Chapter 12
Tom Kelley’s The Art of Innovation

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The other week I had to drive home one evening for some family matters, on the way back to Morgantown I decided to stop at the Bridgeport Target for a little therapy shopping. I am generally pleased when I leave target whether I purchase anything or not. But this could not have been a better experience for me.
As Kelley mentioned Target has become a leader designer. Since teaming up with architect and designer Michael graves they have produced a whimsical houseware line and even now this extends into other items. I remember seeing commercials for target before we got one… the entire them was just “See Spot Save”, they were cute commercials but I was never hurt that I didn’t have a Target store. Now Target makes my heart throb everytime I see a commercial “Design for All”. They not only have Michael Graves, they have Isaac Mizrahi, Liz Lange, Paul + Joe, Sonia Kashuk, Thomas O’Brien, and more.
This particular target store was themed to the hilt (kind of like the website http://tinyurl.com/nb4pw but much more visually pleasing), with meeting the designers, quotes from the designers, and in their sections a photo of the designer, and a quote like “Bold accent pieces really liven up a mantle of a coffee table” (I’m apologizing because at the entrance of the store they had better quotes about just design.. but they are fleeting my thoughts at the moment) Beautiful signage hung from the ceiling where designers were treated like rock stars.
As a designer I ate it up, but I think that anyone who is interested in shopping would enjoy the feeling that they “know” the person who designed the item they are about to purchase. It’s almost like the Sephora method of putting the samples outside the glass, a different kind of push.
I also just think target think more about what I get to look out when I shop. They put up different textured wall patterns in their shelving places (instead of looking at peg board to hang the shelves). Not to mention you can always get stuff on sale… if you can wait long enough to have it. So I left target that evening 30 dollars lighter and 100 times inspired.
What I love about this chapter is Kelley is referring to breaking the rules, but having read a majority of the book I know that this is being done with a process and with “well-thought” constraints? I think we should all be more like Brendan Boyle and his team. I We should all work like we are pitching new ideas for toys. I like how Kelley stresses this point about Brendan’s method of prototyping,

“His method is not falling in love with the tool. He isn’t interested in spending a lot of time in video production or fine turning a graphics file. He most boost up a hand drawing in the computer, even add a little rendering to tell a story. Sometimes he scratches out a flurry of sketches on yellow legal pads and hands the ideas off to illustrators to draw them up. You can’t limit where or how ideas get presented or expressed.”

And that my friend is a beautiful thing.