My col­umn in Blue­print mag­a­zine always cov­ers the main topic of the issue. This time they asked me to write about Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is a car­toon of itself, a stand­ing joke, but with­out the slight­est hint of irony, or self-distance. It is per­haps the most Amer­i­can of US cities, built evi­dence to the fact that big­ger is bet­ter and that bet­ter is big­ger. Noth­ing in Las Vegas started as an orig­i­nal idea, and noth­ing seems older than 10 years, but the sheer amount of bor­rowed images makes the whole totally incom­pa­ra­ble.
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Another col­umn from Blue­print mag­a­zine. I think it appeared in the novem­ber issue.
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While avoid­ing writ­ing my next col­umn for Blue­print mag­a­zine, I found the piece I wrote last year about the same topic, Japan. There is no other rea­son to pub­lish it here and now except the fact that I have it right in front of me now, an unfor­mat­ted text file.
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The new web­site for Eden­spiek­er­mann is up. A lot of the projects are fairly main­stream and a lot of the copy sounds rather “cor­po­rate” to me. That is the result of hav­ing to agree on every sen­tence between nine part­ners and 100 col­leagues. My per­sonal take is rep­re­sented by the text I wrote about the HOW.

We run our busi­ness by shar­ing respon­si­bil­ity among nine part­ners. Each of us run project teams. We do not take money from face­less net­works and don’t have to be account­able to their con­trollers. We alone decide who we work for and how we orga­nize our­selves. And we put our money where our mouths are: we are share­hold­ers and inter­ested in the long view.
Most design con­sul­tan­cies or brand­ing agen­cies (pick your own name) offer pretty much the same type of work. It is how they go about their work that makes the dif­fer­ence. It is a ques­tion of atti­tude, per­son­al­ity, even morals.

The cur­rent cri­sis is also a cri­sis of val­ues: are peo­ple account­able for what they do? Is suc­cess rewarded with fat pre­mi­ums but fail­ure paid for by soci­ety? Can we carry on ask­ing for growth as the only way for­ward? Do we need new values?

Even design­ers are not only judged by the vis­i­ble results of their work, but more and more so by how they achieved them. Orig­i­nal­ity, per­son­al­ity, account­abil­ity are new buzz­words. Atti­tude is more inter­est­ing than cleverness.

Brands are suc­cess­ful when they when they are authen­tic, when they show atti­tude. They show how they make prod­ucts, how they treat their peo­ple, how they look at the future. Cheap stuff – the What – will still be made in China and else­where. Com­plex processes – the How – are designed here.

Achtung! is the title of my monthly col­umn in Blue­print mag­a­zine that I have been writ­ing since Octo­ber 2008. That head­line has to do with the Brits’ con­tin­u­ing stereo­typ­ing of us Ger­mans as heel-clicking, orders-shouting men in jack­boots. I have long since learned that the best way to live with that pre­oc­cu­pa­tion is to go along with it, even bring it up before they do. So when the edi­tors came up with the title, I rolled my eyes but agreed. This was writ­ten in Sep­tem­ber, before the size of the finan­cial cri­sis became to be fully known. My con­dem­na­tion of peo­ple pro­duc­ing “invis­i­ble earn­ings” could have been much harsher.

THESE DAYS, even cities and coun­tries are branded like wash­ing pow­der. When I hear a line like ‘Lon­don is the cre­ative cap­i­tal of Europe,’ (or was it ‘the World’?), the first thing I ask myself is whether this is the result of objec­tive research, a tabloid inven­tion or another gov­ern­ment cam­paign to take peo­ples’ minds off increas­ing infla­tion, pro­hib­i­tive prop­erty prices, ter­ri­ble traf­fic and weird weather. Yet there is some truth behind the slo­gan. I live and work in Berlin, San Fran­cisco and Lon­don, and there is some­thing dif­fer­ent about the British capital.

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On May 24^th Adrian Frutiger cel­e­brated his 80^th birth­day. To mark the occa­sion I wrote a short piece for the Swiss mag­a­zine Hoch­parterre. At the time, this blog was not very active and I only got the Ger­man ver­sion pub­lished. In the mean­time, my son, Dylan, has trans­lated the arti­cle into English.

Adrian Frutiger: Mr. Univers
When you get to a cer­tain age, like myself, you often gets asked who your influ­ences were and are. An easy response is to name nation­ally or inter­na­tion­ally renowned favourites such as Gandhi or Albert Schweitzer. Ones own par­ents tend to score high on the list, at least if they’re still liv­ing and able to read the acco­lades. As far as I’m con­cerned my choice has been a sim­ple one for over 30 years: I first met Adrian Frutiger in 1976, and to this day he remains my idol.

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The exhi­bi­tion at the Vic­to­ria & Albert Museum in Lon­don is titled Cold War Mod­ern, the »first exhi­bi­tion that exam­ines the inter­na­tional devel­op­ment in mod­ern art, design, archi­tec­ture and film in the con­text of the Cold Ware«. The con­nec­tion between Dieter Rams and Jonathan Ive’s Design for Apple has been men­tioned before, also in the Spiekerblog:
Braun Apple

Braun T1000, designer Dieter Rams — Cold War Mod­ern from Vic­to­ria & Albert Museum on Vimeo.

Here is an inter­view I gave to Eric Kar­jalu­oto from idea­sonideas. You can read it below.

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These are not exten­sive list­ings of all my achieve­ments and fail­ings, nor the com­plete story of my life (who would want to know?). Just the sort of cv peo­ple need to pub­lish for events and pub­li­ca­tions.
There are two ver­sions; a very short one in Ger­man and a short one in Eng­lish.
> down­loads

More from my col­umn in form, the Ger­man design magazine.

Pitched out

A pitch is the pre­sen­ta­tion of design ideas to a client by com­pet­ing agen­cies or stu­dios, usu­ally for free.

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