New Kind partner Matthew Muñoz participated in the AIGA tradition of 20/20 at this year’s Make/Think Design Conference in Memphis. The 20/20 program, curated and moderated by AIGA President Debbie Millman, challenged 20 AIGA chapter leaders from around the country to address the theme of making and thinking as it relates to his or her own local chapter and design experience – each in just 60 seconds. (more…)

I wanted to share a recent article from the influential design blog Core77 that adds New Kind to a growing list of influential regional design groups building on the efforts of the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative (NDPI).

On a state and regional level, independent design groups seek to address the lack of federal funding for design- and innovation-based initiatives. One goal, among many, is to give young designers access to resources so they can create and innovate — seems elementary, but these resources have been sorely lacking to date.

In early 2008, Matt Muñoz traveled to Europe with MASS LBP Principal Peter MacLeod, visiting think tanks Demos and Involve, as well as design organizations Participle and Kaospilots, among others. While there, he saw first hand the support young thinkers receive in countries like England and Denmark, where national programs provide funding and infrastructure to emerging ideas and talent. Muñoz and partner David Burney were inspired by this level of commitment to design and innovation, one thread which compelled the formation of New Kind in 2008.

In her article, Lisa Smith of Core77 writes that companies like New Kind, Design Industry Group of Massachusetts (DIGMA) and Design West Michigan “seek to organize state officials, design industry leadership, and educational institutions to promote design as an agent of economic growth and social change in those regions.” Hear, hear!

Beate Becker, Founding Director of DIGMA, invited Muñoz to attend the launch in Boston this summer, and he hopes that an ongoing conversation between groups like New Kind and DIGMA, the first state-level design industry group, will help lay the groundwork for effecting change on a regional level.

Smith’s Core77 article provided insight into the challenges and opportunities facing the changing landscape of design. Through her efforts with the Chicago-based Object Design League, Smith and co-founder Caroline Linder embody this new way of thinking about design and collaboration. New Kind is honored to be mentioned alongside such inspirational groups.

Famed social ecologist and the “father of modern management,” Peter Drucker once advised that the only purpose of a business is to create customers. That type of thinking lead companies to conduct marketing research, determine who their customers are and what their customer want to hear. They created positioning platforms, messaging, advertising— the whole nine yards— in an effort to create customers. For the second half of the 20th century, that model kicked ass. At least for the advertising and marketing firms who did it well. Or could convince their clients they did it well.

Today’s world is different. Duh. Customers are in control. They don’t believe authoritative voices. They don’t trust their messages. They no longer trust the media such companies employ. They don’t have to; they now connect to more authentic voices that they trust via the internet and other social media. It’s second nature.

The broad and rapidly growing consumer preference for networked media means that traditional advertising is now suspect.  The media of advertising comes with an underlying meaning— an agreed upon contract that the advertiser may bullshit you if that helps them make a sale.  That’s the meaning. We all know it. The medium is the message.

So what’s a company to do? Branding is about building credibility. About establishing and scaling your reputation. So, why use social or networked media— such trendy media— to build brand?

Networked media isn’t important because it’s trendy. It’s important because it creates customer-driven innovation. It creates brand evangelists. It can help build a collaborative internal culture and engaged work force. It demands authenticity— especially in the form of customer experience.

So can Twitter really save brands that don’t provide good experiences? That’s the question asked by Fast Company blogger Rupa Chaturvedi, who cautions companies against relying on social media to influence customer behavior when the brand doesn’t live up to the hype they’re trying to create.

These networks can be a highly effective way to build your brand externally. But there’s a catch. It only works when the messages are true. You know they’re true when they’re open. And transparent. And valuable. You know they’re successful when the network grows organically.

But Twitter, Facebook, etc. are the media. They are not the strategy. The strategy is community building. Community building is the ‘new’ marketing.

I’ve been interviewing and hiring designers since about 1980. Whoa. That’s a long time. I’ve hired and worked with great, talented, collaborative designers over all those years. Matt Muñoz is as good as they come.

Matt’s thesis work on mapping large, complex problems is highly relevant for the competitive environment we face today. He’s become a leader in the U.S. National Design Policy effort. His student entry won first place in HOW Magazine’s International Student Competition and he was a finalist in AIGA’s Command X competition at last year’s national convention in Denver. And his work was critical to the success of the Red Hat brand for the last five years.

You can see why I’m delighted he’s my business partner in New Kind.

I’ve had people ask me about samples of our work. It’s a reasonable request. At our core, we are a design studio. Designing brands, websites… the whole nine yards. But we wanted to begin by focusing less on the artifacts that we design. And more on the strategic reasons our clients work with us— connecting design thinking and open sourcing to solve problems and create powerful brands. None of which happens, of course, unless it is made real.

“You can observe a lot by looking,” Yogi Berra once said.

You can look at Matt’s work at www.designheals.com.

It’s been a busy week here in Lake Woebegone, my home town. Last Friday I gave a keynote address at High Point University for its conference on design, arts and technology. I was impressed by the campus and the activity I found there. This year’s theme for the conference was “Design Matters.” I came away convinced that High Point University believes it and is acting on its belief. Good for them. I think that may explain why HPU has garnered the recognition it has:

At High Point University, every student receives an extraordinary education in a fun environment with caring people. HPU, located in the Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina, is a liberal arts institution with more than 3,400 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 50 countries and more than 40 states at campuses in High Point and Winston-Salem. It is ranked by US News and World Report No. 5 among comprehensive universities in the South and No. 1 in its category among up-and-coming schools. Forbes.com ranks HPU in the top 6 percent among “America’s Best Colleges.” The university offers 66 undergraduate majors, 40 undergraduate minors and seven graduate-degree majors. It is accredited by the Commission of Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and is a member of the NCAA, Division I and the Big South Conference. Visit High Point University on the Web at www.highpoint.edu.

I’m delighted to finally be introduced to this unassuming gem right here in North Carolina.

The next bit of news came via messages from my business partner Matt Muñoz and my good friend Chris Grams early this morning. It seems Bruce Nussbaum used my response to his blog from late February as the basis for his own new blog.

Bruce Nussbaum is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek and has lead BusinessWeek’s innovation and design coverage for many years. His blog is one of the essential resources for designers and business leaders interested in being relevant in the 21st century. I’m honored to be referenced in his blog.

I was first introduced to Bruce’s work through an interview in Corporate Design Foundation’s  @Issue magazine [Vol 4; no. 4]. It was beautiful, and just the thing I needed to read at the time. But it was his speech at Parsons a year ago that really moved him into the upper echelon of ‘design thinking’ thinkers for me.

Here’s a tidbit:

Are Designers The Enemy of Design?

In the name of provocation, let me start by saying that DESIGNERS SUCK. I’m sorry. It’s true. DESIGNERS SUCK. There’s a big backlash against design going on today and it’s because designers suck.

So let me tell you why. Designers suck because they are arrogant. The blogs and websites are full of designers shouting how awful it is that now, thanks to Macs, Web 2.0, even YouTube, EVERYONE is a designer. Core 77 recently ran an article on this backlash and so did we on our Innovation & Design site. Designers are saying that Design is everywhere, done by everyone. So Design is debased, eroded, insulted. The subtext, of course, is that Real design can only be done by great star designers.

This is simply not true. Design Democracy is the wave of the future.

Dead on, Bruce. Check out that entire speech.

And that’s the news from Lake Woebegone, where all the customers are strong, all the designers are good-looking, and all the executives are above average.