I’m quoted in today’s Boston Globe
NEW YORK – To those who dwell in the design universe, Apple Computer has accomplished the near-impossible: making nerdy computing products seem hip and friendly.Sleek, ergonomic, and accessible, first their computers and now their iPods have gained raves and a cult following, and they have brought terms like ‘nano’ out of geekdom and into everyday use. ‘I think every designer in the world has been in a meeting where someone announces that their printer, toaster, telephone, breakfast cereal should become the iPod of its category,’ says Steve Portigal of Portigal Consulting, a California firm specializing in design and business strategy.
Now, with the opening of an architecturally audacious retail store in Manhattan, Apple has crossed another design threshold. The Apple Store Fifth Avenue a mammoth underground docking station for Macs, iPods, and accessories has made the ultimate statement of design and product packaging by morphing the design of Apple products with the design of the building that houses them.
‘It’s difficult to think of other companies that have such design coherence,’ says Paul Thompson, director of New York’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. ‘Everything comes together under one design vision. Anyway you cut the apple, design is driving it.’
Article also quoted here.
Tags: apple, apple store, boston, boston globe, design, icon, iconic, ipod
That’s a good observation, Steve. I’ve been in at least two meetings as a designer where someone has voiced the hope/intention that a new product* under development might establish a similar design pre-eminence/recognition factor as the iPod has in its market sector.
It’s become such a touchstone for both designers and the general public that it’s invoked extremely often. There simply is no other comparable product (the original blueberry iMac enjoyed a brief moment of similar comparison fame, but on nowhere near the same scale, and pretty much only for the two-tone, part-translucent look).
I do have a designer friend (working at the same company where Jonathan Ive started his career) with a pretty interesting, informed theory/insight into the iPod’s design language and why the look is so successful and desirable. But I think he wants to keep the insight to himself for the moment until he starts his own design blog in the near future, so I’d better not reveal it!
(*One of the products was the new Sinclair/Daka A-Bike – admittedly the meeting where the iPod comparison was made was a few years ago, when the initial hype about the iPod was starting to take off, and in this case it was more about the hoped-for ‘cool factor’ and ubiquity rather than actual appearance comparisons.)
Comment by Dan Lockton 06.29.06 @ 1:20 pmHere’s some of what I originally wrote:
The iPod has become a totem for business people who are trying to utilize design; I think every designer in the world has been in a meeting where someone announces that their (printer, toaster, telephone, breakfast cereal) should become the iPod of its category. It’s just such a cliche, it’s not that the iPod is always a relevant model and in fact for many of the situations it’s not a relevant example, and of course the iPod success has to do with much more than its simple form, but there’s this magic emanating from the device (and having interviewed iPod users for a design project, of course, they unequivocally love it) and of course business people are going to lust after that magic.
While you’ll certainly got folks who try literally to create an iPod-of-the-[other industry] by parroting the materials, form, finish, color, I believe that most are simply using the iPod as an example (an all-powerful, all-encompassing example, mind you) and aspiring that level of world-domination.
Comment by Steve Portigal 06.29.06 @ 4:37 pm
[...] 500 designers in your pocket As I’ve said beforeI think every designer in the world has been in a meeting where someone announces that their printer, toaster, telephone, breakfast cereal should become the iPod of its category.It occurred to us today that IDEO has become the iPod of consulting firms (and thus the new logo I propose above). Consider:They are perceived as equivalent to their entire categoryThey are perceived as the “best” solution even when there are other solutions availableIt’s the safest purchase decision, even if it costs moreIt’s a very good choiceMaking the purchase is something you want to show off to everyone elseOthers?Labels: agency, cliche, consulting, dominance, ideo, ipod [...]
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