Dedicated to inspiring designers, inventors & the creative spirit in all of us.

It was said to me not so long ago that I should write a post about the Wacom that I work on everyday in the design studio. Giving it more thought, I could not do what I do without my Wacom. The progression of the workstation is astounding, considering the formats that I have used as a designer and while growing up. So here is the evolution of my writing tools and work surfaces since kindergarten.

Like any other child, I believe crayons were my starting point. Crayons on paper, crayons on cardboard, crayons on walls. Rubbing onto textures, coloring within the lines and even chewing a few crayons. Then I graduated to colored pencils and markers. At this stage, I am mostly talking about dried-out, hand-me-down markers and colored pencil stubs from the art bins in grade school.  

Next, I moved up to graphite pencils ranging from 6B down to 2H. They were commonly under lock and key by my art teacher and were soon followed by Prismacolor brand colored pencils. To have access to Prismacolors was the touchstone of any art student, because that meant your work was respected enough by your instructor to have any color imaginable at your fingertips, and you could hand sharpen them with an Exacto knife. Reaching a greater level of artistic ability opened my grip to bigger and better things like watercolors. New media meant new materials to draw on as well: heavy paper, watercolor tablets and spiral-bound sketchbooks.

College then provided me with the marker rendering experience, old-school style. The thin, accurate Prismacolors of the past were set aside for thick, two-sided rendering markers. Marker rendering had me balling up cotton swabs and smearing baby powder on the surface of marker paper, hoping that I moved in such a fluid motion that it was a ‘one take wonder’ that I would not have to correct. I even learned to inject alcohol into the old markers to revive the dying pens in my small collection. Markers were cool, but markers were time consuming and messy.

All of these different drawing instruments through school led me to a crossroads where style and execution met technology. The next tool to be learned was the computer mouse. 

This challenge was an advancement in my hand and eye coordination like I had not seen since I had first learned to grip a crayon. Learning to use a computer mouse was almost like going back to step one. So many advancements in technology had taken place as I had progressed from crayons to markers that I understood the new standard was the computer mouse. By training my artistic eye to communicate with my index finger and palm, I could bridge that gap between new interface and the elements of design that I had learned through my early years of art education. 

Just as I had learned to grip my crayon and coordinate the far reach of my imagination to the surface of the paper with the movement of my hand, I had mastered the mouse. I went through college learning to use design programs with a clicking mouse. At home, at school and at work I reached out intuitively to grasp the mouse as I worked on any project, click-clicking away. But here is where it gets tricky — as I moved into the design world upon graduation, I had to adjust to a new technology that, once again, brings me back to step one again. The Wacom. 

The Wacom uses an interactive pen display that had me training my hands and eyes to once again adjust to writing on a new surface. No more crayons on cardboard. No more Prismacolor in a sketchbook. No more cotton swabs and alcohol soaked rendering markers. Everything I needed; every tool, every color, every texture within reach of a writable surface. No more dirty palms or stained fingertips. No more crumbled paper, wasted on a bad stroke. The Wacom was revolutionary in how I designed. 

Today, I grip the Wacom pen with the same loose grip as I did when I learned to scribble with a crayon. I select my pen tip, choose my color and draw as I so simply did when I learned so long ago. The Wacom interface that I use today has been so well designed that the action of simulating the crayon in hand is intuitive. I can’t wait to witness the next advancement of the writing tool. I imagine that will include speaking with my hands and illustrating ideas in 3D.  I’m ready, and I can not wait!

John Muhlenkamp is from El Dorado Hills, CA, but has had opportunities that have taken him all across the map. He currently works for the supercharged design firm Astro Studios in San Francisco. John is a graduate of the acclaimed BYU ID program and is always looking to learn new things. John has a love for all types and areas of creativity, with a particular passion for footwear design and soft goods. He also enjoys time with his wife, Melissa, and daughter, Eva, in the San Francisco area. John takes delight in golf, basketball, wakeboarding, speaking Spanish, photography, vacationing and, of course, sketching. He took some time to speak to us about design.

Interview: John Muhlenkamp from Industrial Design Sketching on Vimeo.

What a clever way to celebrate your book collection and interest in geography. The designer has taken a great amount of time in creating a nice wall display for magazines, newspapers, books and digital media. I think there should be one of these in every library. And I also believe there should be one designed for each continent, not just this cluster of the continental United States. Who would have thought that there would be more reading in Texas than in Pennsylvania?

Justin Knecht joined the Centre for Design Innovation in Ireland after working for Crayola in the US. Justin has spoken at a number of conferences and company events including SEEdesign, HOW, Hallmark Cards, DMI, Thinking Creatively Conference, Oracle, the Macromedia User Conference and the Allaire Developers Conference.  Enjoy!

1. It’s been some time now since you made your way across the pond, relocating a great distance from your roots in the Keystone State. What is the difference, culturally, designing in Ireland compared to the United States? It’s a much less developed space. The professional design community itself would probably consider itself young by certain standards, which is interesting in a country that has so much history and heritage. The text from Dublin-based Design Factory’s 25-year retrospective spoke to the fact that Ireland‘s cultural identity is largely based upon language more than the visual arts.

For a long time the majority of design talent was leaving Ireland to work in other places, and gradually those people began returning and establishing the professional design community that exists here today.

On a practical note, working with small to medium sized enterprises, like we do at the Centre, is a great reality check. The case studies typically used about big brands just aren’t relevant. Smaller organizations want practical stories, practical tools and practical results.

2. Conferences, blogs and books are vital to the creativity of so many people working in the design genre. What do use as influence when looking for inspiration and motivation when you are designing? It all comes in one big stream through Google Reader these days. I can’t name a single source, though I’ve been inspired by watching various TED Talks. They are a regular 15-minute investment worth making.

3. Your personal blog, Vertical bones.com, is titled “a documented experiment in following your bliss.” Can you credit any one person with instilling that creative, innovative spirit that drives your sense of curiosity and adventure? Well, the quote is most closely attributed to Joseph Campbell. However, I was at a design conference in NYC and Bruce Mau was speaking amongst a group largely composed of corporate creatives. He was drinking water that was recycled sewage, which was a bit humbling following a P&G presentation about the millions spent on the development of a women’s disposable razor. He turned to the audience and said something like, “We have the talent and creativity to do anything. What are you going to do?” That stuck with me.

4. Who do you consider an inspiration to your style of design work, professionally? My life these days is much less about doing actual design practice and working more around the design process, and getting companies to use design effectively to bring products, services, brands and experiences to market. It’s design as a verb, not a noun.

So with that in mind, I’ve been influenced by the IDEO process, or the approach that Adaptive Path is teaching. No single approach is perfect, but I’m most interested in the practical “how”. I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with individuals from the Design Council, and have been influenced by their Designing Demand program and the methodology surrounding its implementation.

5. In your article, creating the right space to foster a spirit of innovation, featured on Centre for Design Innovation blog you share a case study that says there is “an exponential drop of frequency of communication between engineers as the distance between them increases.” How can we bridge this divide so that international offices can work seamlessly without having the tolls of location and distance hinder creativity? I certainly don’t have a solution. My comments were mainly about the importance of space, of a place where innovation can take place and collaboration is facilitated. I’ve often quoted a Steelcase statement that a place can “enable or constrain what takes place in it.”

I also feel strongly that an innovative environment is made up of three components: (Right) People, (Right) Process & (Right) Place. When I was managing a design studio, those were the three strategic themes I always concentrated on.

6. What advice would you give to companies looking to be more innovative? Understand your users. Innovation starts and ends with people. People will reveal the insights you need to create unique solutions, and they will evaluate how well those solutions meet their needs.

7. Is Ireland a good place for innovation? Yes. The same qualities that made Ireland so successful over the last decade will help Ireland innovate themselves out of the current downturn. The workforce is highly-educated, well networked and incredibly resourceful.

8. Is there anything you miss as a consumer, or designer, living in Ireland that you were used to having at your disposal in the States? Tastykake

9. What should any designer do every day, in order to become a better designer through habit? Have a genuine interest in people.

John Caswell Design offers a few not-so-conventional designs, including a chair named “zippy.” Assembled unlike any other chair, zippy is held together with zip ties. Other designs include two-legged chairs, a mirror comb set, and rubber infused wood table named “grippy.” Be sure to take a look; seeing this designer’s imagination in motion will definitely stir your imagination!

Adjust your speakers; this is our first video interview at Davison Creators!  Sit back and watch as Spencer Nugent conducts a sketch-interview and talks about his thoughts on design, influential people and things that keep him designing!

Spencer Nugent Interview from Industrial Design Sketching on Vimeo.

Spencer Nugent originally hails from Bog Walk, Jamaica, and now resides in San Francisco, California, where he works as a designer for the award-winning firm, ASTRO Studios. He is co-founder of the sketch supersite IDSKETCHING.COM along with John Muhlenkamp, both of whom function as the main contributors to the website. Spencer enjoys the visual arts, photography and science fiction. He has always had a passion for learning new things and teaching and helping others. He is currently engaged to his sweetheart, Jennifer Shaw, and they plan to wed in April.

A friend of mine shared this story with me, and I couldn’t resist posting it. As it turns out, everything around us does not need to be so complicated in design.

A designer from Oxford designed a pair of glasses that conceals two pockets that are filled with water to create a lens. As the injected water builds pressure in the pouch that is the lens, vision is optimized one drop at a time. Once vision is ideal, the lens is closed and the syringe goes into the other side of the frame to customize the view for the other eye.

Third World countries are benefiting from this low-cost design that is making perfect vision a right, not a luxury. Good design should change lives, and I believe this design does that.

Based out of Christchurch, New Zealand, Roger Dennis consults in strategic innovation, foresight and the intersections between them. He has worked with clients in a host of sectors including industrial design, telecommunications, and research services. Dennis authors the blog Ideaport , which helps organizations to address complex strategic issues in the world of design. He is also an associate of Innovaro – Europe’s leading strategic innovation consultancy.

1. Will we see more innovation in 2009 or less? I think many organizations will cut their innovation capability in the next 18 months. It is obvious there is a lot of pressure to cut costs in the current recession, and innovation teams often are the first to go in such circumstances. However, companies that cut carefully and preserve the core of their innovation capabilities will be well positioned when the recession ends. The proof of this approach can be found in many examples, but the most well known is Apple. (For more information read: http://www.rogerdennis.com/ideaport/?p=160 )

2. What was your first impressionable moment that involved design? I’ve always valued well-designed products, but never really appreciated the work in design until the late 90’s when I was exposed to the work of the Ideo crew in London when working for egg (an online bank in the UK).

3. Name something that needs improved upon that would benefit the consumer if re-designed? Most products designed for babies or young children. The notable exceptions to this are products designed by Bugaboo (http://www.rogerdennis.com/ideaport/?p=49 ) and Stokke.

4. You describe your IdeaPort blog as mental floss. What brings your readers coming back for more and keeping a nice, white smile? I think there’s a lot of confusion about the links between strategy, innovation and design. I’m interested in the intersections and overlaps of these three disciplines, but not in the jargon that surrounds them.

5. Name one person who influenced how you see things with a “designer’s eye.” I couldn’t attribute this to any single person – but the Ideo experience I refer to above had a massive impression.

6. I understand your home base is in New Zealand. Would you consider New Zealand to be more innovative than Europe and the U.S.? New Zealand has the advantage of having fewer people here, and therefore (in theory) change should be easier. In addition, the country has historically been isolated from the rest of the world, so if you wanted a solution to something you had to make it yourself. However, it lacks some of the culture that accepts failure – essential for innovation – and that balances out the equation.  Given these two factors I’d say it’s probably on par.

7. What or Who would you consider as a best source on innovative thinking? Gary Hamel is still hard to beat as a source of inspiration, but if you want a real dose of inspiration just spend some time online digging out the next re-mix, mashup or embryonic startup.

8. You recently submitted a post about brand and strategy. In it, you wrote about how you supplied a customer service division with a single guiding principle: “Our service is like oxygen and a customer dies after three minutes without it.”  Does this not explain the frame of mind you should have when promoting any product or service? That was actually a guest post by a colleague of mine – Patrick Harris. I think there’s a danger in taking a catch phrase and applying it to any and everything. That particular piece of work that Patrick referred to had a specific purpose. If you want to read more about this, then I recommend a copy of the book “Made to Stick.”

Two very cool images for those of you who try to stay inspired. I have always been told that you must enjoy what you do, and that idea is pretty much summed up in this illustration. What better way to convey the message of just doing something than this typo-ridden inspirational thought.

A glass artisan on Etsy invented a way to create a second life for beverage bottles. This seller turns any bottle with a painted label into a drinking glass using a unique process. What a great way to give bottles a second use, other than recycling.