StarFlyer: I'm leaving o-o-on a jet plane...

Gracious and confident, like a killer whale, and elegant, like a nice Tux (Clearly, I need to work on my metaphors). Who said airplanes can't look stylish?



Make sure to click on the top picture to see the larger image.

Like the U.S. JetBlue, the Japanese StarFlyer is a low-cost carrier. Unlike JetBlue, it promises a much more comfy experience (more legroom, leather seats, LCD TV on every seat), and looks waaay sexier, i.e. makes you actually want to fly it. Notice the difference even on their respective websites, talk about customer experience... The Starflyer's look was designed by Flower Robotics, a Japanese design firm. Nice work, Flower Rob (but you could work on your name, guys :).

The Font I accidentally designed

P.S. Click on the image to see a larger version.

"Design" by Tom Peters

I have a strong belief that you can't overestimate the importance of design in ANY business.

Therefore, I loved the recent book "Design" by the management guru Tom Peters. EVERY CEO of ANY business should have it, if he/she wants to survive and succeed long term.

Why? In addition to making a strong case about the importance of design, he gathered and condensed some profound insights by many well known business leaders. This book is, essentially, a 'Design-101' for CEO-s. Consider just a few quotes:

"Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation" Steve Jobs (you already know MY favorite SJ quote on design - it's on the blog banner).
"Design is the principal difference between... love and hate."
"... emotions are twice as important as "facts" in the process by which people make buying decisions."
"Design - per se - is the principal reason for emotional attachment (or detachment)."
"MFA (Master of Fine Arts) is the new MBA" (totally agree).
"All {comparable} products... have basically the same technology, price, performance, and features. Design is the only thing that differentiates one product from another in the marketplace." Norio Ohga, retired chairman of SONY.
"15 years ago, companies competed on price. Today it's quality. Tomorrow it's design." Bob Hayes, professor emeritus, Harvard Business School.

Unfortunately, 90-some % of the CEO-s today don't get it.

You can pull great quotes almost from every page. Though I disagree with some of Mr. Peters' views on certain issues (as much as I love design, or, may be, because of it), the overall value of this small book is well worth its price ($15, 160 of small 'pocket-format' pages, lots of pictures). What's funny is that I bought it in a grocery store, while standing in line at the cashier counter.

One more reason I like Tom Peters is that he writes well: in a succint, simple and lively language; you don't need an MBA to get the point. Unlike, say, Michael Porter, whose books were a royal pain in the ass to read (as much as I appreciated his insights).

I will return to the "Design" book in the subsequent posts...
I highly recommend everyone, anyone to get a copy!

2006 CLS-500 Coupe

Need I say ANYthing?

World's fastest train with ears

East Japan Railway Co. (JR-East) on Friday unveiled a new shinkansen in the town of Rifu (Miyagi Prefecture) that will run at a speed of 360 km/h, which may make it the world's fastest train. JR East aims to put the new bullet train - named Fastech - into service in 2011.

What’s fascinating and noteworthy to me is not its speed, or the cool new “arrow-line” shape of the head car, but the cute/goofy wolf-ears on the top of the train cars. Fascinating because they decided to attach ears to a TRAIN (!), which is totally awesome if you ask me. Can you picture Amtrak’s Board discussing a new Acela design with dog ears or something? Don’t think so.

I gave it a good 5 minutes trying to figure out if there might be any functional purpose to the “ears”, but failed to come up with a decent guess. Furthermore, the “ears” are not just on the head-car, but on most cars, making the train look a bit like a stegosaurus. Combined with the fun coloring, the shinkansen looks like a friendly and fun cartoon stegosaurus.

Can’t say nothing but KUDO-s to JR-East’s design team and management.

Square TREND

This is how it's done. First, there comes a design that everyone thinks is ugly.It wins all possible "ugly" awards and places last in all polls and surveys (I mean among regular folks, not the professional designers' bunch). Take Honda Element. Was it around 2003 when Honda launched a daringly non-shaped matchbox of a car? What was it thinking? No curves? Nothing to compare to?


But... then some of us (early adopters) bought a few. To stand out, to be different, to get noticed, for the heck of it, and, oh yeah, some of us thought it looks kinda cool, and f... the conventional wisdom... Thanks, early adopters, You guys are the rule benders, innovation drivers... Meantime, the square bunch still triggers negative comments in the streets... But the damage is done, another model follows the pioneer...

Enter the Scion xB by Toyota... Even squarER, even ugliER.... But this time, more people noticed... May be they're not ugly... May be they're not shapeless... Actually they're kinda interesting...


Scion t2B (Concept)...

Pretty soon, everyone and Detroit is designing the Matchboxes... Voila, the T-R-E-N-D started...


Ford SYN Concept


Ford Fairlane Concept

Hm.... Couldn't they make the wheels square too, for the total harmony?

THANKS, conventional wisdom ignorers; thanks, early adopters... For keeping life interesting :).

Design - 2005: Newsweek Special

Vases by one Dror Benshetrit: COOL.
Takeaway: combination of polarly opposite (i.e. mutually exclusive) features (as in 'broken vs. attractive, or broken should be in the trashbin, not as decor') can be very cool, or at least original. Innovative via unexpected.

This week's Newsweek (May 23d) ran a special on Design-2005. Interesting overall, but not much WOW stuff. The few things I really liked, in addition to the vases above, were:

a) The concept behind the new computer game in development "Spore" by Will Wright (the same guy who designed Sim City), where you start off as a single cell, and your mission is to survive and evolve, i.e. multi-million years evolution squeezed into one game.
b) A motto that the design firm IDEO lives by: "Don't interview consumers - go home with them and observe".

Disclaimer: It was hard to appreciate some of the things because of the size and quality of the pictures printed. On a side note, the Newsweek website sucks (sorry MSNBC), very user-unfriendly and slow loading.