Achieving beauty, usability, and make-ability mean shape creating and problem solving are all a part of CBA work, as well as working with Client Associates to shape their Creative Culture. Chris Bangle, managing director of CBA: “Experience has taught me that it takes strong commitments to challenge dogmas with inspiration and direct creativity with visionary courage, to make design and a design culture great”.
Chris Bangle formed CBA in Clavesana, a small village in the Langhe region of northern Italy, after leaving his position as Director of Group Design of BMW AG in 2009. He is now leading his own company, building a hybrid Studio/Design Residency for design amid the vineyards south of Turin, with room to exercise some new-found creative freedom.
In addition to the studio’s activities devoted to product and car design, workshops and strategic consultancy, CBA has developed in the last five years a branch dedicated to animation and cartoons. The key idea at the basis of the Inanimatti project is a world in which things that are not alive yet embark on adventures, feel affection, have hopes and preoccupations, or can just do something as mundane as daydreaming. The Inanimatti extensive project is currently being developed by CBA, as a cartoon series, a short film and a whole world of characters.
Merely saying you are engaging creatives is not enough. An “I have a problem, I need a solution perspective”, is not enough. You have to look at how problems should be faced, with a philosophical approach. We offer the client a new way of seeing things, from a very practical but also a philosophical point of view. Very often designers and managers minds are pre-set and tend to insert an object in one specific category. We drive you towards a new approach to every single object and build up an entire new design strategy for your company.
We are tireless creatives, committed to making innovation tangible. We can design any kind of product of course, but most importantly we are here to understand what you really need from a design consultancy and the deeper Why behind the product you want us to design. There are hidden layers to design that we want to illuminate and reveal, and engage with, so that they make the entire strength of a project. This is what you can call 360 degrees design process.
Chris Bangle and his Associates can provide a unique program and method of Workshop for the designers and all the staff of Your Company. It can be a single day/week workshop, or a part of a more complex and long-lasting consultancy program. Workshops mainly take place at CBA Studio in the countryside near Turin (Italy), which is a residency for design providing great inspiration for creatives of all professions. In other cases, upon specific request, the workshop can be organized in the Company’s offices. No matter where they take place, they all give new visions, energies and hope to your staff.
Design Leadership is not an accidental occurrence, but one that requires planning and commitment. Visions are strategic, Missions are tactical. Motivation and guidance of a Design Team needs both at once. To do this requires an understanding of the tools of Design Management. Should the Design Leadership be a part of your Vision, please contact us.
The experiences in design and innovation and the advice Chris Bangle has to offer after over 25 years as a manager make him a speaker in demand; he travels frequently around the world to lecture, teach design, and consult with his Client Associates. His goal in every speech or lecture is to exceed the expectations of the organizers, in order to engage their audience, give them food for thoughts from a design point of view and lead them to rethink their own position, no matter if they work in Design or in a different fields. “Discovers made through design can be applied to all fields of management and industry“, Chris Bangle says.
