Firebrand

Microsoft unveiled their new Xbox design this week at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), the gaming convention. The new hardware is packed with a 250 GB drive, and Wifi (a long time coming.) But what I want to focus on is what is on the outside. The old design was done by the industrial design / branding firm Astro Studios; a firm I am a fan of and take inspiration from. I don’t know if they deigned this case as well. Let’s analyze the industrial design:

- This is clearly is under the same line of thinking as the Alienware hardware. Nothing wrong with that, particularly because Astro also did the design for Alienware. This is a strong difference from the pervious Xbox which was tidy and refined. The new design is more Mitsubishi Evo if the old design was an Audi.

- Speaking of cars, the case design is like a car in that it has a belt line. A belt line design element on a car is the corner on the side that divides the sheetmetal pointing down from the metal pointed up; because above the belt line is reflecting the blight sky and below is reflecting the dim ground, it creates a high contrast line that can be used graphically on cars. This only works on shiny exteriors particularly using black, which the new Xbox case features. The line angles up to the back, and creates a nice graphic appeal to the otherwise boring side the the case. The fins and shape of the air intake on the right side reference the belt line, creating a dynamic yet tidy appearance.

- The logo debossed on the sides of the case look too small, and out of place. On the right side it references the air intake, but on the left side there is nothing anchoring it to where it is positioned. It as a straight horizontal element looks awkward so close to the angles belt line. I would eliminate the logo altogether, or move it to the bottom or the top to reference horizontal lines.

- The chrome button looks striking against the graphite colour of the case. But the brightness of the button drowns out the signature green-yellow glow around it. Maybe the glow is more prominant when you see the unit in person. I would like to have seen the green glow in more places, as it is the basis of the Xbox branding. It would have been nice to see the logo on the front of the case lit up.

- The choice to switch from a light gray ro a grapite black is an interesting. They have had a black case before with the Xbox Elite, which was also a funny choice. With the original design, I credited Astro for have a very strong link between the branding and the case design. This black distances the branding and the product. It also moves it towards the look of their principle rival, the Playstation 3. This was change probably driven to distinctly distinguish the new model from the old one for marketing purposes.

- The awkward hump on the top of the old case is eliminated… hallelujah. Let’s hope the overheating and red ring of death problems are gone as well.

- The unit looks like it can still stand or sit on it’s side again. A nice feature to have. As nice as it would be to have people proudly display this in their living room standing up, I imagine it will be used on it’s side 90% of the time.

- The case overall looks like they have designed some cost out of it, with only 1 finnish, has shallower injection molded parts and eliminated some parts. This is a good example of how a tidy, inexpensive design can look better if you understand your restraints and design a nice visual concept around them.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an award winning industrial designer who works with large multinational brands everyday designing retail displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

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The views expressed on this weblog are mine alone and do not necessairly reflect the views of my employer, FX Displays.

This is a rendering that I did in Solidwork’s new rendering tool Photoview 360 for FX Displays.

Photoview 360 is a tool that I have been using since day 1, and it really increases the quality of the renderings and has a more inuitive workflow. It is using the “Studio Room Shadow” environment with 3.5 F Stop depth of field, and 50% 10% bloom. The counter display show was modeled in Solidworks 2010.

If you like it please give me a 5 star rating on Solidworks’ rendering gallery.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an award winning industrial designer who works with large multinational brands everyday designing retail displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

Interact with the Firebrand community – Please Comment or Email.

The views expressed on this weblog are mine alone and do not necessairly reflect the views of my employer, FX Displays.

This week, YE Yang became the first Asian born golfer to win a major; a feat that is going to accelerate golf in Asia even faster than it is already going. But as I mentioned on Twitter, I couldn’t get over the success of the industrial design branding of Yang’s Odyssey putter. You knew it was an Odyssey from a mile away.

Odyssey putters for both pros and joes have the same while club face and almost always two white circles staring back at the golfer. The white circles are actually inserts for weighting, and so the golfer can visually line up with the ball. But they are more successful a unique feature that identifies the putter as an Odyssey.

The goal of branding with form or the industrial design is to capitalize on positive user experience by having customer buy products that are visually clearly part of the same family. This is even more important in sports equipment because you are also capitalizing on the positive experience of people’s peers and sports icons like YE Yang.

Question of the Post: What other sports companies brand their products well?

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an award winning industrial designer who works with large multinational brands everyday designing retail displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

Interact with the Firebrand community – Please Comment or Email.

Game changers are products that make an otherwise healthy looking product sector look like it had been stagnating for years. They take industries in completely different directions, leaving competitors behind. I want to put the the Nissan GT-R and iPhone, because it shows the power of flagship products.

Nissan GT-R

The Nissan GT-R has made it look like the sports car engineers in other company’s have been sitting on their hands for the last 10 years. The only new car comparable (4 wheel drive, dedicated sports car) is the Audi R8 which has performance figures of 0-60 in 4.6 seconds, 187 mph top speed, and 1.01 g in the corners. The Nissan GT-R has performance numbers of 0-60 in 3.5 seconds, 195 mph top speed, and 0.99 g in the corners. So the GT-R tromps the R8 in acceleration in and is on par in cornering. Both have performance number you would expect from next generation, $120,000 (US) supercars; but wait, the GT-R isn’t a $120,000 supercar. It’s a $76,840 supercar. To buy a car faster than the GT-R on the Top Gear test track, you will have to spend $191,700 on a Porsche 911 GT2 or $198,000 on a Lambourghini Galardo LP560. But those cars you wouldn’t drive to the office in a snow storm like you could the 4 wheel drive GT-R.

Enough car talk. The Nissan GT-R competes with cars 2 1/2 times it’s price. How? Well I believe it is because of two reasons: working smarter and not harder, and taking losses on each car for the marketing value. The GT-R team of engineers and ex-race car builders had a clear mission. They built a car to be the fastest for anyone, anywhere, any time. Every componant is tuned to be fast and efficient. The supercar’s body was wind tunnel tested so each wheel is pressed against the road with aero downforce, and only then it was styled. It also has a judicious dose of technology, namely the extremely advanced 4 wheel drive system. But the GT-R doesn’t have anything new from cars in the past. It’s no compromise componants just work together cohesively.

The main contributor to the GT-R’s value is the loss Nissan is absorbing based on the marketing value of having the fastest, cheapest super car. Nissan’s previous performance model badges (SE-R and Spec-V) have lost their value of late, but the GT-R supercar would bring a reputation of extreme performance to a GT-R performance line. I wouldn’t be suprised to see a Sentra GT-R, Altima GT-R and Maxima GT-R. The people interested in cars like those would be well aware of the GT-R, and would pay the premium to have even a small piece of the GT-R supercar credibility.

Car people know about this car. Car people are a valuable group to covet, because they have extreme influence on car purchases with their friends and family. Even if Nissan doesn’t leverage it with a performance line, the GT-R has established Nissan as being masters of engineering and technology. Those brand perceptions will transfer to all Nissan cars, whether or not they have anything to do with their supercar big brother. That is a true flagship product.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.

Please comment!

In the last post, I talked about how design and marketing need to work so closely together in a consumer products company that they should be the same department. One of the reasons that this needs to be is so that there is tangible threads though the industrial design and promotion of a product for consumers to make mental connections with.

I am not talking about high level, intangible vision statements; I am talking about concrete, easily recognizable and executable elements that can repeat themselves both in the product, TV spots, website, print ads, and display fixtures. “Sexy curves” or “light and airy” is not good enough. While having a vision with descriptors is a good thing, it is not tangible enough to be interpreted and implemented the same by different designers. You will waste alot of resources getting new iterations from different designers to get it to match. The threads need to be so tangible that you could write them in a spec, which you should do.

The best example I have come across is the black leather texture on the back of the Blackberry Bold. The back of the Blackberry Bold is black plastic, but it is textures with the relief of a rough leather. A great design element in itself; it reminds me of a high end wallet which is stored and treated similarly to a PDA, and positions the new product as high quality and high end for wealthy business people. It also give some grip for the hand. Well Blackberry uses that Blackberry texture as a background in their website and advertisements. While few customers will ever consciously make the connection between the product and the promotion, it will give them a sense of congruency and commonality in the sub brand. It makes the promotion dollars go further as well, because the tight branding bridges the mental gap between the product and the promotion. (Customer in store: “Oh yeah, I saw the ad for this on The Mentalist last night.) As a fixture and display designer, I know that is an element that I can pick up on to display the product.

This is a tricky thing to implement without constraining designers, of both the industrial, interaction and graphic variety. If you spec it out before the concept generation starts, than industrial designers will let good ideas die on the drawing board because they can’t see how the tread would be implemented. The best part of the design process to write the spec is in the preliminary phase. This is after the product concept has been generated and evaluated. The product hasn’t taken it’s final form yet, but the bones are there. At this point, the industrial designer can come up with ideas for the common thread, and then get feedback on it from the marketing / graphic design. (Eg. Designer: “Can you pick up on these parallel glowing horizontal lines in the advertising?” Marketer: “Yes, I could see that as an element on this print advertisement already.”)

Having the common thread through both the product and promotion will be a great step in creating a 360 degree consistant branding experience. Having that consistant brand experience will allow you to capitalize on the brand you have built in consumers mind, and build it further.

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By Colin Finkle. Colin Finkle is an industrial designer that works with large brands everyday designing displays for FX Displays in Toronto, Canada. He is the principle designer at Firebrand Creative. He also writes for AMD’s FireUser.com blog.