1、1. How do corporations survive in hard times? The Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) for 2003 show how. This annual contest is sponsored by BusinessWeek and juried by the Industrial Designers Society of America. The winners this year used design to push traditional brands into new markets, e
2、xtend well-known brands into new products, and invent something totally new, cool, and useful. With money tight, companies used design research to develop not only products but also their branding, packaging, and marketing. The impact of this approach goes far beyond the objects themselves.2. Indeed
3、, the biggest winners this year used design - and top design firms - to create powerful, emotional consumer experiences. “We have moved from designing iconic objects to designing iconic experiences,“ says Sohrab Vossoughi, founder of ZIBA Design Inc., which snagged six awards this year, second only
4、to powerhouse IDEOs eight.3. The 2003 IDEA contest showed that Asian design continues to grow. Samsung won three honors and is now second only to Apple Computer Inc. in total awards for the past five years. Motorola (MOT ) Inc. designed a gemlike cell phone for the high-end Asian market and decided
5、to sell it worldwide. Indeed, many products designed in Asia or made for Asia quickly become global. A beautiful windsurfing sail collection came from Hong Kong is an example.4. Flat-hierarchy organizations, goal-oriented conferencing and advanced technology have revolutionized the workplace, and th
6、e new breed of business just doesnt fit into the same old office layout. Enter Wilkhahn, an international manufacturer of seating, tables and rack systems for offices, conference areas and public and transportation buildings.Flat-hierarchy 组织，目标导向型的会议和先进的技术革新了工作场所，新型的企业就不宜在同样的旧的办公室的布局。进入Wlikhahn，一个国
7、际制造商的座位，办公室的桌子和架子系统，会议区域和公共运输的建筑物。5. In that context, Wilkhaln initiated a basic research study regarding communication behaviors within changing corporate environments, in cooperation with a group of designers from Germany, Japan and the US. Systematic studies of meeting practices around the world
8、revealed that clients today need a flexible solution to the design of conference space in layout, furnishings and technology. This need is particularly evident in the area of team environments training rooms, continuing education classrooms and technology-intensive departments.在此背景下，对于沟通分为改变企业内部环境 w
9、ilkhahn 发起了一个基本的研究，在与一群来自德国、日本和美国的设计师的合作中，会议系统研究实践表明，如今世界各地的客户对于会议空间的设计布局，装饰和技术需要一个灵活的解决方案。这个需求在该地区的团队环境、培训教室、6. Having identified the need in the marketplace, Wilkhahn commissioned its independent development company, Wiege, to design a line of flexible conference furniture that would meet the requ
10、irements for static, variable and dynamic conferencing. Wiege President Fritz Frenkler and two associates, Justus Kolberg and Jens Korte created the Confair line of conference furnishings, in association with Andreas Storilo, who designed the folding table.7. The designers paid special attention to
11、comfort, safety and ease of use in the engineering of these products. They withstand heavy use, and the beautifully engineered mechanisms make them easy to roll, fold or stack, so they can be moved or reconfigured easily during a meeting, between sessions or from department to department, and the ca
12、n be stored when not in use. Wiring success for telecommunications equipment is readily accommodated.8. The power of such corporate images, and their almost iconic ability to become part of the visual landscape, demonstrates that great brands and great logos often go hand-in-hand. And while it is di
13、fficult go measure the specific impact of even the most widely recognized logos(would Coca-Cola have been any less popular and enduring with a different logo?), executives, marketers, and designers agree that the logo is often one of the most important elements in the marketing mix. “ the logo is a
14、point of entry to a brand,” says designer Milton Glaser. As such,it is not only the most immediate form of corporate communication,but also the most far-reaching ;even people who dont bother to watch a companys commercials or read its literature are apt to be exposed to the logo. It may represent th
15、e one opportunity a company has to say something to everyone-in shorthand. “A logo must somehow manage to sum up the essence of a company in a single mark,” says designer Alexander Isley (figure 20-1).9. That is no easy task, and the inherent conservatism of many corporations often makes the logo de
16、signers job even more difficult. “With logos, it is often necessary to reinvest clich, to take something that is very familiar and make it seem fresh,” says Glaser, who designed the immensely popular “I Love New York” logo a couple of decades ago. On the other hand, clients may not want it to seem t
17、oo fresh. “Companies dont necessarily want to seem unusual or out of the mainstream,” Glaser says.10.Ugly people are unavoidably second class in modern, consumerist societies. Day by day in magazines, television and films they are reminded of what they dont and can never have-beauty. Material happin
18、ess revolves around beauty and the concomitant pleasures of the flesh. All other material effects are palliatives by comparison. Consumerism is based on selling these palliatives-and at the heart of consumerism there is the photograph.11.The situation is radically different in the United States and
19、Canada. Automobile traffic has gradually usurped the urban spaces. A different attitude to traffic and the automobile has influenced this development, and even where there was a will and a desire, planning policies have been too weak to alter development. The automobile has taken over. Parking areas
20、 have increased and the city centers have become vast asphalt deserts with spread building patterns. It has become impossible to walk. It is too far, too boring, too ugly and in some areas too unpleasant and dangerous.12.Businesses have gradually moved indoors in protected, commercial environments.
21、In the suburbs, this is usually in the form of huge, regional shopping centers. In some cities there are networks of indoor atriums and shopping arcades, where one can walk about within the city blocks. Eton Center and Calatravas new shopping arcade in Toronto are examples of this. Other cities have
22、 developed as “Skywalk citied”, where all activities, shops and pedestrians have been elevated to the first floor level. Everything takes place indoors, and the connecting links are aerial walkways between the buildings. Other cities have developed as “Underground cities”, where all activities, shop
23、s and cafes have moved below grade in a subterranean network of walkways. Montreal has 29 kilometers of subterranean streets and walkways!13.Ironically, the developments on both sides of the Atlantic after World War were equated with a loss of identity. On the one continent reigned the indifferent p
24、ragmatism of reconstruction, The specification of whose basic structures was a matter for the county councils, while on the other the native elite grew jealous of the status achieved by German immigrants such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. In the mood of postwar Europ
25、e, nostalgically looking back, modern buildings often appeared too sudden, too violent. Restorations and careful reconstructions of historical edifices using traditional, skillful craftsmanship were considered more valuable than the new buildings of the day. In the absence of clear city contours, co
26、ntemporary architecture searched desperately for identity alongside the sentimental populistic motifs of arcades, oriels and gables. This“skinny”, mediocre architecture of the fifties, precariously balanced between art and kitsch, always had an episodic character.14.Mies devoted himself to two basic
27、 forms. First the pavilion, which was to have a support-free interior and which in its ideal form was a floating volume of “air between two plates”,as perfected in the Farnswarth House. Second the skyscraper, which the treated as a skeleton construction with identical floors behind a perfect faade of constructive elements which articulate a seemingly unbroken glass surface and rob it of the membrane-like character of usual curtain walls.
