A Fine Line: How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business,   ISBN:9780470451021

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

Esslinger does a remarkable job showing how teamwork contributes to artistic design and successful production at the same time. While artists and designers are often envisioned as solitary and individualistic, Esslinger shows how this energy, converted into a team approach, enhances art and production simultaneously. Esslinger gives examples, e.g., some clients may seek to exert excessive political will in the development of design and production -- even at the expense of the project. Esslinger will get involved early. Settling internal wrangling early may annoy the client who may pull out of a project he can't control. Esslinger points out why this alternative is preferable to late stage failure when personal and financial resources may've become exhausted. Esslinger's approach is itself highly individualistic, probably why frog design has been so successful. All the same, readers who enjoy a political mention now and then will notice that Andrea Merkel made it into this book, a must buy for both design moguls and CEOs. -- RLW

Customer Rating: 

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.