Design with purpose

I'm so happy I'm curious.

Without this father learned legacy I would have never clicked the 7 links I needed to follow to end up here: AN INTERVIEW WITH RALPH EGGLESTON, Production designer on Pixar's WALL-E.

I didn't know of course that Ralph Eggleston joined Pixar Animation Studios in 1992 where he served as Art Director of their first feature film Toy Story. Afterwards, Eggleston helped develop the treatment and screenplay for Monster’s, Inc. and went on to write, design and direct their 2002 Academy Award®-winning animated short For the Birds. In the role of Production Designer he helped envision the undersea world of Finding Nemo and was Brad Bird’s choice for Art Director on his Academy Award®-winning animated film The Incredibles. Before coming to Pixar, Eggleston’s early work in animation included character animation for the Family Dog episode on the television series Amazing Stories.

Eggleston’s recent contribution for Pixar was as Production Designer for their cautionary tale Wall-E. Months after the film’s June 27th theatrical release, in October 2008 and January 2009, Eggleston discussed with me how he went about creating the futuristic environments for Wall-E.

The whole interview is worth your time considering he speaks about Pixar, the creative process and Wall•E. But these are some of my favorites.

In many ways Wall-E is a film about contrasts, not only from the point-of-view of its story, but also contrasts and contradictions within some of its design choices. The film opens with a portrait of a ruinous Earth inhabited by a diminutive robot. The second half of the film is contrasted by a high-end space resort full of overly-indulged humans.

As any of the great production designers would tell you, “Start from the character and then everything else will follow;” and it’s so true.

The script provided the most obvious jumping off points. Wall-E is a square whose only limitations beyond his imagination is what he can physically do. Eve was a circle (an oval, actually) who only did what she was programmed to do. Wall-E has a soul; Eve develops one.

Once the major design obstacles are laid out and agreed upon with the design staff and the director, I can jump back into the color script. Because we’ve done so much research and have begun understanding the world we’re creating, I can delegate to my crew a lot of what needs to get done. This allows me to get back in and focus on the emotional core of what we’re trying to say visually with color, value, and lighting, which usually takes me well into production.

Wall-E was the first time I’ve ever did it exclusively in Photoshop, digitally.

My creative process is “method painting.” I put myself in the place of the character and walk through the story. I’m trying to find colors that evoke an emotion based on everything I’ve absorbed up until that date, reading the story, hearing a pitch, research.

For inspiration for the movie we looked at the Mars Rover film and toured a cruise ship. We looked at Sea Lions for the blubber on the humans.

The key things to the design of Wall-E are his -- eyes, and the overall proportions of his body as it relates to his eyes. The first impression we wanted the audience to have is "child-like.” They were about to watch a whole feature starring a bucket of bolts; we needed to grab their hearts as fast as possible. We never wanted this to be a man in a robot outfit. I’ve seen many animated robots that were visually appealing, but I rarely believed in them, because they didn’t seem designed to do anything specific. Not so with Wall-E. He was designed by the Buy'N'Large Corporation to do one thing: crunch trash. Over the centuries of gathering trash, it seems he’s developed a soul and a personality.

Exactly, one of my goals on this film was to bleach out the whites. I wanted the audience to feel like they might need their sunglasses while they were watching the movie.

The three classes of the Axiom were delineated by shape, color, lighting, organization, and texture.

No, I don’t think so. I think it was the idea of the song and the contrast of the world you were seeing, the world of trash. So much of this film deals in contrasts and the song really grabs your attention quite well! Also, the director was in a High School production of Hello Dolly and had a soft spot in his heart for it. If anyone has video of this, I’d love to see it!

What advertising can learn from design.

For my entire career I've been an advertising creative. Driven by the dogma of creativity: The idea above all.

The truth is, I'm not sure any more.

I've always known that the ideas of the advertising creative had a purpose, and that purpose, to sell a product, could be achieved with clever and innovative creativity.

But I've seen and experienced lots of situations where we place the idea above the consumer, because we believe that the idea might be more important than the purpose itself.

After watching this video about IDEO and their creative process, I have to admit that we need to reconsider the value of an idea that doesn't deliver on it's purpose.



While design creatives mainly place purpose on function (does it work?), advertising creatives place it on the form. (is it creative?)

And while design finds a beautiful form for its functionality. Advertising is constantly trying to find functionality to its form.

We need to remind ourselves that the ideas we come up with, are design to be understood to provoke an action. Does it work? needs to find an answer in an action from the consumer, not with an award in your shelve.

When you achieve both, you have something worth talking about.

Creativity works better when engaging the brain to fill in the blanks. A mistery of sorts where our mind is engaged to figure out the message.
A big difference from a puzzle, where our brain is left without enough relevant information to get to the message.

I think that this is a big difference to keep in mind and a key point that changes the purpose of our creativity.

Ask yourself: Does it work? often enough and you'll find the right purpose to your idea.

Lots and lots of creatives are already doing this, resulting in great work that deliver amazing results for the brand and the consumer.

I just think that we need more purpose driven creative. More design thinking and less creative for the sake of being creative ideas.

Prototype early, prototype a lot.

I can't help but to feel envy while reading The Art of Innovation by Thomas Kelley.
In every page you can find a story that could change your work culture or your approach to brainstorming. But the part that I'm finding the most breakthrough and helpful is the prototyping chapter.

By executing a prototype you start the process of discovering and improving, eventually resulting in "making" your idea happen. These are some of the principles:

Prototyping is problem solving. It's a culture and a language. What counts is moving the ball forward, achieving some part of your goal.

Prototyping is a state of mind.
No matter your business, no matter your experience, odds are the water is rising, you don't have time, and if you don't act soon, the project will be underwater.

If you keep trying on new techniques you'd make dramatic improvements. Childlike curiosity and enthusiasm, a playful iterative approach to problems. Boyle's law: Never go to a meeting without a prototype.
Make mistakes - and discoveries - as soon as possible.

In engineering, if you have more variables than equations you normally have an unsolvable situation. But in the other hand, if you take some good guesses and fill in the blanks on some of them, you'll get some answers.

The birth of Amazon.com was lunched on the run. Prototyping is about acting before you've got the answers, about taking chances, stumbling a little but then making it right.

In 19914 Bezos scratch on a paper a list of things that he could sell online, got on a truck and headed west without a clear destination.

The enxt time you kick off a project, try tackling problems when you don't have the answers.

Once you start drawing or making thing, you open up new possibilities of discovery. Doodling, drawing, modeling, sketch ideas and make things, and you're likely yo encourage accidental discoveries.

A picture is worth a thousand words. And a prototype is worth a thousand pictures.

I believe that prototyping is perhaps the single most important concept to embrace to make things happen.

Take a step forward, see where you go. No matter if you fall, you'll be a step closer to your goal.

Request to Account Services: Be a Lando Carlissian

I remember watching "The Empire Strikes Back" in 1980, fully engaged in the story and the characters. You know? Dreaming to be like Han Solo or Luke, living exciting adventures fighting storm troopers and Darth Vader.

I remember being afraid of Darth Vader and the dark side.

I can still recall the disappointment, betrayal really, that I felt when Lando Carlissian surprisingly turns our heroes into hands of the empire.

Being young dreamer I couldn't understand how he could betray their friendship for money. And why Han Solo could've trusted Landon, after everything they had gone through together. (remember Landon won the Millennium Falcon from Han in a game of sabacc)

Landon was supposed to be on the side of the Rebels, the good guys. And their friendship meant more even now that the universe was fighting for its freedom. So his betrayal to his friend and to the cause was devastating.

But perhaps one of the best moments of any Star Wars movie is when Landon changes his mind and he helps Chewbacca, Princess Leia Organa, R2-D2 and C-3PO escape. He later on assists Leia in rescuing a maimed Luke Skywalker from the underside of Cloud City.

Few things make us happier than an old friend who left us joining back the force.

Please, see the Carlissian within you and come back to our side. I know that playing both sides feels safe. But believe me, we want you back, fighting by our side, for the good of ideas and the future of marketing.

Join our Rebel Alliance. We need you.

The creativity behind company names.

Naming a company is a fascinating exercise that requires vision, creativity and a sharp knowledge of vocabulary, right?

Hardly.

Most companies show a surprising lack of originality. And most fall under three well defined categories: Companies named after the owner's names. Comapny names formed following a combination of names. And third; acronyms created by the first letter of a long series of words.

Owner's names:

• Adidas – from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler
• Boeing – named after founder William E. Boeing.
• Black & Decker – named after founders S. Duncan Black and Alonzo G. Decker.
• Bang & Olufsen – from the names of its founders, Peter Bang and Svend Olufsen, who met at a School of Engineering in Denmark.
• Mattel – a portmanteau of the founders names Harold "Matt" Matson and Elliot Handler.
• Taco Bell – named after founder Glen Bell

Combination of names or words:

• Alfa Romeo – the company was originally known as ALFA, an acronym for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili. When Nicola Romeo bought ALFA in 1915, his surname was appended.
• 3Com – Network technology producer; the three coms are computer, communication, and compatibility
• Accenture – from "Accent on the future". The name Accenture was proposed by a company employee in Norway as part of an internal name finding process.
• AOL – from America Online.
• Cisco – short for San Francisco. It has also been suggested that it was "CIS-co": Computer Information Services was the department at Stanford University where the founders worked.
• Coca-Cola – derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' to make the name look better.
• Duane Reade – named after Duane and Reade Streets in lower Manhattan, where the chain's first warehouse was located.
• Skype – the original concept for the name was Sky-Peer-to-Peer, which morphed into Skyper, then Skype

Acronyms:

• ASICS – an acronym for Anima Sana In Corpore Sano, which, translated from Latin, means "Healthy soul in a healthy body".
• BMW – Bayerische Motoren Werke
• CVS – Convenience Value Service.
• GEICO – from Government Employees Insurance Company
• IBM – named by Tom (Thomas John) Watson Sr, an ex-employee of National Cash Register (NCR Corporation). To one-up them in all respects, he called his company International Business Machines.
• Qantas – from its original name, Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.
• WPP – Global advertising and marketing company. Originally called Wire and Plastic Products.

Random or/and Original:

• Amazon.com – founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company Amazon (from the earlier name of Cadabra.com) after the world's most voluminous river, the Amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online (as opposed to a bricks and mortar) bookstore. (Alternative: Amazon was chosen to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo, which listed entries alphabetically.)
• Apple – For the favorite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard, and to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time – which had names such as IBM, DEC, Cincom and Tesseract
• Google – an originally accidental misspelling of the word googol and settled upon because google.com was unregistered. Googol was proposed to reflect the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available online.
• Häagen-Dazs – Name was invented in 1961 by ice-cream makers Reuben and Rose Mattus of the Bronx "to convey an aura of the old-world traditions and craftsmanship. The name has no meaning.
• Kodak – Both the Kodak camera and the name were the invention of founder George Eastman. The letter "K" was a favorite with Eastman; he felt it a strong and incisive letter. He tried out various combinations of words starting and ending with "K". He saw three advantages in the name. It had the merits of a trademark word, would not be mis-pronounced and the name did not resemble anything in the art. There is a misconception that the name was chosen because of its similarity to the sound produced by the shutter of the camera.
• Lego – combination of the Danish "leg godt", which means to "play well".^[37] Lego also means "I put together" in Latin, but Lego Group claims this is only a coincidence and the etymology of the word is entirely Danish. Years before the little plastic brick was invented, Lego manufactured wooden toys.
• Pepsi – named from the digestive enzyme pepsin.
• Virgin – founder Richard Branson started a magazine called Student while still at school. In his autobiography, Losing My Virginity, Branson says that when they were starting a business to sell records by mail order, "one of the girls suggested: 'What about Virgin? We're complete virgins at business.'"

You can see a larger list in Wikipedia

The perfect brief.

I've been thinking about writing this post for a long time. But it never quite materialize in my head. Its difficult because a brief is a interesting instrument. Most people agree on having one but few people know how build it properly.
The Planning Lab blog has put together a review of 4 briefs. From Saatchi and Saatchi, Falon, BBH and CP+B.

This is a summary of his comments:

Saatchi:

Pros: Good amount of elements. Requires structured thinking.

Cons: One simple proposition might not always be the solution.

Verdict: My favourite brief for standard projects. Gets the job done. 7/10.

Falon:

Pros: Openess allows for flexibility and creativity.

Cons: Quality will depend solely on who writes the brief.

Verdict: Will only be better than your standard brief template when there’s a sharp mind behind the pen, and it will not work when you have a hangover. 6.5/10

BBH

Pros: Focus on the task rather than the message allows for creative flexibility.

Cons: No focus on HOW the communication should be to be effective allows for free interpretation of how a problem can be solved.

Verdict: A modern creative brief template that covers most areas while still allowing for creativity, but not that inspiring to be honest. 8/10.

CP+B

Pros: Puts pressure on planner to deliver psychological insights and on CD to deliver a workable concept.

Cons: Less creative freedom for creative teams in terms of creating a big idea themselves.

Verdict: Phenomenal, I love it. 9.5/10.

8 things I wish I had known when I started in advertising.

To save energy and to keep my mind.

I wish this post was about the corporate values my parents tough me:
Work hard, you'll get far.
Learn as much as you can, people will look up to you.
Managers know the way.
Your principles will prevail.

These are great lessons about the way the world is supposed to be. But in my experience the world rarely is the way we want it to be. The world is complex, office politics complicated and most people are just passing by.

This is why I want to share this list with you; The 8 things that would have made my life easier when I started as a creative in advertising.

1. You are a creative. You have the best job in the world. Brainstorm, read, share ideas and have fun. Do as little politics as possible. Believe me, there is always someone above you who can take of that.
2. The Account services dept. doesn't care about the creative idea. They care about the client, and unless the client cares about ideas and creativity, AS won't do it. Save yourself some disappointments and don't expect too much creative input from them.
3. Look at the big idea picture. I know you worked hard to come up with cool creative ideas, but don't spend too much time defending the small stuff. Keep you eye on the big idea. You'll be happier.
4. All agencies and all accounts are the same. Believe me, they are. Clients are demanding, the time line sucks, the brief lacks depth, the agency politics interfere with true innovation and the hard, talented workers hardly get the credit.
5. People is what makes the difference. When choosing an agency to work for, look for chemistry, soul mates and mentors. As a creative you need to feel confident to screw up, say the crazy thing and share your soul every day with the people you work with.
6. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Be part of the 20% no matter what. Because you are doing it for you, your own satisfaction, your career and your principles. Don't pay attention to the 80% downloading music, playing Foosball or watching youtube. Stay focus on your work.
7. Don't take it personal. Believe it or not, most times is not personal. Most times its mediocrity.
8. Know what drives each department. Account services=make client happy and timeline. Finance=money. Production=Budget and timeline. Traffic=timeline and paperwork. Planners= strategy and originality. Clients=their brand. When you know their interest, you know what to expect from each one.

I hope this list of insights helps you to be a happier creative, because at the end, that's all that matters.