Customer Reviews

A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
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2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is not the book I expected from a world class design company. I was looking for detail on their process of innovation and what I found was a soapbox presentation on "Green" design. This was intertwined with hints about companies that didn't use frog's recommendations to their demise. Much of it was a pitch about why you should use frog design and what might happen if you don't.

In A Fine Line Hartmut Esslinger gives forward-thinking insight into building a company's creative culture. The book allows you to crawl inside the mind of frog design's founder who held the fate of major brands like Disney and Sony in his hands. It effectively reveals Hartmut's approach to unique business solutions and the influence of design on corporate strategy. What I enjoyed most about the book's revelations, aside from providing key design and innovation wisdom, are the honest and humanistic anecdotes that Hartmut offers about his experiences working with Apple, cultivating a growing design firm, and pushing brands to take risks and move beyond the "norm."

Inspiring to say the least.

The book is more focused on why Frog is so great and how they managed to get some of their accounts. I thought I could get a glimpse of where they got their inspiration and how they turned it into products that sell, but there was none of that. I admire the author's success, and even though he tries to open up and show you how he did it, the book is more about business than design.

The first couple of chapters are pretty dry and more about his company history, but after that is full of inspiring thoughts and ideas. You will see the world differently after finish the book. One thing though. Essinger is such a great visionary. There are so many thoughts in this book that scream for more explicit detail discussion.

I hope he has the second book.

A wonderful book, full of sharp and honest observations about the not always easy marriage between design and business. Unlike other books on design, "A Fine Line" is not all about shapes, surfaces, and interfaces. And unlike other business books, it is not all about numbers, winning, and boardroom intrigues. Soulful and with a deeply humanistic understanding of consumers, "A Fine Line" brings culture back to business.

Finally a book on innovation that doesn't come from the "Ivory Tower" of business but is based on experience.
Hartmut Esslinger's book "A Fine Line" is his story on how he has defended creativity in his personal life and in the Board Rooms of major corporations around the world . A great read with new insights on working with Steve Jobs at apple and executives at Sony on their path to become recognized innovation brands.

I really liked "A fine line". Harmut Esslinger shares his experience and insights gathered during all his carreer. His wisdom about "selectivity" explained as a key carreer success is one the most useful advice I found in the book. He is very convincing in his field, the industrial design, a bit less when it comes to digital design. But still A Fine Line is worth reading, as it is rare to access so directly to the thinking of great "design achievers" such as Harmut Esslinger.

Let's all join hands and sing kumbaya... I was hoping for some good insight into the design process and instead get a diatribe on saving the planet and how design = (or should) corporate strategy. Those of us in the industry know Frog's success is pretty much solely the result of their association with Flextronics, an ability (or good luck) to have compliant clients, and an ability to bring "fashion" to otherwise utilitarian products. I was hoping for detailed thoughts on things like region influence on design, various design trade-off issues, and the design/engineering/manufacturing interface. Zip. If you are of the save the planet mindset this book may have appeal but if you have to make a living doing design and managing its' product execution it is pretty worthless.

A FINE LINE: HOW DESIGN STRATEGIES ARE SHAPING THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS comes from a designer and founder of Frog Design Inc. and provides a series of tips of better business through better branding designs. This tells of the author's change from an industrial design genius to a global innovation powerhouse in the new global economy, telling how he and Frog blend creative design into company competitive strategies for maximum effect. A fine, and rare, step-by-step overview of the entire innovation process, from setting goals to designing to reflect the marketplace and connect with consumers. Any business library needs this.

As a new venture strategist I recognize every day the "fine line" between home run deals and strike-out deals. This book is a great read about a great designer and his even more famous clients. This book offers one reality check after another. The reader has to have his/her attitude on "Got-to-Have" mode to take away the jewels Hartmut has packed in this box. Hartmut didn't have to write this book and give away so many secrets about frog design's success - he did and I'm better off today for it.