Mario Gagliardi | Home

The world's first desktop computer and the designer who declined to work for Steve Jobs

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:14:35 +0200

In 1963, designer Mario Bellini got a call by Roberto Olivetti, the charismatic founder of Olivetti. Roberto Olivetti was at home in Milano, together with Giorgio Perotto, a computer engineer from Torino. Perotto came up with the idea for the first desktop computer, and it was clear to Olivetti that a designer needed to give this radical thing a proper shape.

Before, Olivetti needed to sell 75% of its electronics business to General Electric. But one night, an employee changed the internal name of a particular product in development from "computer" to "calculator". That way Perotto soldiered on - for Olivetti, in offices now owned by GE - and continued to work on his desktop computer.

Just to give this story a bit of perspective: There was no desktop computer or PC in 1963. Computer had been machines filling large rooms, used only by specially trained personnel.

When taking on the job, Bellini had to 'tame a monster', as he tells today. He started with clay models and continued with models in wood. Once Bellini finished his design, the world's first desktop computer was called Olivetti programma 101, nicknamed 'Perottina'.

It was released in Italy in 1964 and exhibited at the 1964 New York World's fair. The design was futuristic for its time, and despite costing today's equivalent of around 23.000 USD, it sold 40.000 pieces that year.

Hewlett Packard bought 100 items, copied it -just as it was- and sold it under the HP brand. Olivetti sued and won a compensation of 900.000 USD.

A few years later, Bellini got a call from Steve Jobs, little known at the time. Jobs wanted Bellini to design for him. But Bellini declined, referring to his exclusive contract with Roberto Olivetti.

That's how the most beautiful and innovative Apple computer never happened.

But Bellini has no regrets. He continued working for Olivetti and developed several outstanding products.

Apple, says Bellini, is the lucky heir of Olivetti. They did similar things, but Apple was in the US, and Olivetti in Italy, and that, says Bellini, is the whole difference.

Japan: The good and the bad

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:12:06 +0200

The good:

Japan is a country of creators and craftsmen. I've seen a fashion designer formerly working for a famous fashion brand who specializes in crafting blue jeans in his home, all hand-made and elevating it to an artistic statement; a coffee shop owner - the coffee shop has only 14 seats - who imports his own coffee beans and roasts them in a roasting oven specially manufactured according to his design; a chemist who creates energy by fermenting household waste; and a former primary school teacher who, after retirement, started a new life designing and dying fabrics according to traditional methods.

The bad:

Ajinomoto. This company invented MSG (monosodium glutamate), and it is close to impossible to find any restaurant food in Japan without MSG in it. Most supermarkets spices are Ajinomoto-branded and have MSG in it, no matter if it is table salt, pepper, or pizza spice. Airplane catering in Japan is so badly messed up with MSG that it ends up being worse than in most other places (except perhaps the Netherlands), which in a culinary field as depressing as airplane food is indeed an achievement. As frugal and efficient as Japanese are, it must be considered ingenious to create grand taste entirely out of cheap chemicals. Make great something out of nothing! Well, a similar argument was used for nuclear power plants, and that also didn't turn out so well after all. This company must have Japanese national treasure status, because nobody in Japan ever dares to say that MSG is bad or that they would proudly offer MSG-free food.

Coffee

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:37:51 +0200

Coffee in Vienna is a tradition and ritual. Here shown is a Kleiner Schwarzer, a single shot espresso, and a Melange, coffee with milk and foamed milk on top - not to be confused with the French café au lait or the Italian caffè latte, both of which are made with more milk than coffee.

The Kleine Schwarze must have dark foam on top, the Melange white foam. Any cup of coffee in Vienna must be served on a silver tray and accompanied by a glass of cold water, and the coffee spoon must be placed on top of the glass (see the shadow on the left).

There is no time limit on Viennese coffee: Once a coffee is ordered, one has the traditional right to stay seated in the coffee house all day without ever being bothered for another item to consume - a time-honored tradition which made Viennese coffee houses at the turn of the 20th century the home for artists and literati such as Karl Kraus, Arthur Schnitzler and Peter Altenberg. Franz Kafka discussed with Max Brod, painters Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele visited regularly, Freud played chess, Theodor Herzl conceived the idea of the Jewish state, and Leon Trotsky discussed his ideas.

On a beautiful spring day, just like today when this photo was made, your cafetier (the owner of the coffee house, not to be confused with the сafetière, an instrument the proud cafetier will frown upon) will provide for small tables on the sidewalk, where your coffee is best enjoyed with just a tad white sugar in a nice sunny spot.

The Colors of Japanese Credit

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:54:11 +0100

With blue, gold, silver or black the creativity of credit card companies usually ends.
Not so in Japan: Choose your card from a palette of 32 colors including 'Tomato Kiss', 'Creme Brulee', 'Baby Face', 'Twilight', 'Straw Hat' and 'Melon Soda'. (Click on the preview image for the large version.)

all-new gagliardi associati

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:31:50 +0100

The new gagliardi associati site is online. After one year of user feedback from the first site design unveiled in December 2010, we have significantly streamlined the user experience and focused our message.

We found that the core of our proposition - our combination of research, strategy and design, our cross-pollination of experimentation and practical application, and our new services (design ideation, radical design) have been at times difficult to explain to customers used to traditional design services.

Consequently, we have focused our message to better communicate our proposition: interdisciplinarity. To communicate the cross-over not only of different design disciplines (industrial, graphic, interactive), but also of research and strategy, the landing page gives a first impression showcasing the variety of our projects:

From the landing page, you get to the 'about' page, where a dynamic graphic visualizes our core proposition.

The sections 'research', 'strategy' and 'design' each offer quickly accessible snippets of our work:

Finally, in the 'research' section, we have included old favorites such as '15 Seconds Evolution', an interactive experiment where your own drawings spawn evolutionary offspring, and a range of recent interactive works.

The research section also incorporates another idea: See-thru layers. Windows are presented as layers in different opacities so that the rest of the content remains in sight.

Happy surfing!

Yesterday, Just Before the End of the Empire

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:36:57 +0200

In 1909, Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky was commissioned by Tsar Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov, Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland and King of Poland, to make pictures of the whole of the Russian empire. Over the course of the next years, Prokudin-Gorsky travelled to all corners of the empire to document it in pictures, with a specially designed railroad darkroom and permits by the Tsar to enter restricted areas.

5 years after the start of Prokudin-Gorskys project, the empire entered WWI, in which over 35 million people would be killed. Another 3 years later, Prokudin-Gorsky was still travelling and taking pictures, but the empire he photographed had ceased to exist. The Tsar, having abdicated in 1917, was killed together with his wife and his 5 children in 1918. The same year, Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky left Russia.

We are used to see historical records in black-and-white images, and it seems that monochrome depictions create a layer of abstraction in our perception which tends to remove us from what we see. But Prokudin-Gorsky used a technique of taking three black-and-white images in a sequence through a red, green and blue filter, thereby creating color photos. His images surprise because they are in color, allowing us to glance into a long lost time as if were yesterday.

Case Study: Developing Design and Innovation

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:10:00 +0200

Until 2010, I have been working at Qatar Foundation to develop the strategy for the creation of an infrastructure for design and innovation in Qatar. The strategy consists of several interrelated activities, here is the case study for the fundamentals of the project. For more on the topic, have a look at the report from the architectural design workshop: Developing the Blueprint for a Zero-Carbon Community in the Desert

DESIGN ZONE

Qatar Design Experience Space (model by G. Botsford)

Design Zone is envisioned as an organization complementing national initiatives for education and science towards a knowledge society. Its mid-term goal is to build the basis for a creative culture and to kick-start a creative infrastructure to accelerate Qatars development. The long-term goal is to establish a sustainable creative sector to help Qatar compete on equal terms with competitors in economies where creativity, design and innovation are important aspects of economic, social and cultural development.

In an "ideal system", creativity suffuses education in schools, innovation is in demand in economy and government, and creative ideas are welcomed in society. Although a simplification, it is still useful to plot out such an "ideal system" to visualize how education, economy and society are interrelated in providing for the dynamics to be achieved for the growth of a new nationwide creative infrastructure.

The basis for a creative infrastructure is a creativity-friendly culture. To move towards this end, activities are proposed on several levels:

● Business has to be informed about the economic benefits of design and innovation.
● Government has to support long-term goals to build a sustainable creative infrastructure.
● Education institutions have to provide creative education which is meaningful for economy and society.
● Finally, society at large has to be involved to become interested in design and creativity. 

The project name Design Zone is given to a framework which sets out priorities and action plans to connect resources with the long-term goal of creating a creative infrastructure in Qatar. Over the long term, Design Zone is envisioned to become a global creative hub and center of excellence in the region.

Its main goals are:

● to support national competitiveness  
● to increase public interest in creativity, design and innovation  
● to enable the participation of the public 
● to promote the social, cultural and economic benefits of creativity, innovation and design

While there are several quality education offerings in the region, there are presently only a few quality offerings for design services in the region and in the emerging markets in Qatars proximity. Design Zone thus could tap into a latent demand for excellence in design services for the Arabian Gulf, India, and Africa.

If developed into an international creative hub and national center of excellence in design and the creative industries, Design Zone could undertake work on several levels:

● creating its own design and architecture projects
● working on design projects for external clients
● organizing design events
● running an incubator to foster creative start-ups
● contributing to education programmes in order to leverage creative skills

ECONOMIC BASIS

The economic position of Qatar is particular: Its GDP is over $60,000 (Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of State, October 2006) and projected to be the highest in the world in the near future. At the same time, unlike the economic environments of countries with existing design promotion organizations, it has no manufacturing base. This poses unusual challenges and opportunities.

Design support activities of other countries are traditionally built on a manufacturing-oriented economy. This foundation is not applicable to Qatar. An effective design organization must be built to suit the distinctive economic and cultural environment in the country it serves. As the economic and cultural environment of Qatar is different from other countries, different future design development strategies and activities need to be applied.

DESIGN AND THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

The intention of the Qatari government is to diversify the economy and to advance the country into a knowledge society. A future design promotion strategy, therefore, will require a strategic fit for a knowledge-based economy.

The Knowledge Economy and its Demands for Design

In a knowledge-based economy, the ways design adds value are substantially different from a manufacturing-based economy. In a knowledge economy, humans and their knowledge are the assets. In order to convert knowledge into actual value, several factors are to be considered: the structures in which knowledge is generated; if environments support creativity; the organizational design of knowledge businesses; and the design of infrastructures enabling access to knowledge.

The traditional company creates value by transforming raw or preprocessed materials into goods through prescribed procedures. Companies in a knowledge society are systems to generate knowledge and turn it into value in the form of tangible and intangible goods - products, services, experiences, or any combination of these. The transition of product-oriented to knowledge-oriented companies is inherently difficult, as it involves the reconfiguration of linear business structures to non-linear ones. However, there are company structures which are set up from the outset to catalyze creativity and support the creation of new knowledge.

In a knowledge society, creativity is a vital basis and needs dedicated strategies, company structures, and tools. It needs top management commitment and with it encouragement, support, and feedback. Matrices, networks and interdisciplinary project structures support creativity, while rigid hierarchies inhibit it. Support tools are, among others, creativity techniques, systems for problem seeking and solving, and information tools to catch, decode, and distribute knowledge.

Knowledge which creates value is not propositional, but prescriptive, i.e. applied to products and services. To convert propositional knowledge to prescriptive knowledge, design is a core discipline. In an industrial economy, design is part of the procedures converting resources into things. In a knowledge economy, design converts a variety of knowledge resources into products, services, and experiences. Design is a process driven by knowledge, and knowledge is embedded in designed artifacts.

Design is also good in unpacking complex, or wicked tasks - the kind of problems increasingly occurring in highly competitive economic environments. Another strength is its inherent visionary quality: every design is an instruction for something which does not yet exist.

In a survey of over 1000 companies in Europe, it was found that service firms innovate mainly through structural, organizational change, while manufacturing firms innovate through a focus on products. In a study on 2900 European companies, it was found that knowledge-intensive business firms are more likely to find external organizations as important sources of knowledge and that they are more likely to enter in co-operations for innovation. A cross-sectional study with 1300 company managers in Sweden showed that companies with high design integration (treating design as an integrated process rather then a second-order activity) are performing substantially better then companies with a low degree of design integration. Also a study on 42 companies in the UK showed statistically significant relationships between business growth and investment in design. It was shown that in companies with strong growth, knowledge and attitudes of managers were positive toward investing in design, while declining firms had a limited knowledge and narrow understanding of design and innovation.

The knowledge economy also brings new industries as typical clients for design: government, education, social services, the hospitality industry, healthcare, banking and insurance, legal and business consulting, and the entertainment industry.

In summary: With increasing knowledge, design integration in companies becomes higher. Knowledge-intensive companies are more open to external information and co-operations for innovation. Yet, manufacturers are more likely to perceive design as important and innovate through products, while service companies are less likely to perceive design as important and are innovating mainly through structural and organizational change.

► In order to support the transition of Qatar to a knowledge economy, a first strategic focus for the envisioned Design Zone should be design for knowledge-intensive companies. In knowledge-intensive firms the readiness for external information and cooperation is high, making them good initial clients for support activities.

► The most convincing argument in promoting design to companies is the proven positive correlation between design integration and economic success.

► For effectiveness, the Design Zone should not be organized as a classical, rigid structure but as a network of relatively independent units, managed as profit centers.

BUILDING DESIGN SUPPORT

In other economies, design promotion activities have often been based on strengthening the economy through the adoption of design by the manufacturing industry, with a perceived economic threat as the single most important driver. The situation in Qatar is substantially different, as there is neither a manufacturing base nor an immediate economic threat.

In developed economies, the contribution of creative industries is substantial. For instance, the creative industries represent London's third largest sector of employment (525,000 people) and second biggest source of job growth, contributing one in every five new jobs. Creative industries contribute 6 per cent of GDP in the UK. However, creative enterprises are small: 77% of design businesses have a turnover of less than £100,000/year.  

The original driver for emerging economies to embrace design - such as Japan in the sixties or South Korea in the nineties - was the need to upgrade industrial production in order to be able to compete with established economies by improving the quality and appeal of locally produced goods.   Another approach was initiated in the early 2000s in Singapore. In the face of the economic threat of a rising China and the emerging economies in Southeast Asia, Singapore, itself having only few production facilities, found that its strategy to stay ahead of the curve is to invest into creative industries to be able to compete. The idea was to leverage Singapore to a knowledge and service economy. Singapore since then has invested into projects such as Fusionopolis Media City and the Media 21 programme.

► Main drivers for national design support are: A perceived need for economic change, the realization by a government that design is conductive to the economic and cultural goals of a country, and consequently government dedication for long-term design support. Main obstacles would be the lack of consciousness for design in government, the lack of funding, and a disconnection with the design scene and the current economic situation.

► National design culture depends on global recognition. There is a connection between design and the cultural attitudes of a country, resulting in design as being an important constituent of national identity and pride. Also, the realization of the local public that design is part of a national culture tends to set in as a positive feedback effect once the design of a country becomes globally recognized examples for this are Finland, Denmark, Italy, Japan, or Korea.

► It is the strategic fit between government intent, an adequate design promotion strategy, its allocated resources and the overall structure of an economic environment which ultimately determines if a design organization can be successful. Another primary factor is the degree to which design has become part of national culture and identity.

► Successful design support employs measures designed to advance the economic environment and are built on clearly articulated strategies, such as setting up specialized university departments, promoting design in cooperation with mass media, funding start-ups in innovative design fields and enabling processes such as product envisioning in companies.

► Design support should be bound to visions with quantifiable goals such as: 7 global brand companies by 2008 (Korea), 6 % creative industry contribution to GDP by 2012 (Singapore), 30 % of companies taking design to a strategic level by 2005 (Finland).

► Piecemeal design consultations, also when carried out programmatically over a longer timeframe, seem not to substantially contribute to an improvement in design capability. The reason might be that they do not provide sufficient cultural and economic resonance. Korea has learned in the mid-nineties that such an approach is not effective if not managed by a strategic design approach. Instead, promising design firms are funded directly.

THE CHALLENGES

Growth competitiveness/Design competitiveness

Based on research by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, the differential between growth competitiveness and design competitiveness for Qatar is -28. In comparison, this differential is for Germany: +12, for Japan: +11, for Korea: +3, for Denmark +1 and for Singapore: - 10.

Local research

Creative businesses are small in scale and lacking diversity. Many specialized design disciplines are not represented.  Clients have a moderate to low understanding of the value of design. Design companies are focused on providing services to domestic market, are struggling under pressure to perform and compete with international design companies, are constrained through the lack of, and access to, adequately trained human resources, market knowledge, technical support and training. (VCUQ Design Report)

The challenges to create a sustainable creative economy in Qatar are substantial. In emerging economies such as Qatar, the value of design, innovation and creativity is not widely known. There are very few preexisting structures to support creativity, innovation and design. There is also no immediate economic threat which might drive the need to leverage creative capacity, and often learning and management structures (rote learning, hierarchical structures) do not fundamentally support creativity.

Following problems have been identified:

The role of design and its contribution to the quality of life and economic well- being is not widely understood 

The designers contribution to success is not recognized 

Design is not seen as a strategy for growth 

Design is seen as a jobbing commodity  

Design is not used to make products, services and environments user-centered 

Design is not harnessed as a strategy to grow export markets for Qatar companies and entrepreneurs 

Design is commissioned as delivery and not viewed as a strategic research, envisioning and thinking process

There are 2 basic impacts to be accomplished: design for economic impact, and design for socio-cultural impact.

Design for economic impact

This includes design for economic well-being, design as a tool for business growth and developing export markets, and design as strategic resource. Support for this could be accomplished through a direct link to the goal of diversifying the national economy.

In this context, it is useful to have a look at international company attitudes toward design: In a 2005 DTI study, data show that 21 per cent of firms serving international markets have some spending on design, compared to only 2.5 per cent for firms serving local markets. Design use is different in different sectors and, among all sectors, highest in advertising and corporate communications, followed by product development, packaging, R&D, marketing, and service delivery. Spending on design is highest in mid-sized companies (between 500 and 999 employees) and lowest in small companies (between 10 and 49 employees). Also, the impact of design on company performance is stronger in industry segments where design use is less common than in industries where design is routinely used. In conclusion, the attitude and spending on design and innovation depends on factors such as market orientation, company size, and overall use of design in an industry segment. For possible support activities of a national design organization, the profile of mid-sized companies serving an international market, in industries where design use is less common, might be a good target. When entering cooperation, enabling factors should be clearly articulated and supported.

Design for socio-cultural impact

This could be achieved more effectively through structures based on entrepreneurial dynamics and exposure to changing trends and markets than linear models which might lack motivational effects and thus tend to be less effective.

Tasks would then be to:

► Create design awareness in society and for companies

► Demonstrate the positive social and economic impact of design

► Develop design as a cultural and economic resource 

STRATEGIES TO GROW THE SECTOR

Initial Actions

● Incentives to foster and encourage the design sector, to advance businesses, and to build design consciousness in society  

● Activities to inspire and inform the general public (experience-based spaces, micro-environments, symposia, workshops, courses, exhibitions)

 ● Demonstrating the beneficial impact of design through real-life projects

 ● Incubating creative startups to grow and leverage the sector

Successful design support activities must be designed to advance the economic and cultural environment. Design development needs to foster and encourage the design sector and must lead to visible change, first on a local level, then to global recognition. Socio-cultural impact could be achieved effectively through structures based on entrepreneurial dynamics and exposure to changing trends and markets.

Incubation

It is proposed to foster design-driven companies and organizations in Qatar through a design incubation strategy utilizing networked incubation and angel investors with connections to existing businesses. These companies could then evolve, attract attention in the region and on a global level, and as such become trailblazers for other companies to follow. The positive social impact of design could be demonstrated by real-life projects with the goal of positively reinforcing national identity, history and quality of life.

 The Government as Catalyst

Government bodies can stimulate demand on at least two fundamental levels:
● by commissioning and supporting design in public services, infrastructure, buildings and spaces
● by introducing creativity, innovation and design into all levels of education.

Real-life Projects

The positive social impact of design is best demonstrated by real-life projects with the goal of positively reinforcing national identity and history, life quality and intellectual enrichment such as: rediscovering traditional crafts, improving workspaces, design for learning environments, design for community centers, sustainable urban planning and housing projects for community-building.

Project example: The Design Dhow
Combine local tradition and design to create a contemporary Dhow: A solar-driven, hand-crafted luxury boat for high-quality slow cruising.

Project example: Design Zone Simaisma
Develop a local 'ideal community' to attract creative and knowledge workers: walkable, zero-carbon, sustainable, with a high-quality architectural design and a masterplan inspired by the building traditions of the region.

Business Participation

Instead of relying on piecemeal interventions to motivate businesses, it might be preferable to offer local corporations models for participation in design projects for the public good, providing both a better incentive and a more reliable positive outcome in the form of an improved image for the participating companies. Additionally, corporations could benefit from:

Knowledge transfer through executive workshops
Access to tools and knowledge: Arabic design language, eco-design, eco-architecture
Investment opportunities in projects and start-ups
Design service offerings, for example workspace design
Learning by participating in managed projects
Creative patronage - direct sponsoring
Preferred access to design innovations (Studio sponsorship)

Prizes

Creating motivators such as a Royal design and innovation prize and quality marks for design, culture and innovation together with the appropriate media coverage.
Creating a professional design accreditation programme.
Creating a long-term information and promotion campaign for design and innovation as tools for building the future of Qatar by bringing a better quality of life, benefitting the economy and positively reinforcing local culture.

Linking Cultures

 Parachuting foreign designers can only be useful as a first incentive to kick-start a development. In order to create a sustainable basis, this has to be positively linked. One proposal would be a special apprenticeship program to hook up foreign designers with local creative people in sponsored projects.

Enabling family-based Businesses by Design

Traditional crafts are well-regarded and provide a common shared identity. Most businesses in Qatar are family-based and could be the common basis for auteur design companies.

The main driver for a national design culture will be a working connection between creatives, businesses, and the culture of a country, ultimately resulting in design and innovation becoming a part of national identity. The realizing agents for a national design culture must be companies and designers in successful cooperations.    

ORGANISATIONAL SETUP

In order to accelerate the building of local linkages, the organization is not envisioned as a traditional line organization, but as a distributed system of interrelated units, possibly hosted and co-managed by partners such as organizations and universities already under the umbrella of Qatar Foundation (TAMU, CMU, VCU, QSTP), other local universities (Qatar University) and local government bodies.

En example of an organizational system is shown below, linking the goals of diversifying the economy with an improvement of life quality, and clients (local consumers and businesses) with projects (eco-design, public parks, public transport, systems for public services). In this example, activities include an incubator for creatives, the provision of design services and the provision of lifestyle services (through a corporate spinoff for luxury hospitality).

The goal of a design development policy must be to create favorable conditions for the growth and dynamic propagation of the sector. To this end, two complementing bodies are proposed in order to minimize the detrimental effects of one-sided interventionism: One distributed organization dealing with design and innovation promotion (Design Zone), and one open professional organization advocating for the needs of creative professionals. Design associations are usually founded by practitioners, serving the special needs of an active profession, and often provide necessary counterparts to balance and inform government-based design support institutions. In the example of Korea, a host of specialized associations complement state-funded KIDP (Korean Institute of Design Promotion): KFDA (Korea Federation of Design Associations), KDFA (Korea Design Firms Association), VIDAK (Visual Information Design Association of Korea), KTDA (Korea Textile Design Association), DETRA (Korea Design Trend Association), KSDS (Korea Society of Design Science), KAID (Korean Association of Industrial Designers), KDDA (Korea Digital Design Association), KOSID (Korean Society of Interior Architects and Designers), KECD (Korean Society for Experimentation in Contemporary Design), KPDA (Korea Package Design Association).

The organization dealing with design and innovation promotion could be structured through 5 main cross-functional units, each defining quantifiable goals to serve the overall goals of Design Zone.

► Knowledge Unit, with a design experience space for lecture series, workshops and exhibitions, offering short courses and learning programs for different target groups. The design experience space would be showing emerging design trends, possibly linked to a designer-in-residence program bringing in eminent designers.

► Marketing Unit, initiating and managing media and partner involvements, carrying out long-term design information and promotion initiatives, organizing design prizes and design accreditation programs and establishing standards to support the growth of the creative industries.

► Creative Industries Incubator, developing innovative and design-driven venture companies by supporting start-ups in the areas of experience design, interaction design, service design, contemporary crafts, architecture and urban planning, and sustainable product design.

► Project and Program Unit, demonstrating the benefits of design by managing and carrying out real-life design programs for social, cultural and economic enrichment.

► Studio and Design Lab, capturing information about trends and carrying out design projects.

Factors to advance the organization will be:

Leadership commitment  
Identification of need and clear concept definition 
Focus on customer value
Early detection of problems
  Cross-functional teams
Knowledge and learning culture 
Availability of resources and advanced support tools 
Help from government sources

Detrimental factors will be:

Poor leadership and goal definition 
Poor coordination and adequacy of structure and processes to objectives
  Poor cooperation and communication  
Shortage of resources, manpower or capital  
Inadequate knowledge of design and innovation
  Inadequate business models
Resistance to new ideas

To develop the organization in detail, three task forces are proposed, each dealing with a particular aspect of the future organization:

The first task force, system design, will be concerned with actions and processes, developing linked creative, cultural and business processes and programs for cultural and economic effectiveness.

The second task force, structure design, will be concerned with management structures and processes, developing organizational culture parameters and structures and defining interfaces with external partners.

Finally, the third task force, facility design, will deal with the development of spatial concepts, tangible architecture and facilities supporting system and structure.

Industrial Sixties in A Font: MG Punch

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:04:00 +0200

MG Punch: A new font by Mario Gagliardi, inspired by punched sheet metal and letterforms of the late sixties. It comes with caps (A-Z) and numbers. There is a set of abstract symbols mapped to the lowercase letters (a-z) of the font as if it were letters of an unknown language.

Just as MG Moon, the font is free for personal use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License.

Download: MG Punch

All good ideas started out small

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 12:14:00 +0200

Since the inception of Gagliardi Associati, we change the splash page of our website monthly. Here is the brand new splash page of GagliardiAssociati.com for October 2011. Wait a bit and see what happens on the page...

Imitated, Commodified, Experienced: Design Integration from Imitation to Ecosystem

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:36:07 +0200

Company structures changed dramatically over the course of the last century. The structures and processes behind the production of goods evolved, and with these also the relationships of products and their users.

In the craft guilds, the skilled human was the originator of the product, and the focus was on skilled execution, made-to measure for the customer. The powerful guilds owned the monopoly on produced goods, heavily opposed the adoption of the newly available production machines and finally lost their power to mass-production.

In the mass production plants of the early 20th century, the machine and the mechanically acting, unskilled worker was the originator of the product. The customer focus of the craft guilds disappeared, and Henry Ford famously said that people can have any car they want as long as it is a black model T. Ford profited from a radical innovation, the assembly line, to create economies of scale. But already 1927 Alfred P Sloane of GM introduced a different viewpoint and introduced the Art and Color Section, a predecessor of the modern design department.

Production was still monolithic, but parallel, customers had a choice, and design was used to differentiate. After the line organisation evolved into a parallel line organisation, the next revolution was to switch lines: Lean manufacturing, pioneered by Taiichi Ohno of Toyota in the eighties, shifted industry focus further to the customer by offering wide product choices, enabled by quick changeover times in production.

As the complexity of markets increased, so did the design of organizations. Organizations with a tight coupling between parts - the Fordist assembly line - gave way to loosely coupled organizations with organizational designs fitting better to complex and uncertain market environments: The matrix and networked organization.

Customer focus, after having been lost with Fordism, has since Alfred P Sloane reentered organizations. In todays most developed, loosely coupled, but densely networked companies, the focus on the customer has progressed so much to the core of business that it has gone beyond the focus on the product: The product is now a mediator rather than an end in itself, the final product is the customer experience.

Design, in the understanding of an industrial phase, is fixated on the product. In the global economic landscape at the beginning of 21st century, design must take on a new role. Responding to a global market which is characterised by uncertainty, high speed, high complexity and extreme competition, the design of organisations has again evolved.

Some advanced companies are again a new, informational form of craft workshops, others are creating experiences through every part of the business. These companies become directors of flows material, information, and knowledge flows. In the stage of informational capitalism, design is utilised to initiate and manage conversations with the market and should be understood as the art of weaving together business processes, services, products, expectations and visions.

This most contemporary form of design integration is what I call the metteur-en-scène, the company as stage director. In this type of organisation, design is not a separate factor. It is completely diffused in the company and radiating into the market. Tangible goods are only a part of the final offering. Products, brands and services are interwoven through design as elements to achieve the final goal: the branded, holistic customer experience.

Where is the design?

However, this model, in which design is suffusing the in- and outside of the organization, occurs only in the most advanced corporations in an advanced state of market economy. So why is it that only a few companies have adopted this form of using design as a genuinely strategic factor? It can be assumed that businesses must have an interest in the optimal organisational utilization of design. In the current phase of informational capitalism, one of designs strengths becomes important: Its ability to deal with complex situations, uncertainty and wicked problems can be vital for succeeding. Yet business managers still often understand design as a business function on the periphery of the organization.

The main reasons for this are, firstly, that designers and managers speak different languages, have different worldviews and outlooks. Secondly, design is generally happening in an implicit way, while management needs explicitness. The third reason is the classical, industrial-phase understanding of design, which unfortunately also many designers themselves still advocate: That it is a discipline focused on products, thus being a part of product development and marketing, but not of strategy. This are typical characteristics of the design as commodity stage which I will explain further below.

Design can be of great value if integrated into business strategy in complex markets. Managers however often perceive it as part of the problem rather than part of the solution design is regarded as something difficult to understand, difficult to deal with, and at the periphery of the organisation. While a select range of successful companies are breathing design, many companies do not.

The reason is that predominant paradigms are shaped by history, resulting in beliefs and education systems creating a considerable time lapse between reality and actual approach. While the evolution of companies, formed by rapidly changing market environments, can be a matter of years, time lapses in education take much longer.

In many design school curricula, design is still taught as defined by an early 20th century understanding with divisions according to materials or paradigms focused on ideologies of function. But the realities of a globalized economy -what Manuel Castells calls informational capitalism- are far ahead of these historical paradigms. In line with the economic development of different global regions, market realities have shaped new models of design integration.

It is not sufficient to acknowledge only organisational models which are obviously geared towards design. For a realistic description, every type of relationship, contact and overlap between design and an organisation has to be considered. The two main models for design integration are Fairheads design integration steps from 1988 and Boisots model from 1995, based on contextual complexity and design constraints:

■ Boisot proposed a matrix with 4 quadrants defined by contextual complexity and design constraints:
1) Where contextual complexity is low and design constraints are few, design is self-expression.
2) Where contextual complexity is low and design constraints are many, design is described as routine.
3) Where complexity is high and constraints are few, design is seen as a political process.
4) And finally, where complexity is high and constraints are many, design is technical problem solving.

■ Fairheads model proposed 4 steps of design integration:
1) Design is seen as styling and aesthetic wrap around.
2) Design is about better products, the focus is on industrial design, engineering, and market research.
3) Design shares an interface between the company and audiences, it is part of marketing and communications with a focus on human factors.
4) Design is integration, a whole process with a multi-functional team, which is considered to be central for corporate success.

I suggest that, in step with the development of the market economy, design integration progresses through five organisational states which link design and economic development through specific types of design adoption in companies. Fairheads design as styling evolved into design as consumption. Fairheads design for better products and design for communication and marketing collapsed into a type which I call design as commodity. Design as a process, the top end of Fairheads scale, is, in the meanwhile, appearing in a form of business I call auteurs.

Two other types have until now been left out in design integration models: One is the metteur-en-scène on the top end of the scale, an advanced organisational design which only emerged in the last years. Since Chinas ascent to a global economic power, another type has become important: Imitator companies are now responsible for up to 7% of goods produced globally.

By plotting down significant changes of organisational designs as they impact design integration, the result is a timeline of economic state changes. A significant feature of this model is the realisation that the progression of design occurs from an element outside the boundaries of the firm via steps of partial integration to finally a fully dispersed and emanating state which transgresses the boundaries of the firm.

This progression happens in the most advanced companies more or less parallel to changes in economic development through an increase in knowledge (of management, strategy, processes, customers, markets etc.) and a simultaneous decrease in the degree of separation between design and the organisation. In other words, once the knowledge in an organisation accumulates so that it successfully copes with the pressures of advancing economic stages, design, if integrated strategically, becomes gradually more important, taking center stage at an advanced level, and even further increasing in importance by finally transgressing the firm and its market.

Changes in economic systems do not happen overnight. New, better adapted organisational designs are achieved as states of punctuated equilibrium with phases of disruptions in between states. Thus, when economic change suggests a new organizational structure, it will at first be adopted only by a couple of companies having suitable capabilities. Only after a phase of trial and error and a considerable delay, the fittest stage of design integration will emerge and over time become widely accepted. Thus until recently the most adopted stage in Europe and the US was the design as commodity stage which was firstly adopted in the nineteen-seventies. This role is now slowly being taken over by a new form of OEMs, integrated production companies which offer design as an additional service. As a consequence, many corporations are now gradually leaving the commodity stage and evolving towards metteurs-en-scène - the creators of ecosystems - at the top end of the scale.

Imitation

At the bottom of organisational evolution is a state without any design involvement: OEMs are by definition completely foregoing design knowledge, producing design without reaping the added value of design themselves. The largest part of the profit goes to the OEMs customer, the brand which invests in design, while the surplus remaining with the OEM results solely from cheap labor and economies of scale. But the step from OEM to the first stage of imitator is small: Firms that produce designs for global brands in their function as OEMs often at the same time imitate these products for the domestic market.

Imitation goods manufacturers attribute their profit to the fame of the imitated goods. That way, the imitation stage is a first step of learning that what adds value is consisting to a large part of brands and design. There is no shortage of companies engaged in imitation: The World Customs Organisation states that up to 412 billion Euros annually are made with imitated goods, amounting to 5 to 7 percent of global trade in merchandise. The US alone attributes 20 billion annual costs to copyright infringement by imitated goods, 65 percent of which are made in China. Others estimate a full third of Chinese product output to be imitations.

Imitation businesses accrue profit by mimicry, counterfeiting well-known brands without building up a sustainable brand themselves. As building brands is a time-consuming process in which companies are also forced to deliver increasing quality, imitation is an attractive tactic for businesses without the willingness, patience and knowledge required to build up their own value proposition.

H&M, the Swedish fashion company, is an example of a company which started as an imitator. With the refinement of its business strategy and the building of its brand, H&M is now steering towards becoming a metteur-en-scéne. Also in larger economic terms, the examples of Japan and Korea suggest that the imitation model is a beginner stage of organisations. Organisational learning and the development of brands and design go hand in hand: Once an organisation has achieved a sustainable brand and accrued the market knowledge coming with it, it will unlikely go back to imitation the value added by the brand reinforces business forms built on brands. It is thus to be expected that in several years, once Chinese companies have succeeded in building global brands, the current imitation model will cease in popularity.

Production as consumption

The production as consumption model is at work whenever design is utilised in a superficial, random fashion. The design decision process, defined largely by hints and hunches, has few strategic merits. By definition, this model is detached from the individual characteristics and capabilities of a corporation, foregoing the development of an own value proposition which can crystallise in a distinctive design language and ultimately a branded experience. This model is in Europe mostly found in SMEs with little knowledge of design.

A special form of the production as consumption model is currently thriving in China. There, specialised design firms put together large catalogues of styles for different product groups, selling pre-made product design templates, often through local intermediaries, right out of the catalogue to large manufacturers. In choosing designs out of catalogues, these companies are acting as amateur consumers, similar to hobby tailors sewing a dress out of a pattern. This model is an adaptation of the model found in the West. While there it is mostly found in smaller companies with little strategic skill, it is adapted to the larger Chinese companies by multiplying the designs on choice. So the size of the company does not contribute to an improvement of the design process, the analogy is more basic: Large companies get a larger choice of - still random - designs. Reasons are historic many Chinese companies, while being large, have not yet accrued sufficient knowledge. The design studios engaged in the catalogue-design business are mostly based in Asian countries which years ago have gone through similar economic boom years themselves and thus already have experience with companies at that stage. In large markets, this model works only as long as the target market is still undersaturated, consumers are, in comparison, less sophisticated in their demands, and production costs are low enough to absorb the profit offset incurred by the weak link between design and company.

Design as commodity

In the classical line organisation, design is not an integral force but a separate sub-part. These companies are characterised by functional divisions and clear lines of authority, and design is seen as a fragment, located separately, a component of either engineering or marketing. For companies at this stage, a product is essentially an engineering challenge, and design is seen as one component towards optimised products. Value is created by efficiency and optimisation.

This role is challenged by advanced OEMs or service-producers. Quanta Computer is the worlds largest notebook producer, manufacturing laptops for Sony, Apple, IBM, Sharp, HP, and Dell. It excels by providing a highly efficient production service through flexible manufacturing lines. For Quanta, which itself is increasingly contracting out to lower-end OEMs in mainland China, an order takes 2 days to manufacture. Yet, every production optimisation inevitably hits a limit: Due to shrinking profit margins, advanced OEMs now also offer engineering and design services. To compete at this end, US-based Flextronics, an advanced OEM specialising in electronic devices, recently has purchased the product design firm Frog.

With advanced OEMs moving into the territory of line organisations, line organisations have a choice of either moving down or up the scale: Dell, as a distribution- and price-focused company, is outsourcing most design work for notebooks and electronics. It is essentially an OEM distributor with added brand value in an advanced production as consumption stage. Others are opting for the higher end only: the auteurs.

Auteur design

Several companies, especially in Europe, have adopted a model of design integration which I call the "auteur" model. It shows characteristics of craft shops before the first industrial revolution, transferred into informational capitalism. The "auteur" company is design-driven, focusing on concept and skill. There is an attitude to see the product as an art form driven by craftsmanship, quality, spirit and inventiveness. The designed product takes center stage.

At the outset, these companies are hardly present in the mass market, doing well within niches among specially defined target consumers who are ready to pay for skilled craftsmanship, a special origin, or a special story, as tokens for prestige value understood only by adepts. Examples are, for instance, the German sneaker band Zeha, re-established from Eastern German origins, or the German sports car manufacturer Wiesmann.

If successful, these brands develop into well-regarded specialty brands with a larger market coverage such as the fashion company Zegna, the tableware producer Alessi, or the coffee producer Illy, all of which are also distinctively Italian. The country of origin, as a culturally charged factor for distinction, is an important component for "auteur" products. This value will for the foreseeable time be a major advantage for countries with a strongly positive image such as Italy, Germany, or France. The Italian senate even discussed the introduction of a brand Fully made in Italy to indicate that a product was designed and made in Italy.

Mise-en-scène design

In the fifth stage, design becomes a systemic capability, and the company, just as a movie director, plans, conducts, and delivers a thoroughly design-driven, branded experience. Mise-en-scène, an expression from French movie and stage directing, means to put up a scene on stage. It is a network of relationships between actors, objects on stage, and the audience.

Organisations at this stage are more likely loosely coupled and densely networked than strictly divisionalized, perceiving business essentially as a design problem open-ended, multi- dimensional, multi-sensory, and weakly defined. Focused on situations of use, their aim is to create representations of future reality. Thus the boundaries of the firm are constantly transgressed and customers and markets are part of the company rather than outside entities.

There is a script going through the organization, carrying a message which is read and unified in the consumer, just as in this passage from Roland Barthes:
A text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused. That place is the reader, not the author. A texts unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.

Take for instance Porsche: The company, formerly an "auteur", is producing only 10 percent of every Porsche delivered. Porsche's focus is the Gesamteindruck, the holistic impression of its products. To reach this end, it undertakes only the last 10 percent of the production job itself it assembles its Porsches from individual parts, all made by OEMs. Every assembled Porsche is then test-driven by an experienced driver who knows through his ears, his nose, and his bottom how a Porsche should feel. Only when the Porsche-to-be passes the Porsche feel test, it is delivered to the customer. Of course, there is top-of-the-range technology and engineering in it, but also other car brands have access to that. Porsches real asset is the Porsche feel, embodied in its brand.

And Apple: The iPod and iTunes have reaped 70% of the online music market within 2 years from its entry into the market. Before Apples entry, music production companies struggled for years with the changes brought about by the Internet, putting efforts into all sorts of defence against music downloading and file-sharing tools. Instead of seeing that the Internet opens up new avenues for delivering music which are happily embraced by consumers, the music production companies pinned their strategy on refusal.

Electronic hardware, on the other hand, was overloaded with buttons and functions. Companies in the electronics industry, mostly set up as divisionalised organisations, commonly believed that electronic products are essentially differentiated by functions: The more there are, the higher the price. This led to a mind-lock in which electronic hardware with less functions would inevitably only be able to be sold for a lower price, a frightening idea in an industry beleaguered by constantly dropping profits. This was an opportunity, Apple saw it and redesigned the experience of acquiring and listening to music. More than a hardware or software product together, it is interwoven to deliver a consumer-oriented, design-driven, and branded experience.

Companies at that stage have realised that design is about complimentarity. They are orchestrating relationships, excelling in the complex and uncertain market conditions brought about by informational capitalism. Value is created by integration, effectiveness, knowledge, adaptation and constant learning. By collaboration and the combination of product, service, delivery, and brand, holistic experiences are created from a multitude of parts. Yet the result is more than the sum of its parts and hence difficult to imitate, let alone surpass.

This paper was first published in Fall 2005 in 'Designmatters' by Danish Design Center (DDC) with the title: 'Imiteret, kommercialiseret, oplevet: Sammenkædningen af design, virksomheder og denverdensøkonomiske udvikling'

Changing Habits: Food Or Not

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 17:59:00 +0200

In 2006, I talked to a museum director about the necessity for extensive food buffets at his openings. Visitors have mostly already eaten before they visit openings, yet food has to be offered to fulfill a social obligation, and most of it remains untouched and ends up as trash.
In order to change habits, I designed a series of silk-screened simulacrum plates depicting standard American fare in black-and-white, completed by pills with artificial food aroma, to be offered in place of the usual buffet.

Thelonious Monk Bar, Vienna

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:53:44 +0200

In 1990, I designed the Thelonious Monk Bar in Sonnenfelsgasse in the first district of Vienna. Named after American Jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, it was a Jazz bar and casual diner, something which did not exist in Vienna at the time.

I used anodized aluminum sheets with aluminum rivets and chrome-plated steel tubing for the bar front, lacquered Bubinga burl wood for the tabletops and Portogallo marble for the flooring.

On the backside of the bar was a frosted glass curtain with one of Monk's song titles: 'Let's cool one', crafted by Vienna's neon legend Dusty Sprengnagel. The toilet featured a transparent water tank and specially designed light bulbs to create the impression of being in a space reminding of Jules Verne's submarine.

The beige Connolly leather chairs and the aluminum-covered pillar in the center of the vaulted salon continued the design theme to create an atmosphere inspired by 1930's ocean liners, which in combination with the original medieval vaults created the impression of a space right out of a time machine.

Fashion designer Hermann Fankhauser, who studied with Helmut Lang, was the head bartender, and his Thelonious Monk Whiskey Sour was arguably the best between Vienna and Venice. The images below are scans from in the meanwhile slightly damaged color slides which until recently have been believed lost.

Emperor Nero and the Construction of the Domus Aurea

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 06:11:16 +0200

Nestor is there, Nestor! They must have brought him today!
 Nero, son of Agrippina, the sister of Caligula and later wife of Claudius, gazes across the grand basin on the construction site of his Domus Aurea in the heart of Rome, covering 4 former districts which had been destroyed by the great fire. He recalls Ovidius´ "Oracle for Cronos": Thou best of kings, thou shall be ousted of thy sceptre by thy son...

The sculptors' faces are covered by white marble dust. They worked all night, polishing the new statues of Nestor and the Centaurs in the faint light of the Lucernae.

Nero recalls that Princeps Augustus, a farmer and religious fanatic, had burned Ovidius some 50 years ago at the seashore. Nero's eyes glide across his immense construction site. Now, he thinks to himself, I stand here, on the shore of my sea, this basin grander than any other in the empire, its shore more beautiful than any shore of the empire, its seaside villages and temples sculpted in marble and covered in gold, its glistening vineyards and ebony forests being marvellous hiding places  yes, this centaur there must be Chiron. And is that Cronos, the ruler of the universe, the god of gods?

"Severus!" Nero shouts.  

"Severus!"

Next to Nero, a few sculptors put their heads together, then one of them rushes towards the octagonal hall of the western wing. There is Severus, the architect, standing in the center of the hall, directing a couple of craftsmen standing on high ladders. They are trying to fit a wide blue glass disc with inserted stars made of gold leaf into the apex of the large dome covering the hall. Hundreds of craftsmen and painters are weaseling around, painting the walls with pictures of mythical scenes and phantasmagoric cities, covering wall divisions with gold and silver, carving mother of pearl and polishing precious stones. 

"Severus, the emperor wants to speak to you. He is standing by the south side of the pool."

Severus is struggling for breath as he arrives, yet manages to show a convincing smile as he addresses Nero:  Salve, my emperor! I have received the good news that Zenodorus is nearly finished with your bronze sculpture, my emperor."
But Nero cares about something else. "Where is Cronos?"

The architect hesitates just for the glimpse of an eye. Today he feels especially tired, he had not slept for 3 days.
"Cronos, my emperor, shall he not be placed next to Zeus, up there on the island of the gods?" He points to the other side of the basin and continues:
"There, in front of the raging Cyclopes, perhaps? Ascending from Gaia and right next to the Titans?"
"Mmm...and what about Gaia? asks Nero.
"Gaia, my emperor, isn't she the world, the earth on which we stand?"

Upon finishing the sentence, Severus knows that he went too far. He can see it in Neros eyes. Severus is just too tired, he must tell Celerus, his companion, to take over supervision of the site for a couple of days. Nero does not shout, but answers in a soft voice:

"No, my dear Severus, Gaia is not everywhere in this garden, as this is the garden of myself, the emperor. Gaia is everywhere out there, where the farmers dig their feet into the mud. This is the heart of Rome - here, where the pigs lived before the great fire, Gaia is to be placed next to her sons, with her voluptuous ivory breasts feeding the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Hecatoncheires."

Severus would not make a mistake again, and while he clearly sees the impossibility to sculpt Gaia, a figure feeding a bunch of three Hecatoncheires with hundred hands and 50 heads each in addition to 11 Cyclopes and 13 Titans, he says:

"Of course, my emperor. The sculptors will start right away." Severus briefly bows and is about to leave, as Nero asks:
"Isn't that Cronos?", pointing at a muscular figure in the new group they brought tonight. Without hesitation, Severus answered: "Yes, my emperor."
"And his sickle?", Nero asks, impatiently. The figure doesn't have a sickle because it is not Cronos, but Severus quickly responds:
"The sickle, my emperor, the adamantine sickle, is in the making. It will be a beautiful feature in the hands of Cronos."
"Yes", says Nero, "and he shall be up there"- Nero points to the opposite of the pool- "there shall be the island of gods. That is a good place. The island shall be made of all precious stones to be found in Greece."
"This is indeed an excellent suggestion, my emperor. I will have it made right away."

While Severus walks back, he wishes that this project will never be finished. "Whenever this is finished, I will lose my life in the Circus", he says to himself.

In A.D. 64, the architects Severus and Celerus designed the Domus Aurea for emperor Nero. The Colossus Neronis, a 37-meter high bronze statue of Nero, stood in the vestibule, and later gave its name to the Colosseum.

The palace, build in the center of Nero´s grandiose Neronia, the area in place of the recently burnt old city, was a stunning innovation for its time, focusing on effects and technical gadgetry. One feature was an octagonal hall, roofed by a constantly rotating dome following the skies, open to all sides to surrounding rooms and a landscaped garden. The palace had hundreds of rooms, adorned with frescoes, filled with marble statues and fine furniture.

According to Suetonius, the dining rooms had ceilings with sliding ivory panels to scatter flowers and to spray perfumes. The main feature in the garden was a pool designed to look like the sea, complete with islands, pavillons like seaside villages, artificial forests and vineyards. Removed from the empire although located in its very centre, the Domus Aurea is a design-controlled environment for the gaze of Nero, who, removing himself from realpolitik and the practical values of the Roman elite, soon becomes the popular symbol for a megalomaniac tyrant, an image he represents until today.

Shinjuku Crossing: Images For Stories from Japan

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 17:00:00 +0200

A gallery of images from Japan, summer 2011:

MG Moon: A New Font inspired by '70s Science Fiction

mg@mgstrategy.com (M) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 19:59:46 +0200

MG Moon: A new font by Mario Gagliardi, completed at a lunar eclipse and inspired by science fiction of the seventies.

An experimental font, great for monograms and logos evoking the spirit of the time when outer space was closer then ever. The font is free for personal use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License.

Download: MG Moon