Monday 18 November 2013
Thursday 14 November 2013
Wednesday 2 October 2013
Tuesday 17 September 2013
Monday 26 August 2013
WHAT IS DESIGN?
Many designers believe that graphic
design has number of responsibilities toward society. Among responsibilities of
concern to graphic designers is the influence and impact of visual communication on the
visual environment, as well as the need to ensure that communication works
toward community safety in an appropriate way. Solving a design problem is not
just about visual appeal and clarity, it also needs to be effective as a
communication tool, preventing and reducing socially and personally harmful
outcomes. The design process should not only produce symbols but also test the
effectiveness of design after delivery.
Design is a science?
Testing and
predicting graphic design impact ought to be parts of the design process,
making design essentially about problem solving. However, design problem
solving using similar processes to those applied in the sciences could be
confusing, as it suggests that design is a science. Herbert Simon points out
that there is a difference between design-in-general and science. On a
simplistic level it maybe argued that science is concerned with how things are,
while design is concerned with how objects and ideas can be proposed and
realized in respect of utility.
Design is an art?
It is popularly asserted that design and art have a long interface with each
other throughout history. Unfortunately, this shared history can result in the
designer’s desire to play a central role in the design process. The fine arts
legacy positions the designer at the center of the artifact project, just as it
does the art project. In most cases, the artist is usually the focal point of
the artifact and artists are encouraged to produce art outcomes that are
largely self-referential.
Norman Potter in What is a Designer answers the question, is
the designer an artist with an emphatic: NO! As Potter explains, the designer
often works for others solving their problems, while the artist is working for
himself/herself to solve his/her own problems and express his/her own visions.
Design is Design
Many voices argue that design should not be claimed as an art
or science. They believe that the call for design to become an art is a
reduction of both design to aesthetics and designer to egoist. Likewise,
treating design as a science is a conversion of design to a purely functional
tool serving restricted economy.
As one of these voices, I believe that design should be
treated as design and only design.
Saturday 3 August 2013
Monday 29 July 2013
Thursday 20 June 2013
Monday 17 June 2013
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Tuesday 4 June 2013
Monday 27 May 2013
To get in the game - just start
Get your #startup journey
going
I frequently bump into people who tell me they want to start
a business but they don’t know where to start. I can certainly relate. I
decided to become an entrepreneur in 1989. I found myself quite lost and
delayed getting into the game until 1998. I had
moved to the Qatar with my family and found no viable employment opportunities.
When I did finally cross the starting line, and delve into becoming an
entrepreneur, there was no entrepreneurial eco-system, and no how-to guide in
starting a business in the developing Middle East.
I have a few expressions that have served with me over the
years that could qualify as personal brand statements. My mantra is: “It’s not where you’re at, it’s where you
are going”.
I have rarely chosen a direct path in my career, whether in
projects or more major aspects. I prefer
to architect solutions that often require a lot of creating … of building
foundations, networks, strategies and ideas.
During the early bootstrapped startup phase, I call this
creating process, “knitting out of the
air”. Starting with a clean slate,
limited tools, no resources and sometimes no market. You
invest in building equity and capital by knitting ideas and connecting people
together.
This knitting project becomes your strategy safety net once
you’re flying.
In that light, I guess you could say I have had moments
where I may have appeared, to the outside world, and myself for that matter, to be
“stalled” professionally.
Creating with “It’s
not where you’re at, it’s where you are going” in mind, and keeping my eye on the
“end state” ball have always served me well.
My first business was a small real estate office serving
Qatar’s inbound expatriate community. When the bottom fell out of the oil
market, and expats were being sent home in droves, I took up a real estate
consultancy gig to attract clients to one of Qatar’s first apartment
towers. The market had become fiercely
competitive and savvy marketing saved the day.
Then I started a boot-strapped creative agency that slowly
grew into one of the best event and publishing agencies in the country.
I had limited to nil direct experience to start any of these
businesses. I worked with local co-founders who made great mentors into an
unknown culture, but the business part of it I just had to figure out as I went
along.
If you don’t know the right place to start, just jump in
with the end state in mind. Jump into an existing network, ramp up your
networking game, talk to people in the space you want to be part of. Ask lots
of questions. Inspiration, opportunities
and ideas spin out of dialogue.
Today resources exist in virtually every community to help entrepreneurs get started. Mentors, social media Questions and Answers (Quara), startup clubs abound and can help to jump your start.
To get your startup journey going, take a step today.
Sunday 26 May 2013
DIY therapy for the “I can do it better tomorrow” approach and how to Blast the Procrast
I have recently pulled myself out of a huge procrastination
rut. Well I will tomorrow, at least.
For weeks I navel gazed and contemplated and had big
discussions with myself to try and get myself going. I am not sure if
procrastination is like an addiction, but I decided that the only way I could
move through it was to first “identify the problem”.
There inlay the next endless phase of procrastination. I
couldn’t get to the next step because I couldn’t identify what was causing me
to procrastinate. I was now taking my procrastination to an entirely epic level
as I equated my failure to identify the problem with delaying - or procrastinating my break though
solution. All progress halted and
movement forward hinged on me cracking the procrastination- cause relation.
So I spoke more energetically to myself. I planned to wake
up the next morning and write to do lists. That didn’t work either. I was spinning in circles and picking up more residual
guilt with each revolution of the wheel.
The guilt was feeding a growing sense of self-doubt – I wasn’t being
true to my own ethos. If I continued
procrastinating, I would become one of those unreliable people.
I dreaded talking to my co-founder. I was going to have to
confess that I had nothing for him, and I would be letting him down. After my
kids, he is the last person I wanted to disappoint. So I stacked more negative thinking onto the
guilt - I started having thoughts like – OMG I’m going to get fired from my own
startup before we even started. Could there be a bigger failure than that?
Yes, this was spiraling out of control. I just couldn’t crack
it on my own. Quite frankly, I had no time to be in a procrastination funk. I
am involved in multiple startups. Every week my procrastination pulled me
further behind and my to do pile didn’t stop and wait for me to get my
procrastinating act together.
I chose to do an intervention, to come clean.
So on my next co-founder call, I hung my head and I started
with… “ Hello, my name is Suzanne, and I’m a procrastinator”.
And there was the break through solution. By confessing, I
was obligated to explain my actions in some comprehensible way and through
sharing that with somebody else, instead of giving myself lectures and guilt
trips, I accepted the responsibility to figure it out.
The wall of tasks I had set out for myself had become so big
that if I worked 72 hours straight, I couldn’t make a dent. If I started today, or tomorrow, the next day
the impact would appear the same – limited to nil.
My co-founder Hussam helped me to put things into
perspective. He reminded me that we were in it together and of how we had
planned to work through our projects. He took the load off and asked me to
focus just on one task.
I got to work, made some real progress within a couple of
hours and took a break to open a tall stack of bills I had also put off paying
and actually finished something.
So if you are sinking into procrastination, get help, accept
that you are a procrastinator and talk to somebody. Then make a to do list
with only 2 items. 1 – one simple task you can accomplish in the short term and
2 – to write another short to do list when you finish #1.
My Blast the Procrast has been so successful that I may need
another intervention…
Hello, my name is Suzanne and I’m a workaholic…
Saturday 11 May 2013
Friday 10 May 2013
The Argument for Diversity on Startup Leadership Teams and in the Boardroom
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I recently had the privilege to be a keynote speaker at How Women Work Qatar (HWW Qatar). The Conference is the Brainchild of Carolin Zeitler and developed with the support of the Qatar Professional Women's Network. The event aims to break down gender stereotypes and cultural biases.
I was subtly waving the flag for entrepreneurship, and more loudly imparting the merits of women sitting at boardroom tables, amongst leadership teams and within communities. I am discovering that entrepreneurship and women are more closely intertwined than I originally considered, or they should be.
It's not news that the strength of all groups and teams is greater than the sum of their parts, but it's less commonly known just how powerful creating diversity at leadership and advisory levels can be. Why this is true remains a mystery to many.
So I did some homework after a help shout out on Twitter. The Credit Suisse Report on Gender Diversity explains why diverse teams function better:
- diverse groups bring broader perspective,
- diverse groups pay greater attention to detail, consider more data points and derive better solutions
- a majority group improves its own performance when a minority joins the group
- collective group intelligence improves when the style of interaction is more socially sensitive. Women are more socially sensitive and the communication dynamic of an all male group will change when women's voices are heard
- more gender diverse boards tend to focus on customer satisfaction, clear communication, consider diversity and corporate social responsibility
- male and female leadership styles and skills bring leadership balance to the group
- According to a NASA study, women's leadership styles can be characterised by task orientation, mentoring and the needs of others. All male teams are characterised by competitiveness, and little sharing of personal concerns.
- According to McKinsey studies, there are nine key criteria that define any good leader. Women apply five of these nine leadership behaviours more frequently than men. Women are good at defining responsibilities clearly and are strong at coaching and mentoring employees. Men are better at taking individual decisions and corrective actions should things go awry.
The magic of diverse thinking, perspective and interactions can combine to fuel powerful results. When building boards of directors, advisory and leadership teams, when seeking mentors, the diversity card is far from wild and more a natural outcome of human behaviour.
Thursday 7 March 2013
Your Diverse Power Team, Startup Boards and What Women Bring to the Table - International Women's Day 2013
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| Suzanne Grant, Championing Entrepreneurship in Arabia #women #youth #design |
Back to the HWW Qatar stage. I was subtly waving the flag for entrepreneurship, and more loudly imparting the merits of women sitting at boardroom tables, amongst leadership teams and within communities. I am discovering that entrepreneurship and women are more closely intertwined than I originally considered, or they should be.
It's not news that the strength of all groups and teams is greater than the sum of their parts, but it's less commonly known just how powerful creating diversity at leadership and advisory levels can be. Why this is true remains a mystery to many.
So I did some homework after a help shout out on Twitter. The Credit Suisse Report on Gender Diversity explores why diverse teams function better:
- diverse groups bring broader perspective,
- diverse groups pay greater attention to detail, consider more data points and derive better solutions
- a majority group improves its own performance when a minority joins the group
- collective group intelligence improves when the style of interaction is more socially sensitive. Women are more socially sensitive and the communication dynamic of an all male group will change when women's voices are heard
- more gender diverse boards tend to focus on customer satisfaction, clear communication, consider diversity and corporate social responsibility
- male and female leadership styles and skills bring leadership balance to the group
- According to a NASA study, women's leadership styles can be characterised by task orientation, mentoring and the needs of others. All male teams are characterised by competitiveness, and little sharing of personal concerns.
- According to McKinsey studies, there are nine key criteria that define any good leader. Women apply five of these nine leadership behaviours more frequently than men. Women are good at defining responsibilities clearly and are strong at coaching and mentoring employees. Men are better at taking individual decisions and corrective actions should things go awry.
The magic of diverse thinking, perspective and interactions can combine to fuel powerful results. When building boards of directors, advisory and leadership teams, when seeking mentors, the diversity card is far from wild and more a natural outcome of human behaviour.
All diversity, including gender diversity, helps to build better teams, better businesses and when we listen to all voices within our communities, a better world.
The following is an International Women's Day address from Rodger Harding, who has personally inspired me to be more actively vocal. He speaks directly to the essence a woman's style.
On this important day I salute those remarkable women whose innate service-orientation drives their ability to observe, listen and intuit. Your preparedness to engage not only identifies what has to be done, but also inspires those who need to take the required action!
International Women’s Day also provides the occasion to acknowledge all those who take the time to see, access, validate and enable the potential of deserving women.
My 3 decade career, served on 3 continents, has left me with little doubt that the human aspect of women leadership, bringing empathy, acceptance, flexibility and adaptability, is indispensable to the sustenance and advancement of the species!
My 3 decade career, served on 3 continents, has left me with little doubt that the human aspect of women leadership, bringing empathy, acceptance, flexibility and adaptability, is indispensable to the sustenance and advancement of the species!
On a personal level, I am humbled by those women who see me for who I am…For understanding the coexistence of perfection and imperfection, strength and vulnerability, confidence and insecurity, wisdom and fallibility....!
Thank you!
Harding International and Associates Inc. | International Women’s Day
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