I think in a few years time when I look back on the loft and its journey; this last week will be one that lingers in the memory. There were SO many important events this week I wouldn’t even know where to start. But I am going to select three and try to join the dots as I go along.
On Monday, I had a very interesting meeting with a partner in a large law firm. We are working more and more with professional service firms and starting to create individual propositions to them each that better serves their needs. Loft Legal will be a specialist brand communication service for law firms looking to strengthen their brand in the marketplace. At this stage, we’re still talking it through with different people and seeing where our services can fit.
The meeting on Monday was hugely significant. When asking the legal partner about the company vision and values; not only did he know them off by heart but gave individual examples about how he had applied them in his legal work. This was fantastic, I was impressed by the passion and resourcefulness- my only question, as an aside, was why these examples weren’t more evident on their web-presence but I’ll get back to this part of the story later.
Onto the next related event…
Tuesday saw the release of the awe-inspiring ‘LaFerrari’ at the Geneva motor show – outrageous, dramatic, truly-beautiful. There are no words. I love the design of this car; Ferrari has made more ugly cars than beautiful ones in the last twenty years but this one is stunning. Above that the engineering is breathtaking. They’ve built a semi-hybrid powered car that will go to 60mph in less than 3 seconds, weighs less than 1300 kilos and laps Fiorano, the Ferrari test track more than 5 seconds quicker than its predecessor the Enzo. At first I thought, this car is 12 years in the making. But no it’s more than that – the pulling together of all the resources and expertise of a company means this car is 66 years in the making. 66 years of moving the game forward. Of using its pedigree in racing to build faster cars.
How do they continue to do this?
Innovation.
What fuels this innovation?
Passion.
Ferrari is a small company, tiny on the grand scheme of things. They do not have limitless resources. But Ferrari behaves more like ‘a cause’ than a company. Everybody at Ferrari knows what the company is about and they do a fantastic job of getting this vision across. One of the great aspects of small companies is the compactness of the organisation. The sense of a shared purpose. ‘LaFerrari’ has one or two big innovations but the main body of work is in the details. Thousands of small, iterative details that have been lovingly created to build something out of this world. Collectively they all combine to help form something incredible.
Its innovation and passion that lies at the heart of a number of companies – those are also the ones that happen to have the strongest brands in the marketplace.
Coincidentally, this was further confirmed on Thursday when Paul Fletcher of Edinburgh University put together a strong presentation on that very subject at Thursday mornings Comms Breakfast. He spoke of the problems with companies being overly-results focussed and why ‘innovation’ is the only way to climb ourselves out of difficult times. But he also spoke of the issues with innovators – difficult to manage or control, disruptive, etc. He even went as far as stating that nobody in the room would have had the patience to deal with a young Steve Jobs in their companies.
Difficult to believe as that is.
Innovation in itself is difficult to do but I was delighted that he agreed afterwards with my analysis that innovation is fuelled by passion. And that it has to be fostered from the people at the top. The relentless march of progress is driven by people that love what they do and strive for better. It’s present in all of the great causes of our time and is the invisible hand that enables people to drive companies forward.
Which takes me back to Monday’s meeting.
I am afraid to say that I was unsure if the legal sector would be a good fit for the loft. I was delighted to hear that there are culturally aware firms that were enacting on their vision. I have been saying for a long time that to build stronger brands; Behaviour is more important than words. In this meeting, the passion was evident. Passion which is sometimes difficult to see with legal firms. Imagine the possibilities if you could leverage the entire workforce – all of the junior associates, trainees, partners, managing partners, strategic partners to innovate on behalf of a company’s vision and values? Furthermore, imagine if you could leverage the entire company to communicate this online or offline.
From a ‘brand’ point of view. what can be stronger than a passionate 200-300+ brand advocates enthusiastically articulating the company message at events, dinners, when speaking with family and friends, online?
Call it advocacy, call it internal marketing, call it whatever but it’s a tremendous opportunity. I only realised on Monday that we may have an opening for ‘Loft-Legal’ and it lies in this area. Having vision is important but it has to be articulated properly. It has to be crystal clear – it’s what the likes of Ferrari do very well. But not just big multinationals you’ll find this sense of purpose in restaurants, engineering firms, charities, etc. They may not use our words – brand, vision, values etc but it’s definitely there. This is an area we can definitely help.
My company is ‘design with soul.’ But what is becoming apparent is we need the ‘soul’ bit to come from the client to do great work. What was most exciting about Monday was that we can build a service and proposition with the loft potentially innovating on our own vision. Doing something innovative and delivering something of additional value to clients. Traditional design channels work remains incredibly important – photography, fonts, graphics, motifs, messages etc. We’re amongst the very best at it but I realise that we operate in a hugely competitive marketplace and we must continue to innovate to build a better business.
Through the Finance Gap, we’ve got designs on advocacy too. But that’s a story for another day. Like I said, it’s one of those weeks I think I’ll look back on as a significant turning point. Loft Legal has the potential to make an impact for both legal firms, but other professional services too.
Watch this space.
Benedetto
About the Author
Benedetto Bordone
Creative Director of the loft.
Benedetto runs the creative design consultancy, the loft. Based in the centre of Glasgow, the loft creates emotionally engaging brand identities.
Benedetto began his design career aged 9, sketching cars in the loft bedroom of his parents house. Even then he realised some eternal truths. Alfa Romeos are infinitely cooler than Ferraris and always have been. Time has only hardened this opinion. Since then, he has been on a journey taking him from his hometown in Kilmarnock to Coventry, studying car design aged 17, three separate spells in Italy followed where he interned, worked & freelanced for distinguished design companies – BeeStudio, Alfa Romeo, Honda Advanced design & Stile Bertone.
Setting up his own business was a natural step for somebody as independently minded as Benedetto. The loft was set up in 2008 and offers a comprehensive branding and communication service to its clients. The company combines a deeply analytical approach into the clients culture and commercial targets before engaging in creative design work to build emotive brands.
Dec
Windows 8
Posted by benbordone / Comment, News
As a little boy, I used to love playing with Lego. Building houses, ships and cars with Lego was one of my favourite hobbies. And when the time came to move onto Technic, I did so gratefully. My young mind aching to be challenged in greater ways. But anybody who is familiar with Lego or Technic, or building anything for that matter will know that once you’ve reconstructed the same thing once or twice. You get better at it.
You find room for improvement, you find pieces that may be superfluous, think of better ways to build something and think of more elegant solutions. I remember being very firmly told by my friend Alexandre, a senior designer at Honda, who also happened to be a world-class trumpet player.
Before creating. Learn!
Learn from what exists. Learn what works. And learn what doesn’t.
Learn from the masters.
In essence, he told me to build on and respect existing practices and structures in car design before going off on a limb trying to reinvent the wheel with flights of fancy.
The difference between student and professional work and good advice.
I started to think of Alexandres advice recently when I seen the new Windows 8 Operating System. Boy is it radical. It’s fresh and a huge step forward for Microsoft. It has the impetuosity and care free abandon of youthful thinking.
But you see, building a computer operating system is like building anything. It’s only by building, testing, constructing, re-constructing, doing, ending and starting again that a great system evolves. You have to be able to dig deep into the detail first before proposing structural changes.
Trust me with an object as heavily used as an operating system, form is definitely a consequence of function. No matter how smart the interface is. Nothing will dull the novelty quicker than something that doesn’t work properly.
Apple have got this right brilliantly recently with the vast number of OS iterations that both work and function beautifully. The incremental and iterative process used by Apple means that their operating system just works and the fact that it works beautifully enhances the perception that it is beautiful.
I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to see Microsoft do something as Bold as Windows 8. This is a company that has thrown off the shackles of conservatism and embraced radicalism. One could even say it has ‘out-appled’ Apple. I love the strength of the concept, the fact that one Operating system can cross several platforms. And I do rather like the minimal graphic style. The strength of its boldness, has even begun to ask questions about Apple and their ‘skeumorphic’ approach. So much so that their top dog in design – Sir Jonathan Ive has been drafted in to oversee the development of their new OS.
Visually, I must say that Windows 8 is a huge step forward over 7. It is a sensible evolution of the Microsoft Vision 2019 with the breaking down of tasks/applications into mini modules, centred on the screen. This is obviously common throughout traditional desktops, tablets and mobile devices.
Despite the radical appearance, you are still reminded that this is Microsoft and not Apple. As a car designer, I remember Alfa Romeo investing a lot of time and effort to mimic the pleasant thud when you close a car door. Companies like Mercedes and Audi had become lauded for their quality and the door thud was symbolic of their success. Despite their best efforts, Alfa Romeo was never quite able to replicate the same feeling of quality. Kind of get the same impression here.
Microsoft should be praised for their boldness but their execution, in design, isn’t quite on the same level as Apple. The icons for example are a touch on the small side proportionally and more than that they lack that attention to detail that is required. Minimalism is a wonderful aesthetic direction, particularly when executed well. However, what many forget is that reducing an object (or part of an interface in this example) to its most core components means that every element has to have the right depth and attention to detail in its own right.
Microsoft and aesthetics is a bit like Alfa Romeo and quality. With the best will in the world, it’s never quite there. The new Microsoft logo is also testament to this. However, without being too harsh to Microsoft; this is the kind of Operating System Apple should be building and I believe that their rivals in Silicon Valley will be incredibly jealous that their clothes have been stolen by their competitors. Conceptually, it’s quite a bit ahead of the game.
However, before getting carried away with Windows 8. I must return to the original point and heed this warning. The beauty and conceptual integrity of the Microsoft interface will only work commercially if it performs and functions well. It’s what made Windows 95 so popular in the first place.
According to one of my great design heroes Richard Seymour…
“We don’t see beauty in objects as they are but as we are.”
Everything is beautiful to different people in different ways. The most beautiful objects in anybody’s eyes are those that work well, that enhance our lives. As many of you know I never shut up about how much I love my BlackBerry.
Why?
Because it allows me to type on the move; to blog, to send e-mails. All effortlessly so!
It’s why I hated the I-phone I had for three months. Because I just couldn’t do that.
You won’t find too many people in love with their operating systems but subconsciously people feel the exact same way.
If Microsoft 8’s cool new concept and layout allows users to interact with their word processors, e-mail, music, Facebook etc with greater ease, then boy do they have a product.
Otherwise, its novelty will quickly wear off and people will continue to flock to Apple.
Time will tell…