Marty Neumeier (born October 10, 1947) is an American author and speaker who writes about brand, design, innovation, and creativity. He is currently Director of CEO Branding for Liquid Agency, a branding agency in San Jose, California.
, 2014. Accessed January 23, 2014.

Career

Neumeier attended

Art Center College of Design The ArtCenter College of Design is a private art college in Pasadena, California. It was incorporated in 1930 as a degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both the visual arts and design. ...

from 1967 to 1969. For 15 years he worked in advertising and brand design as a communication designer and writer in Southern California. In 1984 he moved to

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

to work with clients such as

Adobe Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, and

Symantec Symantec may refer to: * Gen Digital, an American consumer software company formerly known as Symantec * Symantec Security, a brand of enterprise security software purchased by Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, ...

. By 1998 his firm Neumeier Design Team created retail packaging for software products, including Filemaker, Norton Antivirus, Apple system software, and HP LaserJet.''Graphis'' 338
, Barnett, C. "Interview with Marty Neumeier: Life after ''Critique''." ''Graphis'' 338 (2002): 94–103. Accessed January 18, 2014. He was also a contributing editor for the magazine ''Communication Arts''. In 1996 he founded the "seminal but now-defunct design magazine ''Critique''", a quarterly publication about

design thinking Design thinking refers to the set of Cognition, cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design prob ...

.AIGA Design Archives
''Critique'' Magazine, Fall 1996. Accessed January 18, 2014.''Strategy + Business'' review of ''Critique'' Magazine
Hurst, David K. "A Robot Ate My Job: Review of ''Metaskills: Five Talents for the Robotic Age'' by Marty Neumeier." ''Strategy + Business'' 72, Autumn 2013. Accessed September 18, 2013. ''Critique'''s designer contributors included

Robert Bringhurst Robert Bringhurst Appointments to the Order of Canada (2013). (born 1946) is a CanadianWong (1999). poet, typographer and author. He has translated substantial works from Haida and Navajo and from classical Greek and Arabic. He wrote ''The El ...

Ivan Chermayeff Ivan Chermayeff HonRDI (June 6, 1932 – December 2, 2017) was an American graphic designer and artist. He is best known as co-founder of graphic design firm Chermayeff & Geismar. Chermayeff created logotypes for the Smithsonian Institution, Ha ...

Milton Glaser Milton Glaser (June 26, 1929June 26, 2020) was an American graphic designer, recognized for his designs, including the I Love New York logo; a 1966 poster for Bob Dylan; the logos for DC Comics, Stony Brook University, Brooklyn Brewery; and his ...

, Steven Heller,

Stefan Sagmeister Steve (born August 6, 1962) is an Austrian graphic designer, storyteller, and typographer based in New York City. In 1993, Sagmeister founded his company, Sagmeister Inc., to create designs for the music industry. He has designed album covers for ...

Paula Scher Paula Scher (born October 6, 1948) is an American graphic designer, painter and design educator. She also served as the first female principal at Pentagram, which she joined in 1991. She started her career as an art director in the 1970s and ear ...

, David Stuart and

Massimo Vignelli Massimo Vignelli (; January 10, 1931 – May 27, 2014) was an Italian designer who worked in several areas, including packaging, housewares, furniture, public signage, and showroom design. He worked within the modernist tradition, emphasizing sim ...

. In 2003, Neumeier started Neutron, a San Francisco consulting firm specializing in internal branding, and wrote three books: ''The Brand Gap'', ''Zag'' (included in ''The 100 Best Business Books of All Time'' by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten."Books in the 100 Best"
Covert, Jack and Sattersten, Todd. Blog: ''The 100 Best Business Books of All Time''. Accessed January 18, 2014.) and ''The Designful Company.''''The Brand Gap'' review
''Morningstar Multimedia'', January 2013. Accessed January 18, 2014.''The Brand Gap'' review
Scanlon, Jessie. "The Onliness of Strong Brands." ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', November 2006. Accessed January 18, 2014.''The Designful Company'' discussion
, "''Brand Gap'' and ''Zag'' Author Marty Neumeier's New Book ''The Designful Company'' on Virtual Tour." ''Sandblog'', April 2009. Accessed January 18, 2014. He also served on the board of directors of

AIGA The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) is a professional organization for design. Its members practice all forms of communication design, including graphic design, typography, interaction design, user experience, branding and identity. The ...

, known until 2005 as the American Institute of Graphic Arts, developing its first mission statement. He was president of AIGA Center for Brand Experience, where he edited and published ''The Dictionary of Brand''.AIGA.org
Accessed January 18, 2014.''The Dictionary of Brand''
Accessed January 18, 2014. In 2009, Neutron merged with Liquid Agency, which named Neumeier the firm's Director of Transformation."Liquid Agency Merges with Neutron LLC"
''Bloomberg Business Wire''. November 10, 2009. Accessed January 18, 2014. At Liquid he wrote two books on business creativity, ''Metaskills'' and ''The 46 Rules of Genius'', and an updated version of ''The Dictionary of Brand'' for Google.''Metaskills'' interview
"Marty Neumeier on Identifying Your Metaskills." Podcast: ''Author Talk with Nancy Aldrich-Ruenzel.'' February 8, 2013. Accessed January 18, 2014. He currently maintains two blog series, ''Steal This Idea'' and ''The Rules of Genius''. He has given talks and workshops at events such as the UX conference in LondonSpeakers at UX London 2013
Accessed January 23, 2014. and the Design Management Institute's Remix conference.
, Accessed January 23, 2014. His slide presentation, ''The Brand Gap'', has been viewed over 25 million times.''The Brand Gap'' slideshow
Accessed January 18, 2014.

Books

*''The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance between Business Strategy and Design'', 2003,

New Riders Press Peachpit is a publisher of books focused on graphic design, web design, and development. Peachpit's parent company is Pearson Education, which owns additional educational media brands including Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, and New Riders. F ...

: A book about brand-building in the post industrial age *''The Dictionary of Brand'', 2004,

: A pocket-sized glossary of brand terms, co-developed with Willoughby Design. Out of print *''Zag: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands'', 2006,

: A book offering a framework for brand differentiation *''The Designful Company: How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation'', 2008,

: A book about branding and creative collaboration for corporate leaders *''Metaskills: Five Talents for the Robotic Age'', 2012,

: A book about skills for succeeding in the age of intelligent machines *''The 46 Rules of Genius: An Innovator's Guide to Creativity'', 2014,

: A book of concise insights about how people innovate and create *''The Brand Flip: Why Customers Now Run Companies—and How You Can Profit from It'', 2015,

: Sequel to ''The Brand Gap'' about how to build brands in an era of customer dominance *''Brand A-Z: An Interactive Dictionary of 1,000 Essential Brand Terms'', 2017, Amazon Digital Services: An illustrated ebook with hyperlinked terms

Video

''Marty Neumeier's Innovation Workshop'', 2009, New Riders. An instructional DVD with group exercises."Marty Neumeier's Innovation Workshop."
''Pearson Higher Education''. Accessed January 18, 2014.

Selected articles

* "Apple Computer", ''Communication Arts'', May/June 1985: A feature article on

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...

John Sculley John Sculley III (born April 6, 1939) is an American businessman, entrepreneur and investor in high-tech startups. Sculley was vice-president (1970–1977) and president of PepsiCo (1977–1983), until he became chief executive officer (CEO) ...

, and

Creative Services. * "

Herbert Bayer Herbert Bayer (April 5, 1900 – September 30, 1985) was an Austrian and American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental and interior designer, and architect. He was instrumental in the development of the ...

", ''Communication Arts'', September/October 1988: A profile of the last

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...

master. * "Secrets of Design", ''Critique'', 1996–2001: A series of 15 articles on various aspects of

. * "Six Predictions for the Millenium", ''Critique'', Issue 7, 1998: An article that predicted the

dot-com bust The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Intern ...

and discussed design trends.
"The Aesthetics of Management"
''Change This'', Issue 54, 2009. An essay on the art of business. * ''Dreaming: A Meta Skill for the Future'', ''Harvard Business Review'', April 21, 2014. A case-study article on the value of imagination. * ''Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen Are Both Wrong About Finding the Future of Business Education'', ''Forbes'', July 12, 2014. A call for design thinking instead of traditional business thinking. * ''Ten Ways to Jumpstart Creativity'', ''Huffington Post'', October 13, 2014. Tips for applying your imagination to business challenges. * ''The Rules of Genius: An Innovator’s Guide to Creativity'', ''Harvard Business Review'', May 1, 2015. A case-study article on innovation skills.

Career

Books

Video

Selected articles

References

External links