An interesting article on IDEO talks about how they bring ideas and practices across the industries their clients span into their problem solving.

I have always been a big believer in the fact that you can learn from one discipline and apply it into another. We think that way at work on a smaller scale—while all our products are software—the areas we work on span very wide topics—games, music, transacting, imaging, communication tools—enough difference that goals and tasks are very different. But what we learn from one arena can be applied to another. Even what we dismiss from one could be the right thing to do in another.

An excerpt from the article stands out:

“IDEO will seek out projects in industries it finds "“interesting ” and “full of potential” and even risk taking a loss on the project just to gain access to new worlds. At IDEO, the core activity is neither manufacturing products nor pure research and development, sales or marketing. Instead, IDEO's engineers and designers are engaged, every day, in designing new products, new environments, even new innovation strategies for their clients—and the firm's success depends on routinely surprising its clients with innovative solutions.

For each new project, IDEO uses the experiences its engineers and designers have gained while working for so many different clients in so many different industries. The resulting innovations are recombinations of objects, ideas and even people they learned about while working elsewhere. For example, the bicycle manufacturer Specialized asked IDEO to design a new and different water bottle, and the project team came up with a spill-proof nozzle that didn't require opening and closing: Just squeeze the bottle and the nozzle pops open. The team first developed that idea when, five years earlier, they were working on a shampoo bottle that could hang upside down in the shower. They first heard about the idea when working with a medical products company and seeing valve designs for artificial hearts. ”

Making these relationships and remembering snippets of ideas from one space to another is one of the reasons I liked working in advertising and why I like working at a company that delivers many types of products not just one. It also supports my thought that reading, learning and being involved in lots of other unrelated things will actually help you be a better designer.

Thanks to Beth for pointing this out.

A lovely site, Arts et Métiers Graphiques, about the French Graphic arts magazine that was published from 1927 to 1939 by Charles Peignot, head of the French typefoundry Deberny et Peignot in France. Done as part of a Masters Thesis at RIT (my MFA alma mater) this site taps into the collection at the Cary Library and has indexed the full run of the publications in a searchable database.

While doing some Dr. Leslie project research, I stumbled across an impressive collection of World War Two information that includes a very large collection of propoganda posters. These include tons of US and Allies posters.

The posters are organized by categories—Allies, Canning/Rationing, Civil defense, Conserve materials for the war effort, Defense work, Don't Talk, Home efforts, OPA (Office of Price Administration), Presence of the President, Recruiting, Save materials for the war effort, Stay healthy, Victory gardens/Save the forests, War bonds—and within each category are several posters with their relevant information as well as a large version of the poster (accessed by clicking the small poster).

The About sections reveals that “WWII Tech.net is a open project” and the sections are fleshed out with the efforts of volunteers.

Nice site, nice collection.

Beth puts it nicely and offers some great ideas to the latest round of organizational conversations.