Some years ago I’ve worked as a senior consultant for the “first integrated design corporation” in Germany: design.net ag (today the company is part of Peter Schmidt Group). Interestingly the company has been the springboard for several professionals who today are international experts in design management (but that’s a different story ;-)
In any case design.net had an interesting portfolio of companies under its hood which somehow reflected the complete (design services) value chain from acquisition over consultancy to creation, production and promotion. Part of this value chain even though (organizationally) separated from the rest of the company was “form” one of the earliest magazines on industrial design founded in 1957 by Jupp Ernst, Willem Sandberg, Curt Schweicher and Wilhelm Wagenfeld and bought by design.net at the end of the 90’s.
There has been much debate at that time whether the freedom of press (from the perspective of form) and business interests from the value chain perspective of design.net could have been guaranteed. At least from a business perspective it has been a smart choice and was truly “integrated” ;-) After all the “design scene” felt some relief when form was sold to Birkhäuser Verlag, a publisher with a focus on design and architecture from Switzerland some years ago.
Ever since the beginning of this year form benefited from a major relaunch both the printed magazine as well as their website. The magazine is now sub-titled “The Making of Design” and even though from my perspective the content still has its focus on the “Meaning” of design rather than “Making” you can feel the shift. For sure it’s still a magazine which is unlikely to be found on the desk of the average middle management engineer in a German SME (Small and Medium-sized Enterprise), but given the recent developments that design, marketing and engineering are more and more merging into what is called “Innovation” these days “form” clearly has potential to capture this (so far uncaptured) strategic space in the magazine industry.
The continuously bi-lingual articles (which are part of the relaunch concept) of the printed magazine as well as the website are clearly aiming to address an international audience. So for those of you living abroad and who do not regularly stop by at internationally well-assorted magazine stores you might want to visit their website and give it a try: http://www.form.de
My “recommendation of the day” is the transcript of the opening speech of Christoph Böninger (former head of design at designafairs) for Entry2006 (the first world forum for design and architecture to take place at the Zollverein area in Essen, Germany until December 2006) from last weekend. Well, Entry2006 … that’s another story ;-)
