Video: Saul Bass’ Bell System Pitch
This is a video of Saul Bass presenting his brand identity suggestions to Bell System in the early 1970s. The first half is a fantastic overview on the importance of brand identity,. while the second half (starting at around 13:00) is the identity pitch itself. A long video, but worth every second of your time.
Edward Tufte Profile
Joshua Yaffa profiles Edward Tufte, one of my personal heros, for The Washington Monthly.
After the publication of Envisioning Information, Tufte decided, he told me, “to be indifferent to culture or history or time.” He became increasingly consumed with what he calls “forever knowledge,” or the idea that design is meant to guide fundamental cognitive tasks and therefore is rooted in principles that apply regardless of the material being displayed and the technology used to produce it. As Tufte explains it, basic human cognitive questions are universal, which means that design questions should be universal too. “I purposely don’t write books with names like How to Design a Web Site or How to Make a Presentation,” he told me.
The Groupon IPO
I haven’t been following their IPO very closely. I don’t use the service. I won’t invest. I long ago decided not to invest in technology firms like this. Heck I am basically just a mutual fund dude at this point in time. So heck I don’t really care. But David Heinemeier Hansson, a partner at 37Signals does:
Groupon has filed its S-1 and hopes to raise $750M in its initial public offering. Given they’re currently losing a staggering $117M per quarter, despite revenues of $644M, they’ll be burning through that cash almost as soon as it hits their account.
At the moment, it’s costing them $1.43 to make $1, and it doesn’t look like it’s getting any cheaper. They’re already projected to make close to three billion dollars in revenues this year. If you can’t figure out how to make money on three billion in revenue, when exactly will the profit magic be found? Ten billion? Fifty billion?
Now clearly the IPO is as much about future performance as anything. But it still makes you wonder doesn’t it.
Now That Is A Motivation Tactic
I don’t recall this and I’ve read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, twice. Darn good story.
Charles Schwab had a mill manager whose people weren’t producing their quota of work.
“How is it,” Schwab asked him, “that a manager as capable as you can’t make this mill turn out what it should?”
“I don’t know,” the manager replied. “I’ve coaxed the men, I’ve pushed them, I’ve sworn and cussed, I’ve threatened them with damnation and being fired. But nothing works. They just won’t produce.”
This conversation took place at the end of the day, just before the night shift came on. Schwab asked the manager for a piece of chalk, then, turning to the nearest man, asked: “How many heats did your shift make today?”
“Six.”
Without another word, Schwab chalked a big figure six on the floor, and walked away.
When the night shift came in, they saw the “6″ and asked what it meant.
“The big boss was in here today,” the day people said.
“He asked us how many heats we made, and we told him six. He chalked it down on the floor.”
The next morning Schwab walked through the mill again. The night shift had rubbed out “6″ and replaced it with a big “7.”
When the day shift reported for work the next morning, they saw a big “7″ chalked on the floor. So the night shift thought they were better than the day shift did they? Well, they would show the night shift a thing or two. The crew pitched in with enthusiasm, and when they quit that night, they left behind them an enormous, swaggering “10.” Things were stepping up.
Shortly this mill, which had been lagging way behind in production, was turning out more work than any other mill in the plant.
The principle?
Let Charles Schwab say it in his own words: “The way to get things done,” says Schwab, “is to stimulate competition. I do not mean in a sordid, money-getting way, but in the desire to excel.”
The desire to excel! The challenge! Throwing down the gauntlet! An infallible way of appealing to people of spirit.
[Found via Kottke]
