Every now and again on Embody 3D we have articles that aren’t industrial design, often architecture, interior, graphic or web design. But we figured that industrial designers often get their hands dirty with graphic design. So we compiled a list of the greatest frustrations graphic designers face day to day. Please comment and list some of your frustrations.

Article by Martin Gibson – Twitter – 28.03.2010

1. How Do I Resize An Image?

So many people still have no idea how to resize images, granted Microsoft Windows doesn’t make this process terribly obvious but even Paint can do this. Every time you want a small image from a client just to put on their website they will send you a 20MB Raw Image, and when you want to print something they will send you a 20kb JPG; you know how it works. Worst of all they will send you an email with an album of 5MB images totalling 50-100MB and attempt to send it to you clogging your whole mailbox.

2. What’s A Vector Image?

When doing a project for a business you will often require their logo to use in a nice report or business card. Oh oh here it comes, the beloved .jpg, .png, .bmp logo gets sent your way. Any ‘designer’ who isn’t designing logos and other graphics in a vector format should be shot. It’s called Illustrator, it’s called PDF!

3. A Microsoft Word File Will Be Ok Right?

Designers just use Microsoft Word to design all their stuff don’t they? Oh well I will make it extra easy for them and send all my project information in a Word document. Because Microsoft Word preserves image data really well and will be good at blowing the image up later on. Maybe if the designer knows what he is doing maybe he could throw in a giant clipart image to give it some real class.

4. Isn’t Comic Sans In At The Moment?

Don’t you love getting a businesses style guide and it is filled with the beloved Comic Sans, Times New Roman or Papyrus!

5. As The Saying Goes The More Fonts And Colours The Better!

Well its obvious the more colours and fonts we add to the graphic the more it will look like someone put a lot of effort into it. All the colour and complexity will really draw the reader in. **** why not, why don’t we throw in a few drop shadows, inner glows, bevels and embosses?!

5. Let’s Utilise All The Real Estate We Have To Work With!

Whats the deal with all this white space! That is valuable page real estate! We could add some images inside the margin! We don’t need all that space in between paragraphs and headers, we could fit valuable clip art images in there!

6. Ambiguous Job Specifications

I want this job to be new age, you know a lot of pizzaz and energy, you know what I mean you’re a designer, make it pop out of the screen, you know what I mean. 10 minutes later the client is yelling at you for going down the wrong path.

7. Bad Colour Combinations

What are you talking about orange, white, light blue and navy go well together!

8. We Must Have Our Slogan In The Logo!

You know every iconic logo of the last 100 years has had its slogan in it. It wont be too much work to just put a small Times New Roman italic font underneath it.

9. We Decided To Change The Page Size, No Biggy

We have loved what you have done so far but we have decided that A4 isn’t big enough for the 100 page report, can we perhaps make it A3? That shouldn’t be too much work should it. You should just go to page setup and select A3, only a couple of seconds of work really. The graphic designer faints over the keyboard as indesign is open.

10. The Colours On The Screen Don’t Match Our Company Colours!

You sometimes get those clients who don’t understand the colours on the screen don’t match the colours that are going to be printed out. This then results in a 10 minute conversation about what CMYK, RGB, PMS colours are.

It’s that chilly time of year (well not in Australia anyway) but certainly in Vancouver the home of the 21st Winter Olympic Games. The Winter Olympics and winter sports in general are still so new and it is a real area of innovation and design experimentalism. It is exciting each games to not only witness the top athletes in the world compete, but also the competition of the industrial designers to design the fastest, coolest, sleekest and most comfortable designs to help give athletes the winning edge. As we have seen in these olympics gold medalists have won their events by fractions of a second, so why wouldn’t you use the best industrial design has to offer? Please comment on your favourite/least favourite designs!

Article by Martin Gibson – Twitter – 28.02.2010

Swix Ski Pole

Cheetah Ultra Sports Snow Board

Kari Traa Helmet

Force SL Snowboard Bindings

Bauer DNE 90

North Legion SMX Snow Bike

USA Bob Sled

James Lee and Leo Obstbaum Olympic Podium

James Lee and Leo Obstbaum Olympic Tray

Olympic Medals

Olympic Torch

In this article we are going to explore the world of concept cars! This comprehensive collection can be used as inspiration not just for automotive design but design for a whole array of consumer products. In the comments please mention your favourite concept car and maybe chat about what you would like cars to do in the future.

Table of Contents

Citroen
Mazda
Peugeot
BMW Vision
BMW
Lexus
Mercedes
Lamborghini
Audi
Toyota
Luxury
Sedan
Sports
Muscle
Off Road
Racing
Retro
Funny/Cute
Interiors

Article by Martin Gibson – Twitter – 13.02.2010

Citroen

Mazda

Peugeot

BMW Vision

BMW

Lexus

Mercedes

Lambroghini

Audi

Toyota

Luxury

Sedan

Sports

Muscle

Off Road

Racing

Retro

Funny/Cute

Interiors

Once and for all I am going to try and document the most commonly used cliche selling points industrial designers use. For some of us just a mutter of some of these cliches will get our tempers boiling and for others we might be mistaken for using them ourselves from time to time to suck up to our boss or to a poorly educated client. In the comments please post some cliches you’ve come across and I will add the best ones to the article!

Article by Martin Gibson – Twitter – 27.01.2010

1. The Customer Always Comes First Cliche

This one really irritates me. Often you may hear a product designer or the product marketing manager give a brief spiel as to how they came up with such a ‘fantastic’ product. Often you may hear this:

“Well this product is all about you. The design is focused around our end user as this is what our company values. We put the customer at the forefront of our design process by having intensive user trials and sough their opinions as to what they value in our product.”

Another one includes using a very personal story to empathise with the audience and it may go something like this:

“Well I was out on the street with my wife/husband and we saw a baby crying because he/she couldn’t reach the dummy inside the pram. So I was like Eureka! We can design a small contraption that will automatically give the baby a dummy whenever he/she wants!”

Please tell me a successful product that didn’t put the customer first.

2. The Green Wash Cliche

A cliche that has really emerged particularly in the last 5 years is the green wash phenomena. It’s like a every product description has to have some tagline on how it is good for the environment. Take for example the below female carry bags made from hemp.

These bags are labelled in their marketing material as good for the environment, and how often do we see taglines like this in advertising “it is good for the environment” or “our product uses 20% less energy.” Lets get perfectly clear there is no such thing as a consumer product that is actually good for the environment. We can design products that are better for the environment, but we can’t design products that benefit the environment. My apologies to designers who design solar panels or energy harnessing products I stand corrected. So often in modern society we forget that most of the time we buy products they we already have. We buy clothes but we already have clothes that work. We buy cars but we already have a car that works. Does anyone know how many bags girls have already? There is a great chance that any consumer buying the above hemp bag already has a bag that operates perfectly fine and will do for decades to come.

We live in a day and age where consumers demand environmentally sustainable products. To be ethical and fair to consumers though we should only use the ~ green bomb ~ when we have made some significant developments in our products environmental footprint. For example how many car advertisements have we seen saying: “less fuel consumption” or “less emissions” etc. It gives the impression to consumers that every car created in the year 2010 is designed in an environmentally responsible manner. Yet we know that different cars have significantly different environmental footprints.

3. The More Bang For Your Buck Cliche

The more bang for your buck cliche is often used internally to sell a product to senior managers to say that the product has a viable market. For example if we take the desktop computer a designer might say “well this new Dell computer gives you a processor which is 10% faster than the previous generation desktop and costs less to make as well!” Then of course the manager is like “wow that’s incredible, imagine how many of these we can sell!” Yet we know that due to product lifecycles and technology growth trends, that specifications are always going to get better and the means of producing these products is going to go down due to economies of scale.

4. But Look Now It Has An LCD Screen Cliche

Another cliche is a when designers add often gimmicky features to existing products and sell it to consumers trumpeting the requirement for them to stay up to date with the latest technology. Little do consumers realise that they are not attaining any new core functionality to their product experience. This is often done by designers who lack any form of real creativity and are trend followers rather than trend setters. “Their toaster has an LCD screen, well maybe I should put an LCD screen on my toaster as well”. But does a toaster really need an LCD screen? The scary thing is that we know many consumers are likely to be like “wow a toaster with a screen how cool! I really need one of them”.

5. Now It’s Called the PowerCleaner 5000! Cliche

Another cliche used to sell new designs is lame cliche names. Some techniques include:

The power technique – which involves adding a strong bold number after your product name. For example we could call a music play an “ipod”, but we could also call it the “ipod 3000!”

The shock branding technique – which involves calling a product a controversial name like “****”

The stupid spelling technique – using abbreviated letters like “Xtreme Snowboard”

The stupid numbers in words technique – which involves replacing letters with numbers like “Alien8″

The web 2.0 name technique – which involves using geeky web symbols like @$#+=- inside of names like “Alien@e”

6. But Look Did You See the Diagram? Cliche

One of my favourite cliches used by designers is the “look did you see the diagram” cliche. Often you see it used in television commercials or on the back of point of sales material. This involves designers creating dodgy highly unscientific diagram in photoshop or illustrator which look pretty cool but often lack any substance and are so ambiguous it is hard to criticise. For example a designer of a new type of shoe might get a picture of a foot and put transparent red blobs in comfort problem areas. These types of diagrams are often used in health products and are used to give the perception that a product has been thoroughly thought-out. For example if your watching the television and one of those irritating Abdominal-Blaster or some cheap exercise equipment products comes on they will often use these sketchy diagrams not as a way to be informative but rather to sell to the audience that they are genuine and they have consulted health professionals in the development of the product. But often these diagrams give off little in the way of information, clinical proof or any other stature of authority.

7. Form Follows Function Cliche

Industrial Designers often use quotes that are just assumed to hold diametrical truth like “form follows function” to justify their work to clients. But does form always follow function? Often a poorly informed client will nod their head and go along with the industrial designer because you know the industrial designer knows everything…right? We must recognise that when it comes to industrial design there aren’t many laws, and design is still very much a subjective field where beauty is in the eye of the beholder. To state these rules of law or sayings as undeniable facts or design philosophies is primitive at best. Here are my favourite irritating industrial design quotes you here way too often:

“Form Follows Function” - used by right-wing industrial designers

“If it aint broken don’t fix it“ – this is often used as way to get out of doing more work

“Imagination is more important than knowledge”

“You get bored with beauty but you get used to ugliness” - classic excuse after a client says he doesn’t like the look of your product

“The devils in the details”

“If you make the product idiot proof, the world will make a better idiot” - another way to avoid doing more work

“Engineers deal with probabilities, designers deal with possibilities” - classic line to rip into your engineer friend at work

“There is no final solution” - commonly used to silence perfectionist designers

“The diiference between an artist and a designer is that when an artist makes a chair, you look at it. When a designer makes the same chair, you can sit on it” – a classic line to rip into artists for lacking compassion and empathy

“Kiss – Keep It Simple Stupid”

“Less is more”

“Lifes greatest failures are those who don’t know how close to sucess they were when they quit.” – this is the classic line to say to your boss or senior designer if he/she is putting pressure on you to hurry up.

“Necessity is the mother of invention”

If you feel there has been a consultancy that is missed out, let me know in the comments and I may add it!

1. Tiller Design

Background:

Tiller Design provides specialist Industrial Design services to many product markets. Creating compelling, desirable solutions that hold excellent ergonomic foundations and well researched user experience is all in a day’s work for Tiller Design.

Website:

http://www.tillerdesign.com/

Address:

72 Victoria Rd | Rozelle | NSW 2039

2. D3 Design

Background:

D3 Design is a boutique product and packaging design agency. D3 has 25 years of extensive experience both overseas and Australia.

Website:

http://www.d3design.com.au/

Address:

106 Boundary St | Paddington | NSW 2021

3. Blue Sky

Background:

http://www.blueskycreative.com.au/

Address:

Suite 14 | 56 Church Av | Mascot | NSW 2020

4. 4 Design

Background:

http://www.4design.com.au/

Address:

83-85 Foveaux St | Surry Hills | NSW 2010

5. Design and Industry

Background:

http://www.design-industry.com.au/

Address:

115 Mullens St | Balmain | NSW 2041

616 Balcombe Rd | Black Rock | VIC 3193

6. Outerspace Design

Background:

http://www.outerspacedesign.com/

Address:

16 Harvey St | Richmond | VIC 3121

7. Nielsen Design Associates

Background:

http://www.nielsendesign.com/

Address:

33 Alexandra St | Hunters Hill | NSW 2110

8. Kennovations

Background:

Kennovations is a product design and innovation consulting company made up of a team of Industrial Designers and Engineers sharing a passion for invention, creative and technical problem solving, and helping Australian innovators to achieve their product design and commercialisation goals. With over 50 years of combined Industrial Design and Engineering experience, Kennovations is committed to the long-term support of Australian innovation at every level.

http://www.kennovations.com.au/

Address:

Unit 3 | 16 Herbert St | Artarmon | NSW 2064