Mark Breitenberg

The following presentation was made by Icsid President-Elect, Dr. Mark Breitenberg, before 900 guests at the 2009 BraunPrize awards ceremony.

Above: Dr Mark Breitenberg gives his keynote speech to the audience

Guten abend meine damen und herren!
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be here with you tonight.

Today, walking through Victoria Park here in Kronberg, I was thinking about all the changes in the world since my visit two short years ago as a member of the 2007 Braun Prize jury, but also, at the same time, how familiar everything felt. Maybe it was this old, historical town: the world changes around it, but Kronberg looks the same for the last 500 years! And this thought reminded of the well-known quotation, "the more things change, the more they stay the same." It comes from the French, "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."

For me, these past two years have been marked by a great deal of change. Last spring I left Art Center College of Design in Pasadena to become the Provost at California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Oakland. CCA, my new school, developed out of the arts and crafts movement over 100 years ago. We still have thriving programs in the traditional crafts - ceramics, glass, metal, jewelry - and a strong emphasis on making, thinking with your hands. But CCA has also launched some of the most forward looking new programs in the world, reflecting all the changes in design, as well as new directions in existing programs: we're the first art and design school to offer an MBA in Design Strategy, led by Nathan Shedroff; the new program in Animation is taught by artists from Pixar; our Fashion program is one of the pioneers in sustainable fashion, and along the same lines, our Architecture students have built an entirely solar-powered house in collaboration with engineering students from Santa Clara University that will compete this fall in the international Solar Decathlon competition in Washington D.C.; in Industrial Design, Yves Behar has led a wonderfully creative program for the last few years. And there are many more programs at CCA - twenty-seven in all.

One of the interesting developments in design education in the last few years is a renewed interest among students today in the traditional crafts. I have seen this at CCA and at other schools around the world. Of course digital media are still prominent, but perhaps that has led to a swing of the pendulum back to a resurgence of interest in materials, tactility, the singular rather than mass-produced object. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

CCA is also distinctive for its location in the Bay Area, where some of the world's most innovative and progressive companies are located. Did you know that 40% of all venture capital investment in the United States comes from the Bay Area? And the region has twice the national average in NGO (non-government organisation) funding. So it's a very creative part of the business world that also has a strong humanitarian sense of social justice. An art and design school in this kind of region needs to be a campus without walls: we look for our faculty among all the creative professionals, and our classrooms at their offices and studios.

The second significant change in the last two years also occurred in San Francisco. In the fall of 2007, I was honored to be elected the President-elect of Icsid, the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design. We hear a lot today about the internationalism of design - its spread throughout the world. But we should remember that Icsid was founded in 1957 as the world's first international design organisation. Back then it was still a mostly European organisation, but one of our founding fathers was Japan's Kenji Ekuan, whom you all know. He started GK design, and its current President and CEO is here tonight - Mr. Kazuo Tanaka, a member of the Icsid board and the Braun Prize jury this year. A couple weeks ago we celebrated Kenji's 80th birthday in Tokyo, and I asked him why he became a designer. I will never forget his answer. He told me that he decided to become a designer as a boy while walking through the awful, blackened ruins of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb had devastated the city. All around him he saw destruction, and it made him want to build something beautiful, to create life where there was only death. Of course Kenji Ekuan went on to become one of the key contributors to Japan's economic recovery after the war through his work in design. He remains actively engaged with Icsid today.

Icsid transcends politics, but of course it can never be entirely apart from politics. During the Cold War, attending an Icsid Congress or Interdesign was one of the few opportunities for designers from behind the iron curtain to go to the west. Like the Olympics, Icsid provided a passport across political borders, and I think it's fair to say that design in the former Eastern Europe was able to remain current with developments around the world through Icsid. Recently, we faced a political challenge when Taipei was named as the host of the first IDA Congress in 2011. At first, we met with resistance from the Chinese government in Beijing. But once again design crossed political borders, and today, plans for the event are moving ahead in harmony between Taipei and the mainland.

Icsid now has over 150 member organisations from over fifty countries around the world. If you count all the people inside this organisation, Icsid represents perhaps 160,000 individuals.  Among design organisations, we're unique in bringing together four different kinds of design stakeholders: professional associations, design-driven companies, design promotion organisations, and art and design schools. We're very proud to endorse and sponsor the Braun Prize this year as in years past. One more note here: the 2009 Icsid Congress in Singapore is rapidly approaching in November, and I urge you all to attend. Some of the most interesting designers in the world are holding studios this fall that envision the world in 2050. We'll hear from them in Singapore - it should be a terrific event.

Today, we hear a lot about the growth of design, its increasing importance around the world, especially in the last ten years since the dawn of our new century. No doubt the practice, influence and awareness of design is growing at an exponential rate. A couple weeks ago, as you all know, IKEA changed its typeface from Futura to Verdana, and it became almost an international incident on the Internet. Millions of people around the world debated the merits of this change, and not just designers! I would guess that ten years ago this would have gone unnoticed, but today, with people designing their own websites, Facebook pages or blog sites, a debate about typeface is everyone's business.

We also hear that we now live in a "Creativity Economy," as Bruce Nussbaum coined it, or the "Conceptual Age" in Dan Pink's phrase. A.G. Laffley, who is here with us tonight, recently said that it's no longer enough simply to strive for innovation: we must go back a step further and "innovate the way we innovate." Are you aware that 1,000 new design programs have been started in China in the last ten years? Apparently China is not content to manufacture the rest of the world's ideas. Or that Mayor Oh of Seoul has hired a CDO - Chief Design Officer - to his cabinet, so that design can power the next economic "miracle on the Han river?" Seoul's transformation through design led to the city winning the competition to becoming the World Design Capital in 2010, an honor bestowed by Icsid. Singapore has set a goal to become the first design-driven country (although it is sort of like a big company). Already a new design and technology curriculum is in place across the country's secondary schools, and a fourth national university will open in 2011 devoted to innovation and creativity. You've all heard of the bold move in Finland: the new Aalto University, which brings together the three largest universities in the country - in business, technology, art and design - to focus on innovation as well.  There are so many more examples around the world. It seems that we all agree that our quality of life, economic strength, and our ability to solve the world's most challenging problems in the 21st century will be in large part shaped by design.

This is all very new in terms of the scale of design's influence and power. But the idea is not new. Buckminister Fuller said the same thing sixty years ago. Plus ca change . . . .

And of course this great explosion in the design world of new ideas and initiatives in business, education and government has led to a remarkable increase in the number of design competitions. I have served on five juries just this summer! They are everywhere - perhaps not a week goes by when there is not a design competition somewhere in the world. The first design competition in the Middle East was held in 2008, and there are many new design education efforts in this region as well. I heard that there were twice as many competitions in the first decade of this century as in the last decade of the twentieth century. 100% growth in ten years!

This statistic brings us closer to why we are all here tonight, and it also raises the question: what makes the Braun Prize so unique, so different, and so important, in this vast sea of international competitions? I think there are two significant reasons. The first is Braun - the company. Since its founding 1920's, and especially in its famously creative years from the 1950's through the 1970's, Braun has a strong claim to be the world's first design-driven company, the first to see and to practice what so many companies have come to realise today: the ability of design to lead a company's economic success, to create iconic products and to establish world-recognised brand recognition through design. All this Braun accomplished over fifty years ago.

For me, one of the most interesting and compelling stories of the last year was the comparison between Jonathan Ive's products for Apple and the iconic products designed by Dieter Rams for Braun. One of the reasons that Apple's designs have done so well is because Dieter Rams trained our sensibilities--he taught the world how good design should look and function. If you have not done so recently, read Dieter Rams' "Ten Commandments of Good Design" again - it's just as relevant today as when it was written. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose indeed!

Dieter Rams is also an important figure in Icsid, serving as a board member in the 1990's and today as a Regional Advisor. I know he wanted to be here with us tonight, but I am told he has finally agreed to have a much-needed knee replacement. I hope it is well designed! And I know we all wish him a fast recovery.

The second reason why the Braun Prize is so important and unique today is the rigor and quality of the competition, and this is to the credit of Peter Schneider, who has been the chairman of the prize for fourteen years, and the extraordinary team that supports him. Anyone who has served on the jury knows how hard you work, the deep analysis and debate, the integrity in every step of the process. From all my experiences on juries, I say this to you not because we are here but because it is true: the Braun Prize is the best organised, most rigorous, most prestigious design competition for young designers in the world.

The Braun Prize is also a great asset to Procter and Gamble, the parent company, a jewel in the crown of P&G. In the last ten years, under the leadership of A.G. Laffley, P&G has itself become a design-driven company, throughout its operations, and it has a become a model of innovation for other companies in this century, as Braun was in the last century.

As for the future of the Braun Prize, that lies in the talented and capable hands of Oliver Grabes, the new director of design at Braun, and in the continued support of the leadership of P&G. My belief is that the Braun Prize should build on its powerful legacy within Braun and its growing internationalism to become the most important design competition for the next forty years. To accomplish that, the Prize can build on the traditional, enduring values of Braun design to express and embody the future of design as it grows and changes. For me that includes the emotional, human-centered design and research, the new media in which design is now created and expressed, the new applications of design, design thinking and problem solving to different spheres of human life, and of course the ethical dimension of social responsibility.

I am certain that the Braun Prize will change, as everything should, but also that it will retain the values that have made it so important in the design world. "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

And I look forward to remaining a part of Braun Prize for years to come. You know, when you come to Kronberg and to Braun many times, as I have, you feel a strong bond to this place and to the people who live and work here. So, to conclude my remarks tonight, I want to tell you from the bottom of my heart, Ich bin ein Kronberger!

Dankeschon.

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About BraunPrize

When it was established in 1968, the BraunPrize was Germany's first international competition to promote the work of young designers. Braun's commitment to this cause has been highly regarded by the design world and the design-aware public ever since.

In sponsoring the BraunPrize, Braun seeks to highlight the importance of industrial design and innovative products and to promote ideas for consumer items which help people in all aspects of their daily lives.

The BraunPrize seeks to promote the work of young designers from all over the world, to recognise the work of design schools and to help develop a greater appreciation of the factors and criteria which make for good product design.

Furthermore, it serves to make the ingenuity and creativity of young designers accessible to the public and to provide a link between young designers and industry or potential clients.

Links

Read more about the endorsed event
See more images from the awards ceremony in the photo archive
Read the press release about the awards ceremony.
Read a review of the awards ceremony on Core 77
Visit the BraunPrize website