Marty Neumeier Quotes

The cave you fear to enter, goes the ancient proverb, holds the treasure you seek.

A genius is someone who can tolerate the discomfort of uncertainty while generating as many ideas as possible.

1) Who are you? 2) What do you do? 3) Why does it matter?

Even back in the command-and-control days of the production line, Henry Ford’s decision to manufacture automobiles was driven by intuition rather than market research. “If we had asked the public what they wanted,” he explained, “they would have said ‘faster horses.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness. —Aristotle

Great ideas are not polite. They never say they’re sorry. They don’t try to fit in. On the contrary, they force the world around them to make changes in self-defense.

Miles Davis once said: “Do not fear mistakes—there are none.

We just go where we want to go, do what we want to do, and become who we want to become. We want to be unique, but we want to be unique in groups. We want to stand out, but we want to stand out together. In the age of easy group-forming, the basic unit of measurement is not the segment but the tribe.

Creativity is the discipline you use when you don’t know the answers, when you’re traveling to parts unknown. On this type of journey, missteps are actually steps. Every mistake brings you closer to the solution.

A brand is not a logo. A brand is not a corporate identity system. It’s a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company. Because it depends on others for its existence, it must become a guarantee of trustworthy behavior. Good branding makes business integral to society and creates opportunity for everyone, from the chief executive to the most distant customer.

flip side: its growing vulnerability. A failed launch, a

your mind, not in your hand. It should get you out from the covers and into your projects as fast as possible. And it should reveal its deeper wisdom reading

It now seems possible, even necessary, to reconnect art with science, synthesis with analysis, magic with logic.

They copied all they could follow, but they couldn’t copy my mind. So I left ’em sweating and stealing, a year and a half behind.

When you shift your focus from getting grades to gaining understanding, you set yourself on the road to mastery. You begin learning how to learn.

If a man writes clearly enough,” said Hemingway, “anyone can see if he fakes.

All the lessons of invention come down to this: The best design tool is a long eraser with a pencil at one end.

The truth is, most people love change until it affects them.

Extreme resistance can be a portent of extreme success.

Uncluding is the art of subtracting every element that doesn’t pull its weight.

If you find it hard to describe your idea, don’t fix your description. Fix your idea.

New ideas capture and possess the mind that births them,” said Robert Grudin in The Grace of Great Things. “They colonize it and renew its laws.

If we can’t find valuable work, it’s not because we’re in a recession; we’re in a recession because we can’t find valuable work. We’ve been confusing cause and effect.

If our rational brains were deprived of emotion, even the most banal decisions would become impossible.

We’ve been trained by Industrial Age marketers to believe anything good is already on the shelf.

In developing talent, hard work trumps genetics.

The hallmark of innovation is surprise. No surprise, nothing new. Nothing new, no interest. No interest, no value. Therefore, creating surprise is a crucial step in creating value through innovation.

the lessons of your heroes. Über-restaurateur Reed Hearon said, “If you read two books on a subject written by knowledgeable people, you will know more than 95% of the people in the entire world know about that subject.

The human mind loves either/or choices. We prefer a choice of A or B. Yes or no. Chicken or beef. Simple choices give us a feeling of control, while open-ended choices give us a feeling of unease. Therefore we’d rather choose between than among.

When your goal is to describe a vision for the future, information is not enough. People are up to their necks in information. What they need is a way to imagine life after the change, and compare it with life today. That’s why it’s called a vision and not a plan.

Make a sketch, construct a model, or assemble a prototype. Then another. And another. With each attempt, you’ll reveal new possibilities for innovation. Your mind will talk to your hands, and your hands will talk to your mind. This dialogue is called generative thinking, and it happens only when you’re making something. It’s the active ingredient of design.

Sift through threats for hidden possibilities. Every threat carries with it the potential for innovation. The problem of obesity contains the possibility of new kinds of nutrition. The problem of global pollution contains the possibility of new energy sources. The problem of high unemployment contains the possibility of new educational models. The list is endless, if you can learn to see what’s not there.

DISTINCTIVENESS is the quality that causes a brand expression to stand out from competing messages. If it doesn’t stand out, the game is over. Distinctiveness often requires boldness, innovation, surprise, and clarity, not to mention courage on the part of the company. Is it clear enough and unique enough to pass the swap test? RELEVANCE asks whether a brand expression is appropriate for its goals. Does it pass the hand test? Does it grow naturally from the DNA of the brand? These are good questions, because it’s possible to be attention-getting without being relevant, like a girly calendar issued by an auto parts company. MEMORABILITY is the quality that allows people to recall the brand or brand expression when they need to. Testing for memorability is difficult, because memory proves itself over time. But testing can often reveal the presence of its drivers, such as emotion, surprise, distinctiveness, and relevance. EXTENDIBILITY measures how well a given brand expression will work across media, across cultural boundaries, and across message types. In other words, does it have legs? Can it be extended into a series if necessary? It’s surprisingly easy to create a one-off, single-use piece of communication that paints you into a corner. DEPTH is the ability to communicate with audiences on a number of levels. People, even those in the same brand tribe, connect to ideas in different ways. Some are drawn to information, others to style, and still others to emotion. There are many levels of depth, and skilled communicators are able to create connections at most of them.

If we wipe away some of the misconceptions about brand, we can make more room for its truths. Ready?

We are not Human Beings, we are humnan becomings

Constant addition without subtraction always make a mess.

Here’s how the Ritz looks at touchpoints, as written in the company’s credo: “The Ritz-Carlton experience enlivens the senses, instills well-being, and fulfills even the unexpressed wishes and needs of our guests.

Innovation amateurs talk good ideas,” he says. “Innovation experts talk testable hypotheses,” A hypothesis, embodied as a prototype, beats market research because it can be tested. The word prototype comes from the Greek words protos and typos, meaning “first form.” Customers don’t have to imagine how they would feel when they see a prototype. They’re already feeling it. Steve Jobs, although famous for rejecting market research, insisted that Apple designers make and test hundreds of prototypes before deciding on the final form of a new product.

Narrativity is becoming less like a book andmore like a jigsaw puzzle that we put together by making connections and recognizing patterns.

Marketing psychologist Kit Yarrow notes that customers want five things from a purchasing decision: 1) to feel more in control, 2) to reduce the fear of making a mistake, 3) to simplify the decision process, 4) to offer clear and immediate emotional benefits, and 5) to be free of obstacles. Of these five, she says, customer control is the best “antidote to anxiety.” Anxiety goes far to explain the extraordinary power of customer reviews.

Does design pay off? The Design Management Institute partnered with Motiv Strategies to measure the return on design investment where it counts—in stock values. Over a 10-year period, a $10,000 investment in design-centric companies would have yielded returns 228 percent greater than the same investment in the S&P 500. And this is only an average.

Designing is thinking with your hands. Start with a scribble. See what’s missing, what could be improved, what else it reminds you of. Make more scribbles. Work the best scribbles into low-fidelity prototypes—limited function mockups, models, or experiences that you can test in the real world. The goal isn’t to impress your customers, but to let them impress you with their reactions, knowledge, and insights. Think of design as a rich conversation that brings you closer to the truth of your brand.

The founders of Method agree that it’s counter-productive to outsource customer calls to India. “The customer has actually used your product. This isn’t just a marketing opportunity; it’s a chance to capture new insights, create a raving fan, and even safeguard yourself from legal problems.” Customer calls can be turned into what the Academy of Marketing Science calls “transcendent customer experiences”—emotional encounters that generate lasting shifts in beliefs and attitudes, and sometimes even self-transformation.

Often the most resource-ful person is the one who has tried the most approaches, taken the most risks, failed the most times.

What you need beyond that is a facile imagination and the skills to apply it, driven by a passionate will toward a focused goal.

Moore’s Law, the 1965 prediction that the amount of computing power you can buy for a dollar will double every 18 months. Gordon Moore’s formula has surprised everyone with its consistency.

Contant afdition without subtraction always make a mess.

Storyframing is the discipline of building a structure that lets customers create their own narratives. It provides the boundaries that keep the story contained, like the edges of the jigsaw puzzle. The basic framework includes the POV of the company—its purpose, onlyness, and values, plus the IAM of the customer—personal identity, customer aims, and tribal mores. Out of the framework comes a range of encounters, or touchpoints, through which customers can find personal meaning and growth. The job of the company is to keep the framework alive while encouraging and applauding its customers.

Here’s a simple (but headache-producing) test. Complete the following sentence: “Our brand is the only ⸏ that ⸏.” In the first blank, put the name of your category (robotics company, online university, fast-food chain). In the second blank put your key differentiator (sells voice-mimicking parrots, makes you the teacher, caters to vegans).

The first thing companies did with computer technology back in the 1980s was to multiply the number of choices for their customers. More colors, more styles, more features, more models, more messages, more channels, more services, more brand extensions, more SKUs. The siren call of “consumer choice” proved impossible for companies to resist. If a little choice was good, they reasoned, more choice was better. Customers loved it. For about 15 minutes. Today their lives are so cluttered by choice that they can barely breathe. Americans now see that a little choice increases their freedom, but too much takes it away. Do you really want to spend three hours learning how to use the features on your new Samsung TV? Or sort through 17 varieties each time you buy Crest toothpaste at the supermarket? Or deal with the 3,000 pages of items shown in Restoration Hardware’s 15-pound set of catalogs? Not if you have a life. Of course, none of us wants to give up this lavish banquet of choice. We just want it off the floor and out of the way. “It’s not information over-load,” media consultant Clay Shirky famously said. “It’s filter failure.” Our brains can’t handle the deluge. We’re desperate for a way to organize, access, and make use of so many options. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos called it “cognitive overhead.

Every brand is a running narrative, a story-in-progress whose hero is the customer. If at any point the story splits into two stories aimed at two different tribes, you then have two brands. To keep the narrative together, each new feature, extension, or product use must keep something from the original direction to preserve logical continuity.

Caution: When staking out your onlyness, remember that whatever seems unique to you may not seem unique to everyone else. you’re viewing your product close up, while they’re seeing it from farther away. Make sure your product is not just unique, but really unique. Crank up the onlyness to eleven. Make it incredibly easy for customers to notice it, choose it, and share it with friends. Don’t compete. Differentiate.

If you can surprise your customer with something more than baseline satisfaction, you’ll spark the kind of emotion that leads to loyalty.

It’s almost impossible to reconcile creativity with cleanliness. The sculptor gets metal dust all over his studio. The writer must wade through a clutter of notes, books, and crumpled drafts to get to her desk. The rock musician must weave through a tangle of cables, black boxes, guitar stands, and song notes to sit down and create.

Today’s real competition doesn’t come from other companies but from the extreme clutter of the marketplace.

الفِكرة الجيدة تكونُ كذلكَ عندما تُخيفُ الجميع وتُرعبهُم بشدة، الجميعُ بِما فيهم أنتْ!

The ability to subtract features is the rare gift of the true communicator.

When the external actions of a company align with its internal culture, the brand resonates with authenticity.

There’s a growing recognition that the great advances of the future will come not from a single man or woman, but from the concentrated effort of a group. The operating principle today is, “None of us are as smart as all of us.” Yet to activate the creativity of a group—whether it’s a team, a company, a community, or a nation—we’ll need to bring our best selves to the party.

We have an unfounded fear that machines will someday start thinking like humans. What we should really fear is that humans have already started thinking like machines.

A charismatic brand includes a dedication to aesthetics. Why? Because it’s the language of feeling, and in a society that’s information-rich and time-poor, people value feeling more than information.