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.
I remember catching Thirtysomething in between working and DJing on a weekend and during my evenings. What caught my eye at the time is that the show felt ‘bigger’ than other shows on TV at the time. It was down to Thirtysomething having talented directors and really good script writers who managed to tease the drama and storytelling out of everyday life events. It was the first show where I watched and learned how it was being created rather than being merely entertained by it. I had already taken a similar attitude to film thanks to Alex Cox’s Moviedrome series.
Promotional artwork for the series
Thirtysomething dealt with issues like ‘selling out’, having career disappointment and becoming a ‘corporate being’. The storylines included episodes where cast members were killed off or had cancer. It was also unashamedly aspirational; they were all university educated. Two of the main characters ran an advertising agency together, that would be later bought out – which brought its own troubles. Others were a successful artist, a successful photographer and a college lecturer.
In many respects Thirtysomething was a forerunner for the BBC’s This Life, which was the younger, hipper British cousin. There is something very ‘HBO’ about the feel of Thirtysomething despite the fact that it was shot for the network ABC.
The people went on to work on big Hollywood projects:
Looking back at Thirtysomething you realise that the problems that middle class America worry about have grown. Thirtysomething came from a middle class that was still striving and unashamedly white as was the later Friends. This Life had it easier being set in multicultural London rather than Thirtysomething which was set in Philadelphia. Thirtysomething had a limited release as a box set in the US. It is unavailable for streaming in the US or UK and doesn’t have the kind of following it would likely deserve, given the quality of the storytelling and the script writing involved. Much of this seems to be down to issues with music rights, which makes sense when you see tracks by The Who being replaced on the DVD releases of the original TV series of CSI.
Tracker software
In the early 1990s, tracker software packages that ran on the Commodore Amiga inspired a number of music producers, mostly bedroom producers. Some prominent producers used this set-up, notably drum and bass pioneer Micky Finn.
Tracker software is the grandparent of modern DAW software like Cubase which has replaced most outboard studio equipment.
Making Leatherman multi-tools
This video looks at the Leatherman multi-tool factory and the legacy of engineer Tim Leatherman who founded the company in 1983. In a globalised world, Leatherman is unusual in continuing American manufacturing.
The Ford Fiesta will be forever linked to my early driving experience. I started learning to drive in the 1990s. Back then leasing agreements and car finance weren’t really a thing due to high interest rates. (There is a whole other blog post that I should write at some point about the risk of sub prime car loans, but not today.)
Car insurance was cripplingly expensive. It was even more expensive when you had no no claims and three points on my licence for an accident that I still claim wasn’t my fault.
I also have a Dad who is a time-served mechanical fitter and all-round engineering wizard. At the time we had access to a garage with a vehicle pit, welding equipment and an engine hoist on the evenings and from Saturday afternoon on during the weekend. My Dad had good personal relationships with a number of people who ran scrapyards. You went in, tore the parts you wanted off the cars and took them to the owner and negotiated a deal.
One salvage yard took things a step further by tearing cars down themselves and selling the parts alongside the basics that you’d need for servicing and usually buy from a motor factors. They’re still going strong and still only do business in-person or over the phone. No fax machine, email or website.
My Dad had been servicing and repairing cars since the mid-1960s and worked repairing a wide range of tracked and wheeled vehicles for the likes of Bord na Mona and Massey Ferguson.
Driving bangers
The vehicles that I owned were nothing to brag about, but they were really, really cheap and at least one of them was really, really dangerous. The most dangerous car was a Fiat 126. It cost £150 and I bought it off a former colleague who I met working one summer repairing tools and equipment rented out for use on construction sites. Even in the early 1990s that was a ludicrously cheap car.
The engine was terrible, as were the drum brakes. The body work crumbled in a way that one would expect for a Fiat made in the 1970s. Drum brakes ‘fade’ with repeated use (like going through a set of turns), they don’t work particularly well in the wet and they were prone to locking up on occasion.
Because of the noise, dangerous brakes, exceptionally poor build quality and Russian roulette-like standing starts it was tiresome to drive anywhere for anything more than an hour. The lights were pathetic the wipers were ineffective and the all the rubber seals leaked.
But it also put a smile on my face more times than any other car that I have owned. It handled really well. You could go sideways around corners and still stay in lane. You had a ludicrously low seating position and an exceptionally direct gear change. As a young man with a complete lack of appreciation for risk, it taught me that small cars can be fun.
Also as a cash-strapped young man, I appreciated that paying less to run a car was a good idea, so I aspired to own a diesel.
Building a Ford Fiesta
Eventually, through my Dad’s contacts I managed to get the diesel engine from a Ford Escort van that had been rear-ended and a Ford Fiesta delivery van with a blown petrol engine. At the time a friend that I knew through scuba diving had done a diesel engine swap into a mark two Ford Fiesta XR2. My vehicle was much rattier.
A mark two XR2 very similar looking to the car my friend transplanted with a diesel engine. The only difference being that his had the ‘pepper pot’ alloy wheels. Picture by Kieran White on Flickr (creative commons licence)
We used the beefier Escort springs to handle the increased engine weight, but kept the Fiesta braking system and gearbox. So I had a diesel Ford Fiesta van. Over a weekend, we used a Makita jigsaw to remove the van panels were the windows should be. New window gaskets and rear side windows from a totalled Ford Fiesta mark one. In went the mark one seats and rear seat belts and I had a car.
The van was old enough that I didn’t need to pay VAT after converting it to a car according to the DVLA at the time.
The gearbox was less direct than my previous cars, the steering lacked the go-kart feel of the Fiat and there was more body roll, but the Fiesta was a good car to drive. It had enough power for confident standing starts at junctions and motorway driving was comfortable. The best part was the fuel economy, I typically got 70 miles to the gallon (over 29 kilometres per litre).
I read that Ford was getting rid of the Fiesta and I was reminded of my old car and the role that it played in taking me around the country and allowing me to earn a living before I had moved to London.
Why are Ford Motor Company likely to be binning the Ford Fiesta?
I suspect that it is down to a number of factors:
Consumers want the higher driving position of a crossover or SUV, super mini vehicles like the Ford Fiesta have fallen out of favour
Small vans no longer share the same body shape as their car equivalents. Ford has its Transit Courier small van with a body better designed to cope with large objects or small pallets. So there are less common tooling that they can use to mitigate for lower production volumes
Germany is an expensive place to built a small car, even in a highly automated factory
It makes sense to prioritise scarce components in crunched supply chains to vehicles that produce the highest profit margin
An electric version of the Fiesta would give only a limited range between recharges. Electric battery carrying capacity is directly proportion to the size of the vehicle floorpan and Fiestas are very small. BMW couldn’t get its I3 to work from a business and consumer offering perspective
The price point of an electric Ford Fiesta would represent poor value for money for consumers
Goodbye to the Fiesta
Ford of Europe put together a farewell video to announce the end of Ford Fiesta production.
https://youtu.be/UYcoJ5cU-v4
Ford of Europe
YouTube channel Big Car did a great history of the Fiesta that is worth watching. Until I watched this video I had no idea that the impetus to develop the Ford Fiesta didn’t come from within Ford of Europe, but from American executive Henry Ford II. Henry Ford II is most famous amongst gear heads now as being the executive who drove support for the Ford GT40 after talks had collapsed with Ferrari.
Hank Deuce as he was known was portrayed by Tracy Letts who acted opposite Matt Damon and Christian Slater in the movie Ford vs. Ferrari.
Ernest Shackleton, the Irish explorer and the heroic age of antarctic exploration are evoked in Apple’s ads for its Apple Watch Ultra – a rival to Casio’s G-ShockMaster of G range and the Protrek range, Seiko’s similarly named Prospex range and Citizen’s Promaster range of watches.
https://youtu.be/tidgsqAf_tI
The underlying dialogue uses the text to a newspaper advert attributed to Shackleton when he was looking to recruit crew members for his ship the Endeavour. The Endeavour expedition competed with the rival Roald Amundsen’s expedition to reach the South Pole.
The monologue also reaches back to the way Apple did its Think Different brand campaign rather than the kinetic iPhone, iPod and iWatch ads of the past.
Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.
The reality is that the ad didn’t become widely known until decades after Shackleton had died. There is no evidence to suggest that he ever wrote the words (stirring though they are in nature), or that the advert was ever published by Shackleton.
Instead of Shackleton, who then wrote the words attributed to him? We’ll probably never know. What we do know is that they were first published in a book published in 1959. The 100 Greatest Advertisements: 1852-1958 written by Julian Lewis Watkins and was first published by first published by Dover Publications, Inc. Whether it was Shackleton who wrote them or not, they went into popular culture and sparked additional interest in the Irish explorer. Shackleton died in 1921 when returned to the Antarctic with the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition, he suffered a fatal heart attack while his ship was moored in South Georgia. We don’t know whether Ernest Shackleton would have appreciated the Apple Watch Ultra as a technical marvel concocted by wondrous boffins, or a pointless exercise in frippery for the serious explorer.
Rolex Deepsea Challenge – a watch even more worthy of Shackleton?
I know a watch is special when my Dad is telling me about it as soon as it’s launched. Rolex has upgraded its Rolex Sea-Dweller Deepsea to create the Rolex Deepsea Challenge. Out goes the largely useless date window, in comes an an all titanium grade 5 alloy case that’s 50mm across. This means that the watch moves from being waterproof of a depth of 3,900 meters to 11,000 meters (or just over 6.8 miles) with the new Deepsea Challenge.
The Deepsea Challenge watch follows on from the years of experience that Rolex has had making titanium watches under its secondary Tudor brand using a similar (if not the same) grade 5 titanium.
Titanium Grade 5 is the most widely used titanium alloy. It has (relatively) good hot formability and weldability. It is resistant to salt water, marine atmosphere and a variety of corrosive media temperatures below 300 ° C. Grade 5 titanium alloy is most likely to be accepted by the human body – its hypoallergenic and ideal for medical transplant components like hip joints.
It is made up of 88.74-91.0 percent titanium, 5.5-6.75 percent aluminium, 3.5-4.5 percent vanadium and no more than 0.015 percent hydrogen.
There is obviously osmosis between the two brands in terms of innovation, materials, process and technologies. This also explains why Tudor tries to do innovative designs in its range rather than just digging into the rich seam of ‘heritage looking’ watches with the Black Bay, Ranger and Heritage Chrono models.
The watch community has already started spoofing the watch, which is another sign of it having become an icon. Whether it’s a famous icon, or infamous icon remains to be seen.
35th Tokyo Girl’s Collection
I talked years ago on this blog about the innovative approach to retailing behind the Tokyo Girl’s Collection. I came across their 2022 autumn and winter collection opening stage event, which I am sharing here.
https://youtu.be/vx4AzkAtD3o
USB-C
Apple on the EU regulating connectors to standardise on USB-C. The reason why Apple went to detachable cables on chargers is very interesting. Apple are reluctantly complying over USB-C. The discussion around innovation is really interesting, particularly the way in which Apple executives duck the question.
State capitalism has been created in various forms in China since opening up. Some of the new forms have aspects that impacts the relative attractiveness of doing business in or with Chinese companies.
Opening up
Historically since opening up China has been a mixed market model. There were small private businesses including many farmers. There was the state owned enterprises, a direct descendent of Mao’s work units and businesses that the government wanted to keep a strategic hold on.
Taken at an exhibition that was part of the Shenzhen Biennial, when I was there back in 2010
Grey zone and hybrid companies
Grey zone companies
A classic example of a grey zone company would be Huawei. In their 2019 paper Who Owns Huawei, Balding & Clarke make a convincing argument that Huawei is a state controlled company, if not state owned in the conventional sense. This view is supported by:
The state hacking of Nortel which Huawei disproportionately benefited from in their subsequent telecoms carrier contracts and 5G technology
State bank vendor financing on behalf of Huawei at negative interest rates that telecoms providers like BT and Vodafone were given
Zichen Wang translated a Chinese academic paper that pointed out an alternative view. Yes the ownership structure was a shit show, was pretty much the one point of agreement between the two papers.
But that much of this was down to domestic practice influenced by classic state capitalism and modern business law that China brought in and still doesn’t square up with what was happening on the ground in terms of business laws.
You can make up your own mind if this is an element of state capitalism.
Hybrid companies
An example of this would be the Stellantis | Guangzhou Auto Company joint venture that made Jeep branded SUVs for China. These joint ventures were basically the way the Chinese government coerced technology transfer from western firms to local firms. The Stellantis JV has gone into bankruptcy and GAC seems to have its own range of capable SUVs based on Stellantis expertise gained over the years.
Huawei’s joint venture with 3Com allowed the telecoms giant to build a large enterprise networking business to compete with the likes of Cisco Systems. At the time that China first rolled out its Golden Shieldinternet censorship platform, it relied on Cisco technology, and China would want to remedy this under its state capitalism system. Huawei now supports internet censorship around the world. This form of state capitalism has been common in a number of developing countries over the years, but China was particularly successful in using it in a coercive manner to enhance state capitalism rather than just driving economic growth.
Rise of the hybrid firm – Gavekal Research – Today, 48% of onshore listed companies, representing 67% of market capitalization, have a mixed bag of major shareholders from the private and state sectors. While many of those companies are still clearly controlled by either state or private shareholders, a large and significant group of firms occupies an intermediate position that is harder to characterize. – on China’s state capitalism system
How China’s communist officials became venture capitalists – Times of India – The US and other Western governments have long been wary of the economic power of China’s “state capitalism,” fueled by giant state-owned companies and an industrial policy driven by subsidies and government mandates. But policymakers need to pay more attention to what’s really propelling China’s growth: private firms with minority government-linked investments. “The distinction between state-owned and private has been important for policymakers outside China and for analyzing the Chinese economy,” says Meg Rithmire, a professor at Harvard Business School who specializes in comparative political development in Asia and China. “That boundary is eroding.” – see also Chinese banks vendor financing deals which is the real reason behind Huawei’s growth (alongside stealing IP and other proprietary elements: Nortel cough, cough)
Influenced firms
Influenced firms are a particularly pernicious part of the Chinese state capitalism system. The Chinese economy has always relied on relationships and even patronage of government power brokers similar to Malaysia, Thailand and Korea. But the state has looked to move personal bonds to state bonds. Much of this comes from National Intelligence Law 2017; that puts demands on Chinese citizens, Chinese companies and anyone connected to China.
Like the more widely reported Cybersecurity Law (which went into effect on June 1) and a raft of other recent statutes, the Intelligence Law places ill-defined and open-ended new security obligations and risks not only on U.S. and other foreign citizens doing business or studying in China, but in particular on their Chinese partners and co-workers.
Of special concern are signs that the Intelligence Law’s drafters are trying to shift the balance of these legal obligations from intelligence “defense” to “offense”—that is, by creating affirmative legal responsibilities for Chinese and, in some cases, foreign citizens, companies, or organizations operating in China to provide access, cooperation, or support for Beijing’s intelligence-gathering activities.
The new law is the latest in an interrelated package of national security, cyberspace, and law enforcement legislation drafted under Xi Jinping. These laws and regulations are aimed at strengthening the legal basis for China’s security activities and requiring Chinese and foreign citizens, enterprises, and organizations to cooperate with them. They include the laws on Counterespionage (2014), National Security (2015), Counterterrorism (2015), Cybersecurity (2016), and Foreign NGO Management (2016), as well as the Ninth Amendment to the PRC Criminal Law (2015), the Management Methods for Lawyers and Law Firms (both 2016), and the pending draft Encryption Law and draft Standardization Law.
For Young Chinese, Even State Sector Jobs Are No Longer a Safe Bet – the public sector hasn’t lived up to its reputation of being a safe haven. Nearly three years into the pandemic, many of China’s local governments are facing eye-watering fiscal deficits and implementing austerity measures. And those cuts are hitting civil servants hard. Wang had originally expected to earn at least 250,000 yuan ($34,600) per year at his new job. In reality, he estimates he’s being paid just 160,000 yuan. His basic salary has been cut by 30%; his social insurance payments haven’t risen as promised; part of his annual bonus has never been paid. Instead, Wang finds himself forced to work regular unpaid overtime shifts, helping to implement the town’s virus-control policies, and trying to cut back spending at home. His plans to trade in his boring SUV have been put on hold indefinitely.
Chinese ‘police stations’ in Canada under investigation | Hong Kong Free Press – there is a definite turning point around the illegal Chinese police operations against its diaspora. I expect United Front activities to be the next point of focus and you could see triad organisations treated less like organised crime and more like the paramiilitary or terrorist arm of the United Front
How the U.K. Became One of the Poorest Countries in Western Europe – The Atlantic – “Between 2003 and 2018, the number of automatic-roller car washes (that is, robots washing your car) declined by 50 percent, while the number of hand car washes (that is, men with buckets) increased by 50 percent,” the economist commentator Duncan Weldon told me in an interview for my podcast, Plain English. “It’s more like the people are taking the robots’ jobs.” That might sound like a quirky example, because the British economy is obviously more complex than blokes rubbing cars with soap. But it’s an illustrative case. According to the International Federation of Robotics, the U.K. manufacturing industry has less technological automation than just about any other similarly rich country. With barely 100 installed robots per 10,000 manufacturing workers in 2020, its average robot density was below that of Slovenia and Slovakia. One analysis of the U.K.’s infamous “productivity puzzle” concluded that outside of London and finance, almost every British sector has lower productivity than its Western European peers. Read alongside – What British politics looks like to the rest of the world – The Face TL;DR a joke that makes their country look good by comparison.
Japan cannot survive without Russian oil, warns trading house chief | Financial Times – Some analysts have expressed concern about Itochu’s heavy exposure to China through its 10 per cent stake in Citic, but Okafuji stressed that its risks were lower since its investment was in a government-owned company. “Currently, what they are doing in China is to move private assets from private companies to government-owned companies to reduce the gap between the rich and poor,” he said. “Our objective is to contribute to providing a prosperous lifestyle to the Chinese people, so I think the Chinese government welcomes that.” – I expect that the Chinese government and CITIC will tear the face off Itochu
Concerns mount over German Chancellor Scholz’s upcoming trip to China | Axios – it looks like there is a battle royale brewing between the German public and their large corporates. Add to this: Ports in a storm: Chinese investments in Europe spark fear of malign influence | South China Morning Post and Watching China in Europe with Noah Barkin – 55 percent of Germans believe he (Scholz) is out of his depth), deepens divisions in his government, and undermines its quest for a common European policy toward Beijing, a goal that was spelled out in black and white in the three-party coalition agreement. More worryingly, it shows that Scholz and his advisers still have a steep learning curve on China. Germany’s sway with Beijing depends on a united front in Berlin, in Europe, and across the G7. Scholz has managed to torpedo them all in the span of a few weeks. To be clear, the problem is not that Scholz is meeting with Xi. The party congress showed that Xi may be the only member of China’s leadership who is worth talking to these days. And it is normal for Scholz, who has been chancellor for nearly a year but unable to meet with Xi in person because of China’s restrictive COVID-19 rules, to want to sit down for a face-to-face with the country’s newly anointed leader for life. But the when, where, and how of this first meeting are important. And Scholz has whiffed on all three. The situation is reminiscent of his predecessor Angela Merkel’s decision, two years ago, to hurry through the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) weeks before Joe Biden entered the White House. Like Merkel, Scholz is gifting Xi a geopolitical victory without much in return. And he is voluntarily sacrificing whatever leverage his government might have had with China. He may not realize that but members of his own government—some of whom have been working diligently for months on a new, tougher China strategy—are furious. “As long as the German chancellor doesn’t buy into his own government’s China strategy, then it is worthless,” one German official fumed. “The Chinese can see the divide in Berlin and Europe, and believe me, they will find a way to exploit it. It is absolutely fatal. And what is so stunning is that Scholz has done all of this of his own free will.”
Hong Kong
America’s Biggest Financial Firms Are Still Collaborating with the Sanctioned Hong Kong Government – After an increasing number of critics began to pile on, including the co-chairs of the Congressional Executive Commission on China Representative Jim McGovern and Senator Jeff Merkeley, a coalition of 20 U.S.-based Hong Kong activist groups, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Citibank’s Jane Fraser claimed that she had tested positive for Covid-19 and will pull out of the summit. The rest of these executives have only a couple of days to come down with similar illnesses or unexpected family commitments, but I’m not holding my breath and Hong Kong Summit Surrounded by Drama Before It Even Begins – Bloomberg – Top executives pull out after getting Covid; storm approaches. Event aimed at showing city is back in business after pandemic
9 in 10 marketers spend time in making global marketing locally relevant: report | Advertising | Campaign Asia – Marketers say local requirements are kept in mind by headquarters when making decisions, however, the majority (82%) feel they spend too much time educating HQ on Singaporean nuances and needs. 47% of marketing decision-makers in Singapore say that senior leadership in regional or global offices are misaligned with local marketing teams, there is a lack of local understanding of effective channels, and in some cases, there’s an assumption that a global approach will work across countries. Over a third (36%) of marketers believe in localising content for maximum ROI, however, the local tone, diversity and humour in campaigns is often not well understood by global offices teams.
– The departures mean Apple is losing at least three vice presidents — the highest manager level below Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s executive team — in recent weeks. Evans Hankey, Apple’s vice president in charge of industrial design, is also leaving the company, Bloomberg News reported earlier this month. Chief Privacy Officer Jane Horvath has departed Apple in recent weeks as well, taking a position at a law firm
Trio conduct 6G reconfigurable intelligent surfaces trials … – Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces can be programmed to modulate the phase of electromagnetic waves and reflect signals into blind spots, enhancing coverage and improving user experience. The low cost, low energy consumption and easy deployment, of RIS have attracted broad interest in 6G research and made it a popular candidate technology. The technical trial mainly evaluated the deployment effects and performance of sub6 GHz RIS and mmWave RIS in different indoor and outdoor scenarios. The tests modelled deployment conditions with and without RIS, different incidence and reflection angles, different deployment distances, etc. Recorded performance index parameters included RSRP, throughput and others. The trial participants worked together to carry out several RIS test projects yielding hard data that makes a strong argument in favor of continued RIS technology development.
This post on AI and creativity was inspired by experiments being done at work by a member of our design department. They had been using Midjourney to create images within a minute of receiving an initial set of words as creative prompts.
For example we created this surreal image which fits somewhere between Christian kitsch familiar to catholic households around the world and a touch of Syd Mead‘s visual futurism. This comes from the prompt.
Jesus fighting alongside the US Air Force
https://flic.kr/p/2nSGwLB
Other efforts weren’t successful, we had faces featuring eyes with two pupils and when it tried to render round shapes, it didn’t know when to stop. The hands would go on and on as a twisted mass of flesh. This could be resolved by creating a human character in a service like MetaHuman and uploading that to Midjourney as a base model instead.
How neural networks drive AI and creativity?
Midjourney works using two neural networks. The first works to render an image. The second compares the processing image to exemplars from a data bank of images. There is a back and forth exchange between the two networks until a number of variants are rendered. At this point the human operator is given a choice, or they can choose to have other variations created if the originals don’t meet their requirements.
These images can be rendered in high resolution allowing for an amazing level of detail.
Dystopian vibes
The dystopian feel of the use of AI and creativity is down to a few different factors.
The first reason is that dystopia is at the centre of our cultural zeitgiest in the west. Documentary maker Adam Curtis covers it really well in this discussion with with the Joe Politics channel on YouTube. This zeitgeist affects the type of imagery that the AI has available to draw upon and the kind of prompts that people use to create AI images.
Secondly, the use of AI to ‘create’ something lacks the feeling and collective emotional experiences of a real person. Those elements can’t be captured in prompts which is why images land with the sensation of a dead fish.
What does AI and creativity mean for agencies?
Concepting
The most immediate impact could be in rapid concepting, analogous to how rapid prototyping for manufacturing design. Creative teams would still need to conceive of ideas but concepts could then be brought to live in minutes.
It’s as far away from the black marker and pad that creative directors traditionally used; as paste up graphic design techniques from the use of desktop publishing software that started to impact the design world in the mid to late 1980s.
News illustrations and graphic novels show the way
One of the first areas that is really shaken up by AI and creativity has been the world of the political cartoonist and news illustrator. At the moment newspapers and news magazines pay skilled artists to develop and conceptual designs that convey a political concept.
A good example of this is the covers of The Economist magazine. However things are starting to change. US political publication The Bulwark has already started using AI generated illustrations processed by Midjourney. Midjourney has also been used to create graphic novels.
One could easily see how this might be extended into business-to-business marketing for intangible products like software and services.
Production
The hyper-realistic effects that AI can produce is likely to inspire a desire in clients to use them more often for cost effective production costs. At the moment however, the results can be very hit and miss. There is a problem with hands, faces, interlocking round shapes and a ‘dead’ look to the work.
Social implications
At first we had a discussion about what happens to designers? Were they doomed? Should there be a universal income for them or should they march in the streets to ? How could the technology be stopped?
I wasn’t exactly a ray of sunshine in this discussion. I pointed out that over the past few centuries, capital won out over labour every time. So people only kept their jobs if they cost less than the process to automate their tasks.
Globalisation versus automation
London like a few other cities have ad agency work done that is designed for global audiences. At the moment I work on campaigns designed for markets including: the UK and Ireland, Spain, Italy, the US, Vietnam and Japan. Globalisation seems to have benefited hub cities rather than moved the work to cheaper locales.
This in sharp contrast to what happened to British manufacturing. Whole sectors largely disappeared:
Steel making
Textile mills
Shipbuilding
Car manufacturing
Chemical industry
Pharmaceutical manufacturing
Engineering and fabrication
Where capacity was spared, it was largely down to the UK being a good point of entry into the European Union. As the number of countries expanded new manufacturing jobs moved east; and workers moved west to fill workforce needs in established UK factories depressing salaries.
Research shows that globalization only accounts for 13 percent of job loss in US manufacturing while 88 percent of losses were from automation including robotic manufacturing. In fact, availability of ever-cheaper automation options combined with uncertainty in the global supply chain has led to a resurgence in “onshoring” manufacturing.
Automation has been the quiet destructor of roles. During the 1960s businesses had typing pools and secretaries. Many of these roles disappeared due to desktop computers, office productivity software and the democratisation of touch typing as a skill.
The Technium
Even if labour won out over capital in the UK, there is no guarantee that they would be able to stop the march of technology. Kevin Kelly in his book What Technology Wants shares the idea of ‘The Technium’. The idea behind The Technium is that technology has a momentum of its own building on previous progress. Kelly goes as far to describe it as a super organism of technology. He believes that it exerts a force that is partly cultural with technology influencing and being in turn being influenced by technology. All of which means adaption and accommodation are likely to be the way forward for now.
Adaptation
While people don’t realise it, you’ve been using what could be termed AI for decades:
Autofocus on a camera
Losing ‘shake’ in camcorder and smartphone video
Programmes in a microwave the attempt to cook a casserole or baked potato
Predictive text (although it seems to have become more stupid over time)
Siri, Alexa and Google’s various search functions
In the case of a designer it would also include tools like the ‘lasso’ function in Photoshop that automatically cuts around objects including frizzy hair on a model. So it’s a bit late in the day for people to get squeamish about AI and creativity. Dominant creative software company Adobe sees the place of AI and creativity more as a technology to augment designers in their work rather than replace them. Much of the current Adobe focus seems to be on lowering the on-ramp for new users of their software packages.
There will be more of a challenge for supporting professions like photographers. Fashion brand Hugo Boss is looking to 3D AI powered design to aid in product design and 3D rendering threatening product photography for websites, look books and catalogues.
Limitations of AI and Creativity
One of the things that my colleagues said which really struck with me was ‘if an AI told the world’s funniest joke’ would it know that it was funny? Software is being used to track emotional response, but it wouldn’t necessarily know why something was funny.
The AI can’t be coded with a summation of life experiences, it can analyse emotions, but as far as we know doesn’t experience them yet. This probably explains why Studio Ghibli and Disney animation feels like it has much more life in it than the best AI renders.
Is it art?
Auction houses have sold works generated using AI, but is the art in the creation of the work, or in the decision to use an AI to do the work and thinking of the artist behind that idea? AI can produce works as they have existed before and mash-up genres and ideas, but it wouldn’t be able (at the moment) to create something completely novel through a leap of abstraction, such as a concept like Marcel Duchamp’s sculpture ‘Fountain‘.
AI images can be nice, but do they involve an illusion of creativity? Everything that appears in an AI image is depended on the inputs that the AI receives and the content in image banks that it uses as a reference – which is the reason why AIs often sign works with an indecipherable script.
Do artist styles have to be better protected as part of their IP as well as their works?
IP issues goes beyond artists. We created an artistic rendering of Pokemon character ‘Pikachu’ on Midjourney using the prompt
Definitely not a pikachu
In conclusion
If you’re a creative we eventually managed to get to four thoughts from the discussion:
In the grand scheme of things, change is the only constant
AI has been changing things and will continue to do so
It is inevitable that there willl be some automation and augmentation happening in the creative professions such as design
In the words of Douglas Adams book Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy ‘Don’t Panic’ – but be prepared to adapt and learn new skills and develop new areas of expertise
