Design Insight by Mario Gagliardi
  • Innovation in AI Development: Stargate versus China

    The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) has underscored the critical role of innovation in shaping the global technological landscape. The strategies of the U.S. and China diverge sharply. The U.S.-led Stargate Initiative exemplifies a centralized, corporate-driven model, while China’s state-backed ecosystem is geared towards decentralized, cost-efficient innovation. Innovation in AI hinges on balancing resource…

  • AI for designers: How to stay ahead of the curve

    1) Start with understanding what AI, ML, and deep learning are. Focus on concepts like supervised/unsupervised learning, neural networks, and data preprocessing. 2) Explore AI uses in design Generative design (e.g., Autodesk’s tools). Predictive analytics for user behavior. AI-driven prototyping and simulation. Personalization and customization. 3) Learn Programming and AI Tools Python is the most…

  • The Vibe Shift: How a Return to Family Values and Meritocracy is Reshaping Society and Consumer Behavior

    The Vibe Shift, a term coined by historian Niall Ferguson, refers to a cultural and ideological pivot in societal values, often marked by a departure from previously dominant narratives and the emergence of new paradigms. The 2025 Vibe Shift is a cultural and societal transformation that marks a return to traditional family values and a…

  • Jaguar: A controversial rebrand

    Is this Jaguar, the blue chip brand on par with Ferrari, Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Rolls Royce – the brand standing for sleek and elegant sports cars which won Le Mans seven times? Jaguar is a British icon and an emotion which creates loyalty, as evidenced in over 160 million views of the rebrand on social…

  • Milan Design Week 2024: Everything Everywhere All at Once

    Walking around Milan Design Week, I recall a quote of philosopher Guy Debord, who wrote in Society of the spectacle: “The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.” What Debord could not have imagined in his time is that most people in 2024 are armed with…

  • Design support for the 21st century

    Published 2021 by Dongdaemun Design Plaza/ddp Design Fair/Seoul Design Foundation. From hand-holding to startup financing The history of design support until today has two distinct phases: project hand-holding and startup financing. From the nineteen-eighties until around the 2000’s, the economy revolved around industrial production, and a preferred model of design support was project hand-holding. In…

  • Exclusion included: Hostile design

    Lately, a young designer with a bachelor’s degree from Parsons School of Design approached me with his design for a bench for a design competition for better public spaces. After having asked a few questions, it became clear that sitting a bit longer on this bench, or lying on it to have a nap, was…

  • Design Collaboration for Dongdaemun Design Plaza

    The largest Design Center in Asia, Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), published a two-part article on new paradigms for Design Collaboration by Mario Gagliardi (in Korean): Strategies for the 21st century: Design Collaboration, part 1 Strategies for the 21st century: Design Collaboration, part 2 DDP is managed by the Seoul Design Foundation and the Seoul Metropolitan…

  • The Vessel, New York

    The buildings of New York always held a special symbolic quality. The Empire State Building was iconic for it’s age, representing a relentless striving upwards, culminating in it’s gleaming Art Deco top. The Word Trade Center was a symbol of post-war New York. Jean Baudrillard uncovered its symbolism: “Why are there two towers at New…

  • Why the eighties are back

    Korea’s design magazine Design Jungle interviewed Mario Gagliardi about the history and reasons behind the resurgence of eighties design. “To understand the design of the eighties, you have to understand what led to it. The sixties brought the revolution of 68, the design of the seventies embraced this new freedom, and the eighties combined it…

  • Design Integration: From Imitation to Ecosystem

    This article was first published in Fall 2005 in Designmatters by the Danish Design Center (DDC) as ‘Imiteret, kommercialiseret, oplevet: Sammenkædningen af design, virksomheder og denverdensøkonomiske udvikling’. Company structures changed dramatically over the course of the last century. The structures and processes behind the production of goods evolved, and with these also the relationships of…

  • Bubbles

    2020, the year of the pandemic, brought with it new popular words and phrases. “New normal”, “social distancing” and “flatten the curve” stand out, but also “travel bubble”. These new pop phrases have something interesting in common: they combine two semantic opposites in one phrase. “New” is about something we don’t know yet, the opposite…

  • Analysing lifestyle changes during and after the pandemic

    Changes in lifestyles are always consequences of changing life circumstances. On an individual level, this includes education, income, or age; On a macro level, this includes, among other factors, political change, governance, and technical progress. Lifestyle changes on an individual level are simple to understand: For instance, an increased or decreased income instantly affects individual…

  • After Corona: Quality is back

    The lockdowns and restrictions imposed by governments due to the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in many being furloughed or losing jobs. Consequently, it is expected that discretionary spending would decrease. In particular, businesses depending on day to day consumer traffic (restaurants, brick and mortar retail) or on gatherings of people (theatres, sports events) have been a…

  • Home, sweet home

    This is the first time most consumers across the world have the experience of being confined to their own home. What will this new experience mean for business? Let us look at the experiences of consumers during lockdowns and how this could impact consumption after Corona. Phase 1: PanicIn the first phase of a quarantine,…

  • Podchain, ownership and usership

    Car ownership was a fundamental idea of progress since Henry Ford came up with his Model T in the early 20th century. During America’s golden years, roughly from the nineteen- fifties until 9/11, owning a car was the first thing on every teenager’s mind. It was a sign of freedom and independence, the visible expression…

  • On mental models, refusing a five billion dollar offer, and petting a cobra

    Mental models are ideas of how things are. They are not about how things are in reality – they are beliefs about how things work or should work. People’s mental models can be wrong. If they are, they tend to be persistent, creating problems and at the same time impeding the ability to fix these problems.…

  • Innovation starts with concepts

    Organisations often struggle to change. One fundamental hindrance are tacit mental concepts, the foundation for both daily decision-making and the long-term strategy formulation of organisations. Once mental models have become taken for granted, they are held implicitly and can be barriers to novel thinking around a common aim.

  • Social consciousness and design

    Larger shifts in social consciousness offer chances for new product concepts. The green movement, the emerging consciousness of our environment, is a long-term influcence which in the nineteen-nineties gave way to concepts such as Body Shop, in the early 2000’s supported the emergence of organic and fairtrade food, and  in the late twenty-tens leads to the…