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Issey Miyake - Fall 2017 RTW

I love this piece and the colors used; photos probably don’t do it any justice

The Last mm

Every product requires a finishing phase where the details are sorted out. This involves removing ideas, adding ideas, and leaving some ideas alone.

A project I worked on recently hit the market, and it’s not selling-through at the levels we anticipated. This is bad for business, obviously.

I believe there are two reasons why:

We changed a very important aspect of the product (the branding) at the very last moment. It was an impulsive decision which we had checked in on along the way. A new business leader had taken the helm, and his call was to change a very subtle execution of the branding to something more overtly visible. This killed the essence of what was sexy about the product.

The coloration of the product was poorly executed. The branding change gave us another thing to mess up, which was. In defense of the color designer, there was not much time to consider exactly how color would play out with the new branding execution. He had to make a quick call, and I didn’t do him any favors with the way I executed the branding (in hindsight I wish I had made it simpler).

I should have fought back and told the entire team the original concept was the way to go. Sometimes, even when it may not seem like your call (I was technically not on the team when they wanted to make the change), you have to stand up for the product. In the end everyone will benefit from that sort of courage.

Designers painstakingly analyze the last millimeter. I have learned to value deliberate consideration over impulsive fear.