Category : KA+A

Gravity Ventures, LLC., an angel capital fund focused on investing in early-stage, high-growth businesses, was featured in the Indianapolis Business Journal this weekend. Gravity Ventures emerged out of discussions we had been having around the studio for several years. For several years Kristian Andersen + Associates had been in the process of formalizing the process of making equity investments in our clients. We knew that there was a larger opportunity (and demand) for a fund that would allow mid-career executives to make smart venture investments. Six months ago I, along with the other managing member Mike Fitzgerald, launched Gravity Ventures. Since then we have successfully raised a committed fund (in arguably the toughest fund raising environment in the past 75 years)…

Stanford University and Neutron (an SF brand consultancy) recently asked 1,500 top American executives to identify the wickedest* problems their companies face. The number one problem? Balancing long-term goals with short-term demands. As the role of design in business has shifted over the past decade or so (and KA+A's focus has shifted along with it) we've seen firsthand how this is indeed a persistent and perplexing issue. As we integrate more tightly with product and marketing teams we often get a close look at how the struggle to balance immediate and felt needs with future goals and ambitions can play out in an organization. One way to address the problem is to keep…

Just a few days ago, I finally succumbed to Sudoku - the famous 9x9 grid logic puzzle in which you disperse digits 1 - 9  in each column, row, and 3x3 box only one time each, invented by Indy's own Howard Garns of  the Dagget architecture firm in 1979.

Other than the sheer satisfaction of declaring myself winner after completing each puzzle, the tangential benefits to my job as KA+A's Account Manager is a big plus, or a least it's one way of rationalizing the copious amounts of time I spend with the game. At its core, Sudoku is a game that exercises our reasoning and intellect, and our ability to account for the simultaneous unique happenings of each box, which is why I've selected it as a lens through which…

Or at least it becomes well documented. During the nearly two years that I have been Account Manager for Kristian Andersen + Associates, our project management system has evolved from instinct and concepts to tangible archives. While intuition is still very much a part of the process, we have freed up our time to focus on the right concepts, by putting the details on paper so to speak. This act of documenting action items and ideas makes them official and accountable.

After several months of browsing and trying on different project management suites, we settled into 37Signals’ Basecamp - and boy does it feel good! The biggest value Basecamp has added to our project management is documentation. With its intertwined system of Milestones, To-do’s, Messages, and File posting, Basecamp has…

I was listening to a great interview with Don Norman, by the folks over at AdaptivePath (listen here), this afternoon, and was taken aback when I heard him say that he advices all of his students to "not attempt to solve the problem that is asked of you (by clients)". It didn't take long for the point of his statement to sink-in. He went on to explain that they (clients) are almost always asking you to solve the wrong problem and that the most difficult part of design is to determine what the real problem is that your designing for.

We've been practicing and preaching this (albeit with a less antagonistic tone) for years. A client's reaction to this approach can often be very telling, and in many cases…

This year the staff at Kristian Andersen + Associates traveled from Indianapolis to New York City for our annual Holiday party . It was a whirl-wind 48 hour trip for the KA+A team (excepting Clay and Erin - who decided to prolong their holiday). We started with a little consumer marketing research (aka shopping) and finished with dinner at Nobu. We were blessed with a perfect NYC Christmas experience, including copious amounts of snow, sleet, and the tangy scent of urine on the subway.…

A big thanks to the editors at Indianapolis Monthly for naming Pecha Kucha Indy "Best Open Mic" event in Indianapolis for 2008. Kristian Andersen + Associates and our friends at Asthmatic Kitty have been staging Pecha Kucha events here in Indianapolis for over a year now and continue to be amazed by the level of enthusiasm and support that the event garners. If you're interested in presenting, helping, or just finding out more, be sure to visit: www.pkindy.org.

Excerpt from Indianapolis Monthly below:

Its concept is simple. Its pronunciation is not. Pecha Kucha (peh-chak-cha, if you’re a stickler for authenticity; peh-cha-koo-cha, if you speak Hoosier) takes its name from the Japanese word

This past week, Kristian Andersen + Associates had the privlidge of hosting the inaugural AIGA Indianapolis Studio Tour Series at our offices. The purpose of the studio tours series is to foster a bit of cross polination within the Indianapolis design community. Additionaly, if gives studios and agencies the ability to peek into the inner workings of other design firm's work environments.

As part of the evening's festivities we featured Dos Banderas Sangrita, one of our product / equity joint ventures. If you haven't tried Sangrita yet... you don't know what your missing.

It was great to catch-up with our friends in the Indy design community and share our studio for the night with a…

We hosted the fourth installment of Pecha Kucha Indy on November 7th, 2008 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. More than 80 people turned out to hear one of the strongest groups of presenters we've had yet. Pecha Kucha, literally meaning "chit-chat" in Japanese, is a grassroots movement started by architects and designers to remedy long-winded lectures and frivolous presentations. The movement has spread to cities across the world, including Amsterdam, Beijing, Berlin, Budapest, Hong Kong, London, Portland, Nagano, Toronto, and now Indianapolis. In one corner, the presenters at Pecha Kucha have only six minutes and forty seconds to convey their idea, with twenty slides at twenty seconds each, whether they like it or not. In the…