What's It Take to Make a Product Iconic?

This is the eBook version of the printed book.

This Element is an excerpt from Conversational Capital: How to Create Stuff People Love to Talk About (9780137145508), by Bertrand Cesvet, Tony Babinski, and Eric Alper. Available in print and digital formats.

How to create products that are truly iconic--and create conversation everywhere they go.

The Red Bull can has become a modern-day icon. It took Dietrich Mateschitz and Johannes Kastner more than a year during the company’s start-up phase to design the can. Some might argue that this micro-management of packaging minutiae was an overinvestment in time and resources, but the result speaks for itself. Through such care and attention, product and package design can take on iconic power….