“Here are the materials, ideas, and forces at work in our world. These are the tools with which the World of Tomorrow must be made.” With that, the pamphlet announced the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
Alfonso Iannelli was right at home in the World of Tomorrow. Having gotten his start designing posters for vaudeville, Iannelli was also right at home with hype. Sunbeam Products was showcasing two of Iannelli’s designs: a toaster and a coffee pot, or the T-9 Toastmaster and C-20 Coffeemaster. These hardly seem innovative to today’s audience. But toasters were still an emerging tech in the 1930s. And the C-20 pioneered the vacuum coffee process which even today connoisseurs consider the superior way to make coffee.
Most importantly, the C-20 and T-9 brought the Streamline Moderne style to life. The push towards modernism was a recurring theme in Iannelli’s work. And there it was, at the World’s Fair, courtesy of Sunbeam.
Unified in style and updated in technology, these appliances have parallels in security capabilities. We’re often updating existing capabilities along with designing and implementing new ones. For example, suppose we have an existing workforce identity and access management program. Suppose we also have customer identities within the ecommerce website. A common challenge is to bring these two programs up-to-date and centralize the way identity is secured.
When developing a vision for the future, we naturally look for ways to implement the latest technology. It is equally important that we look for ways to standardize and unify the design for the experience.
Find the Streamline Moderne of identity and access management. First, find your vision.
After acclaim at the New York World’s Fair, Sunbeam put the coffee maker and toaster into production. The Coffeemaster would stay on the market nearly thirty years, wrapping up its run in 1964. Meanwhile? The Toastmaster was immortalized in a slice of Americana. On the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1948, central to the Norman Rockwell painting, there sat Alfonso Iannelli’s toaster. Moderne had arrived.
The starting point was the World of Tomorrow. Likewise, with your vision, the starting point is showcasing a pilot. Develop a proof-of-concept. Tie it to something larger. Hype it with all the gusto of a vaudeville poster.
Showcase your vision. Take this moment to gain early support and feedback.
This article is part of a series on designing cyber security capabilities. To see other articles in the series, including a full list of design principles, click here.
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