The IBM Story

Good Brand Design is Good Business.

Long before Thomas Watson Jr. assumed the role of IBM’s CEO, he had already resolved to put his stamp on the company through modern design. Watson was taunted by the Olivetti shop — just a short stroll down 5th Avenue — with their sleek, colorful typewriters displayed in their modern storefront. By contrast, IBM’s offices were dimly lit, the computers were boxy and drab, and the lobby was designed to meet the aesthetic of Thomas Watson Sr., which his son described as a “first-class saloon on an ocean liner.”

In 1956, when Watson Jr. finally stepped into his father’s shoes, he made the most profound decision of his professional life, hiring as the company’s design consultant, Eliot Noyes, a well-respected architect and former curator of industrial design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Mind you, this was a computer company.

Noyes’s goal was to create an overarching corporate design program to encompass IBM as a whole — everything from its products to its offices, logos and marketing materials. A unified look and feel was merely a small part of a much larger purpose. Noyes’s plan was to fashion, for the first time in history, an entire business organization — its management, operations and culture, products and marketing — as an intentionally created product of the imagination; as a work of art.

“The spirit of our company is expressed to employees and the general public alike in considerable measure through the appearance of our architecture, products, printed matter and displays. Truly good appearance can be a silent partner working for us.”

— Thomas Watson Jr., IBM Chairman and CEO, 1956-1971

IBM’s canvas, as Noyes put it, would be “like a good painting.” But not just any kind of painting — something specific and immediately recognizable, yet never uniform or static. To achieve this, Noyes brought in a wide variety of artists, designers and architects — some of the greatest creative minds of the day. Among them were Paul Rand, Charles and Ray Eames, and Isamu Noguchi — all grounded in a unified design philosophy, and who expressed the spirit of IBM through the appearance of their architecture, products, printed materials and displays.

The impact Thomas Watson Jr. had on IBM cannot be overestimated. Through Noyes, the self-proclaimed “curator of corporate character”, Watson modernized all aspects of the brand. And along the way, the perception of IBM changed irrevocably. Once rooted in the grime of cogs and springs, Big Blue had become the face of a new computer age.

Good design and “design thinking” are now seen as essential for organizations to express their brands and their values. One need only walk into an Apple Store, Starbuck’s or Disney theme park to see this in action, and to witness the impact good design and comprehensive branding have on a company’s financial success. The correlation is simply too strong to ignore.

This approach to brand design isn’t limited to Fortune 500 companies.

The application of “design thinking” is a strategic business decision — one that can positively affect the way your company is perceived, and improve its bottom line. Fisk Alloy, for example — a medium-sized company manufacturing highly-technical copper alloy wire for the aerospace, automotive, medical and other industries — came to One Degree with a hope not unlike Thomas Watson’s. See the work and read about it here.

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