‘Fogo’ designed by Alberto Vasquez has been published in SendPoints inspiring book called Creative Product Design

Fogo by Alberto Vasquez is published in Creative Product Design

The Removable Handles called Fogo designed by Alberto Vasquez has been part of SendPoints collection in Creative Product Design. Check the review of SendPoints:

The advancement in technology and the use of new materials, the increase of public environmental protection awareness, as well as people’s seeking for better, easier and multifunctional living, bring fresh challenges to product design. Creative Product Design presents and analyses creative products in everyday life from various parts of the world. The book features five parts: lamps, tables & chairs, shelves & cabinets, kitchenware & containers and tools. Continue reading


Innovation is the new currency of surviving?

Why nobody can overtake a pioneer and innovator company even they try to copy it?

Those who innovate doesn’t get the opportunity of being a Pioneer and conquer the market by chance. This is not a one-time occasion whereupon folowers and copier competitors can take the lead of the market any time by their bigger and cheaper manufacturing and marketing capacity.

Innovation is culture

Innovation becomes part of the corporate culture so they repeat that huge amount of innovation by every new product cycle. They create again and again a brand new cathegory of experiences generation by generation of their products. Therefore it becomes impossible to catch up an Innovator. Apple has grown to be the most valuable company of the planet (in less than 30 years from its establishment) thanks to this innovator culture and not because of its manufacturing capacity or the amount of their commercials. Capacity follows Innovation and not inversely! Continue reading

Why design is the most powerful force to grow your business – PART 3

Welcome back!  Here we are with #3 in this series on my “List of 3 special design force″ — the 3 main design tools of what I would consider the best “forces” to grow a business.

This article will make a LOT more sense if you’ve already Article #1 and Article #2 in the series, so if you haven’t already, please do that.

Assuming you have, then great – let’s dig in.

Design Force #3:  Liberation from price competition

The priceless thing that design can give your business is that it makes your products free from price competition once and for all!

Can you imagine? It means that you will never ever have to compete again with prices, you will never have to care about competitors prices and people still want to buy from you and they will adore your product. You can impose the prices of your product that really meets its Value and you can make the profit that you really deserves.

Most of the companies simply cannot imagine their business without price competition. The reason behind is that they have never aproached this issue from a Design perspective.

The problem is that discounted prices don’t message anything but how much should you pay in reality for it. When a company gives a discount they take away the focus from the value of their product and move it right on its price.

In order to keep your prices high you need to be able to sell the Value of your product. You need to constantly point your prospects focus on the Value of your product not on the price.

When a company begins or participates in a price competition they strive to sell that product as cheap as possible increasingly lowering their profit. Doing all this instead of striving to sell it on its original or even higher price and giving higher value and quality: definitely higher than competitors. The goal is to constantly point your prospective customers’ attention on that you give them a better product than the competitors.

Even the tiniest discount has a harmful influence on the integrity of your prices because next time it can make quite difficult to achieve at that same customer not to focus on the price but to concentrate on the value.

So, why can great design make you free from price competition? Continue reading

Why „Aesthetic-Usability Effect” can raise your sales?

Why does it raise your sales when your product’s aesthetics compensate the difficulties and frustrations of using and handling it?

Last time, when I was in an Apple store I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon. Two customers were talking about their recently updated operating system, that seemed to them unstable and freezed sometimes. It was very interesting how they talked about it. They talked with empathy and patience like it would be a completly natural phenomenon. However I experienced that the PC users usually talk incredibly frustrated about similar issues.

This phenomenon is caused by the „Aesthetic-Usability Effect”: Aesthetic products are percieved as easier to use than less-aesthetic products.

The effect has been observed in several experiments, and has significant implications regarding acceptance, use, and performance of a product in the eyes of the customer.

Aesthetics has a highly important role how people use a product. Aesthetic products are more effective at fostering positive attitudes than unaesthetic products and make people more tolerant of usability problems.

One of my favorite example for lack of tolerance is the “pay-off” sceene in the Office Space film.

pay-off sceene - office space film

Continue reading