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Please Stand By.



"Beware the lollipop of mediocrity; lick it once and you'll suck forever." Brian WIlson.

That's Right,

HMK

Thanks to Bermoraca for the cool image.

Brilliant!

In February 2009, Jim McKelvey wasn’t able to sell a piece of his glass art because he couldn’t accept a credit card as payment. Even though a majority of payments has moved to plastic cards, accepting payments from cards is still difficult, requiring long applications, expensive hardware, and an overly complex experience. Square was born a few days later right next to the old San Francisco US Mint.


Today the Square team is focused on bringing immediacy, transparency, and approachability to the world of payments: an inherently social interaction each of us participates in daily. We’re starting with a limited beta and rolling out to everyone in early 2010.



Square is backed by Khosla Ventures and a team of angels.

Square is going to be HUGE.

That's Right,

HMK

Designing the Future of Business

"Forget total quality. Forget top-down strategy. Design is the engine that can transform a company into a powerhouse of nonstop innovation."

"Imagine a crazy wonderland where most of what you learned in business school is either upside down or backward. A land where customers control the company, jobs are avenues of self-expression, the barriers to competition are out of your control, strangers design your products, fewer features are better, advertising drives customers away, demographics are beside the point, whatever you sell you take back, and best practices are obsolete at birth. Meaning talks, money walks, and stability is fantasy. Talent trumps obedience, imagination beats knowledge, and empathy trounces logic.

If you've been paying close attention, you don't have to imagine this scenario. You see it forming all around you. The only question is whether you can change your business, your brand, and your thinking fast enough to take full advantage of it."

Great stuff from Marty Neumeier, president of San Francisco think tank Neutron and author of Zag and The Brand Gap. His latest book, The Designful Company, considers the challenge of building a corporate culture of innovation.

More: Designing the Future of Business

That's Right,

HMK

Financial Practices

Awesome shot by Graeme Nicol.

Here's the first in a short series: How 20 Designers Charge Their Clients Part 1.

Designer David Airey begins his series with 3 simple yet complex questions:

How do you charge clients?

How do you accept payment?

Why do you recommend working this way?

A helpful and insightful read, offering valuable insight into the mystery of how graphic designers manage their finances.

Thank you sir!

How 20 Designers Charge Their Clients - Part 1.

That's Right,

HMK

Out-Imagining The Competition

Businesses have to out imagine the competition, to think--to become--more like designers.

As a designer recently unchained from the ego-driven, status minded, corporate machine, I'm more than familiar with questions like "'Why are you doing that?' 'What is the ROI?' These are the questions that kill," says Andrea Ragnetti, Philips's chief marketing officer. "I made a clear point in the boardroom that whenever it comes to design, we have to keep business management out of the process."

If an organization wants to reap the benefits of design, it must do more than just hire "hot" designers or declare itself to be "design oriented." The challenge is to manage the chronic push and pull between a value system premised on what's valid and one based on what's reliable.

As the management theorist James March has argued, by focusing on the intuitive and experiential, organizations explore new sources of competitive advantage. By looking to the provable and replicable, organizations better exploit the innovations they've brought to market.

To prosper over the long run, a company needs to succeed at both. It must mesh the classical workings of a traditional organization with the prototypical features of a design shop, especially in three key areas: reckoning the future, organizing work, and establishing status and rewards.

But, enough of this rational banter - has everyone turned in their timesheets today?

That's Right,

HMK

Read both Jennifer Reingold's Design Intervention and Roger Martin's, dean of the Rotman B-school Tough Love to get the full-on scoop.

Thanks to the good folks over at Fast Company