Recently he helped in the designing of the digital interface of Ford's SmartGauge that will be equipped on the hybrids arriving in 2010, designed to reduce fuel consumption by providing feedback to the driver on their driving performance. Debbie Millman is the host of Design Matters, as well as a board member of the national AIGA. She is a teacher at the School of Fine Art in New York and is the president of the design division of Sterling Brands. Design Observer is a website centered around all kinds of creative design (graphic, print, typographic, packaging design, etc...).
I listened to the podcast of Dan Formosa being interviewed by Debbie Milman. I thought that it would be an especially useful interview as Dan Formosa works with packaging design, and we are working on packaging design in GD1. The greatest thing that I think Dr. Formosa talked about was the psychological research that goes into their designs and how that shapes the final product. Sometimes he would make packaging that he knew would just shock the audience, but in most cases, group studies and interviews were used to determine what would be most widely accepted by a target audience. He was also very clear that his target audience could not be pinpointed down to a very narrow average, because as he put it, “If we make a door for the average sized person, then half the people who go through the door are going to hit their heads.” I think this is very insightful and an important thing to keep in mind when thinking about those that are receiving our designs. Not everyone who consumes the design is going to fit into a narrow and neat audience persona. The design can be targeted in a certain direction, but must be considered for and work on several levels for a range of people. The tighter a design is focused for a narrow band of people, the more often if will fail to reach many people and most of the time this is counter productive to a main goal of any given project.
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