Design and Telephones

I have a complicated relationship with design.  I am a big believer of the value of quality design.  Design can make a marketing piece.  Design can help communicate your marketing message, or get in the way of it.


I once worked with a designer who was very talented but very disconnected from the marketing process. She would create incredibly creative designs that in no way communicated the message we were trying to convey with the chart or literature she was working on.  We had many spirited "conversations," that often led to frustration on my part and anger on hers.

So I had this learned (and erroneous) feeling that design is a hinderence to success.  That design is all about form over function.

And then I read this article on Huffington Post about the Dutch designer, Dave Hakkens, that completely and forever changed my mind.  His design idea is brilliant on so many levels.

An exploded view of the Phoneblok

Hakkens has introduced the concept of Phonebloks.  The idea behind Phonebloks is that the various components of a cellular phone would plug into a central baseboard.  When someone wants to upgrade or a component no longer works, they only have to replace the corresponding block.  This eliminates the need for disposing a whole phone when one component stops working.  It allows for highly customizable and long lasting phones.  AND it looks like it would be fairly easy to do.  Watch the short video on phonebloks.com to get a better idea of this groundbreaking design Hakkens is promotiong.  . Hakkens is conducting a Thunderclap campaign to try to show the world of telephony that there is support for this concept.  I encourage you to add your voice to this campaign if you find this design as innovative, intriguing and refreshing as I do.

This month's issue of Fast Company is about design.  In his forward, Editor Robert Safian describes his evolution of thought about design.  It closely resembles mine.

"When I first arrived at Fast Company...I still had an archaic understanding of design.  Like many businesspeople, I equated design with tangential aesthetics and fleeting style trends.  I was taught by the Fast Company staff...that good design is really about problem solving, that it offers a more sophisticated perspective on modern business challenges than traditional spreadsheet-based approaches.  You could go to consulting firms like McKinsey and get an answer based on established business models.  Or you could go to one of the rising design firms such as Ideo, and maybe you'd come up with something never before seen."

Like the Phoneblok.

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• Phonebloks: the smartphone for the rest of your life