I’m in a drafty room in Farringdon, London, shaking the hands of a dozen mechanical engineers. A few months before, I was scoring paper at an airy luxury atelier in Paris.
On its face, those client experiences might sound worlds apart. And they were, but not for the reason you might expect.
I came to IDEO from those luxury ateliers and joined a team that was designing a new brand for Ford Motor Company. I brought with me the best of what I learned in Paris: a vigilance about being a brand-guideline guardian and a proficiency in creating highly aspirational brands.
Our remit was to come up with a brand for the innovation lab of the 118-year-old automotive company—what would come to be D-Ford. The lab’s remit was to use human-centered design to drive progress, so the brand had to give new meaning to the word “design,” which was very specifically associated with car design internally. It also had to be capable of being comfortably and regularly used by everyone, designers…