New website

I just registered the website patryandesign.com and am thinking of moving the Pat Ryan Things content over to that site so that I can free up patryan.com for more creative and artistic uses.
 
I have wanted to do more experimental web-based art and design projects for awhile but can't really justify all that weirdness on my business site.  Clients get too freaked out.  I try to stay away from any R-rated, conceptually challenging, or political stuff on the business side only because current and potential clients don't need to waste their time processing it.  It is just a pain in the ass for them to have to wade through a bunch of "artsy" crap.
 
Anyways, I am laying out the architecture for how these sites would work together or compliment each other without becoming too co-dependent.  Also, I am looking at how search engines would handle a change like that and where, exactly, a blog like this should live.  I already feel it is getting too personal for the business site...
 
Speaking of sites, a lot of people still find me through searching for GOOG Design - my last firm.  Thank God we dumped that company for many reasons but the biggest reason I am happy we are not GOOG anymore is because Google is going to use the word "GOOG" as its stock symbol on NASDAQ when it has its much-hyped IPO in August.
 
I am glad I don't have to answer that question anymore...
 
Speaking of GOOG, I wonder if Google plans to trademark the word "GOOG" for t-shirts, hats, and stuff.  GOOG Inc. still owns the trademark "GOOG" but since the corporation is no longer operating, does the trademark die?  If I remember, GOOG Inc. transferred the ownership of the trademark to me in lieu of a bunch of money it owed to me way back in 2001 or 2002.  I'll have to check my files.  Anyways, Google could probably find a category that they could use that would allow them the use of the word "GOOG" without confusion between GOOG's registered mark and their marketing crap (not that there would be a lot of confusion anyways).  We also filed a trademark for a product line of hair and skin products for kids under the GOOG name once.  We abandoned that one because we decided not to pursue that line at the time although I still think there should be a great line of hair and skin products for kids that is clean, healthy, and doesn't smell like raspberry or watermelon candy.

The Feed

This is just a feed claim that makes no sense to anyone not worried about such business

The Myth of Financial Success in Architecture and Design

In this month’s issue of Contract Magazine, Diana Mosher writes an essay for her “Practice” column entitled “For Richer or Poorer”.

In it, she poses a question about the definition of success and its highly subjective meaning.  She also postulates that , “now more than ever price wars, shrinking budgets, and compressed schedules conspire against the design team and threaten to squelch creativity, not to mention profitability.”

In essence, she goes on about how the work culture within the Architecture, Engineering, and Design industry has been “fragmented and inefficient” and that “forward-looking” firms are transforming the process through “true partnering.”  What, exactly is “true partnering” I ask?  Partnering is a goofy and overused corporate jargon-speak concept that is supposed to be where the involved firms recognize certain commonalities between them for the mutual benefit of the firms.  In reality, this is a bunch of crap.  Architectural firms and Design firms are way too project-focused to work like this.  Because of the reality of selling hours to their clients, design firms don’t give a shit about the long-term goals of either the client or the “partnering” firms they are supposedly working with.  An ongoing relationship with the client is only as good as the resulting project documentation including the pretty photographs that do nothing but market and promote the design firm to future clients.

In her essay, Mosher notes a research study by Greenway Consulting in Norcross GA (a veritable epicenter of design) that states a finding that process innovation is a key ingredient to future success.  This includes a greater commitment to efficiency in service delivery, improved technical solutions such as online project management, and a new wave of design authoring tools.  Ho Hum. Heard it all before.  By the way, online project management is stupid.  It takes far too long to update a custom design project for any real-time usefulness that the negatives outweigh the positives.  And what exactly, are “a new wave of design authoring tools?”

At any rate, Mosher cites a firm in San Francisco that “has already incorporated this thinking into its repertoire.”  Noted is a growing trend within design-build.  By having a bridge architect, the owners can bid out to the design-build team utilizing a preliminary design.  How ground breaking!

In the same article, Mosher points to the work done by the high-falutin sounding  San-Francisco-based Advanced Management Institute for Architecture and Engineering.  Speaking on the topic of emerging models of practice for architecture and engineering firms, it finds that these firms “have lost track of a fundamental insight – that design professionals create value as they shape the environment.  In essence, that design professionals put their careers in danger when they adopted a business model that focuses on, once again, the selling of billable hours.  They should have focused on creating value for their clients they conclude.  This, the result of a research project.  When I read stuff like this I cringe with embarrassment over the fact that some idiot is financing this BS.  Of course it is obvious but it is as if architects and interior designers need gentle reminding of what it is they do.  Not to offend the over-sensitive egos of these people but rather to coax them into believing that what they do is important and can be financially viable if only they could somehow convince the client that they “you really like me.”

This research also found, consequently, “that clients treat the designers like commodities and less like providers of valued professional services”.  Boo hoo.  The research postulates that “design firms must move to differentiate their business models and their firms.”

The final example Mosher uses to illustrate this stupid ideology is the incredibly creative solution a firm called Rios Clementi Hale Studios in Los Angeles has found helps it “boost profitability while simultaneously encouraging the creativity of its employees”.  Along with all the projects this studio does, the firm also “designs furniture and housewares, which it offers in a storefront retail shop located downstairs from the design studio.  In addition to creating a new profit center, the store provides a cool new outlet for the firm’s creative contingent and, we’re guessing, an unusual icebreaker for the business development team.”

All that research to find out that you can open a retail showroom attached to your design studio in an effort to make more money?  Stupid.  And, its been done yet I would still like to see the financials of your “furniture and housewares” concept.  I’m sure you're just getting rich and richer.
 

Design School

I have just put up the list of classes that I am going to teach this fall and winter at the shop.  I have always had a lot of requests to teach basic welding skills and have thought about it a long time so I guess the time is right. 
 
I am presently working on the curriculum for seven different classes including:
beginning welding
creative fabrication and metalworking
furniture design and build techniques
starting your design business
advanced design and build
midnight engineering
fabrication for architects and designers
 
check out the list and what is covered at pat ryan website
 
I really am excited about the "starting your design business" and "midnight engineering" classes to be honest.  I think those two classes are going to be fun to develop.
 

Right now, I have to figure out the best dates to offer the classes so I can work them into my schedule and also how much they will cost to teach.  I plan on having small, intimate classes with no more than three or four people in each.

More later.  Got to go get ready for a big week starting tomorrow.

I could do your job but you could not do mine.

I am about two days from finishing a rather large and technically challenging commercial project that involved the fabrication and design of a awning and sign structure that wraps around a building here in Denver.  The client, in this case was an office furnishings company called Source 4
 
The project was hard on a couple of levels.  The first being that it is an older building that originally had been a house and has been retrofitted and remodeled as an office.  The outside of the building is very old sandstone brick that could basically be knocked down with your bare hands if you wanted to.  A parapet wall along the top was so loose I could lean on it and it would move back and forth.  Consequently, I could not rely on it for attaching the structure.
 
Secondly, I has been hot (like 105 degrees) daily since I started the install making for some very uncomfortable working conditions on the roof of the building.
 
At any rate, because of the engineering involved with getting this awing up onto the building, a lot of fabrication has to take place that required making specialized brackets and fixtures to, in effect, hang the awning off the roof and not the sides of the building.  A lot of this work would never be seen from the street level but was hugely important for this installation to go smoothly and be safe.
 
Therein lies the essence of my rant today.  You see, a lot of the fabrication taking place in my shop was very time consuming and invisible to the client.  The owner was incredibly understanding of the process because he was kept in the loop of the whole development as we engineered the structure.  He was also aware of the condition of the building and knew about the pitfalls of anchoring to the structure.  However, some of the employees of the business had no idea about that element of the project.
 
One day, as I was setting up my ladder to do more initial structural work that would eventually figure into the final outcome, a girl who worked inside came out and made a big point of looking down the side of the building where I was beginning to set ¾” all-thread bolts into the crumbly masonry using a two part, injectable epoxy from US Mix called Gelbond NS.  These bolts became a stabilizer for the lower part of the awning to keep the awning panels from swinging.  They were not carrying the load of the panels;  the load was being suspended from above by large brackets that were anchored to the roof.  Anyways, it was another step in a long sequence of processes that had to be done before even one finished panel could be hung.  Also, a critical part of this process was leveling these bolts along the building so that the awning would be level.
 
Well, the girl from inside is looking up and making this kind of stupid face like mock disbelief or something and shaking her head with this duffus grin on her face when she looks at me and asks, “Are you working on our awning”?  Duh, no I am just standing on this ladder leaning up against your building for the past three weeks hanging on to all these tools because I just go around pretending to do this on random buildings around town…
 
“Yes”, I say kind of sarcastically. 
“Is there anything getting done on this thing or what”, she mockingly asks.
“Nope. Nothing”, is the only thing that I can think of in response because right then I am doing a slow burn thinking about how clueless this idiot is.
She shakes her head again with her clueless idiot grin and walks back inside.
 
That exchange ruined my day and here is why: 
 
Here is a person who works in a business that sells office furnishings.  Office chairs, cubicles, conference tables, etc.  She sits inside at her desk and looks at her spreadsheets and projections trying to figure out how many more chairs she needs to sell in order to make x amount of commission.  She sits and figures out her budgets and emails her plans to attend yet another lame sales opportunity or follow up on some proposal she sent out last week  Whatever.
 
Yet, in addition to her most important position and need to fulfill such an underserved market like office furniture sales and all her busy, outgoing, prestigious glory she also knows how to design and build things.  Go figure.  This amazing renaissance woman can actually fill in her sales reports and keep on eye on the technical fabrication and installation progress going on outside her office window.  I feel safe just knowing I have another set of eyes watching my back to make sure the project stays on schedule and built to the exacting specs that any office furniture salesperson expects.
 
Oh yea, make sure you let me know that your awning project is not quite measuring up to your expectations for completion and timeline development.  If only you could let go of your mouse for five seconds and come out here and give me a hand with these tiebacks then we could really get this project moving in the right direction.
 
By the way, you suck because guess what?  I could easily learn how to do your job in about five minutes and you could never learn how to do my job in your entire life.  So why are you commenting on the process that you know nothing of.  Do I walk into your office and shake my head from side to side with a goofy smirk on my face and ask you, “Why do your sales projections look so skewed?”,  or how about “Are you ever going to throw away that Diet Coke can that has been sitting on your desk for like, three days already?”
 
In other words, your job is dumb.  What do you offer?  Another cheesy high-back, ergonomically over-designed space-age piece of crap office chair or are you just some supporting cast member for another sales rep?  Whatever it is you do,  someone else can do it and can do it the minute they walk in and replace you.  However, I don’t think you could say the same about me.
 
But I surely appreciate the input.  Thanks for your caring.  Now go empty your trash can – it is too full again.