No, this is not a blog about a sequel to the 1989 movie starring Tom Cruise, “Born on the Fourth of July.” It’s about Sir Paul Smith, famed British fashion designer who was born on July 5, 1946.

Known for his bright color stripes and self-described “classic with a twist” creations, Paul Smith fell into fashion design literally by accident. After dropping out of school at the age of 15 in Nottingham England, Smith’s father escorted him into a nearby clothing warehouse and offered him up as an errand boy. Young Smith’s interest at the time was not in fashion, but in cycle racing.

It was Smith’s cycling to and from the warehouse on deliveries that kept up his interest in the job, until he had a serious accident two years later. During his six-month recuperation in the hospital Smith decided that fashion design may be more his speed than cycling. And the fashion world has never been the same.

Although Paul Smith’s reputation was built primarily as a designer of menswear, today he has 12 different fashion lines, including women’s wear, shoes, pens, watches, and furniture. His collections are wholesaled in 35 countries, with 15 shops in England including his flagship store in Notting Hill.

According to London’s Design Museum, Smith is regarded as Britain’s most consistently successful fashion designer, which is not lost on the Japanese. His products are sold in 200 stores throughout Japan alone – where his label outsells every other European designer.

In 2000, Smith was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, in recognition of his iconic success over three decades.

Sir Paul Smith continues to remain very active in his company, serving as both chairman and designer. He is also a regular blog contributor at Vogue.com.

Many have studied Smith and the source of his success. Some point to his focus and accomplishment as both a designer and a business man. “The reason I’ve been successful is because I’ve just got on and packed boxes and I know that VAT means Value Added Tax not vodka and tonic,” Paul Smith has written. “I’ve sold on the shop floor, I’ve typed invoices.”

There is a lesson here for every aspiring entrepreneur or corporate manager. Creativity, smart design, and business savvy make for a powerful combination for success.

Happy Birthday Sir Paul!

The Ladew Topiary Gardens of Monkton, Maryland boast the title of “the most outstanding topiary garden in America” as named by the Garden Club of America. I now see why. This past Saturday, I toured the Ladew Gardens as part of its second annual garden festival, and came away a very big fan.

Any fine collection of art starts with a passionate collector and a talented artist. Harvey S. Ladew (1887-1976) was both. He loved flowers and topiaries, and he put his love to work in the 22 acres of gardens he created from a 250-acre farm he bought in Maryland in 1929. Ladew discovered the art of topiaries (trimming and training shrubs or trees into unnatural ornamental shapes) during his many travels to Europe with his parents, and later as a young adult and Army officer during World War I.

A self-taught gardener, Ladew created two long cross axes on his Maryland property, which provide for spectacular vistas in each direction. Off of the axes are 15 garden “rooms,” each devoted to a single color, plant, or theme. Ladew is considered “one of the first Americans to create garden rooms on this side of the Atlantic,” according to the garden’s brochure. Many of the garden rooms feature elaborate topiaries of animals in sculpted settings.

One of the most impressive areas of Ladew Gardens is the “Great Bowl.” Several dozen swan topiaries swim atop a sea of large, billowy yew shrubs that border a two-acre circular lawn, which gently slopes toward a round pool in the center.

Harvey Ladew was influenced by the work of landscape and topiary artists from England and Italy. How many botantical artists and gardeners have been influenced by Harvey Ladew over the last 70-80 years? Hundreds I am sure, who in turn have most likely influenced thousands more.

The ingredients for creativity and innovation are fairly simple, yet get surprisingly little attention from corporate executives and managers. Provide your employees with the opportunity to nurture their passion and talents, expose them to other successful creators and innovators, and serve up a culture that welcomes and incents creativity and risk-taking.

Spend time and energy on these fundamental elements for innovation, and you’ll soon find your company will be on its way to some supernatural performance.

It’s not every day that a movie is made about a typeface. Well, technically it was a documentary by Gary Hustwit that debuted in 2007 at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas. It later aired on PBS in January 2009 as part of the Emmy-award-winning Independent Lens series, which is the version I saw.

The film, Helvetica, subsequently toured film festivals, special events, and art house cinemas worldwide, playing in over 300 cities in 40 countries.

From April 2007 to March 2008, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City displayed an exhibit called “50 Years of Helvetica,” which celebrated the many uses of the font.

Why all the hoopla over a typeface? Well, in short, no other font can begin to approach Helvetica’s long-lived impact on the design, advertising, print and communication worlds. To this day, Helvetica continues to shine based on its simple, functional, contemporary, and timeless qualities.

Helvetica was developed by Max Miedinger with Edüard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland. Miedinger, a former employee and freelance designer, was commissioned by Haas to draw an updated sans-serif typeface to add to the firm’s line. Miedinger’s new font was called Neue Haas Grotesk, but its name was later changed to Helvetica in 1960, which is derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland.

Helvetica’s popularity was fed by its Swiss design roots and by advertising agencies selling this new design style to their clients. Almost overnight, Helvetica began to appear in corporate logos, signage for transportation systems, fine art prints, and a myriad of other uses worldwide. Five decades later, the use of the Helvetica typeface in our daily lives is as ubiquitous as the air that we breathe.

What does your company’s logo and typeface say about your organization? Are you giving enough attention to how your company approaches the design, look, and feel of your products and/or services?

The best product or service in the world is of no benefit if it is not seen as appealing to the customer.

Take a page from our omnipresent friend, Mr. Helvetica, and make sure you are doing everything you can to appeal to your customers. If so, your company too will find itself still looking good at the ripe old age of 53.

Several months ago, I conducted a business innovation workshop in New York City that featured cognitive scientist Donald Norman as a guest speaker. Norman is a leading expert in “user-centered design” and author of The Design of Everyday Things. The workshop was attended by 40 mid- and top-level managers from numerous divisions of a Fortune 200 company.

The goal of this off-site innovation meeting was to provoke some of the company’s most promising professionals to look at things a little differently – in fact, we wanted them to look at everything differently.

Every day of our lives, we are bombarded by tens of thousands of visual and operational stimuli. The door handle we use to open the closet, the street sign we see to make the correct turn, the faucet we use to turn on the water in the restroom, the ink pen we use to sign a letter — and on and on.

Given the sheer volume of this stimuli, it’s no wonder that we give little thought to 99% of what we see, touch, and feel every day. But maybe your brain is paying more attention than you think.

Whether on an individual stimulus basis or in a cumulative way, your brain responds more positively to objects that are pleasing to the eye – even everyday objects. Whether it’s a company logo, a product, an online service, or a routine internal process or form, a user’s reaction to all of these things is real, no matter how subtle.

Your product division may want a customer or potential customer to enjoy the use and visual attributes of a given product. Your sales department may want a customer to have a positive user experience with an online tool or service. And your human resource department may want employees to respond favorably to this year’s new health benefit based on smart and attractive design elements.

Innovation is not only reserved for the once-a-year or once-in-a-lifetime breakthroughs. Innovation can and should occur every day across every part of your company – from the most obvious anchor product of the company to the most subtle and routine business process.

It’s the cumulative effect of these innovations and the associated attention to detail and design that will separate good companies from the best companies.

Companies should make it a point to encourage employees to seek out every opportunity to improve a product, service, or process – and should seek to arm them with the tools, training and incentives to do so.

In the end, making everyday things and how they are designed and used a priority within your company may very well lead to extraordinary things.

Throughout the 1990s, I looked forward to Saturday mornings for two reasons. First, I could sleep late. Second, I enjoyed watching CNN’s weekly fashion show, “Style with Elsa Klensch,” which aired at 10:30 a.m. on the East Coast.

I’m still able to sleep a little later on Saturdays, but not since 2001 have I been able to watch my favorite Saturday morning show when Klensch and “Style” took their last bow on the runway.

I can still hear Klensch’s distinctive voice ringing in my head: “This is ‘Style’ and I’m Elsa Klensch reporting on the design worlds of fashion, beauty, and decorating,” she would proclaim at the top of every show. Then she proceeded to give the week’s highlights of design and fashion as if it were a weekly sports program — only with a lot more panache.

“Style” was the first of its kind. Long before the Fashion Channel, Style.com, and “Project Runway,” there was Elsa Klensch. She brought the latest fashions and their designers from the streets of Paris, Milan, and New York to Main Street – and the industry and the profession are still prospering from it.

Klensch came about her fashion fame the old fashion way, she earned it. She was born in Australia, and then later lived overseas in London and Hong Kong, before arriving in the United States. According to Wikipedia.org, Klensch worked as an editor at Vogue, Women’s Wear Daily, W, and Harper’s Bazaar before joining CNN in New York City on its 1980 launch.

She also appeared as herself in a number of television shows and films, including Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter (1994), which chronicled the Paris fashion show scene.

I’m not sure where Ms. Klensch is today, but I did recently see her name on Facebook. (And yes, I admit it, I sent her a “friend” request). Where ever she is, I salute her on behalf of the thousands of women and men whom she undoubtedly inspired to go into fashion, take up a creative profession, or simply better appreciate design.

Klensch had a style all her own, which was the root of her success. There is a lesson here for individuals and private enterprises alike. Create your own style. Follow your passion. And, inspire others along the way. If so, success should soon follow.

(By the way, Ms. Klensch, if you are reading this blog could you please “accept” my friendship?)

Beñat Iglesias, self-portrait

Harlem’s Alex Adam Gallery opens its “Artists and Monitors” art show on Thursday, October 15. The show uniquely features the works of “three of New York’s most extraordinary contemporary figurative artists, and the painters who are and have been privileged to be their assistants.”

One of the “Teacher’s Monitors” whose works will be featured is Beñat Iglesias, a very talented portrait artist who was born in Pamplona, Spain in 1979 on October 12 – thirty years ago today. And yes, Pamplona is home of the world-famous “Running of the Bulls,” the high-risk, high-adrenaline running of 1,200-pound bulls (i.e., with horns) through the cobbled streets of this picturesque city in northern Spain.

This hometown image is in sharp contrast to how Iglesias describes his approach to art: “My work is devoted to the mundane, to depict humble and ordinary people I aim to show in their natural state, to reveal their way of communicating to the world.”

I first saw Iglesias’s talent showcased five years ago, when I attended an art show at New York’s Art Student’s League. Iglesias’s education in fine arts has spanned more than a decade, including a fine arts degree from the Universidad Del Pais Vasco (UPV) in Bilboa, Spain; then further study at the Edinburgh College of Art in the UK, the University of Fine Arts in Barcelona, and New York’s National Academy School of Fine Arts, the Art Students League, and the Andrew Reiss Studio.

Iglesias has exhibited his work in numerous shows in New York and throughout Europe. In 2007, he was a semi-finalist in the 70th Annual American Artists Drawing competition.

I find myself immediately drawn into his work, and how he is able to capture remarkably true-to-life expressions of unremarkable people. I have bought several pieces from Iglesias’s collection over the last several years, and intend on buying more as he continues to grow and develop.

Iglesias’s bright future has been built on a foundation of years of hard work, high quality training, learning by doing, and a bull-headed dedication to his vocation. All are key ingredients for success in any field of work or business. Identify the talent, grow and nurture it, and put yourself in environments where creativity can thrive.

Happy 30th birthday to a promising artist, Beñat Iglesias, or better yet –
¡Feliz cumpleaños!

The show at Alex Adam Gallery in Harlem (78 West 120th Street) runs from October 15th-25th. The exact schedule can be found on the gallery’s website.