Risk/Reward

Risk/Reward, AIGA's fourth National Business and Design Conference was held October 6–8, 2000 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

Reflections on "Risk/Reward" by David Brown, conference moderator
Show me a design conference where the roster of speakers includes venture capitalists, CEOs, editors, entrepreneurs, a tenor saxophonist, a world-renowned chef, a political scientist, and an animal behaviorist, and I’ll show you a most unusual design conference. The theme was "Risk/Reward" and the organizers (Kit Hinrichs and Bob Brunner from Pentagram’s San Francisco office and Alice Twemlow of AIGA) not only talked it, but lived it. The audience seemed to respond to both the conference's content and the intent.

Having acted as moderator, emcee, concierge, time-keeper, connection-maker and general mover-along-of-things—that all added up to having permission to be curious in public—I offer the following post-conference reflections:

Diversity
Whether it was solely the artfulness of the organizers or a reflection of larger trends and conditions, there was terrific variety on stage. There were singles, pairs, trios, quartets and panels. There were designers along with their clients, facing the music together (or in the case of Muzak and Pentagram, making some). There was much evidence of migration from discipline to discipline. We had an industrial designer turned researcher (Kelly Mooney); an architect turned annual report impresario (Bill Cahan); a philosopher/mathematician turned master chef and restauranteur (Reed Hearon); and several world-class designers who are pushing the boundaries. It was very inspiring for people like me, who still haven't quite figured out what they want to be when they grow up.

New economy/old economy
These are actually the same economy but at different stages in what Joseph Schumpeter identified as "creative destruction"—the essence of democratic capitalism. Speakers Hillary Billings and Susan Casey are vital examples of creative people who have mastered and transcended their media contexts. Billings, for example, engineered the turn-around of retail giant Pottery Barn, fashioned for Starwood the design-saturated "W" Hotels brand, and is now taking her retail savvy on-line with Redenvelope. It’s about the people and the customers and the design—not about the technology.

Research
We grew up with A.C. Nielsen ratings and Gallup and Roper polls, but there is a new level of sophistication and a new commitment to research in design that's emerging. Research in the service of design seems to be appearing in three places: at the beginning of a project to learn what the issues, problems and opportunities really are in order to underpin creative work; of people in general in order to learn more about how they work and what they value and how they make decisions; and then afterwards to determine effectiveness. On the Net, the ways in which people actually respond to design can be measured in ways that were unthinkable ten years ago. This kind of accountability is new and important.

Design
Design is alive, well, morphing, evolving, becoming more complex, more pervasive, more evident in the lives not only of the experts but in the lives of people. "Design Within Reach" is the name of a company whose CEO (potter-turned-retail entrepreneur Rob Forbes) participated on one of the panels. Not only is design "within reach" these days, design is everywhere from the front covers of popular magazines to television interview shows to newspaper articles. Design is no longer some distant, half-imagined, half-understood poor relation in the business process. Design and designers are now sharing the stage—and bearing both the rewards and the consequences. New York Times architecture and design critic Herbert Muschamp asks exactly the right question in these heady times: "How much design can we stand?"

I'll close with a comment on conference opener Frank Gehry. Hiring Gehry to design a building is perhaps the least risky thing one could do—today. Not so 30 years ago, when everything Gehry was doing was "risky" and the rewards to those involved were something other than the acclaim now afforded by the press, the public and his patrons. Down the line, with talent and persistence, the risk of leading is its own reward and the other rewards are a nice byproduct, but not the point.

—David R. Brown

Speakers

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Hilary Billings, chairman and chief marketing officer, Red Envelope Gifts Online (www.redenvelope.com)
As chairman and chief marketing officer of RedEnvelope Gifts, Hillary Billings brings over fourteen years of experience in the design and home furnishings industries to a company that provides convenient and last minute gift solutions.

During her two-year stint as senior vice president of brand development and design for Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Billings led the development of an entirely new hotel brand, W Hotels, combining the modern styles of "boutique" hotels with the superior amenities and services of a major business brand.

Prior to her work at Starwood, Billings spent seven years at Pottery Barn Catalogue and Retail, repositioning the business through an exclusive line of products and a magazine approach to the catalogue’s photography. As a result, sales increased from $14 million to $100 million in four years.

Ayse Birsel, president, Olive 1:1 (www.core77.com/reactor/ayse/bio.html)
Turkish-born Ayse Birsel is the founder of the New York City–based product design company, Olive 1:1. Famed for her innovative design of office and home products, Birsel’s clients include Knoll, VIA Furniture, Sasaki Crystal and Dansk International.

Her ergonomic design for TOTO’s luxury hygenic toilet— described as "the best toilet on earth" and replete with a remote-control bidet function in the seat—won many awards, and "Resolve," her radical new office environment for Herman Miller Inc., is set to revolutionize the workplace.

A Fulbright scholarship brought her to the Pratt Institute in New York for work on her masters degree She now teaches at Pratt as well as at institutions in France and Turkey.

Moderator: David Brown, writer and consultant
David Brown, a former AIGA national board president, began his career as a writer and consultant working primarily in design and communications. Of all the things he wrote, his favorites were the acclaimed Imagination books designed and photographed by James Miho and published by Champion Papers.

Brown went on to become a corporate vice president at Champion International Corporation and then spent 14 years as president of Art Center College of Design.

Brown is now working on a freelance basis again, exploring the creative, business and education opportunities presented by the Internet and is currently doing research on a book that will address the question of whether it can be empirically demonstrated that "good design is good business."

Bill Cahan, founder and creative director, Cahan & Associates (www.cahanassociates.com)
Bill Cahan founded Cahan & Associates, a San Francisco integrated communications design agency, in 1984. Since then the agency has garnered over 1,600 awards nationally and internationally.

Through its convention-busting annual reports for a diverse mix of Fortune 500 and emerging companies, Cahan & Associates manages to visually represent the core of a company as well as bringing deadly financial statistics to life. The company’s portfolio also includes consumer and business-to-business collateral, package design, promotional materials, event graphics, website design and corporate identity (including the Yerba Buena Gardens logo).

Cahan & Associates is currently the subject of a book released by Princeton Architectural Press, entitled I Am Almost Always Hungry.

Frank O. Gehry, design principal, Frank O. Gehry & Associates
Frank Gehry has built an architectural career that has spanned four decades and produced museum, theater, performance, institutional, commercial and residential projects in America, Europe and Asia.

Hallmarks of Gehry’s work include a concern that people exist comfortably within the spaces he creates and an insistence that his buildings address the context and culture of their sites.

Since its conception in 1962, Gehry’s firm has approached each project by integrating the client fully into the design process, for a true working collaboration.

Bestowed with just about every significant architectural design award and academic honor invented, Gehry is one of the world’s most celebrated architects: His acclaimed Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has branded an entire region and stands as a spectacular monument to creativity.

Richard Koshalek, resident and chief executive officer, Art Center College of Design (www.artcenter.edu)
Richard Koshalek began his term as president of the Art Center College of Design in Pasedena, California, in September of 1999. Koshalek has an extensive professional history in the field of architecture, curation and education.

As the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1982–1999), Koshalek provided leadership for the development of the founding endowment of $30 million, for building the permanent collection and for growing an extensive and diverse exhibition and performing arts program. Additionally, he has worked with architects Frank Gehry and Arata Isozaki on the design and construction of the Geffen Contemporary and the permanent building for the Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened in 1986.

Peter Lawrence, chairman and founder, Corporate Design Foundation (www.cdf.org)
Peter Lawrence is chairman and founder of Corporate Design Foundation and a management consultant. He has taught about design at Babson, London Business School, and Boston University School of Management.

After eight years of developing and directing the Design Management Institute (DMI), Lawrence established Corporate Design Foundation whose mission is to improve the quality of life and effectiveness of organizations through design. The Foundation achieves this by conducting research, developing teaching material and working with business school faculty to introduce design into the business school curriculum. The Foundation publishes @Issue: The Journal of Business and Design with sponsorship from Potlatch.

P. Kelly Mooney, managing director, Intelligence, Resource Marketing Inc. (www.resource.com)
P. Kelly Mooney is managing director of the Resource Intelligence Group, a strategic marketing and research team that helps companies build their brand both online and offline. Mooney pioneered the consumer research methodologies that resulted in the Resource E-commerce Watch, an acclaimed analysis of the online customer experience.

At Resource, Mooney has directed brand positioning and product launch strategies for companies such as Apple, CompuServe and The Limited. She has also been the lead strategist behind the successful e-commerce initiatives for Victoria’s Secret, Drug Emporium and lowestpremium, among others.

Mooney is the author of the 10 Demandments for Building Online Customer Loyalty, an e-retailing manifesto outlining what today’s consumers demand when they shop online.

Marty Neumeier, publisher and executive editor, Critique (www.critiquemag.com)
Critique, launched in 1996, focuses on graphic design thinking and explores a range of topics from aesthetics to marketing, communications to career development. The mission of Critique is to raise the bar of graphic design quality by sharing knowledge and inspiring excellence.

A native of Los Angeles, Neumeier attended Art Center College of Design, and founded the Neumeier Design Team in 1973 in Santa Barbara, California. His firm began to specialize in graphic design for the high-tech industry in 1984, and eventually focused on software packaging.

During his 32-year career as a graphic designer, Neumeier has won hundreds of awards, and has been profiled in Communication Arts, Print, HOW and Novum magazines.

David Stuart, Creative Partner, The Partners (www.thepartners.co.uk)
David Stuart is a founding member of the London-based consultancy, The Partners. The Partners believes passionately in "Third Brain Thinking," an approach in which people who think with the left side of their brains—working closely with those who think with the right side—produce ideas of outstanding power and commercial effectiveness.

Stuart has chaired various awards juries and is currently president elect of British Design & Art Direction (D&AD).

His work, especially the most eagerly anticipated calendar of the year, for Thrislington, the market leader in prefabricated toilet cubicles, has won major awards throughout the world.

Stuart co-authored and designed a book on design creativity, A Smile in the Mind, which has become one of Phaidon Press’ best-selling design books.

Organizers & Sponsors

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Conference chairs
Kit Hinrichs, Pentagram Design Inc., San Francisco
Robert Brunner, Pentagram Design Inc., San Francisco

Advisory committee
Andy Dreyfus, executive creative director, marchFIRST
Rob Forbes, founder and chief design officer, Design Within Reach
Marty Neumeier, president, Neumeier Design team and editor, Critique
Mary Scott, director of design, Academy of Art
Michael Vanderbyl, principal, Vanderbyl Design

Presenting sponsors
Aquent

Potlatch

Supporting sponsor
Razorfish 

Student host
Crane's 

With additional support from
Critique magazine