"Design," The New Buzz Word in Marketing

October 2013 FAST COMPANY

I just received my new Fast Company magazine and of course had to read it. Not only was I intrigued by the photo of Jony Ive on the cover, who by the way could have shaved for the photo, but by the lure of the awards for design.

Design today is what customer service was yesterday. You know, when you call and you are put on hold for an hour being told that "Your business is very important to us. Please hold and we will be with you in a minute (substitute hour, day, month)" while terrible music slightly out of register plays and a sappy voice reminds you how important you are to them. I once confronted a rep and got him to admit there were only two people on the phones - all day every day. The Indian call centers have far more, you can hear the chatter in the background, but understanding them is another conversation.

So, as the saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig but its still a pig. Too many businesses still don't get it.

Case in point, I recently purchased a light timer when the one I had finally burned out. It was some GE product that was supposed to give you two settings a day. Easy to use. It sits in the junk bin because neither my wife nor I can program it. The instructions might as well be Greek because I have yet to get it to do anything. I am sure the product designer can set it in a jiffy. The rub is, he never gave it to someone else to try. How many products do we have that behave in the same way? That's why Apple is the world's most valuable company. When you buy one of their products you simply know it will work. If Grandma can use an iPad so can a two-year-old.

So it was with interest that I read about the collaboration of various companies, Burberry, Nike, Pepsico, Jawbone, Samsung and others. With the exception of Burberry or Pepsico I have owned or used their products and would not ever again for precisely this reason, design or failure thereof.

Robert Safarin of FAST COMPANY was insightful when he wrote, "When I arrived at FAST COMPANY I still had an archaic understanding of design. Like many businesspeople, I equated design with tangential aesthetics and fleeting style trends. I was taught that good design is really about problem solving, that it offers a more sophisticated perspective on modern business challenges than traditional spreadsheet-based approaches. He goes on to say that a well designed business - one that delivers customer delight-has a significant competitive advantage. If that was true, WHY aren't they all doing it?

The main article is about Apple and while secretive to NSA standards, they were able to get glimmers of the design process from past employees. Apple has stumbled, we all know that. Jobs was kicked out in 1985 and finally on its death throes brought back in 1997. That it endured that long is a miracle. You have to wonder what the company would have been like if he had remained at the helm those 12 years. On his return many things were tried. However, as the article points out, even the failures went on to create the items we know and love today. They weren't defeated, they learned and continued to innovate. Each newer item got better, was easier to use. They were not afraid to try new things and in fact have been the leader in innovation leading the industry kicking and screaming into the future for years. If Microsoft had their way we would still be using floppies.

My question is, they have recognized 14 companies. Where are the rest? I don't see Ford or AT&T, IBM or Wal-mart, even Microsoft. Even with the companies that were recognized you have to wonder. Writers tend to talk to the CEO's or designers, people intimately involved with the creation of their products. Of course their products are better than sliced bread. Could they say anything else? Their business lives depend on success. I have yet to hear from the man or woman in the street, (no I don't mean TV ads with "real" people) hear their real world experiences with these same products. I do, however, pay attention to friends and acquaintances who talk about a product. Often writers, journalists, artists or whatever talk to themselves so often they can't see the forest for the trees. Remember the Edsel? New Coke? 3D TV? The list goes on and on. These people were so busy talking to themselves they completely missed their audience. As the article points out, when the audience speaks out the results can be brutal. As my wife says, "Every idea is not a good idea." Amen to that.

Design IS important. It literally guides everything that we do. There is no element of our lives that is not designed, not created. If you are an artist, you are designing something. If you are a writer what you write has a mental design in mind...beginning, middle and end. Politicians too are designing the laws we live by. Highways, the TSE, FAA all are created by design that effects us every single day. Yes, design is important however, design for designs sake is "designed" to fail. Design at its very best is problem solving. It seems sadly, there is never an abundance of that.

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Is Georgia O'Keefe A Realist Too?

In the process of trying to find the "best" American artist, I looked at many paintings. I couldn't really say the arguments for "best" were all that valid as I think that each of the articles I saw were heavily biased by the author. However, one of the things that was clear was that there are many American artists that have captured the hearts of their fellow citizens.

BLUE MORNING GLORIES - Georgia O'Keefe

After my mother moved to New Mexico from Portland, OR when I was going to Oklahoma State University, I had chances during several summers and the nine or so months I lived there after returning from the Peace Corps to "get into" New Mexico.

After Oregon, there really is no comparison. Even eastern Oregon, about as dry as much of New Mexico, doesn't have the sweep or the landscape. The vistas used to great advantage by the Native American and Spanish settlers somehow has created an artistic world all its own. The challenge for artists then is to capture it.

I learned to love the shades of browns, yellows and reds, purples and blues and few greens coming from a land that was mostly green. For the first time I realized a forest is fairly boring. Here, you could literally see for miles and the colors changed with distance. It seemed you could literally see the end of the earth!

I will never forget the assault on the senses of walking up Canyon Road in Santa Fe, NM, seeing the wild colors on the houses and even more color in the shops. The canyon was awash with color.

O'Keefe, a midwesterner, who married the great photographer Alfred Stieglitz in NYC had a studio and finally settled in New Mexico. She seemed the perfect artist to capture what was around her. Until I saw my first sunset on the Sandia Mountains behind Albuquerque, I never realized that mountains really could turn watermelon red and that shadows were not blue or black but brilliant purple.

O'Keef's style is realism...but in some ways hyper realism or fantasy realism. The images are sharp and clear, detailed yet they are often used in ways that are not real. Like Dali whose surrealism was distorted and at times impossible to understand, her images were sharp and clear yet distorted as well.

O'Keefe used realism to create a world of things we might understand but used them in ways we had never seen before. Her florals are ravishing and yet many are borderline pornographic. We know they are flowers but we also know they could be something else. Her famous cow skulls stare at us with a realism and mortality that we find uncomfortable to stare at. Even earlier city scenes create both a realistic cityscape but are clothed in fantastic dynamism. These press on you bringing you closer as you tend to fight to get away.

There can be no doubt realism is important in art. Even though it appears to be exactly what the artist saw, any artist knows that some things are added and others left out. While it is realistic, it is also an expression of what the artist saw and felt. That, in essence, is what realism is all about.

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Who Is The Great American Artist?

After telling a friend about the recently discovered Van Gogh painting, SUNSET AT MONTMAJOR in Provence, one that I missed by about a month at the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, I related it was originally purchased by a wealthy Norwegian industrialist in 1908. He was then told it was as a fake so he rolled it up and stuck it in his attic. The current owner of the home rediscovered it and had it appraised. Oddly the Van Gogh Museum authenticated it this time after rejecting it in 1991. Apparently someone actually read his letters to Theo and found mention of it several times. Van Gogh loved the scene but considered the 1888 painting a failure. It is anything but a failure being painted in the final and best years of his life.

Cheyenne Tribe - LEDGER PAINTING

My friend then asked me who is the greatest American painter?"Everyone knows about Van Gogh," he said. "Who is the greatest American painter?" I was stumped. Wracking my brain I came across a bunch of people, but the best?

I "Googled" the question of course and found that while I agreed with some of the answers, others were odd choices or more likely the author's bias in his current era. I mean who WERE some of these people.

Shepard Fairey- BARAK OBAMA/HOPE

One of the last mentioned but probably should be the first considered would be the poeple's the settlers found here. Not much remains of the American Indian's culture and even less of the tribes art, unless of course you consider the cultures of the Southwest great artists. I and many others do.

Gilbert Stuart with his iconic portraits of George Washington came to mind. Yet at the same time, who can forget the recent art of Shepard Fairey and his iconic image of President Obama that will most likely reflect this current era! Using a palette of red, cream and blue, Fairey captured the hope of a nation that while still divided on race and even more on philosophy, was willing to move past the topic of race and instead focus on getting things done. How it will play out is anyones guess but artistically, it is iconic.

Edward Hicks - PEACEABLE KINGDOM

Benjamin West - THE DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE

America, even in its earliest years had great painters. Most were European trained but in viewing the vastness of the land they lived in were moved to create a style more fitting to the great continent. Americans began to dominate. While
There were artists who had hopes of heaven on earth, artists like Edward Hicks' PEACEABLE KINGDOM. It wasn't to be. The United States also became more like its European cousins with scenes of war dominating the painters palette. Benjamin West's DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE relates a battle in the New World but gives it all the glory and drama of those battles in the old.

Andrew Wyeth - CHRISTINA'S WORLD

As I meandered through a quick catalog of artists that I considered great American painters I began to realize that there really isn't a single one. I have written about Andy Warhol and while I haven't mused about it here deplore Thomas Kincade for creating a genre of  bedroom and bathroom art. I know that there are many who would argue with this but you have to ask, is a little cabin painted in glowing colors in the woods in scenes that will never be really art? Can it compete with the angst in Andrew Wyeth's paintings? I remember seeing that painting for the first time in an article. I was so struck by a whole flood of emotions including its amazing detail. Yet it seemed to portray, to me at least, a kind of loss, a never attainable event.

Grant Wood - AMERICAN GOTHIC

Or can Kincaid be compared to Thomas Eakins and his iconic images of the late 19th Century, or John Singer Sargent? James Whistler, George Bellows or even Edward Hopper?

I began to realize there are so many and the images they have created are part of the American experience whether you are an art fan or not. Probably one of the most iconic paintings ever in American art, one that is played with and tortured the most, has to be Grant Wood's AMERICAN GOTHIC. In looking for images for this portrait of a farm couple in the midwest, and believe me I saw their clones a thousand times going to school in Oklahoma, there were also hundreds of variations, twists and spoofs on this. Yet it remains truly American.

Yet, to my surprise while looking for images of great American artists, many that I knew quite well, I stumbled on this amazing Winslow Homer, one that I had missed but that looked amazingly to me like an Impressionist painting. It was created just before that period of art began in Europe. So it seemed, Americans were on the cusp of art even then. This painting, created in 1865, seems to be one of a soldier returning to his farm after the horrific Civil War. Yet, in so many ways it uses the same device as Millet in France and of course Van Gogh.

Winslow Homer - The Veteran In A New Field

 It seems that art, no matter where it is created captures a time and place and for each person, a painting represents something that they cherish or feel for. It can be like a song that never goes away. It just is.

So who is the greatest American artist? I discovered that I had no answer. I only know that there are many that I love and at times review just to see how they handled a problem.

If anyone has a word or three to comment, please do. I would be interested in hearing what others think is the "best" American artist and most importantly why.

Be sure to visit my store - KrugsStudio.etsy.com for a series of new items.

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Making Rosemaling Into Your Own Styling

Rose Rosemaling Birdhouse by KrugsStudio

Since I took a class on basic "rosemaling" at the Las Vegas Painting Convention, or as I discovered recently in Norway, translated meaning "rose" painting, I found that I was in love...in love with a design that seemed so unique and yet so complete. I realized that while it was incredibly popular in the 1700's it led to what could best be considered "tole" painting here in the United States. As we were told in Norway, over 880,000 Norwegians, Danes back then, immigrated to the United States and surely brought their traditions and art with them.

While I never stumbled on rosemaling except in historic settings, I did find a wonderful book in English and Norwegian in the town of Mundal near the Jostedal Glacier in the middle of Norway. This little town, at the gateway to the glacier, of maybe 1,000 people, is known as the "book" city. Local vendors there have over 300,000 used books for sale. It was there that I found my treasure, a classic book on rosemaling in both English and Norwegian. Its even spiral bound to boot!!!

Rosemaling, and styling changes from town to town, is best known for the use of artistic flourishes using the letters "S" and "C." However, as I read through the book it also mentions that it is flexible and that really, just about anything could be used. This led me to consider the birdhouse pictured here. When seen from the side, the flourishes that are visible on the side continue all the way up to the roof. No one ever used a birdhouse back then but while I created a kind of rosemaling effect on the front and back, similar but not the same, I felt that the side and roofline would be the perfect foil for this beautiful technique. And while my skills are still developing, I think that while simplified (some of the designs are very intense and almost too much) I found that a simpler and more colorful approach seemed to attain the same ends.

I started with a traditional background, a solid clay pink-rose, then gave it a kind of marbling using red. Then the designs were applied using a DecoArt Napa Red, a deep Green Umber and then brighter reds, oranges, a variety of greens and a splash of buttermilk. The whole thing was antiqued using a deep brown to darken the edges. It turned out to be a striking piece and while not exactly what I intended found that I am quite happy with what turned out.

Art and artistic styles are often an evolution. You start out with one idea in mind, but, if you have any innovation talent at all, you discover that there are many possibilities. That is how art evolves and even more important, how an artist evolves. Change or die.

This piece is merely the beginning. I am already planning the next piece, a plate or maybe a Lazy Susan. Oh, the possibilities!

Check out my store and this birdhouse at KrugsStudio.etsy.com.

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Does Anyone Write Letters Like Van Gogh Today? The Intimacy of Letter Writing.

People of a certain age used to write AND receive letters. In this newfangled age of text messages, emails and such, receiving a letter ranks right up there with viewing dinosaurs on the prairie; at least in the minds of anyone say under the age of about 40.

What brought this to mind was a letter, handwritten of course, to a friend that I was unable to see on a recent trip. It turns out that he came down a few weeks later and when we connected he had with him that letter. He was so surprised to receive an actual letter. I was surprised that he had it with him! It got me to thinking.

Even though he is in his 90's and knows how to write and receive email, it just seemed that I should write him. I know how wonderful it is to hold a letter in my hand and I was sure he would enjoy it too. An email, printed or not, has about as much intimacy as a dead frog. This is something youngsters have never understood. The more we are digitally connected, the more we seem to separate ourselves. To actually pen a letter is to expose yourself and your thoughts on the first go-round. No spell check, no erasing...it is what you are thinking at that very moment. To receive such a letter gives a rare glimpse into anther persons thoughts and feelings. Its a rare moment of intimacy.

For artists, of course, the most memorable and very intimate letters regarding art and the mind of an artist, have to be those written by Vincent Van Gogh. To read the struggles, despair and rare moments of triumph in letters written to his brother Theo, is to witness at first hand the birth of an artist. In fact, it was those very letters, written in 1888 just helped a Norwegian man prove that a canvas he had, had stored in his attic when told it wasn't painted by Van Gogh, WAS in fact a Van Gogh, one that the master himself thought a failure and wrote about several times in his letters.

Writing an actual letter has, in fact, become such an archaic thought that the question of getting clip art on Google Images for a "person reading a letter" gets you just about everything but. Has the idea of letter writing already gone out the window?

I can remember how my mother would nag me and then my sister into writing thank you notes to people who gave us gifts. It was always a drudgery. Yet we did it because she checked. Then in high school, the year my father passed away, I started making Christmas Cards. I created them by hand over and over again and sent them to family and friends each one with a personalized note. I continued that in college as I was 2,000 miles from home. Then, when I was in the Peace Corps, I had plenty of time and created some interesting cards I wish I had today. I have done it ever since. 60 years now and counting.

When my kids were young it became our yearly Christmas post card of the kids usually taken a few weeks before December 25th. Back then we didn't run to Wal-mart or Costco for the cheap and meaningless prints because I had my own darkroom and each kid had a chore. I would print, my son would develop and my daughter, who could barely sit up at first did the fixer. It became a yearly ritual. The horrible photo taking session, the developing and finally the printing with the photo everyone agreed on. There were several years where the photos of the kids fighting as we were taking the photos would have been more revealing but we never used those. Too bad. THAT was what life was like then. Looking at them today, they are very funny.

We hear the post office bemoan the fact no one writes a letter anymore. I wonder. Could they create a campaign talking about the joy of writing letters? Have people speak about the pleasure it brings? Would it make any difference? To me, receiving a real letter ranks right up there with a real person answering the phone when you call a business. In the blink of an eye they get you where you need to go, no prompts, no #3, then #2 and the message that "we are experienceing an unusual increase in call volume. Please stay on the line, your business is very important to us," then minutes of terrible music that is too loud and not tuned in right. The increase in volume is more than one person calling and only one person answering.

The mail equivalent to that is email, tons of junk email that no matter what you do never seems to go away. Even here no one really writes a letter. Its a link, a few short lines, forwarding something that someone else sent them. As intimate, as I noted before, as a dead frog.

Doris Kearns Goodwin made a comment when we heard her speak about this very fact. Historians for thousands of years have mined letters and such to gleam facts and details about the people and events they write about. The fact that the Founding Fathers wrote to each other and others frequently has been a gold mine for historians writing about the founding the United States. She moaned that everyone was writing emails and that those intimate details in diaries and letters would never be written. However, I believe that she is wrong, In fact, just about every email ever written is saved somewhere on some server somewhere on the planet. Can you imagine the drivel you would have to go through to get anything interesting? It could be a gold mine though as people write what they think is private and deleted after they read it. Its not.

The next time you want to "drop a note" why not make it a real, hand written note? Remember the joy receiving a letter brings you. Bring some joy to a friend as well. If you are willing to take the time to write an email, write a note instead. It costs 45¢ but can you put a price on friendship?

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Did We Ever Have Privacy?

This Was Pinned in 2007!

Over the past few weeks I think Americans, or rather the citizens of the United States (because the Brazilians are mad as hell over being spied on and consider themselves Americans too) and the rest of the world has been having hot and heavy discussion about what privacy means. After listening to President Obama, I am beginning to wonder if he knows what privacy means. Seeing the movie THE BUTLER, it makes me wonder if any president since the 20th Century has even known that?

Following a rather intense discussion with my wife, I then heard on the radio that the State of California is considering suing Google over privacy concerns. It appears they too are doing their share of spying. Each email you write is checked for "keywords" that are then sold to advertisers to send us email soliciting things we might be interested in buying. NOW I know where this junk comes from. If you mention you bought a pair of shoes...you do the math and the deleting. As an Advertising Journalism major, we could only dream of things like that in 1967. Gosh!

When asking Google for images that have to do with privacy this cartoon came up. What makes it so amazing was that it was created in 2007, LOOOOONG before Snowden. But then George Orwell wrote about that in 1984 or Huxley in ANIMAL FARM or for that matter C.S. Lewis. As my wife pointed out they knew things about us in the 1800's and I am sure they were pretty good during the Reformation, the Renaissance, The Roman Empire and back to the beginning of civilization. A casual reading of the Bible even gives you more than enough clues about who was doing what to whom!

The dream of privacy is, well, ephemeral. We probably have never had it and for every step that we take to make it so, about 10 steps are taken to make it less so. I find it fascinating that the two greatest democracies in the world, The United Kingdom and The United States have, we now know, the most sophisticated surveillance systems in the world! While we were pointing our fingers at China, we were in fact, doing as much and far, far more!

If you live in Los Angeles, it has been called the loneliest city in the world. Everyone comes here to escape. It is often rare that neighbors know much about each other. In fact, the less the better.  Think about it. If you are from the midwest and lived in a small town, even larger ones, you were known to all. You were under a kind of microscope. If you were uncomfortable with that, for any reason, you fled here. I can remember my first days in college. I came from Portland, OR to Stillwater, OK, home of Oklahoma State University. The first question they asked was your name, the second, what church you went to. THAT was the great divider. You were a believer OR you were a heathen and it was their duty to save you. Baptist's didn't dance or play cards, Methodists didn't dance...and on and on. For someone from the West Coast, it was like entering another time. Cotton Mather anyone?

We visited my best friend in college who now lived in Tulsa, OK while taking our daughter college shopping. She was interested in a college in Memphis. He asked her are you sure? Yes, she said. Well, he said, you know that Memphis is the buckle. The buckle? Yes, he answered, the buckle of the Bible belt. We all had a good laugh at that. My daughter, born and raised in the Methodist Church was sure she could handle it. Turns out she wasn't fond of the church at all. The church she had known in California was nothing like the church in Tennessee.

So there have always been spies, or snoops or whatever. We can't escape them and I guess we never will. Maybe, just maybe by just knowing that we will lead better lives. Let's hope so and those that don't well, lets hope that with all this surveillance, they get caught!

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Does The Big "3" Design A Car Americans Will Buy Anymore?

Car designers and their engineers try to make a vehicle a fairly wide audience will purchase. If you are Porsche or Ferrari that is not often a consideration. However, if you are Ford or Chevrolet, Toyota or Honda, you are hoping to get the biggest bang for your investment buck.

1958 Edsel

American cars, at least in the United States ruled the road. That began to slip I remember as a child when in 1960 Ford gave us the Falcon, GM the Corvair and Chrysler the Valient. Their take on a "small" car. They were going to be the import killers. If you see one today you are rather surprised at how big they were. They also didn't stem the flow of imports, If anything, probably hastened it.

Compared to a 1959 Cadillac however, they were well, smaller. That '59 Caddie is bigger than my full sized 2003 GMC pickup; weight, length and width!

With this in mind walking my dog the other day, I became aware that every single car on the street, the place looks more like a used car lot than suburb, was an import. I went several blocks before a saw an American vehicle and they were two beat up old Dodge Vans. Everywhere there were Toyotas, Hondas, a Nissan or two, a few Audi's, Kia's, a few Lexus' and BWM's. Then, in one yard sat a forlorn, 1980's Cadillac not unlike the sad picture above of an even more forlorn vehicle in its day, the 1958 Edsel! The Caddie was out in the open, dusty, tires half inflated while under the carport was a snazzy Infiniti coupe and SUV.

You had to walk down to my house to see American. A 2006 Buick Renaissance and the 2003 GMC pickup. Kind of a sad state of affairs.

How could the American car companies ignore the fact that imports, first from Germany then Japan and now Korea were making what their audience wanted and were fleeing their offerings. Yet, as I discovered on trips to Europe, Ford and Opel (GM) were making great cars that held off Japanese imports in Europe because they made the same type of cars there, oftentimes better looking and just as reliable. You have to wonder. All they needed to do was build the same cars here.

It wasn't that Ford and GM were clueless. The German Ford Capri was a snazzy little coupe that was all the rage in the 70's. It went head to head against the 240Z and was more fun to drive and cheaper. Then Ford imported the small Fiesta a truly cheap small car that was a favorite of the college crowd. Cheap to run and reliable you see them once in awhile still.

Finally, in the midst of the "Great Recession" Ford brought over the new Fiesta to acclaim and sales, then the Focus in several model changes and now the Hybrid C-Max, very popular in Europe right now. There is an S-Max but you would never know that in the states. In fact there are quite a few other small cars they sell there but for some reason not sell here.

GM - Opel is no different. In its dying days in desperation GM brought over a series of Opel models and branded them with the Saturn label. They got rave reviews but it was too late. The bankruptcy forced them to shed product lines so the Saturn, Oldsmobile and Pontiac's bit the dust.

I remarked that the Tesla-S won one of the highest rating ever on Consumer Reports and is, for American cars at least, the gold standard to be compared to. While there are some remarkable features unique to this car, it was their design AND attention to detail in every aspect of their vehicle that makes it a standout. It was DESIGNED to be successful from the beginning to end.

One can hope American auto makers have learned their lesson. It was gratifying to read the other day that the 2014 Chevrolet Impala, at one time a great car but wandering in the bloated wilderness for 30 years, got a 95 rating in Consumers Reports, 4 points below the Tesla. They were stunned. The model it replaced scored 62 and you get the idea is was a gift.

Design is so much a part of our life that we, as artists, often don't even realize the strategies we use. However, just like "quality" you know it when you see it even if you can't define it!

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