Thanks to a heads-up from Diego Rodriguez (Metacool), I attended a lecture last night by writer/design-thinker Virginia Postrel at Stanford. (It was part of a the David Lui Memorial Lecture Series in Design.)
I had not met Virginia before, but I had a chance to chat with her before her lecture. She was warm and friendly. I thanked her for the kind things she had said about the Ball of Whacks in her blog, and I was glad she was having fun playing with it. We both acknowledged that it's nice to be mentioned in Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit blog because it creates, as she put it, "an Instalanche" of site visits.
Virginia then spent the next hour presenting her design ideas to the packed auditorium (mainly appreciative designers and design students). Among other things, she discussed the "design explosion." It makes good business sense to improve the aesthetic experience of products and places — to "make them special." She gave many examples for her points.
She singled out Starbucks as a company that has successfully used aesthetics as a strategic tool. Starbucks "is in the business of creating appealing social spaces for people." She went on, "Starbucks is to the age of aesthetics what McDonalds was to the age of convenience, and what Ford was to the age of mass production."
She also shared a number of ideas from her book Substance and Style, and then took questions for another twenty minutes. I asked her about Bruce Nussbaum's recent comments (in BusinessWeek) about "Are Designers The Enemy of Design?" She spoke about the growing DYI (Design It Yourself) movement, and also recognized that good professional designers are really knowledgeable and create some amazing things. She also adroitly handled questions about world music, and the availability of fresh produce in grocery markets.
Thanks Virginia for a fun, stimulating evening!
(BTW: here are some of Virginia's Ball of Whacks designs!)
Roger:
What a wonderful opportunity to meet Virginia Postrel. I really enjoy her style: writing and thinking. In Italy, we were secretly hoping to keep design all to ourselves... and I am really glad it spread. Just today I was discussing the importance of design as container of experience with Steve Roesler from All Things Workplace (blog).
Posted by: Valeria Maltoni | 13 April 2007 at 04:06 PM
Roger,
When Jonathan Rotenberg ran The Boston Computer Society it was the largest organization of its type in the world. (Near the beginning of the creation of organizations of its type it had — for a year or three— more members in California than any of those based in California.)
I think a major reason for his success was design.
In a world filled with the aesthetic horrors of dot matrix printing, Jonathan insisted on high quality design for of all the Society’s marketing materials and for its flagship publication “Computer Update.”
Of course, he had to do many other things right in order to succeed as he did. But his relentless pursuit of excellence in design attracted people to the services the Society provided.
You and Virginia Postrel are right to point out the power of design.
John
Posted by: Shakespeare's Fool | 15 April 2007 at 02:43 PM