Ged Carroll

Category: design | 設計 | 예술과 디자인 | デザイン

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:

  1. It is innovative
  2. It makes a product useful
  3. It is aesthetic
  4. It makes a product understandable
  5. It is unobtrusive
  6. It is honest
  7. It is long-lasting
  8. It is thorough down to the last detail
  9. It is environmentally-friendly – it can and must maintain its contribution towards protecting and sustaining the environment.
  10. 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.

  • September 2023 newsletter – the difficult 2nd album

    September 2023 newsletter introduction

    The September 2023 newsletter time came around quickly. As I write this, it’s almost the end of September and it feels like no time since I curated the last edition. If you’re reading this, and it’s your first time welcome! If you read the pioneer issue; I hope that this isn’t the newsletter equivalent of the difficult second album.

    Strategic outcomes

    If this continues to go well I will put one out each month. You can find my regular writings here and more about me here. 

    Things I’ve written.

    Rolex Submariner 5512
    Rolex Submariner 5512
    • Analysis on the Bucherer acquisition by Rolex – which shook up the luxury sector in the run up to the end of August.
    • Psychotherapy and culture. How psychotherapy has been mainstreamed via culture, and in turn influenced culture.
    • Digital abortion clinics. How tele-health businesses are trying to address the challenges posted by US state abortion bans and how these services should be doing a better job protecting their patients, in particular their privacy.

    Books that I have read.

    • The Code by Margaret O’Mara. O’Mara’s work like my last month’s recommendation Chip War is a history of Silicon Valley. The key difference is that O’Mara approaches the history through the lens of the American political environment, whereas Miller’s Chip War considered it more in terms of global geostrategic politics. You can read more of my take on The Code here.
    • Deluxe – how luxury lost its lustre by Dana Thomas. Thomas’ book came out in 2008, but much of it is still relevant today, particularly around what my friend Jeremy dubbed the ‘Supremification’ of the luxury sector. You can read more of my take on Deluxe here.

    Things I have been inspired by.

    • Lately I have been listening to Kurena an album by Japanese jazz musician Kurena Ishikawa. I reviewed the album here. 
    • The Korean Cultural Centre in London has a series of rotating art exhibitions. I got to see Audible Garden by Jinjoon Lee. Lee is a multimedia artist. The exhibition usesculptures, drawings, a wall painting, prints, videos, and directional sound installation to create an experience that blends inside and outside landscapes. If you’re involved in creating experiences you’ll want to see it. The exhibition is on until October 13, 2023.
    • My friend Natalie Lowe runs The Orangeblowfish with her husband in Shanghai. One of the projects that they worked on was helping media agency Mindshare rethink their office space and employee brand through the power of comics.
    • We talk a lot about the benefits of neurodiversity in business thinking. But a less explored area is that of cognitive diversity. While Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is an imperfect measure, this work by UCL and Sense Worldwidehighlights the benefits of cognitive diversity in envisioning new possibilities. 
    Cognitive diversity
    • Swatch Group continues with its Mondelēz International -like brand mash-ups (a la Cadburys Dairy Milk x Ritz crackers), this time Swatch x Blancpain. I wonder what this does to luxury brand caché? I imagine that there will be a short burst of hype tempered by existing customers concern about paying $800,000 for a watch from a brand that also puts its name on plastic tat. Omega were a well known premium watch brand, often seen as a cheaper alternative to Rolex. Blancpain is the oldest brand in Swiss watchmaking with the longest most storied history of horology. It is a brand for die-hard watch fans, they made the first automatic self winding wrist watch and still make sophisticated complications like the 1735 Grand Complication and the highly regarded Fifty Fathoms range which pioneered modern dive watches. The company slogan has been:

    Blancpain has never made a quartz watch and never will

    Blancpain
    swatch x blancpain

    It seems the resale value on these watches on secondary market platforms has dropped almost immediately after launch.

    Finally Alzheimers Research put out a fantastic animated film to illustrate the impact of dementia on a life.

    Things I have watched. 

    Moving on from the French new wave works of Jean-Pierre Melville that I viewed in August, this month I revisited works from the Hong Kong new wave. Chow Yun Fat’s performance in the John Woo-directed film The Killer blew me away when I first watched it on VHS tape and still moves me today, more on that here. I followed this up with John Woo’s second best well-known film Hard Boiled. Watching it for the first time in several years, gave me a slightly different perspective on the film – I can see obvious influence it would have had on 1990s Hollywood – in particular the Die Hard series; but the ‘new wave cinema’ elements felt like stylistic add-ons rather than a crucial part of the story. 

    Netflix has a couple of sleeper Japanese language series:

    • Sanctuary is about the journey of a young man from a broken family in the world of professional sumo.
    • Informa is a tale of revenge and assassination played out in modern day Japan highlighting the close links between the yakusa, local politicians, the construction industry and the media.

    Useful tools

    Small fridge magnets

    Working with colleagues who had a fantastic whiteboard, this whiteboard was vast like the rolling door on a freight carriage. Everything was brilliant but for the fact that Post-It notes wouldn’t adhere at all to the surface for some reason. Thankfully, I’d had a run through on the room a few days before and found this out by accident. So I got some fridge magnets that were ideal for using with Post-It notes on the day. I now have three dozen of them in my loadout for in-person workshops.

    Flight Delay Compensation

    If like me you’ve had problems with airline delays and cancellations, Moneysavingexpert have put together:

    • An explanation of your rights
    • Links to tools that make claiming comparatively painless

    More here.

    The sales pitch.

    Now taking bookings for strategic engagements. Contact me here.

    The End.

    Ok this is the end of my September 2023 newsletter, I hope to see you all back here again in a month. Be excellent to each other. Let me know what you think or if you have any recommendations to be featured in forthcoming issues. 

  • The Freshest Kids + more things

    The Freshest Kids

    The Freshest Kids tells the story of early breakdancing. My own attempts at breakdancing were very poor. My moonwalk was closer to John Hurt’s shuffle as part of his portrayal of John Merrick in The Elephant Man. Because of that I have a real appreciation of those people who can do breakdance properly. You can watch it here.

    RAYS Engineering

    I have a thing for manufacturing videos that shows how a product is made. RAYS Engineering alloy wheels are famous as providers of high quality after market wheels, particularly among fans of Japanese import vehicles. Their manufacturing process is unique. The forging process provides their wheels with superior properties to normal cast alloy wheels.

    Anjihood pop-up book

    Anjihood is the 32 square kilometre development (less than 3% the size of Hong Kong, or over 100 times bigger than Canary Wharf in London) outside Shanghai. It looks to blend the benefits of urban living with a more green environment – a 21st century analogue to the Victorian garden city concept. They commissioned Shanghai creative agency The Orangeblowfish to create a pop-up book that would convey the concepts behind Anjihood and the emotions they hope the development will evoke.

    Innovation in Japanese hospitals

    Japan is using a mix of robotics and machine learning tools to help assist staff in its hospitals cope with its aging population. NHK World goes in-depth in how a mix of commercial off the shelf solutions are being used in concert with each other.

    No to obsolescence

    Porsche Netherlands did this film to show no matter how old you’re Porsche, if they don’t have the relevant part available. They will go back to the original design drawings and remanufacture it for your vehicle.

    I am not too sure how this would hold up for electronics components which might not be able to get the relevant integrated circuits. But it’s an interesting commitment to make. In a low carbon economy, keeping existing vehicles on the road for longer is as important as a world full of Teslas.

    The Porsche 111 was first made some time in the early 1950s. Porsche only started building sports cars in 1948, but had been building tractors on and off since 1934 under the Porsche brand.

  • James A Micheners Writers Handbook

    Late on in his writing career a bestselling author created James A Micheners Writers Handbook. Now the stuff of thrift shops and the ‘for sale’ trolley in your local library, Michener was a bestselling author for over four decades. His paperback books were the size of doorstops, yet were sold in every airport for holiday reading.

    Writer’s handbook

    At the end of the first Gulf War, George W. Bush quoted one of Michener’s short stories in a celebration of the allied military effort. If you have ever watched the musical South Pacific, that was an adaption of Michener’s first book ‘Tales of the South Pacific‘. Ten of his works were adapted for film by Hollywood and there were a further five TV series or ‘mini-series’.

    Michener died in 1993, but during his life time his books sold an estimated 75 million copies worldwide. There was a distinctive Michener fingerprint to his books:

    • Geography was at the route of everything, the setting was the hero of his books
    • Deep research: Michener would research the culture, history and geology of the setting
    • A common narrative rhythm to his writing
    • Despite running to 1,000+ pages, Michener’s books were easy to read

    The writer’s handbook

    James A Micheners Writers Handbook talks through the process that Michener went through in writing a couple of his works. He talks about using a cut-and-paste methodology, where he physically cut and pasted in paragraphs on to typed sheets. He discusses the move from hot metal typesetting to phototypesetting and its effect on the editorial process.

    Michener’s career saw him move his writing process from mechanical typewriter to word processor and he discusses how this became beneficial to his writing style.

    Michener shows the feedback that he received from the publisher, the editor and even legal review – laying open how once the original draft is submitted to the publisher, creating a novel then becomes a team sport. And that’s even before marketing gets involved.

    This is all laid out including photographs of original manuscript pages and proofing copies in a coffee table book.

    Creating an easy-to-read books was deceptively hard work. The refining process that Michener went through reminded me of creating propositions for a creative brief in my day job.

    At the back of the book is his advice for future writers in terms of paths to getting published. He admitted that getting published had become much harder for a number of reasons:

    • The opportunities to showcase your writing had diminished due to the demise of short story publications
    • Publishers now relied on agents to filter manuscripts on their behalf
    • Writing courses were considered a par for the course
    • Michener recommended a number of careers to kickstart a writing career including working in public relations rather than journalism – which surprised me

    James A Micheners Writers Handbook won’t tell you how to create great stories, but it is a lesson in writing as a multi-stage process of creation, followed by refinement and further simplification of the language. Michener’s idea of simplification is still far more advanced than we write for today in business, in advertising copy or culture.

    The book itself is a bit of a curate’s egg. I would recommend it, but not too sure about who I should recommend it to. More on the book here.

    You can find more book reviews here.

  • Wonderlust Apple event

    The Apple Wonderlust event happened on September 12, 2023. The events timing fitted in with the two Apple events a year that we have grown to expect:

    • Worldwide Developers Conference – in June.
    • Autumn event in September / October.

    Unlike when I started buying Apple products these events are no longer hosted at external conference centres but at Apple’s own conference centre as part of its campus. For the past decade and a half Apple hasn’t participated at wider trade shows, in the same way that the likes of Samsung or Microsoft would at CES.

    Wonderlust iPhone 15 pro
    Apple Inc.

    Apple events from the late 1990s onwards built their reputation for being great live performances by Steve Jobs and the management team. COVID-19 seems to have allowed Apple to move to a pre-recorded keynote that the media and general public watch together either in person or streamed online, followed by the media being allowed to get hands on with the products.

    This allows for a polished event presentation, all-be-it one that might be out of touch with its audience. More on that later.

    Is wonderlust even a word?

    A quick look at dictionaries offline and online kept bringing up results for wonderlust – the hankering to travel. That was until I hit Urban Dictionary that categorised wonderlust this way:

    the desire to be in a constant state of wonder
    Joe had a serious case of wonderlust: he was bored of anything ordinary.

    There were other definitions, but I think that they were outside the scope of where Apple wanted to go.

    TL;DR

    If you’ve bought an Apple product in the past three years there weren’t any ‘must buy’ products showcased in the Wonderlust event. Your iPhone and Apple Watch will still be good enough and benefit from this years upgraded OS. If you have a device over three years old then upgrading to the new products is worth considering.

    Apple still hasn’t jumped on the folding screen bandwagon that Samsung has. Given that we don’t see question-and-answer sessions that Steve Jobs sometimes indulged us with we don’t know the definitive ‘why’ yet.

    The meh moments

    There was more to criticise in this Apple events than other recent ones.

    USB-C as a benefit

    The reality is that in order for Apple to sell in the European Union it has had to move the iPhone and AirPods to a USB-C connection, away from the the Lightning connector. Apple tried to play this off as an improvement that they’d made to their phones, but the reality is that it was a change forced upon Apple.

    Cringeworthy ESG update

    Part of the pre-recorded content was a skit where Mother Nature turns up at Apple HQ for a meeting with the team about improvements in their environmental record. The problem was that the film was out of touch with the audience and has been roundly criticised.

    For five minutes, we had the same thing over and over. It might be about materials one moment and packaging the next, but it was a single gag stretched out too far.

    It was stretched so thin that you could see the thinking behind it. Every single element was good by itself, and no one would cut anything. 

    But the result is that every single element was undermined by the repetition. And instead of Apple showing it was better than just sell-sell-sell videos, the result was that the sketch felt like padding in an event that’s like drinking tech data from a fire hose.

    AppleInsider – Apple’s ‘Mother Nature’ sketch was a complete dud, and didn’t belong in the iPhone 15 event

    I do think it went on too long — the whole segment (sketch plus details) in fact was just 10 minutes long, not 20. But seemingly everyone, including me, felt like it lasted 20 minutes, which is never a good sign.

    Daring Fireball (John Gruber) – Thoughts and Observations on This Week’s ‘Wonderlust’ Apple Event

    There were some good points highlighted:

    • Recycled materials usage. There were also claims made about leather usage, but these only applied to Hermés straps sold within Apple’s own retail channels.
    • Taking plastic out of packaging. Apple has been minimising packaging by taking items out of the box (iPhone earphones, iPhone charger being two high profile examples). But now it’s taking plastic out of packaging as well. Its able to do this due to control of all aspects of its manufacturing process and packaging re-engineering. This is also pleasing to Apple shareholders. Given that Apple’s packaging is bought at scale, decreased materials usage and size means less risk of damage and reduced cost of manufacture & transport – any increased cost in design and packaging development will be amortised across millions of units. You see a similar benefit in Apple’s product materials as well such as aluminium laptop chassis.
    • Carbon offset for energy used not only in the manufacture of Apple Watch, but also throughout their expected life.
    • A move towards more ocean freight to reduce logistics carbon footprint, compared to air travel. This will have had a direct impact on the flexibility and responsiveness of Apple’s global supply chain, particularly custom specified products like non-standard MacBook Pro configurations.

    Apple still has a lot of problems however and here are three of the biggest:

    • With the exception of the Apple Pro, Mac models can no longer be upgraded, which reduces reparability and product life.
    • AirPods can’t be repaired, only thrown away. This is a problem for the wireless earbud category in general, but Apple are a leading player in the market and can set the the tone in the market through innovation.
    • The very nature of Apple’s business could be considered to drive excessive consumption. In sharp contrast, one of the traditional reasons why one owned a Mac was that you got a computer that was useful for longer. I am currently using a couple of Apple Thunderbolt displays that are between 8 and 12 years old. Prior to the iPhone I was using Macs that may have been eight years old by the time that i parted company with them.

    Incremental product improvements

    The announcements would have felt like tweaks for consumers. Apple Watches got more powerful processors for the first time. The iPhone Pro titanium frame would marginally reduce the weight of the handset. Apple has previously used titanium in laptops between 2001 and 2003, so the material isn’t completely new to the brand. The camera can create video and photography with depth for the Apple Vision Pro. Camera performance with darker skin tones has been improved to match Google Pixel driven innovation. But battery life is ‘about the same’ as previous generations.

    Many of the software improvements including live stickers are likely to be be in the iOS upgrade available to previous generations of phones.

    Ok, so what if anything was interesting about the event?

    There were three things that while they wouldn’t make me want to go out and buy a new device are still important developments, based on the direction that they are taking Apple products.

    Service integration

    Apple iPhone is moving beyond emergency satellite text services to breakdown care via satellite as well. It’s interesting that Apple is continuing to go beyond cellular. It is starting to look like the kind of differentiation Vertu used to enjoy with its single button concierge service. It supports the viewpoint that Apple is a luxury adjacent, if not luxury brand.

    Mechanical engineering on the iPhone camera

    Apple has managed to cram in a lens with an equivalent focal length of 77mm into the iPhone 15 Pro through a novel prismatic lens design. The device also uses a similar mechanism design to that used on Pentax DSLRs to compensate for device shake. The titanium frame probably provides additional rigidity for this system to work to its full potential. However the weight loss of the device might drive increased shake so there is a careful calibration in choices that the engineering team made.

    On-device machine learning

    The Apple Watch had redesigned silicon to move machine learning from the cloud or iPhone device on to the Watch itself. This improves response time, but also points to a move of taking large language model systems and neural networks out of the cloud and on to the device. Given that the watch also features ultra wideband wireless connectivity, it’s an especially interesting choice decoupling the watch from the iPhone.

    More Apple-related content here.

  • The Irish race + more things

    The Irish race

    An interesting documentary from 1971 that explores the idea of ‘The Irish Race’ – it is one episode in a 10-part documentary series ‘We The Irish’. It features some of Ireland’s leading public thinkers at the time including Conor Cruise O’Brien and Seán Ó Faoláin. ‘Race’ as a term is more problematic now than back then as there were so few Irish people who weren’t white European looking as Ireland was a next exporter of people rather than welcoming inbound migrants until recent decades. Secondly, the Irish people were constantly having to establish their identity, culture, language and accomplishments in the shadow of their former colonial rulers.

    selected stories of sean o'faolain

    Ó Faoláin an internationally famous short-story writer, a key part of the Irish arts establishment and a leading commentator and critic – a role played by the likes of Fintan O’Toole today.

    The discussion about the Irish race was an essential part of decolonising the Irish identity; by emphasising Irish distinctiveness and salience rather than reinforcing racial superiority. A process that countries like Singapore and Malaysia would wrestle with in subsequent decades too.

    Tracing The Irish Race

    Ó Faoláin starts his discussion with the book Facts About Ireland that was published for over three decades by the Irish Government. The book itself is like a more in-depth version of the CIA World Fact Book profile on Ireland. It was available in souvenir shops up and down the country, my parents probably have my copy of the 1979 edition that I purchased from Salmon’s newsagent and post office in Portumna

    O’Brien was part of the Irish elite. His father was a journalist for a Republican newspaper pre-independence and he married into the political establishment of the Irish Republic. But that shouldn’t take away from his achievements in the various facets of his career by turns was an Irish diplomat, politician, writer, historian and academic.

    The series also marks a different kind of high brow factual television than we are used to seeing now.

    Beauty

    Superagers: a rare group who can teach us how to grow old gracefully | Science & Tech | EL PAÍS English – longevity will be where beauty meets health and wellness

    China

    The China 2023 series – by Noah Smith – Noahpinion – on Chinese economics

    Work dries up for US consultancies in China after national security raids | Financial Times which makes it hard to do due diligence when doing the inward investment that China wants: China sounds out foreign buyout groups over boosting inward investment | Financial Times

    The Case for a Hard Break With China | Foreign Affairs – U.S. theorists and policymakers ignored the potential risks of integration with an authoritarian peer. Globalization was predicated on liberal economic standards, democratic values, and U.S. cultural norms, all of which were taken for granted by economists and the foreign policy establishment – the arguments in the article are not new, what’s interesting is that they are being run in Foreign Affairs magazine and that should worry China

    China secretly sends enough gear to Russia to equip an army – POLITICO 

    China’s new scientists | Chatham House – International Affairs Think Tank

    Culture

    Love Will Save The Day – Jed Hallam’s online radio station

    Design

    archives.design – beautiful graphic design inspiration

    TUGUCA（ツグカ）｜スノーピーク ＊ Snow Peak – Snow Peak have their own shelving system which looks amazing

    Economics

    British manufacturers’ share of EU business falls despite global trade boom | Manufacturing sector | The Guardian 

    Book Review: “The End of the World is Just the Beginning” | Noahpinion – I will write my own review once I have read the book myself. It’s currently in my to do pile

    The New York Tech Sector – AVC 

    China’s Government Offers Love, but Entrepreneurs Aren’t Buying It – The New York Times – this will kneecap their growth prospects

    Energy

    Tesla’s secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints | Reuters – Tesla years ago began exaggerating its vehicles’ potential driving distance – by rigging their range-estimating software. The company decided about a decade ago, for marketing purposes, to write algorithms for its range meter that would show drivers “rosy” projections for the distance it could travel on a full battery, according to a person familiar with an early design of the software for its in-dash readouts. Then, when the battery fell below 50% of its maximum charge, the algorithm would show drivers more realistic projections for their remaining driving range, this person said. To prevent drivers from getting stranded as their predicted range started declining more quickly, Teslas were designed with a “safety buffer,” allowing about 15 miles (24 km) of additional range even after the dash readout showed an empty battery, the source said – fundamentally dishonest

    Finance

    China’s biggest mobile payment platforms now accept VISA & Mastercard | Pekingology

    FMCG

    Six Bubble Tea Chains Plan IPOs in Bet on China Consumer Revival – Bloomberg – Firms with fast franchise growth not allowed to list onshore. Mixue, ChaBaiDao, GoodMe among firms weighing listings. Who is to say that these businesses won’t be like Luckin Coffee? If the Chinese government won’t allow them to list at home and they don’t want to list in Hong Kong, one has to wonder about the state of these businesses

    Germany

    German deindustrialization crisis of the day – Marginal REVOLUTION 

    Health

    Case for using antidiabetic drug for anti-ageing strengthened after Hong Kong university studies genetic data from 320,000 Britons | South China Morning Post – expect this to blur the line between health and beauty or aesthetic treatments

    ‘Catastrophic’ forecast shows 9m people in England with major illnesses by 2040 | The Guardian

    A couple of things about this video. Major Australian TV network asked YouTuber ColdFusion to make this documentary. YouTubers are now competing against TV production houses for production briefs. Secondly, the video offers a positive take on how machine learning may impact healthcare.

    Hong Kong

    Charged with one crime, convicted of another: how one baffling rioting conviction exposes Hong Kong’s broken courts – is it wrong, yes. Is a break from common law? I am less sure, just because a court procedure is unusual, such as inviting the prosecution to submit a new charge instead isn’t necessarily a breach. What it does mean is that all litigants need to be wary of going to court in Hong Kong given how unorthodox practices are likely to spread.

    60 Minutes Australia on Hong Kong’s awards for capturing dissidents.

    Hong Kong’s Hard Line Against ‘Soft Resistance’ | Asia Sentinel – Hong Kong’s analogue of the mainland’s historical nihilism. And concern about ‘soft resistance’ abroad: Has ‘soft resistance’ spread to the UK? | Big Lychee, Various Sectors

    Innovation

    EssilorLuxottica to move into hearing aids after buying Israeli start-up | Financial Times

    Japan

    Manga is the Rock ‘n’ Roll of Gen Z – on Shonen Jump magazine

    London

    How to find Britain’s stolen Rolexes? Bring in the flying squad | The Sunday Times – London is taking a reputation hit due to high crime level against travellers and the more wealthy. It will affect the travel and hospitality sectors, auctions, luxury retail and even

    JustoffJunction.co.uk – genius app for planning British motorway travel, the reason why you would care would be the inflated prices at motorway services stops

    Luxury

    Gucci Joins Forces With Christie’s To Disrupt the Art and Fashion Market Through Generative AI – Jing Culture & Crypto – generative AI displaces metaverse as Kering’s technology trend du jour

    Security

    The pushback against industrial policy has begun – Noah Smith rebuts The Economist’s recent article against reindustrialisaton of the west.

    Thales/Imperva: cyber security deal boosts defence group’s best division | Financial Times

    Software

    Transformers: the Google scientists who pioneered an AI revolution | Financial Times

    ‘A certain danger lurks there’: how the inventor of the first chatbot turned against AI | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian 

    Taiwan

    How China’s military is slowly squeezing Taiwan | Financial Times – great read

    Technology

    TSMC sees headwinds, flips to 10 percent decline forecast | EE News Europe 

    Samsung reportedly investing in R&D for 3D stacking GAA technology