Reading Notes: Boss, No One's Buying This Design!

Before this, I’d seen a couple of friends here and there recommend this book. “Boss, No One Buys This Kind of Design” had an interesting title that stuck with me. Around March or April, I saw my friend Dapeng (the boss at Xiaoxiang Hanzi) post about this book again, so I ordered it right then.

I read slowly. Maybe it’s because I don’t read much, so my reading skills and efficiency are pretty low. For long or complex sentences, I need to read them several times to make sense of them. Also, I like to think a bit, try to figure out what the author means behind the words, and how the words relate to me (this is heavily influenced by reading the Bible, since reading the Bible is about thinking of its relationship to oneself).

In college, teachers recommended some Japanese design masters and their works (like: Ikko Tanaka), and I really liked the “emptiness,” “tranquility,” “cleanliness,” and “refinement” in Japanese design. Plus, Japan and China share a similar background in Chinese characters, so in terms of branding, graphic design, and design philosophy, Japanese design has greatly influenced me. As a Chinese designer, looking at Japan from China, Japan’s overall design and product standards are probably quite high on a global scale.

Ikko Tanaka’s work

However, in this book, the author Yoko Kawashima and six top Japanese executives and creators reflect deeply on Japanese design: discussing the current state and issues of design in Japan’s industry, their understanding of design from their managerial perspectives, and how design affects their management. The conversations are lighthearted yet sharp and direct, reaching philosophical wisdom.

I gained a lot of insights and benefits from the reading. Here, I’ll only record the parts that moved me the most from the five interviews.

01. The Right Way Managers Treat Design

Soichiro Masuda (founder of Tsutaya Books)

In this era where brand and experience rule, managers must value design (the definition of design can be broad or narrow), this is indisputable. But how to value it? Masuda’s approach is: focus on controlling the source of design concepts, find suitable designers, communicate thoroughly at the conceptual level, then grant creative space and freedom.

I shared thoughts on Masuda’s part in a previous article “About Design Decisions - For the Boss”, and won’t elaborate here.

02. The Designer and the Doctor

Kashiwa Sato (founder of SAMURAI Design, brand designer for Uniqlo)

Kashiwa Sato is a designer I admire greatly, having read his two books “Super Clear” and “Handling Creativity as Business.” Among them, his stringent rules for organizing employees’ computers in his design company shocked me and made me want to copy them: mandating that all designers’ computer file storage methods and folder naming conform to a high level of uniformity. Why do this? He described an interesting yet convincing scene: if a designer is on sick leave and another needs to use their computer, due to the consistent file management, using someone else’s computer feels like using one’s own.

The file organization at Kashiwa’s design studio. Impeccably clean. Doesn’t it feel like a Uniqlo display?

Uniqlo brand design handled by Kashiwa Sato

Due to his influence, when I led the design team at Liu Li Shuo, I required team members to uniformly use Mac numeric keyboards, MagicMouse, Spotlight search, and correct posture (naturally, left hand on the keyboard, index finger on the F key; absolutely no eating with one hand and working with the other), and the workspace and items should be arranged for quick computer operation…

Of course, here I want to talk about how Kashiwa uses “doctor” to metaphorize a designer’s work in the book. Before, when looking at his pictures, he seemed quite rebellious and authoritarian, yet I didn’t expect his attitude to be so humble. To design as a doctor means, first, the main subject is not the designer but the client because the patient and the “disease” are the focus; secondly, like prescribing medication and treating, a doctor must carefully listen to the patient’s symptoms and problem descriptions before taking action. Although, often, bosses/clients, like patients, can’t accurately describe their symptoms or conditions. This is when doctors/designers need to use experience and intuition to guide the patient in discovering issues, organizing their thoughts, and finding opportunities.

03. Career Development Timelines

Satoshi Wada (Audi’s senior designer/creative manager, known for Audi A5)

In the interview, Mr. Wada mentioned the concept of “Beautiful Ordinariness.” Design shouldn’t blindly pursue novelty, as most “novel” products are just temporarily unique, easily outdated, and discarded. On the contrary, items and designs like white rice or jeans are very ordinary and daily but can integrate into everyday life and remain enduring. That’s the concept of beautiful ordinariness.

Another Japanese design master, Naoto Fukasawa, expressed the same idea with another term: Super Normal. The extreme balance of function and form, without extraneous design elements to capture attention, making the product perceived as ordinary and self-evident, frequently used in life.

Jasper Morrison’s work. Had collaborated with Naoto Fukasawa for the Super Normal Exhibition. https://jaspermorrison.com/

Actually, what attracted me most in the book about Wada was his career information. To me, it seems like a perfect career development plan. Born in 1961 in Tokyo. Graduated from Musashino Art University. At 23, joined Nissan as a designer for the first Primera and the first Presea. From age 28-30, studied at the Royal College of Art in the UK. At age 37, transferred to Audi AG/Audi Design, working as a senior designer/creative manager, designing models like the A6, Q7, A5, A7. Established SWdesign Studio at age 48.

By comparison, I was born in 1983, graduated at 22 with a visual design major, working from 22 to 37, experiencing both small startups and large firms, rising from a frontline designer to design director, which is considered smooth. However, from a design career perspective, the “qualitative” change is too superficial. Additionally, always being in a work state led to a lack of necessary theories and knowledge supplementation, insufficient career development momentum. But Wada-san’s timing is just perfect.

At 23, getting into a big company opened up everything: design methods, processes, and vision. Five years later, at 28, continuing studies at a top design school. This further study provides a higher platform and opportunities on one hand, and ample academic and theoretical support for future work on the other. At 37, producing famous works at renowned companies. By 48, using credentials, resources, and experience to start your own venture.

This timeline is very worth emulating for designers, especially for design students and designers just starting their careers.

04.Leisure and Taste

Masahiro Okafuji (Chairman/CEO of Itochu Corporation)

What is the reason Japanese products lack taste? Kawashima and Okafuji discussed this topic, using details from Kawashima’s “ifs Future Laboratory” reception as an example. During the reception, Okafuji introduced the concept of “leisure.” It was just a reception, but ifs invested significant resources in designing and producing original products (snacks, cosmetics). To Okafuji, this felt light and effortless, which he sees as the “leisure” of a company and its leaders.

When I read this, I couldn’t fully grasp what Okafuji meant by “leisure.” I just had a vague sense. I wrote in the margin of the book: the blank space, reserved space, and rhythm of management.

Next, Okafuji used the Toyota CROWN (Crown) car as an example to clearly explain the concept of “leisure.” Cost reduction and efficiency improvement are almost every company’s pursuits. If you blindly chase these, the product becomes very “chicken ribs,” tight and lacking “leisure.” Finally, Okafuji used a more direct word to express “leisure,” which is “waste.”

The word waste is too precise.

While cost and efficiency are important, what often surprises users/customers and forms quality and differentiation in brand/experience is “reasonable waste.” The more high-end the product, the more this is true.

This “leisure,” or “reasonable waste,” appears in many aspects, from spending heavily to open an offline experience store in a city landmark (like NIO’s 2017 opening of NIO House in Beijing’s Wangfujing Oriental Plaza, with an annual rent of 70-80 million) to something as small as the white space on a flyer, rounded corners on a business card, or embossing on a cover. The big “waste” is visible to everyone but costly, should you do it? The small “waste” is too detailed and most consumers can’t see, feel, or care about it, should you do it?

The NIO House located at No. 1 East Chang’an Street, Oriental Plaza, Beijing. NIO, I think, is the best brand among domestic car companies, followed by Ideal.

At the end of the day, I think “leisure” is an extreme pursuit of detail and quality. Only pursuing cost and efficiency, lacking “leisure,” the product is inevitably mediocre and dull.

05. Education is Training Assassins

Hiroshi Ishii (Deputy Director of MIT Media Lab)

In China, Japan, and Korea, due to the influence of traditional Confucian education, the exchange and dialogue between teachers and students rarely sees equal perspectives; mostly, teachers teach and students accept, a kind of mentor-apprentice relationship. But Hiroshi Ishii mentioned that in the U.S., it’s a different state: academic exchanges are equal, with serious and equal confrontation between teachers and students.

The word “assassin” is borrowed by Ishii from designer John Maeda’s statement: “The goal of an educator is to train assassins. They will sooner or later come to kill me, but I’m not that easy to kill.” Well said. What does training assassins mean? I think it implies equal dialogue (when teachers and students spar, both knives and swords have no eyes), surpassing the master, and integration of knowledge and action (an assassin has to draw blood).

Is education about teaching knowledge? Passing down what the teacher learned? If so, it could be that each generation is lesser than the last. This logic is very simple and easy to agree with. But if education is to add something beyond imparting knowledge (or restore some primal elements), then inevitably the educator and the educated need a clear vision, determination, and mindset. Because the added elements beyond knowledge are very important, but “effect” comes slowly, and some positive impacts may take ten years to be felt.

I believe the levels and priorities of education are: skills, knowledge, method, philosophy, and values. It seems that moving forward addresses issues of survival; moving back addresses issues of the spiritual and moral level. If one only learns to survive without understanding why to survive, life and survival becomes a very tragic affair, especially when reaching middle age.

Going off on a tangent.

By the way, after two or three years in design work, I read John Maeda’s book “The Laws of Simplicity.” It’s a thin book but had a significant impact on my approach to design thinking. Highly recommended.

Finally, I recommend designers and business leaders and managers who value design to read “Boss, Nobody Buys This Design.”