Brand evolutions

Here's some brain fodder to play with the next time you're stuck in traffic: Evolution of Car Logos

Just look at the evolution of the SAAB badge. Amazing how much churn there is on the automotive branch of the tree for a brand which only emerged after WWII:

Myself, I like the 1949 badge the best. Don't like the screaming chicken so much. How does one say "Burt Reynolds" in Swedish?

As I look through this site, I have to admit that many of the older badge renditions are at least as compelling as their replacements, and often more so. Having been a brand manager at one point in my peripatetic career, I sense that the rationale for many brand revisions or logo redesigns are rooted more in internal politics and the need to do something tangible for one's yearly performance review than in market needs. In other words, most customers probably don't care if your new logo is slightly better than your old one, especially if they just finally got used to the old one, because it has only been the old for the three years that have passed since the last redesign. As with management, sometimes the best marketing may be no marketing at all...

Via Metacool

Which Blogs Should I Read?

Friends of mine in the industry who aren’t taken with blogs sometimes ask me which ones they should look at just to stay current. I looked through my RSS reader and picked the five I thought would be most helpful. They are

• Seth’s Blog (Seth Godin)
• TechCrunch
• O’Reilly Radar
• How to Change the World (Guy Kawasaki)
• Edge Perspectives with John Hagel

vía Noise Between Stations

Danish wind turbine eats itself

You know how we love wind turbines around here, but we love carnage even more -- so we can't get enough of this 200-foot tall Danish wind turbine shearing itself to bits after its brakes failed during a recent storm. The 10-year old windmill is the one of two different Vestas windmills to fail in Denmark in the past week -- the company is launching an investigation, but might we suggest selling tickets instead?

[Via BoingBoing]

Continue reading Danish wind turbine eats itself

An Evolution of Tech Company Logos

Neatorama has put together a nice little collection of progression of famous tech company logos.

You’ve seen these tech logos everywhere, but have you ever wondered how they came to be? Did you know that Apple’s original logo was Isaac Newton under an apple tree? Or that Nokia’s original logo was a fish?

The history lessons are nice, though one I’m a bit skeptical of the veracity:

Jobs thought that the overly complex [Newton] logo had something to do with the slow sales of the Apple I, so he commissioned Rob Janoff of the Regis McKenna Agency to design a new one. Janoff came up with the iconic rainbow-striped Apple logo used from 1976 to 1999.

Anyone have verification of whether Jobs actually thought this? While it would be amazing if a logo did have the actual power to slow down sales, I’m rather skeptical of that too.

vía Richardsona

Inflatable Tea House by Kengo Kuma

Japanese Tea Houses are among the most beautiful and serene structures on the planet, and are usually minimalist in design and modest in size. Kengo Kuma has built an inflatable one for the garden of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt. According to the Museum: "Kengo Kuma develops the traditional teahouse architecture further, while at the same time venturing onto entirely unexplored territory with regard to his design. In search of flexible buildings - Kuma uses the term “weak architecture” - he has arrived at a truly ephemeral structure with this project. ...

vía TreeHugger

Casulo: An Entire Apartment's Furniture in One Small Box

It might not look like it, but inside this box, there's an armoire, a desk, a height-adjustable stool, two more stools, a six-shelf bookcase, and a bed with a mattress. Casulo, the brilliant, modular setup designed by Marcel Krings & Sebastian Mühlhäuser, hides furnishings enough for an entire room -- or, heck, an entire apartment -- in a small 31"x47" (that's 80 cm x 120 cm) box. Two people can lift, carry, and assemble (and then disassemble, when it's time to move) each piece of furniture within the Casulo in about 10 minutes -- it requires no tools for assembly -- and every part of the boxy exterior is...

vía TreeHugger

Personalising "Cash"

vía Jan Chipchase - Future Perfect de Jan el 10/02/08

This pre-paid and top-up-able Starbucks card guides the customer to "treat this card like cash" - and log on to their web site to create a personalised design.

When the donkey work of transferring a pre-determined and shared value from one person to another can be carried out digitally, to what extent is it desirable to have a tangible representation of that value? In what contexts? And as with this card, to what extent should the customer be able to personalise the tangible representation of that value - to what extent should the customer be able to design and create their own cash?

Thinking about the range of tools to create and reproduce physical things - what are the likely forms this currency will take? And given the degree to which people find comfort in nostalgia, who will be the first to re-introduce the sea shell as a currency?

A New Innovation Index--The S&P/BusinessWeek Global Innovation Index.

vía BusinessWeek Online - NussbaumOnDesign de bruce_nussbaum el 8/02/08

Check out our new S&P/BusinessWeek Global Innovation Index that we launch today. It's part of our ongoing effort to provide innovation tools and methods on the Innovation & Design site and in our Inside Innovation magazine.

Here's the idea:

The index is made up of 25 of the most innovative public companies around the globe, based on The Most Innovative Companies rankings (BusinessWeek.com, 2007), an annual survey prepared by BusinessWeek in partnership with Boston Consulting Group. The Innovation Index's rise or fall is calculated at the end of each trading day, and the results are posted online the next morning.

Each day you'll see how the index has fared and the company whose stock price rose the most—and which fell the most in that 24-hour period. We expect the S&P/BusinessWeek Global Innovation Index to be a valuable resource for investors and the broader business community. Innovation is proving to be the key defining factor for the world's most successful corporations, and the Global Innovation Index is a new measure of that success. Historical data show that the S&P/BusinessWeek Global Innovation Index companies outperformed S&P Global 100 Index companies by more than 7% in 2007 and have done 5% better since the middle of 2005. The index, which can be seen on Bloomberg as SPBWIV (in dollars) and SPBWIVE (in euros), is a vehicle for investors to participate in the growth of innovation-driven companies, as well as a means of tracking the performance of those companies.

Each May, after the Most Innovative Companies ranking is published in BusinessWeek, the 25 companies in the index will be rebalanced. Some companies will fall off; others will be added. The current index is based on the 2007 ranking of The Most Innovative Companies and features the following:

Apple (AAPL)
Amazon (AMZN)
Boeing (BA)
BMW (BMW)

Cisco Systems (CSCO)
Dell (DELL)
Genentech (DNA)
eBay (EBAY)
General Electric (GE)
Google (GOOG)
Honda Motor
IBM (IBM)
Intel (INTC)
3M (MMM)
Motorola (MOT)
Microsoft (MSFT)
Nokia
Procter & Gamble (PG)
Samsung Electronics
Starbucks (SBUX)
Sony (SNE)
Target (TGT)
Toyota Motor (TM)
Wal-Mart Stores (WMT)
Walt Disney (DIS)

Each company's weight in the index is derived from a combination of two rankings. The first is a qualitative ranking based on the company's position in the annual BusinessWeek/BCG survey. The second is a quantitative ranking based on three factors used to estimate a company's innovation—three-year earnings growth; three-year sales growth, and R&D as a percentage of sales. A composite score is calculated for each company by adding the qualitative and quantitative scores. For details, go to www.indices.standardandpoors.com.


We're going to iterate as we go along. Clearly one problem from the getgo is that we are building the index on a survey that took place nearly a year ago. We know that Motorola has blown up and that the cell phone unit is being shopped around Asia (so far no one wants it). Starbucks is in trouble and is trying to get back to the basics of aroma-experience marketing (ending its stinky breakfast fare which interfered with that wonderful coffee smell). Dell is just beginning its transformation from low-cost corporate seller of PCs to higher-priced, stylish, designed machines for individuals. And the whole tech sector is getting hammered as the recession gets nearer and nearer. Apple is down nearly 25% from its high.

S&P will be changing the index right after the next Most Innovative Companies ranking comes out and we publish it--in the next issue of Inside Innovation on April 19. That should rebalance the index to reflect current events.

One of the important lessons we can already draw from the creation of this index is what goes wrong with innovation. We have 25 of the very best global corporations using design and innovation--and a significant number of them messed up this year. Why? What mistakes were made? Design didn't save Motorola (the second rate software of the RAZR that made surfing the net and social networking a horror ultimately undermine the stylish look of the product). Dell's innovation in supply-side sourcing and web-enabled ordering didn't last forever and was disrupted by another innovation--the shift to personal, mobile computing from corporate, fixed-office computing.

What other lessons can we draw from the new innovation index?

Pamelia Kurstin: Theremin, the untouchable music

The Grass is Always Greener with Mindscape's "Peddy" Furniture

Have a green thumb? Need something to sit on outside? Japanese company Mindscape has just the solution for you: their line of "Peddy" furniture creates a truly green place to sit in the garden. In true Chia Pet-style, the couches, benches and seats fro out and grow with a little water and light; like the various chairs and loungers we've seen before, they help prove that green is the new grass. If you like the idea of growing stuff yourself, and need some outdoor furniture,...

Open Architecture Challenge Video

With just one month to go before the deadline for the Open Architecture Challenge arrives we hope all the designers and architects taking part around the world are readying their proposals for submission. While all you guys have been designing and developing ideas the Architecture For Humanity

Anti Smog Architecture: A Catalyst for Cleaner Air in Paris

Architect Vincent Callebaut’s latest project balances public galleries, meeting rooms and gathering spaces over canals and abandoned railroad tracks in the 19th Parisian district. The prototype uses green technologies and techniques but is more than just an example of sustainable design. Callebaut’s ‘Anti Smog: An Innovation Centre in Sustainable Development’ is a catalyst for cleaner air.

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Dean Kamen's "Luke" artificial arm gets demoed on video

vía Engadget

It's still awaiting formal clinical trials, but Dean Kamen's so-called "Luke" artificial arm has already gone through its share of tests, which we can now thankfully catch a glimpse of courtesy of a new video from the folks at IEEE Spectrum Online. That same video also helpfully provides a few more details on the arm, including word that it can be controlled through a variety of means including foot pedals, nerves or muscles, and that it packs force feedback to give the wearer an indication of grip strength, among other suitably sci-fi-like things. Of course, none of this exactly does the arm justice, so be sure to check out the video at the read link below to see it in action for yourself.