As many of you know, my wife is a designer.
However, unlike many people who have this title – her skills go way beyond sitting in front of an Apple Mac.
Over the years she’s done [and still does] all manner of projects/inventions – from corporate, product, digital and packaging design through to the creation of kids wallpaper that changes colour dependent on the pressure applied to it [ie: kids can ‘vandalise their room’ with hand crafted graffiti and yet still appear little angels to their parents because it all returns to normal within a few minutes] and her current area of interest, cakes.
Yes, each one of those roses was hand created by Jill and all are edible!
The thing is, Jill has always banged on that good commercial design solves problems and given she’s created a whole host of tangible stuff – I would say she is more successful at this than many in adland who despite all the claims, can generally think only 30” film segments and/or double page spreads are necessary.
Anyway the reason I bring this up is that I recently got sent something I think is brilliant for a whole bunch of reasons.
Not only is it a great bit of industrial design but it came about because someone recognised that something we all take for granted had business implications on a whole host of industries so not only have they been able to develop a practical solution that could save companies money in a whole host of areas, but it also has the potential to make the ‘design inventor’ a bloody fortune.
Ladies and gentlemen … boys and girls … see how sometimes, reinventing the wheel is not indulgent, but can be powerful, profitable and game changing.
How good is that eh?
The thing is, whilst an industrial designer found a solution, the identification of the problem was there for us all to see – so if adland [and planners] really want to live up to the intelligence we bestow upon ourselves, maybe it’s time we started opening our eyes to problems beyond the marketing and solutions beyond the advertising.