enterprise.

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“THE CITY CENTRE EXPERIENCE”, OCT 23-24, LJUBLJANA
David Charles Cash, UK; International Development Director, BDP

David Cash joined BDP in 1980, and took over leadership of BDP Manchester Office in May 1994 and of BDP North in July 2000, comprised of four offices with 350 staff. In July 2008 he became Director of International Development responsible for leading BDP’s strategy to become a major international design organisation through the securing of new projects around the world and establishing a network of international offices.
BDP works across many sectors – retail, urbanism, transport, workplace, healthcare, education, housing, leisure and heritage. Their many projects include Täby Centrum, Stockholm, Meriadeck Centre, Bordeaux; Liverpool One; Piccadilly Station Refurbishment, Manchester; and the Vasco da Gama Centre, Lisbon.

The town or city centre and in particular its shopping area is usually a reliable measure of the vibrancy of the wider community. In short, what we think of a town is often based on how we assess its shopping centre.
Some towns in decline have been able to reverse their fortunes through a well designed central area redevelopment project whilst others might not have been so successful. Indeed, some poorly designed centres have greatly damaged the historic heart of a community which may have evolved incrementally over many centuries.
With this in mind, Cash offers, it is important to analyse the essential ingredients which characterise the best central area redevelopment projects using examples based on his almost 30 years of experience working in the sector.
As he points out – and develops both in talks and in practice, the design of the town centre shopping experience is a complex matter involving the resolution of many different factors and interests: sustainability and balance with nature; flexibility for change; artwork; lighting;; servicing and logistics; parking; multiple levels; architecture and landmark buildings; local identity and character; diversity and mix of uses; covered or open?; maximisation of pedestrian flows and ease of movement; permeability; street pattern; public realm; continuity and enclosure.
In addition, good redevelopment invariably needs close co-operation between the public and private sectors. For these reasons it can be a long drawn-out process with the average total time for a development being at least ten years. However whilst this might seem a long time with a great deal of work needing to be undertaken, it’s well worth it, Cash maintains, and is one of the most satisfying exercises a designer can undertake.

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“MAKE IT DIFFERENT: FIVE DESIGN TRENDS FOR THE FUTURE,” OCT 23-24, LJUBLJANA
David Carlson, founder, David Report & Designboost, Sweden

David Carlson, founder of David Report, has been working with design as a competitive weapon for twenty years. With design as an added value David helps his assigners create attractive brands ready for the challenges of the future. His assigners include Absolut, Level Vodka and Sony Ericsson.
He is also the founder of the furniture brand David Design, the lifestyle shop Carlson Ahnell and the knowledge company Designboost. Now and then he also serves as moderator and writes chronicles and debate articles. He edits and does the graphic design for a nature preservation organisation magazine.
Carlson regularly lectures on trends concerning design, entrepreneurship, communication and brand development.

Today, Carlsson argues, most companies understand that the products of their competitors have the same technology, price, performance and functions. It’s more or less only the brand and the design that separates them. This then makes it crucial to have an open mind towards the future, to understand the market and its need states.
This involves developing aesthetically-engaging and life-enriching products that talk both to our hearts and to our brains – “feel good” products so to speak. It’s a safe way forward for companies that would like to develop a friendly relationship with their clients and, at the same time, earn lasting brand loyalty.
Carlson talks about the importance of being culturally connected, and having and using knowledge in creating humanistic experiences. He sees it’s about storytelling and how to build factors in that attract consumers; to use design as a tool and channel of communication. Most important is the need to differentiate; to find the white spots or the blue ocean or whatever we might want to call it, to do it your own way.
His approach to design as an experience goes through five different design trends for the future, all based on both micro and macro research made for the trend report David Report.

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“HAPPY PEOPLE TELLING STORIES,” OCT 23-24, LJUBLJANA
Jan Egil & Stefan Dahlkvist, Moods of Norway; Norway

Moods of Norway began in Honolulu, Hawaii as an after-party idea between the company’s two designers Simen Staalnacke and Peder Børresen. Simen and Peder wanted to tell stories from Norway and make clothes for different moods, which is why every Moods of Norway item has a small Norwegian detail or twist to it.
Jan Egil grew up in Stryn, Norway and established his first business at 16, a night club in the Norwegian country side. At 36, he is co-founder and financial director of moods of Norway, handling the daily operations of this lifestyle design brand, and responsible for drawing the line between art and commercial products. Egil also works with the design process and to help bring new Moods of Norway concepts/product categories to the world.
With a Bachelor of Communications from Göteborg University in Sweden, Stefan Dahlkvist is the international sales manager for Moods of Norway and is also active in the concept development/design of the brand. At 34, he works closely with the company’s sales agents in Japan, Spain, Benelux, Germany, Scandinavia, Iceland and USA. Together with the company’s design duo, Dahlkvist forms new collections to fit under the moods of Norway concept umbrella, and is also involved with shaping new product categories.

Returning to the country known for polar bears and expensive gasoline, the designer duo drew their lines for the coming collections. The Moods Of Norway brand has its headquarters and showroom in the town of Stryn (population 5750), a place known for glaciers, salmon fishing and one newly-opened escalator.
Little Moods of Norway has been operating on the international fashion dance floor for just six years now, but the philosophy is still the same. Their main goal, besides making their grandmothers happy, is to make happy cloths for happy people around the world.
What role does design play in creating a strong and effective fashion/clothing experience? Behind the brand is an international lifestyle design concept that combines products with a twist of Norwegian history, culture, heritage and tradition. Nature – and the very special Norwegian natural environment – plays a big part in the brand identity and ultimate brand experience.
As a lifestyle clothing/fashion brand, it plays on – celebrates – international travel, a love of colourful play and fun, board sports and music in their clothing, shoes, cosmetics, food, spirits, hotels and more. Moods of Norway creates consumer experiences with hangtags in the linings, with true stories and statistical details, through concepts with (happy) thoughts in mind. To borrow a neighbouring Swedish company’s tag-line, Moods Of Norway is serious fun.

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“ENRICHING EXPERIENCE THROUGH STRATEGIC DESIGN”, OCT 23-24, LJUBLJANA
Kim Aalto, Mozo, Finland

Kim Aalto is director in charge of brand & marketing solutions for international clients and their brand development with design at Mozo Oy. Mozo is a creative marketing & design agency that innovates, designs and manufactures solutions that communicate and sell brands.
He has long strategic, conceptual and managerial experience in brand management, brand building & development (both domestic & international brands), sales & marketing, strategic planning, and digital marketing (internet & mobile), design. Previously he served as Planning Director at the McCann Helsinki advertising agency in charge of strategic brand and marketing planning; as well as Crossmedia Planner at TBWA/PHS, Helsinki.

Brand building is all about managing brand experiences and building positive brand images. Positive brand images encourage interaction and involvement with the brand. Each interaction becomes an experience. Positive experience leads to more interaction and involvement with the brand. Strong and trusted brands make people spend more, use more and do more with the brand. This way investments in brand building pay themselves back.
Everything the brand does communicates, and everywhere it’s present matters. Design plays an essential role in brand building: it can create positive impact for a brand, it can change how new consumers perceive the brand or change the perception of the brand on new markets; moreover it helps, indeed is key, to delivering the brand message and communicating the brand promise.
Design should always be based on the brand. Brand-centric design consists of Design Philosophy & Design Language. Where Design Philosophy focuses on the physical, rational and emotional properties of the brand, Design Language concentrates on shape & form, graphic style, materials & finishes, colour and illumination specifically suited to the brand. If sustainability or ecology are important, key values for the brand, they should be clearly communicated by the Design Language used.
Aalto points to a number of key components in the process of strategic design, which include looking further in the initial observation process, which must also include the both distribution and the actual end-consumer. In exploring possibilities, the approach should be disruptive and creative, the solution relevant and highly-specific to the brand.

more: http://mozo.fi/

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