Brand and design! Almost the same: Germade
Ignacio Germade is 40 going on 20. Music and design are his passions and he can strum the six-string as endearingly as churning out the latest designs for cell phones. As Motorola’s design director based out of the UK, Ignacio heads the handset ma...
By Moinak Mitra, TNN |
| Ignacio Germade Design Director, Motorola |
NEW DELHI: Ignacio Germade is 40 going on 20. Music and design are his passions and he can strum the six-string as endearingly as churning out the latest designs for cell phones. As Motorola’s design director based out of the UK, Ignacio heads the handset major’s design centers globally. He’s a shining example of how a creative mind from the ad industry finds succour in design, a ‘hobby’ for the last 20 years. Prior to joining Motorola, he led design for companies such as Sapient and IDEO, doing work for firms such as Xerox, Polaroid and IBM. In India recently to unveil the MotoRazr2, the young-at-heart Mr Germade shared his perspective on design-led branding in a freewheeling interview with ET. Excerpts:
How do you build a brand through design?
Brand and design are almost the same. Brand is what people pay for. You tell a story with products to consumers and that’s how you build the brand through design language.
The story is the critical link between brand and design.
MotoRazr is thin, whereas the MotoPebl is round. How do you decide on the look and feel of the product?
When you talk of the Razr being thin or the Pebl being round, they follow some design principles which are similar. Essentially, these principles revolve around simplicity and honesty.
Design should help in developing brand personality. When you combine design with communication, you build a strong brand.
How do you build a brand through design?
Brand and design are almost the same. Brand is what people pay for. You tell a story with products to consumers and that’s how you build the brand through design language.
The story is the critical link between brand and design.
MotoRazr is thin, whereas the MotoPebl is round. How do you decide on the look and feel of the product?
When you talk of the Razr being thin or the Pebl being round, they follow some design principles which are similar. Essentially, these principles revolve around simplicity and honesty.
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When something looks like metal, it should be metal. Within Razr is woven an element of surprise since when you open the Razr, the lines hold you in awe. Richness is yet another attribute that defines the look of the product. At the end of the day, all these attributes should paint a coherent image of Motorola in the consumer’s mind. Design should help in developing brand personality. When you combine design with communication, you build a strong brand.
How do you weave technology in design?
Motorola has a fantastic heritage of technology. With the Razr in 2004, we’ve successfully married technology and design. We started working on Razr in the beginning of 2003 and our main goal was to tell the world that we were really cool. With the Razr, cell phones started reflecting a personality quotient.
But how do you actually turn a feature-laden phone into a casual consumer product?
Consumers realise that they want more. The device is becoming part of their self-expression. In this context, the MotoMing is fantastic since it has turned something very business-like and serious into a consumer product. In the past, PDAs were really big and bulky and hard on the ear. We tried to address that with the Ming, which is small and comes with a speaker. It’s a step forward in understanding in what consumers really want – it’s a reinvention of the PDA.
So, how do you cater to global needs with one single product? Surely, regional differentiation exists? Does Motorola differentiate its products geographically?
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The key is to understand different needs in different markets. In Milan, self-expression is very important, and only high-end phones do well whereas the needs in rural areas are different. Needs is a combination of socio-economic, cultural and geographical factors. In the US, for cultural reasons, people use qwerty keyboards therefore phones are designed for their fingers.
In Europe, bell keypads are used as they can type faster. On the other hand, in China, the stylus is used and so the Chinese text is built into the Ming. In India, the Hindi text can be written through Hindi keypads. Now that is customisation.
So how do you segment phones by behaviour since it’s an extremely personal asset?
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Old people seem to like the Razr since it has large keypad and display. You can make use of colour to segment the market further since colour preference for mobile phones is changing drastically. The colour schemes are changing with mature markets. The MotoPebl has six colours, the MotoRazr V3i had three colours, and so on. Colours add to the brand story and help in communication.Give us a peek into the design-technology marriage of the future.
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Cameras and music will get better. There are already internet-ready phones and phones with which you can make movies. There’ll be high-resolution quality of display and the sound will get better. The display screen glass is becoming tougher since protective films tend to come off.So where does India fit into the scheme of things?
Motorola has six design centers globally – Chicago, Beijing, Seoul, London, Bangalore and Singapore. Though Chicago is the largest center, we’re increasingly getting our research people down in Bangalore to learn about the Indian market. Right now, the Bangalore center is also designing a few models of the future.
Motorola has six design centers globally – Chicago, Beijing, Seoul, London, Bangalore and Singapore. Though Chicago is the largest center, we’re increasingly getting our research people down in Bangalore to learn about the Indian market. Right now, the Bangalore center is also designing a few models of the future.
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