DESIGNING FROM THE INSIDE OUT
by Max Dietshe, Simplification Strategist
The year was 1930, and Henry Dreyfuss—later to become known as the founder of industrial design in America—had been asked by Bell Labs to join a multi-agency effort to design "the phone of the future."
As Dreyfuss described it in his seminal work Designing for People:
"...I suggested that a telephone's appearance should be developed from the inside out, not merely created as a mold...and that this would require collaboration with Bell technicians. My visitor disagreed, saying such collaboration would only limit a designer's artistic scope."*
Months after he declined the assignment, Dreyfuss recounts, the Bell representative returned with a changed point of view; he admitted frankly that the telephones of the future submitted by the ten commissioned artists had been unsatisfactory. Some of them were quite original...but all of them were impractical.
Accepting the new commission, Dreyfuss went to work. He not only insisted on close collaboration with Bell's engineers and manufacturers, but he conducted some unusual primary user research:
"Because placement had a bearing on design, we had to determine what people did with phones, and that is why the telephone company permitted me to act as a repairman's helper when he went on his rounds."
The result of this inside-out-design process was the Bell 300 phone—black, with a rotary dial—with which many of us grew up. With its successor, the Bell 500, it remained the standard for decades.
At Addison, we ensure that business communications get business results by applying a similar inside-out, user-centered process. Whether a communication is offset, online or digital, we begin by involving everyone who touches it, from concept to delivery. We emphasize involving "engineers" (the client's legal, systems and operational personnel who must approve, implement and maintain our recommendations) early on. And it means our strategic analysis often starts in a client's mail room or IT department, or with a print-on-demand or technology partner.
Although we don't get to pose as phone repairmen, we find the results can be simple—and startlingly effective.
*Dreyfuss, Henry, Designing for People (New York: Allsworth Press, 1955, 1967, 2003)
About the author
Max Dietshe is a senior marketing communications executive who oversees simplified communications and corporate marketing literature projects for clients such as Merrill Lynch and Guardian Life Insurance Company. Max joined Addison from OppenheimerFunds, Inc., where he served as director of marketing communications.
Contact us for more information
The year was 1930, and Henry Dreyfuss—later to become known as the founder of industrial design in America—had been asked by Bell Labs to join a multi-agency effort to design "the phone of the future."
As Dreyfuss described it in his seminal work Designing for People:
"...I suggested that a telephone's appearance should be developed from the inside out, not merely created as a mold...and that this would require collaboration with Bell technicians. My visitor disagreed, saying such collaboration would only limit a designer's artistic scope."*
Months after he declined the assignment, Dreyfuss recounts, the Bell representative returned with a changed point of view; he admitted frankly that the telephones of the future submitted by the ten commissioned artists had been unsatisfactory. Some of them were quite original...but all of them were impractical.
Accepting the new commission, Dreyfuss went to work. He not only insisted on close collaboration with Bell's engineers and manufacturers, but he conducted some unusual primary user research:
"Because placement had a bearing on design, we had to determine what people did with phones, and that is why the telephone company permitted me to act as a repairman's helper when he went on his rounds."
The result of this inside-out-design process was the Bell 300 phone—black, with a rotary dial—with which many of us grew up. With its successor, the Bell 500, it remained the standard for decades.
At Addison, we ensure that business communications get business results by applying a similar inside-out, user-centered process. Whether a communication is offset, online or digital, we begin by involving everyone who touches it, from concept to delivery. We emphasize involving "engineers" (the client's legal, systems and operational personnel who must approve, implement and maintain our recommendations) early on. And it means our strategic analysis often starts in a client's mail room or IT department, or with a print-on-demand or technology partner.
Although we don't get to pose as phone repairmen, we find the results can be simple—and startlingly effective.
*Dreyfuss, Henry, Designing for People (New York: Allsworth Press, 1955, 1967, 2003)
About the author
Max Dietshe is a senior marketing communications executive who oversees simplified communications and corporate marketing literature projects for clients such as Merrill Lynch and Guardian Life Insurance Company. Max joined Addison from OppenheimerFunds, Inc., where he served as director of marketing communications.
Contact us for more information
