Design Deja Vu
I’ve often talked about where design inspiration comes from and how there is no clear formula for it. I personally have found ideas in some of the strangest places. The bright red dipstick handle on my BMW, the clever cord storage on my 25 year old Braun coffee grinder, and the carry handle from a M-16 have all influenced designs that I have been associated with. This is all part of the creative process.
Lately, however, I have seen a trend by others to take design inspiration to to an uncomfortable place. For the sake of this discussion I’m going to put this type of design deja vu into three broad categories:
Ride the wave:
Apply the basic design theme to something else and hope you can ride the wave to profitability. The best example I have for this one is the barrage of translucent candy colored products that flooded the market a few years ago. At one point it was nearly impossible to buy even a basic stapler that wasn’t rendered in this manner. Finally I can buy one that doesn’t make me look goofy for owning it.
Intentionally Similar:
These are the kinds of things that are within the same product category but look confusingly similar to a highly visible and successful design already in market. Maybe a few details are a bit different, textures, split lines, etc. They are not totally identical, but the close resemblance is not by accident. The fashion industry has been plagued by this for years. Lately I’ve seen lots of activity in this category within the notebook computer space. How many minimalistic aluminum computers have you seen in the news? Black square ones with contrasting metal hinges have also surfaced. I wonder where they got that idea?
Knock Off:
A knock off is created to be as identical as possible with the intent of fooling either the buyer or others into believing it is the real thing. Often these include an unauthorized use of the manufacturers logo. I’m sure many of you have seen knockoff products being sold out of the trunk of a car deep within the bowels of New York City. Are you sure those sunglasses are real? Look closely. On occasion the logos are slightly changed or spelled incorrectly hoping nobody will notice. Generally speaking this category will cause lawyers to spring into action. This depends on the type of design or trademark protection that may be in place by the original manufacturer. Yes, a design can be patented to protect what is called the ornamental quality. Design patents do not cover any utility or functionality. That is the domain of a utility patent.
Market success seems to breed this kind of thinking. I find it hard to venture into this questionable space . Oddly enough the Volkswagen beetle, the most successful car in history, was never the victim of design deja vu. It was so dramatically unique that nobody ever dared to wade into their territory. I’m a big Picasso fan, but I find it hard to agree with his famous quotation ” Good Artists copy, great artists steal.” I prefer to let inspiration take me to a new place, not somewhere already occupied.
David Hill
Lenovo Meet the Modder Dean Liou
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 2
Lenovo Meet the modder- Chris Blarsky Dairy 1
Lenovo H320 desktop
March 23rd, 2009 7:22 pm
Perhaps the Beetle was never copied because it was not a particularly practical design? The only other time the shape has been reused was by VW themselves with the new Beetle, and the car was loudly criticized for being impractical, poorly engineered and just all-around lousy.
The Beetle is iconic because it revolutionized car ownership with a level of affordability and resultant personal freedom at the time. The iconic design succeeded partly because of its commercial success and partly because it completely tuned in to the anarchic culture of the time.
Here’s a mantra to enlighten the mind:
Success != Good
Good != Success
March 23rd, 2009 7:53 pm
hmm… timing of this post seems to coincide with the recent release of the x301 clone Dell Adamo. I agree, the Dell Adamo is a knockoff of the x301 coupled with some Apple flair (unibody and aesthetic boxing). It definitely looks hot, but the x300 and macbook air came out nearly two years ago. it’s like all the recent apple iphone knockoffs that have been coming out. you’re supposed to evolve the genre (perhaps the Palm Pre will?), not just emulate the front-runner.
March 23rd, 2009 8:20 pm
David, I don’t honestly consider the product you mentioned to be a X300/X301 design copy. The ThinkPad is not machined from a solid block of aluminum, edgeless glass,etc. Thanks for reading Design Matters.
March 24th, 2009 12:19 am
I think there’s a general lack of originality in the laptop space. Every couple of years, Dell, HP, et al refresh their line with bits taken from various other products, and frequently from each other. The result is a generic product that’s designed to be in “style” for 15 minutes.
In my experience, people have gotten used to this and now almost expect it. The ThinkPad is one of the few examples of consumer electronics with a cogent design language, and yet its design is just lost on most people! When I bring my X61s on campus, eveyone is impressed with how small and light it is, but most people think it looks “old”. HUH??!?
To me, it’s simple, black, and beautiful. It reminds me of those amazing futuristic space movie sets from the 70’s – think the interior of the Death Star or 2001: A Space Odyssey.
March 24th, 2009 12:20 am
I agree with D Hill. The Adamo is in no way a clone of either the Air *or* the X300.
Aesthetically (and structurally), it’s a definite nod towards the new Macbook series. But it’s also got elements of Asus and hp (contrasting textures), and pricewise, it’s definitely taking a page out of Sony.
Hardware-wise, though, it does absolutely nothing new or innovative, and is a step back from most of the aforementioned notebooks. No optical drive, non-replaceable battery, heavy (for its formfactor), slow intel IGP, low resolution screen. It doesn’t even match up with other dells for innovation (such as the recent Studios with their “wide” color gamut).
It’s more like a glitzed up bimbo with too much plastic surgery and a pricetag to match…
March 24th, 2009 1:26 pm
Actually, the Volkswagen Beetle was a copycat design itself, have a look at the Tatra T97:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatra_T97
March 24th, 2009 1:53 pm
JanC, Very interesting story here.. The Wikipedia claims that in 1961 Volkswagen paid Tatra 3,000,000 Deutsche Marks in compensation for possible infringment issues. Thanks for sharing.
March 24th, 2009 2:31 pm
Interesting, I popped over here today as I frequently do. This time I was interested in what David would say about the therawfeed.com story claiming Lenovo’s stealing apple’s iphone interface for it’s Android-based ‘ophone’.
Funny synchronicity to read this article, or was it in fact a response? I think we all learned years ago that you can’t actually steal an interface (I suppose unless Microsoft patents it), so I didn’t get all in a huff, but I didn’t know Lenovo was even releasing phones; maybe the oPhone is just for China?
March 24th, 2009 2:48 pm
It’s interesting that you raise the topic, David.
I see that in the home user lines, a lot of manufacturers are producing their own modified versions of Macbooks. I personally fail to see any authenticity in a lot of those products.
I also am personally disappointed to see that most people now benchmark to Apple products as an end objective. I haven’t seen any other manufacturers out to beat Apple and perhaps leapfrog them, as if the industry is somewhat content with a state of design mediocrity.
March 24th, 2009 5:44 pm
Ahmad, thanks for joining in the conversation. I promise to do my best to capitalize on the authenticity that ThinkPad enjoys.
March 26th, 2009 3:22 pm
Good call there Pretentious Erik!
March 26th, 2009 7:52 pm
You have to know who your target audience is and gear your product towards their needs. Thinkpad is all about making business people happy. If you try to appeal to many audiences your brand stars diluting and loosing its reputation and image in the market place that it spent so long creating. For HD displays and all the other bells and whistles Lenovo has the Idea line of pcs.
March 27th, 2009 6:59 pm
I think the problem is lack of design/art education which has caused most people to not consider design in buying decision process. If we take car example: There are lots of succesful companies with poorly designed models (Toyota, Hyundai) and there are also successful companies with good design (BMW, VW,…) who do well but design is not the main contributing reason. Citroen and Alfa Romeo who had great design but lacked in other areas had difficulties in the past. What percentage of people wants a LeCorbusier or Aalto chair or designer desk-lamp or can tell well designed object from a fashionable one. You’ve probably seen perfectly good Thonet and Rex chairs thrown away.
With computers design is even less considered (though I think with commoditization and longer replacement cycles this will change and brands will stratify). A computer more than other objects needs to be new and also look new. A spoon or a kitchen chair can look old and bad “retro” designs are popular, but electronics has to look new. Even though people love 19th century-look furniture there never was a succesful TV, computer, monitor done in that design. This is why lots of people, even educated ones with good taste are drawn to shiny HP Pavillions or Toshibas and Acers with more lights than a landing strip.
Thinkpad is a great design and people with at least some design education/taste can appreciate it, though most appreciate it for engineering, robustness, reliability, hi-tech features, comfort… Design goes hand in hand with those.
You or perhaps others in Lenovo considered making it more “new” (SL was a step in that direction) or maybe coming with premium Lenovo branded notebook. Don’t. A Thinkpad without it’s essence will no longer be a Thinkpad and it never was for the masses. But the design identity and brand strength of non-Thinkpad Lenovo products needs more time.
March 28th, 2009 11:51 am
Guess what David H, I was at the department store this afternoon to buy a new toaster (polished black all-metal from Princess) when lo and behold! the next shelf had a string of candy-colored steampress irons!
I wonder what message the movie Legally Blonde ultimately sent out when it had Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods character gettting a tangerine iBook and using it in a sea of staid black ThinkPads in her legal class. Apple surely got lots of free publicity from that. And yet in real life, how many lawyers out there use a garishly colored laptop at work? Not that a prospective client should judge a lawyer by the style of the notebook he or she uses, but first impressions certainly play a role whether deserved or not.
March 29th, 2009 12:31 pm
While it’s great looking down at naive competitors , it’s great to look up too. And when you do that you’ll probably see just Apple’s current designs.
While I think ThinkPads are great (I wouldn’t be posting here otherwise), with the exception of the X300, they’ve leapfrogged you across the board in both internal and external hardware design.
Take the baseline T400 for example, it is heavier than their 13″ aluminium MacBook, has a battery that sticks out of the back (in order to maintain a competitive battery life), and looks huge and garish compared to it. And I don’t mean it looks like a typical ThinkPad…a X300 looks like a typical ThinkPad too, but it fits together far better than the T400 does and has far better finish, like the MacBook. Ditto the T500 vs their 15″ MacBook Pro – you should strive to not let the weight go above 2.5kg on this model, as you did on the very first 15″ models and as Apple have always done.
If Apple come out with the rumored 15″ Air next year, they’ll likely jump even further ahead. That’s what you should be worrying about, not Dell and HP. Unless of course you want to become like Dell and HP.
April 6th, 2009 7:13 pm
[...] An interesting continuation on this thought can be found here. [...]
December 4th, 2009 4:52 pm
Super stuff! Thanks for the info.