Analyze iPhone in the Context of Broader Corporate Design - Article Example

Analyze iPhone in the context of broader Corporate Design concept Corporate design is essentially, how a corporation brands and markets itself and in a broader context, how it comes across to its customers. It also includes certain images, objects, emotions that might be associated with the brand and thus become part of its image and corporate design. Companies hire corporate designers to do this job for them. Corporate designers are responsible for designing the corporation’s brand identity as well as the identity of its products and their individual designs. As the world becomes more and more globalized and markets become more and more integrated, it has become critically important for corporate designers to align their work to the global perspective since now the average corporation and its products do not cater to one region, locality or peoples but they cater to the global landscape, numerous different regions and localities and peoples. Since all of these regions and their people are different, the corporate designers of today have to be extremely careful that the brand image of the corporation and the brand image of its products is such it has universal appeal for the target audience of the corporation and the products it manufactures. The Apple iPhone also falls under a corporate design because it holds a certain brand image and identity that have been carefully crafted for it since its launch. This brand image can initially be credited to its corporate designers and subsequently to its performance in the market and its quality and performance as judged by its target market. The Apple iPhone has its own identity; like most Apple products, its name is preceded by the letter ‘i’, furthermore, the Apple iPhone has a unique, sleek, yet user friendly design and features that its loyal customers adore and love using. The iPhone’s corporate design therefore is an essential feature that lends to why new customers and old customers of Apple Inc. alike will remain loyal to the iPhone as a brand. The corporate design of the Apple iPhone thus, becomes a positive feature for it and adds to its value as a branded product. People who buy the iPhone are well aware of its image and sometimes are even buying the product because having it in their possession might lend some of the glamour from the product’s brand image to their personal images. A person who uses the iPhone or in a more broad context, Apple Inc. products is thought of and seen by other people as tech savvy and modern, somebody who moves and updates themselves with every technological update in this fast moving, modern world. Thus, a person who has an iPhone in his/her possession is modern, hip, and technologically up to date and that is how the iPhone’s corporate identity adds to the personal identity of the person who owns an iPhone. People aspire to buy this product, often when they can’t even afford it, just because the product’s brand image is so strong and so potent that the customer base believes that buying this product and being in ownership of it will come to define them as people. The corporate identity of the iPhone therefore, works for its advantage in this scenario. However, there is a scenario at the opposite end of this continuum where the iPhone’s corporate identity might not be such a favorable factor for it. But it is to be kept in mind, that this is an assumption at the extreme end, just to illustrate the width of the application of the product’s brand identity. For example, if a segment of the target market thinks of itself as having very basic operational knowledge of technologically savvy phones like the iPhone; they may not want to purchase the iPhone because of its brand image of being modern and technologically advance. However, realistically, as the world moves on and becomes more and more technologically advanced as a whole there is a lesser and lesser chance of this option being applicable. Furthermore, the better the quality of the Apple Inc. iPhone, the more the target market is satisfied with the product and the more likely it is that they will remain loyal to it. And the history of the iPhone since its launch has shown that the product has shown steady technological betterment over the years. When the first iPhone came out in 2007, its features included WIFI, Bluetooth, a fast and efficient operating system, touch screen, a large internal memory and longer battery life as compared to other phones on the market. The iPhone 2G which stands for second generation iPhone, had a better camera, more memory, faster operating system and more games and applications as compared to the last one. With the iPhone 3G, new features introduced included a faster processor as times demanded, a better operating system, greater internal memory, a better camera and better and increased battery life. The cycle of constant innovation continued as Apple Inc. continued to enhance its iPhone in line with its corporate design. The iPhone 4S brought in commendable innovation in the world of smart phones. This iPhone had better resolution, a better processor, greater memory, longer battery life. But more importantly, it introduced ‘face-time’ which was a video calling application that would work between two Apple devices. This also introduced a new double camera feature in the iPhone with enhanced camera quality. This version of the iPhone also introduced ‘Siri’ who was a voice activated assistant in your phone, practically doing everything for you through your phone. So if you had to type a message, you could dictate it to Siri and Siri would type it for you. Or, if you wanted to look for a particular kind of restaurant in your location, you could ask Siri to look it up for you and it would provide you with a list of restaurants you could go to in your vicinity. Siri would also remind you of things and look things up for you like birthday reminders and game scores. This was a very innovative feature in the iPhone’s corporate design that no other smart phone in its technological category had introduced yet. Thus the continuous innovation of the Apple iPhone kept enhancing its corporate design and brand image over the years while keeping its customer base largely loyal and very happy and always eager for more and better which Apple kept providing them through its products. Graphic Industrial design is packaged and labeled and what the product/company’s logo looks like. These are often critical deciding factors when it comes to a customer choosing whether to buy a product or not. Graphic design experienced very high importance in the 1970s when the whole concept had just about started out in the corporate world. (Clifton and Simmons, 2003). Especially for a customer who has not been previously acquainted with the brand. For people like these, the industrial design matters greatly because in the split second that they pick the product up off the shelf, the graphic industrial design is what takes a up the major chunk of their decision whether to purchase it or not because there is not much else the customer can base the decision on, not having used the product before. Like the image Apple inc. has created for its iPhone, Teague was also thought of an “intellectual with sophisticated taste”. (Flinchum, n.d.). He was an important figure when the United States was going through industrialization in the beginning of that period. Like Apple Inc. and his products he accomplished through innovative ideas what no one before had ever accomplished or had thought of accomplishing. (Flinchum, n.d.). The Apple Inc. iPhone’s graphic industrial design is very simple and modern and so is the packaging. The store layout as well goes in line with the whole of Apple Inc’s corporate image as a modern and technologically advance, no nonsense, but human user friendly brand. The colors are kept simple, the product is designed in fluid lines and the features speak of ease of use and accessibility. The iPhone thus, based purely on its graphic design appeals to a customer who is interested in products that are modern and easy to use, yet aesthetically sound and appealing. That has been one of Apple Inc’s strong points; to maintain high aesthetics appeal while improving their technology by innovative designs. The Apple iPhone has a huge customer base all over the world, concentrated especially in the United States of America and now has a huge and growing market in Asia, especially in China and Japan. Now that it is catering to such wide ends of the customer base spectrum, Apple needs to be more careful than ever how it proceeds with its corporate design and industrial graphic image. According to research, due to globalization, two major kinds of clash might take place; country clash and culture clash. (Peterson, 2004). Further research talks about how modern corporate design needs to be socially responsible and has to incorporate cultural factors in its business side to be successful. The current model or the past model, more appropriately has become inadequate in this largely globalized world and a new model needs to be used. Theory also talks about how this model needs to be restructured to allow benefit to the shareholders but not at the cost of other stakeholders. (White and Kelly, 2007). Tying it all together, we see how industrialization, production and design have been affected by their interaction, with globalization in the backdrop of the whole scenario. Modern markets are facing new scenarios and with them new problems like shorter lead times, rising costs, need to mass communicate and rapidly fulfilling market needs before the market moves on to an ever ready competitor. Business organizations are now spread over diverse geographical areas and effective communication is more critical than ever. (Kedher, Henry and Bouras, .nd.). Apple Inc. as a corporation has been able to stay very efficient in this regard by operating a business corporation which has stayed integrated using modern technology and means of mass communication. Their products have also reflected adaptation to the modern environment, with the evolution of the iPhone as well as their other products like the recent addition of the iCloud which allows customers to have remote access to all of their data all over the world. By coming up with such innovative products, Apple Inc. has demonstrated how corporate design and industrial design can be utilized to a corporation’s advantage in the modern, globally integrated world. Works Cited: 1. Clifton, R. and Simmons, J. Brands and Branding. The Economist. 2003. https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=fcea3bf3ff&view=att&th=13a98acca45056f9&attid=0.1&disp=inline&realattid=f_h8njox4d0&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P_6pYZcSHAkSjckIxNxez08&sadet=1351318459811&sads=_wrXJCyCQX3pRzf_5gzRCRyOgk8 2. Peterson, B. Cultural Intelligence. 2004. https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=fcea3bf3ff&view=att&th=13a93999120eee47&attid=0.4&disp=inline&realattid=f_h8ni4ftf3&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P_6pYZcSHAkSjckIxNxez08&sadet=1351318446817&sads=r_BVR-E564wtarGx6yqfRbXJtA0 3. Flinchum, R. Why Teague Matters. https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=fcea3bf3ff&view=att&th=13a93999120eee47&attid=0.3&disp=inline&realattid=f_h8ni2mep2&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P_6pYZcSHAkSjckIxNxez08&sadet=1351318444402&sads=k8YOQQUHK2UTW_oIwIhsQ_pUtRU 4. White, A. and Kelly, M. Corporate Design. 2007. http://www.corporation2020.org/pdfs/SummitPaperSeries.pdf 5. Kedher, A, Henry, S. and Bouras, A. An analysis of the interaction among design, industrialization and production. http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/51/42/17/PDF/Plm10_paper.pdf Read More