Design was something that was important to me from the start of this blog, over different incarnations of the blog, I featured interesting design related news. Design is defined as a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, interfaces or other object before it is made.
But none of the definition really talks about what design really is in the way that Dieter Rams principles of good design do. His principles are:
It is innovative
It makes a product useful
It is aesthetic
It makes a product understandable
It is unobtrusive
It is honest
It is long-lasting
It is thorough down to the last detail
It is environmentally-friendly – it can and must maintain its contribution towards protecting and sustaining the environment.
It is as little design as possible
Bitcoin isn’t long lasting as a network, which is why people found the need to fork the blockchain and build other cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin uses 91 terawatts of energy annually or about the entire energy consumption of Finland.
The Bitcoin network relies on thousands of miners running energy intensive machines 24/7 to verify and add transactions to the blockchain. This system is known as “proof-of-work.” Bitcoin’s energy usage depends on how many miners are operating on its network at any given time. – So Bitcoin is environmentally unfriendly by design.
On the other hand, Apple products, which are often claimed to be also influenced by Dieter Rams also fail his principles. They aren’t necessarily environmentally friendly as some like AirPods are impossible to repair or recycle.
Now that the awards have been announced I can share my PHNX 2025 favourites from the categories that I had a the good fortune to judge. It took me a little time to sit down and collect my thoughts. You can find the details of the Grand Prix winners here.
My PHNX 2025 favourites come from around the world. The categories are truly global in nature and you get work from a wide range of agency sizes. Partly because of my time in Hong Kong campaigns from Cathay Pacific and HSBC stood out for me when looking at PHNX 2025. This wasn’t out of a sense of mawkish nostalgia, but because I understand the cultural context and legislative issues lurking beneath the surface looking to sink a campaign for fear of ‘soft resistance’.
Cathay Pacific paraolympics
While Hong Kong has historically had a strong showing at the paraolympics , its para-olympians achievements hadn’t been seen in the past. Cathay Pacific used the new opportunities that generative AI tools allowed these moments to be recreated.
Cathay Pacific had the permission to do this advert because of its position in Hong Kong life. Cathay Pacific aka ‘CX’ is the nervous system that connects Hong Kong and Hong Kongers to the wider world. As importantly, CX also connects the Hong Kong diaspora to the home city. The airline’s loyalty card is the second most common card for Hong Kongers after the Hong Kong ID card.
HSBC – Hong Kong move forward
Hong Kong as a city has been through a lot:
The protests
The National Security Law and the social changes that came after it
COVID-19 lockdown
A battered economy
All of this piled on top of the co-opetition between the city and nearby cities from Guangzhou and Shenzhen to Macau and Singapore.
Move Forward tries to capture the Hong Kong commercial spirit, even as ‘Underneath the Lion Rock’ common identity dimmed and spread around the world.
HSBC took this concept further by using Tony Leung Chiu-wai ‘aka Little Tony’ as a brand spokesperson. Leung as a star is universally liked by Hong Kongers, from Marvel fans to Wong Kar-wai devotees like me. Leung embodies the ‘Lion Rock spirit’. He left school at 15 due to family hardship. Worked in everyman jobs like a salesman in an electrical goods store and built his career thanks the apprenticeship / talent development system that local TV station TVB ran at the time.
Midea white goods
In the 1980s and early 1990s this ad wouldn’t have been notable. It would have been considered a good advert, but not great. But it’s now 2025, Gym Shark clothing and Suri dental health adverts are soul-rotting. So the joy of seeing any craft and conceptual creativity in an advert makes this Midea spot notable.
https://youtu.be/ujpb1o-vlBU
If Diageo made white goods, this is what their campaigns would look like.
Limin’ with Gram
Of my PHNX 2025 favourites, Limin with Gram was my sole pick from the UK based on the categories that I was a jury member for. It warmed the strategist in me for the way cultural insights were applied to a health-related public service announcement style campaign.
Motorsport fandom is strange. Back when I was a child motorsport fandom was a bunch of anoraks – literally. There was a category of clothing that you could buy from mail order catalogues and retailers like Demon Tweeks called a rally jacket. This was a coat good enough to deal with some cold wet weather branded by a car company or a tobacco brand.
Motorsport fandom, in particular single-seater race series are starting to see very different types of fans who learned their supporting ideas from the K-pop armies which are a symbiot of the artist promotion machine. While both promotion machine and fans are separate with very different tactics, they were united by a common goal to a point.
This isn’t the first time that media has brought in new fans, gaming created fans in the past. But the current motorsport fandom is interesting because of the cultural friction that it brings for drivers and legacy fans. From hate campaigns and death threats against drivers to ‘idol’ style objectification – women are demonstrating traits that would define toxic masculinity. All wrapped up in pastel tinted social media posts and Etsy products – so that makes it all fine, doesn’t it?
WPP has its next CEO – but what do clients make of heir apparent? – It’s not indifference. It’s pragmatism. Marketers like this don’t want to buy into the idea that a leadership change signals sweeping transformation. After all, Rose doesn’t start until September. Until then, they’d rather stay focused on the present, not the promise.
Ryan Kangisser, a bellwether for client perspective thanks to his proximity to them as the chief strategy officer at MediaSense, expanded on the point: “I do think that often the industry cares more about these sorts of appointments than clients do. Especially if clients have got a really solid client lead, or business lead, then they’re the people who they feel are the ones driving their business.”
The Sennheiser HD 25 Light is a modern marvel of design that can trace its history back as far as 1968. German headphone company Sennheiser started making a range of headphones that would become iconic.
How we got the Sennheiser HD 25 light
Founded in the immediate aftermath of the second world war, Sennheiser quickly built up a reputation in professional broadcast and recording circles with its microphones. In 1968 Sennheiser launched the HD 414, which was made sturdy plastic mouldings and a highly adjustable headband , attached to light on-ear headphones. The HD 414 set a design philosophy that the Sennheiser HD 25 Light continues on.
This was back when most headphones were bulky ‘cans’ a la vintage Koss models. They would weigh on the listener during a long listening session. The Sennheiser HD 414 by comparison was light and easy to wear while providing an open accurate sound.
My first foray into hi-fi as a teenager was buying a pair of HD 414s from Richer Sounds. By that time Sennheiser had a full range of headphones, many of which were lighter and more modern looking than anything else on the market, especially when compared to AKG, Beyerdynamic or Sony.
Sennheiser had started making pilot headsets for Lufthansa in 1980 and had developed a good understanding of sound isolation.
Sony MDR-V6 and MDR-7500 series.
When I started DJing, I aspired to own a pair of Sony MDR-V6 launched in 1985 and only discontinued in 2020. These live on through the Sony MDR-7500 series.
These had a reputation for sound quality, good sound isolation, were robust and less bulky than their European rivals. They still weighed in at 230+ grams which could be a bit wearing after several hours. This was the rival that Sennheiser had to beat, and when they were launched Japan and Sony were at their peak.
However, the things hi-fi and sound recording magazines don’t tell you about them
Over the longer term, the vinyl trim on the Sony headphones would start to flake and they weren’t designed to be user-serviceable. Finally, even if you were inclined to repair and maintain them, Sony wouldn’t sell you the parts (in the UK at least.) 12 months of regularly DJing with them and they were needed new ear pads and a headband.
Later on I would go to video shoots and see sound recordists with Sonys which had gaffer-taped headbands and ear pads that looked rat bitten.
1988
1988 was a pivotal year, Mr and Mrs Danny Rampling were running Shoom out of a gym in Southwark, Paul Oakenfold was running similar nights in the backroom of Richard Branson‘s Heaven nightclub underneath Charing Cross station. Up North, the Hacienda was hosting the Zumbar and Hot.
All of which were pivotal in the rise of house music and nightlife culture for the following four decades. This in turn drove sales of professional DJ equipment including the Made 2 Fade family of mixers and Technics SL-1200 series turntables. Record shops sprang up on the high street catering to this audience, the kind of frequency only seen with Turkish barber shops now.
What was lost in all that cultural change was the launch of the Sennheiser HD 25. The Sennheiser HD 25 (1) when it was released was aimed at broadcast users in outdoor settings and sound recorders on a film, TV or advertising shoot.
It had the robust build quality and lightness of the HD 414, and sat on the ear in a similar manner which allowed for hours of very comfortable listening. There was a split head rest which helped keep the head ventilated while listening and spread the load. It had clutter free cabling which borrowed from Sennheiser’s experience making headsets for pilots, along with good sound isolation.
The frame had a special bracket that allowed an ear cup to be pivoted off your ear, making them ideal for DJs.
Finally it was easy to power as a headset thanks to aluminium voice coils that drew on Sennheiser’s heritage making professional microphones for broadcast and studio usage.
The Sennheiser HD 25 (1) when it was released was aimed at broadcast users in outdoor settings and sound recorders on a film, TV or advertising shoot and it took a while for DJs to discover it.
Being aimed at professional users Sennheiser designed them to be user serviceable. You can still buy all the parts AND there is a good third party community making parts for them as well.
Concorde
By the early 1990s, the Sennheiser HD 25 family of headphones comprised of the Sennheiser HD-25 (1) and the Sennheiser HD 25 SP – which is the direct forerunner of the Sennheiser HD 25 Light.
The headphones caught the attention of British Airways who were looking for passenger headphones that matched the noisy but premium experience of flying on Concorde. Sennheiser built a simplified version with adaptions to match the onboard audio system drawing from the HD 25 and the vintage HD 414 headband design known as the HD 25 BA.
This then set the foundation for Sennheiser to design the HD 25 SP as a simplified version of the HD 25. The HD 25 SP didn’t need to have a high level of impedance match the aircraft audio system, so it could be a lot easier to power.
What’s impressive about the Sennheiser HD 25 range is how little they’ve changed over the four decades they’ve been in production. There has been a slight improvement with the HD 25 (2) and the HD 25 Pro – which gave users a coiled cable and optional velour ear pads (recommended). Most of the other variants have been either limited editions more about marketing than sound, and some brand collaborations notably an adidas edition with three stripes and blue ear pads.
The Sennheiser HD 25 Light was a revamp of the HD 25 SP. The differences were:
A different headband design that modernised the vintage HD 414 inspired headband design. It connects to the back of the earphone the same as the HD 25, allowing it to use the same drivers as its big brother.
Sennheiser HD 25 Light
So what are they like and why am I talking about them? I got a pair of the Sennheiser HD 25 Light because I was doing more video calls in crowded spaces and wanted an on ear headphone that would work. It wasn’t hard to know what I wanted. If am listening to music or an audiobook in bed I use a pair of HD 25 headphones. They are very detailed even on low volume and ideal because falling off the bed does no damage to them at all.
I could have gone with a pair of gamer headphones, but they are overly bulky and their sound is tuned for Call of Duty rather than than video calls, podcasts and electronica. I found that they tend to get warm when you’re wearing them on two back-to-back calls and a three-hour virtual workshop. Lastly they come with LED lighting and controls that I don’t need.
So my solution was simple a pair of HD 25 Lights and a third party cable that had a built-in microphone. They sound similar to the the HD 25 like you would expect, the slight differences I think are down to the slightly different fit of the headband affecting they way they sit against my ear and the third party audio cable.
Calls are clear and detailed as is most type of music with more detail than the Shure IEMs that I previously wore all the time. I have a few hacks planned for the headset:
A hard case cover to keep all my audio bits together lint and dust-free in my bag as much as protect the headphones
A smidge of Sugru as reinforcement at the joint between the headphone jack and the cable to reinforce it. I do the same on the power cable for my laptop where the cable meets the MagSafe adapter. It’s less hassle to deal with than the blocks of epoxy putty that plumbers use and comes in more manageable amounts.
The Shure IEMs are still fine for talking calls on the move and listening to podcasts on the tube, while the Sennheiser HD 25 Light headphones take over my office work.
I have a couple of great designer collaboration profiles. The first designer collaboration is Susan Kare. Kare reflects on how she started at Apple and her work on designing the graphic elements of the original Macintosh operating system.
Her work as a designer collaboration with Apple’s engineering team, still echoes down through Apple lore and in the work of user experience (UX) specialists to this day
A second interview on Sarah’s designer collaboration with the Mac development team is equally illuminating.
Nike produced documentary on Tom Sachs on his relationship with Nike, the eventual designer collaboration on the Mars Yard series of shoes and the development of Nike Common Craft series of shoes. The childhood joy of the project Apollo era space programme shines through in Sachs’ thinking.
Manga Video
Andy Frain and an oral history of Manga Video, which as the video company responsible for my love of anime as an art form. Akira, Fist of The North Star, Legend of the Overfield and Ghost In The Shell were all out on video from Manga Video.
The philosophy of AI opportunity
Ben Thompson on the philosophy of different technology firms and their approach to AI. The commentary on both Apple and Google are fascinating, in particular the discussion about vintage Google’s ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button.
Contrast Ben Thompson’s video with Benedict Evans on AI. I like the idea of Benedict’s that ‘AI’ is effectively a synonym for ‘magic’.
Marketing effectiveness
The Media Leader had a great interview with Les Binet at Cannes Festival of Creativity. The result is 27 minutes of marketing effectiveness gold.
Andy Hertzfeld smartphone demo
Andy Hertzfeld is famous amongst the veteran Apple Mac community for being the software architect who built most of the key parts of the original Macintosh operating system. Hertzfeld’s business card at Apple was ‘Software wizard’ – so can be partly to blame for all those people who had wizard, guru and ninja in their LinkedIn job title decades later. After Apple, Hertzfeld went on to found three companies:
Radius who made Mac accessories from monitors to high end video cards
General Magic who designed productivity devices and software that were the ancestors of PDAs (personal digital assistants), smartphones and tablets. It then pivoted to voice based computing that supported General Motors OnStar system. General Magic got so much right about technology but was far too early and featured in its own documentary on what went right and wrong.
Eazel who developed the Nautilus file system for Linux, which preceded the use of cloud computing storage like Google Drive and Box.net.
Hertzfeld captured the most complete version of the Apple Mac’s history in his blog folklore.org and the accompanying book Revolution in the Valley.
This smartphone prototype demo comes from his time at General Magic, was recorded in 1995.
The Financial Times opined on the obsolescence of business cards. This has been a common theme for the past quarter of a century, so whether or not it’s actually news is up for debate.
Business cards have been a surprisingly accurate marker of my career’s evolution. Before college, when I was working in laboratories to save up, business cards were strictly for management. If anyone needed to reach me, they’d receive my name and extension number scribbled on a company compliments slip.
Fast forward to my early agency days, and changing my business cards became the immediate priority after receiving a promotion letter. I vividly recall discussing new cards with our office manager, Angie, to reflect my new title: from Account Executive to Senior Account Executive. While that promotion enabled me to buy my first home, it was the tangible act of updating my business cards that truly solidified that future title for me in my memory.
Building a network was an important part of development in the early part of my career and my manager at the time would ask us each week how many business cards we’d given out as a way of quantifying that development.
Even today in Asian countries, business cards come loaded with cultural symbolism and a distinct etiquette of exchange. The exchange of them is handy as it allows to lay out a model of who is around a meeting table based on the card collection, facilitating easier meeting communications.
Personal organisers
In the mid-1990s, the personal organiser was a staple, its prevalence varying depending on location and budget. These organisers typically featured loose-leaf pages for schedules, an address book, and a system for storing and archiving business cards, even those of people who had moved on. However, by 2001, the media was already concerned about the impending demise of the personal organiser and its potential impact on the business card’s future.
Filofax
Filofax has the reputation for being the most British of brands. It originally started off as an importer of an American product Lefax. Lefax was a Philadelphia-based business which made organisers popular within industry including power plant engineers in the early 20th century.
At that time electricity was considered to be the enabler that the internet is now, and Lefax helped to run power plants effectively and reliably. Filofax eventually acquired Lefax in 1992. During the 1980s, the Filofax became a symbol of professionalism and aspirational upward mobility. I was given one as soon as I started work, I still have it at my parents home. It’s leather cover didn’t even develop a patina, despite the beating it took in various parts of my work life: in night clubs, chemical plants and agency life. Filofax even became part of cinematic culture in the James Belushi film Taking Care of Business also known as Filofaxin many markets.
Day-Timer
In the US, there was the Day-Timer system, which came out of the requirements of US lawyers in the early 1950s and became a personal management tool for white collar workers in large corporates like Motorola – who appreciated their whole system approach. Day-Timer was as much a lifestyle, in the same way that David Allen’s Getting Things Done® (GTD®) methodology became in the mid-2000s to 2010s. Customers used to go and visit the personal organiser factory and printing works for fun. Along the way, other products such as At-A-Glance and Day Runner had appeared as substitute products. Day-Timer inspired the Franklin Planner system; a similar mix of personal organiser and personal management philosophy launched in 1984.
By the mid-1990s, Day-Timer had skeuomorphic PC programme that mirrored the real-world version of the Day-Timer. At the time this and competitor applications would allow print-outs that would fit in the real world Day-Timer organiser. Day-Timer’s move to mobile apps didn’t so well and now it exists in a paper-only form catering to people wanting to organise their personal lives and home-workers.
Rolodex
While the Filofax allowed you take to your world with you, the Rolodex allowed you to quickly thumb through contacts and find the appropriate name.
Back when I first started my first agency job, I was given my first Rolodex frame. I spent a small fortune on special Rolodex business card holders. At my peak usage of Rolodex as a repository for my business contacts, I had two frames that I used to rifle through names of clients, suppliers and other industry contacts.
Rolodex became a synonym for your personal network, you even heard of people being hired for ‘their Rolodex’. For instance, here’s a quote from film industry trade magazine Hollywood Reporter: Former British Vogue Chief Eyes September for Launch of New Print Magazine, Platform (May 8, 2025):
…to blend “the timeless depth of print with the dynamism of digital” with coverage of top creative forces, no doubt leaning into Edward Enninful’s enviable Rolodex of A-list stars, designers and creators gathered through years spent in the fashion and media space with tenures at British Vogue and as European editorial director of Vogue.
If I was thinking about moving role, the first thing I would do is take my Rolodex frames home on a Friday evening. The fan of business cards is as delicate as it is useful. It doesn’t do well being lugged around in a bag or rucksack. Each frame would go home in a dedicated supermarket shopping bag.
The Rolodex was anchored to the idea of the desk worker. The knowledge worker had a workstation that they used everyday. Hot-desking as much the computer is the enemy of the Rolodex. My Rolodex usage stopped when I moved to Hong Kong. My frames are now in boxes somewhere in my parents garage. Doomed not by their usefulness, but their lack of portability.
Personal information management
The roots of personal information management software goes back ideas in information theory, cognitive psychology and computing that gained currency after the second world war.
As the idea of personal computers gained currency in the 1970s and early 1980s, personal information software appeared to manage appointments and scheduling, to-do lists, phone numbers, and addresses. The details of business cards would be held electronically.
At this time laptops were a niche computing device. Like the Rolodex, the software stayed at the office or in the den at home. NoteCards used software to provide a hybridisation of hypertext linkages with the personal information models of the real world. NoteCards was developed and launched in 1987, prefiguring applications like DevonTHINK, Evernote and Notion by decades.
As well as providing new links to data, computers also allowed one’s contacts to become portable. It started off with luggable and portable laptop computers.
Putting this power into devices that can fit in the hand and a coat pocket supercharged this whole process.
Personal digital assistants
Personal digital assistants (PDA) filled a moment in time. Mobile computer data connections were very slow and very niche on GSM networks. Mobile carrier pricing meant that it only worked for certain niche uses, such as sports photographers sending their images though to their agency for distribution to picture desks at newspapers and magazines. While the transfer rate was painfully slow, it was still faster than burning the images on to CD and using a motorcycle courier to their picture agency.
The PDA offered the knowledge worker their address book, calendar, email and other apps in their pocket. It was kept up to date by a cradle connected to their computer. When the PDA went into the cradle information went both ways, contacts and calendars updated, emails sent, content to be read on the PDA pushed from the computer. IBM and others created basic productivity apps for the Palm PDA.
IrDA
By 1994, several proprietary infra red data transmission formats existed, none of which spoke to each other. This was pre-standardisation on USB cables. IrDA was a standard created by an industry group, looking to combat all the proprietary systems. The following year, Microsoft announced support in Windows, allowing laptops to talk with other devices and the creation of a simple personal area network.
This opened the possibility of having mice and other input devices unconstrained by connecting cables. It also allowed PDAs to beam data to each other via ‘line of sight’ connections. The reality of this was frustrating. You would often have to devices an inch from each other and hold them there for an eternity for the data to crawl across. It wasn’t until 1999 that the first devices with Bluetooth or wi-fi appeared and a couple more years for them to become ubiquitous. Unsolicited messages over Bluetooth aka bluejacking started to appear in the early 2000s.
But IrDA provided a mode of communication between devices.
versit Consortium
versit Consortium sorted another part of the puzzle. In the early 1990s the blending of computer systems with telephony networks as gaining pace. A number of companies including Apple, IBM and Siemens came together to help put together common standards to help computer systems and telephony. In 1995, they had come up with the versitcard format for address book contacts, better known now as ‘vCards’. These were digital business cards that could be exchanged by different personal information management software on phones, computers and PDAs. For a while in the late 1990s and early 2000s I would attach my vCard on emails to new contacts. I still do so, but much less often.
The following year the same thing happened with calendar events as well.
Over time, the digital business card came to dominate, via device-to-device exchanges until the rise of LinkedIn – the professional social network.
Faster data networks allowed the digital business card sharing to become more fluid.
A future renaissance for the business card?
While business cards are currently seen outdated in the west, could they enjoy a renaissance? There are key changes in behaviour that indicate trends which would support a revitalisation of business cards.
Digital detox
While information overload has been a turn that has been with us since personal computers, digital detox is a new phenomenon that first started to gain currency in 2008 according to Google Books data. Digital detox as a concept has continued to climb. It has manifested itself with people talking a break from their screens including smartphones. Digital detox has continued to gain common currency.
Creating a need for tangible contact details in the form of a business card in certain contexts.
The pivot of personal organisers
Day-Timer and Filofax didn’t disappear completely. While Day-Timer is no longer a professional ‘cult’, it now helps remote workers organise their own work day at home. They also tap into the needs of people organising their own wedding. The paper plans also gives them a memento of this event in a largely digital world.
If personal organisers continue to exist then real-world business cards would also make sense in those contexts.
Bullet-journaling
Ryder Carroll is known as the ‘father’ of the bullet journal which was a home-made organisation method which was similar to the kind of task lists I was taught to pull together in my first agency role. There were aspects of it that would be familiar to Day-Timer advocates as well.
When the world was going digital Carroll used paper to help organise himself. Carroll tapped into the fact that even computer programmers use paper including notebooks and post-it notes to manage projects and personal tasks within those projects. Carroll took his ‘system’ public via Kickstarter project in 2013.
Bullet journaling provided its users with simplicity, clarity and an increased sense of control in their life. What is of interest for this post, is the move from the virtual back into paper organisation.
Changing nature of work
Hybrid working, remote working and increasing freelance communities in industry such as advertising has affected one’s professional identity. This has huge implications for personal standing and even mental health. Human connection becomes more important via virtual groups and real-world meet-ups. Controlling one’s own identity via a business card at these meet-ups starts to make an increasing amount of sense.
The poisoning of the LinkedIn well
On the face of it LinkedIn has been a wonderful idea. Have a profile that’s part CV / portfolio which allows your social graph of professional connections to move with you through your career. Services were bolted on like advertising, job applications and corporate pages to attract commercial interest and drive revenue.
Over time, LinkedIn has increased the amount of its creator functions, driving thought leadership content that is a prime example of enshitification. 2025 saw ‘thought leaders’ publishing generative AI created posts as entirely their own work.
LinkedIn has become devalued as a digital alternative to the humble business card.
