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.

  • OrCam + more things

    OrCam

    OrCam Read – Transform the Way You Read – YouTube – I watched this video and wondered if this was a sign of failure in the education sector in terms of literacy. As far as I can tell, OrCam is a dedicated OCR appliance that reads back the text to you. In essence it is playing the same role as a scribe to a medieval lord. I suspect that OrCam is a product looking for a market and this is a skewed pitch

    Business

    Chinese investment in UK assets estimated to be £135bn : CityAM 

    Another One Bites The Dust: Why Verizon’s Divestiture Of AOL And Yahoo Is No Surprise | Forrester – Verizon’s sale represents a giant write down. I remember the uproar when Tumblr got wrote down from $1Bn to zero. This is a greater write down in absolute value.

    Consumer behaviour

    Are some personalities just better? – All-blues might really be happier and healthier. If so, it could a result of late modernity, or it might have always been true. Still, that doesn’t mean that evolution will favor all-blues, or that all-blues are “more successful”

    Economics

    The Failed Promise of Malaysia’s New Economic Policy – Asia Sentinel – Malaysia’s 49 year affirmative action programme for the Malay majority failed and helped precipitate a brain drain of Malaysian Chinese overseas (paywall)

    Ideas

    How the U.S. Government Can Learn to See the Future – Lawfare – Research over the past decade funded by the U.S. government demonstrates that “keeping score” by quantifying the probability that a potential event will or will not happen leads to improved forecasting accuracy. This is especially true when that scorekeeping is paired with training to reduce cognitive biases, as well as tools that combine the forecasts of many people together, harnessing the “wisdom of crowds.” These methods are not just for carnival games and stock trading. They can provide clearer insight on national security questions – it looks like prediction markets might be getting their time in the sun again

    Security

    Sweden drops Russian hacking investigation due to legal complications | The Record by Recorded Future – Swedish government dropped today its investigation into the 2017 hack of its sports authority, citing the legal constraints that would have prevented prosecutors from charging the Russian hackers responsible for the intrusion, which officials claimed were mere pawns operating on behalf of a “foreign power.”

    China-linked hackers used VPN flaw to target U.S. defense industry -researchers | Reuters

    Chinese military unit accused of cyber-espionage bought multiple western antivirus products | The Record by Recorded Future 

    Apple brass discussed disclosing 128-million iPhone hack, then decided not to

    Wireless

    Opinion | Steve Jobs Never Wanted Us to Use Our iPhones Like This – The New York Times

  • Porsche 911 GT3 & things that made last week

    Porsche 911 GT3

    Yes the Porsche 911 GT3 is a car faster than most people can drive. Yes they all look very similar unless you are a truly devoted petrol head. But I was struck by this review of the Porsche 911 GT3 by Chris Harris.  In the early part of his review, he ran the car in to put 1,000 miles on the engine. During that time he focused on the simple joy of driving, which gave me a real hankering to get behind the wheel of a car again. What really struck me was the comments Harris makes about that primally magic time for driving as the light goes down in the evening or the sun comes up in a morning.

    Some of my most visceral early memories are of being in the back seat of the family car (unencumbered by a back seat seat belt) during this time. The magic of the early dawn light on winter clouds and wisps of smoke from rural houses as we drove back to the family farmstead in Ireland. Harris’ Porsche 911 GT3 review brought it all rushing back to me.

    Media ideas

    Thought provoking interview on the future of media, ‘lazy-endism’, balancing hyper-personalisation with wider insight and empathy, and the power of context in media. You won’t necessarily agree with all of it, but it took my thoughts on marketing to interesting places for exploration. Jerry Daykin heads up media for GSK’s consumer business across EMEA.

    C-suite’s diminishing appreciation of brand

    The Financial Times and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising put together research on the c-suite’s lack of appreciation of marketing. The decline has been taking place over decades.

    China’s telecommunications ambitions

    Interesting roundtable on information technology and communications which provides great power advantage. Interesting perspective around standards and technology advantages looking at past case studies. China explicitly talks about its desire to project power through the ICT industry basic inputs, supply chain, standards and applications. It looks to build leverage internationally and independence domestically. They want to lock-in their power. It isn’t just about spying but international coercive control.

    Hands free airline toilet door

    ANA the Japanese airline have rolled out a kit that turns airplane toilet doors into hands free operation. It’s a brilliant piece of design. The work was done by JAMCO – a Japanese company that specialises in the design and manufacture of aircraft interiors.

  • Mi Air Charge & things that made last week

    Mi Air Charge

    Mi Air Charge is a smartphone controlled air purifier by Xiaomi. The ad promotes it as being an essential item in a dystopian austere bachelor pad. I am not sure why the Mi Air Charge was controlled by an app, except to sell more It reminded me of a product advert specified and designed for the engineers that likely worked on the product.

    Dyson has done similarly sparse interiors in its ads, but they usually cast a couple or family.

    Bob Ross paintings

    Anyone who has watched TV in the middle of the night has likely come across the TV series of Bob Ross painting landscapes. For each show that he did, there were three paintings. Bob Ross’ paintings have never come up in auction. They were given to friends and the rest held in an archive by the company that carries his name.

    Uniqlo Japan AIRism advert

    Uniqlo set a high standard for adverts and creativity. This particular example for its AIRism casual wear is notable for its natural portrayal of a Japanese lesbian couple. Usually Japanese advert portray the struggles that the LGBTQ community face. Whereas this normalises its protagonists with a slice of life approach.

    https://youtu.be/PsfpCd0TAxU

    Luther Vandross would have been 70 last week

    On April 19, the Google Doodle celebrated Luther Vandross’ 70th birthday with a new animated video to accompany his track Never Too Much. The animation was done for Google by Sam Bass.

    And here is the original video from 1981. I love the way the video intercuts film that they shot on the street into the track. The song was recorded using a Studer A800 multitrack recorder.

    The Mercedes Benz 500E was inspired by AMG’s efforts with the Hammer and increased competition from the likes of Lexus. This video gives a good guide to the car, including clarifying that Porsche helped in the assembly but its not a Porsche sedan.

  • 911 restomod + more things

    911 restomod

    Perfect Porsche? This British-built 911 restomod comes close : CityAM – the idea of the perfect Porsche is contextual and highly personal. I would prefer a car that looks like an early air-cooled car, with no aerodynamic spoiler or flared arches and Fuchs wheels. There are a number of vendors doing a restomod 911. US company Singer is probably the most famous with its muscular looking restomod 911 models. In the article, there is a particularly interesting bit is about the redistribution of parts and lightweight replacement parts in the 911 restomod by Theon Design.

    China

    EXCLUSIVE China’s Ant explores ways for Jack Ma to exit | Reuters – this looks as if its much more focused on Jack Ma and possibly his links to the Jiang Zemin faction. Ma may not be even keeping the money

    Chinese censors take aim at former premier Wen Jiabao’s essay | Financial Times – really interesting that this appeared in a Macao publication, like it was designed to give it a few days out there. Wen was generally a bit more soft-hearted than Hu when the two were in the politburo. And Hu was moderated by the committee approach of the politburo. Xi had learned from Bo Xijlai that populism and nationalism worked and has a hawkish view that is untempered by the politburo.

    Consumer behaviour

    Siu mai or egg waffles? Hong Kong foodies cut through political divide to share reviews, photos in online ‘concern groups’ | South China Morning Post – it also reflects a deepening sense of localism in the community, but in a harmless way – food speech instead of free speech

    China’s keyboard warriors like to fight . . .  each other | Financial Times – China’s grassroots nationalist bloggers seem less like that unified “main force” than dispersed militias which argue with one another as much as they do with external enemies. “The difference between Chinese nationalist factions is probably bigger than the difference between all of them and an American patriot,” says one Beijing-based blogger who is researching a book on Chinese internet culture. And while the CCP’s professional trolls may generate reposts and likes, “volume is not influence”, he adds – interesting article. I keep thinking about how different red guard groups used to fight against each other during the cultural revolution

    Design

    Trapped on Technology’s Trailing Edge – IEEE Spectrum – Repairing the system entailed either redesigning a few circuit boards and replacing other obsolete integrated circuits for US $21 million, as the B-2 program officers chose to do, or spending $54 million to have the original contractor replace the whole system. The electronics, in essence, were fine—they just couldn’t easily be fixed if even the slightest thing went wrong. – which makes me wonder about the internet of things.

    Luxury

    Why Chow Tai Fook sees opportunity in rural China and lower-tier cities | Marketing | Campaign Asia – Surrey Pau, deputy general manager of Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group, responsible for market expansion, explained how and why the brand intends to seize opportunities in China’s fourth-and-fifth-tier cities, despite a natural bias in the sector towards selling luxury items to tier-one markets. Charts comparing urban (blue) and rural (yellow) growth rates Growth in rural China “Some people believe that in rural areas you don’t have much of an income, that you rely heavily on agriculture and have a very simple economic structure,” Pau said. “However we believe that is just a myth.” Comparing household consumption and spending trends in rural and urban areas, Pau sees the countryside soon catching up with cities, helped by government support to rural areas. And along with higher incomes, the brand is seeing people shift to devoting more disposable spending to lifestyle improvements, including cosmetics and jewellery. The other macrotrend is the massive rise in ecommerce spending. And thanks to recent infrastructure investments in new networks, the digital playing field has been levelled to a great degree in China – I don’t think that there’s the growth in Chinese lower tier cities and rural areas that Chow Tai Fook thinks

    Marketing

    6 Elements Of Digital Brand Dominance | Branding Strategy Insider – The old adage “stick to your knitting,” for example, a colloquial version of “build on your core competence,” tends to narrow a company’s imagination. Yet a bold imagination is a requirement for leaders today. Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, and Google would not be what they are if their CEOs and executive teams had not imagined a future that did not yet exist. – but do these businesses also suffer from a lack of focus and a conglomerate discount at some point?

    Media

    Leaked ByteDance Memo Shows Blockbuster Revenue Projections – Bloomberg – convenient that this happened ahead of Hong Kong listing…

    Myanmar

    Activists have launched a pirate radio station out of secret safehouses in Myanmar – Rest of World – probably radio because of the disruption to the internet – Myanmar’s army is sending the country “back to the ’90s” – Rest of World

    Online

    Son’s SoftBank Vision Fund Profit Nears $30 Billion on Coupang – Bloomberg – of course Softbank needs to be able to cash out to realise the win

    More than half of Instagram influencers ‘engaged in fraud’, with 45 per cent of accounts ‘fake’ | PR Week – Instagram mega-influencers and celebrities – those with more than one million followers – were the worst culprits, with two-thirds (66 per cent) of these accounts engaged in some form of fraudulent activity. 

    Nano-influencers – those with 1,000 to 5,000 followers – had the lowest proportion of fraud, occurring in 42 per cent of accounts. The most common tactics used included buying followers, likes and comments from click farms, buying story views, and engaging with comment pods – where a group of Instagram users get together and systematically engage with each other’s posts

    Security

    Huawei had unlimited access to millions of customer data from Telfort – NOS  – translation of Dutch original, more here – Dutch telecoms firm KPN: no sign Huawei has improperly monitored users, Telecom News, ET Telecom 

    Technology

    China’s Dystopian “New IP” Plan Shows Need for Renewed US Commitment to Internet Governance – Just Security – hinges around real ID and total surveillance

    Arm Battle With China CEO Escalates, Complicating SoftBank Sale – Bloomberg – I wouldn’t be surprised if China was pushing this to wrestle control of the group as part of its ‘war by other means’. I wonder if this news is connected – UK Forces Delay in Nvidia’s ARM Takeover, Citing National Security Concerns – ExtremeTech 

    US and Japan to invest $4.5bn in next-gen 6G race with China – Nikkei Asia 

    Wireless

    Lycamobile names CEO to lead digital push beyond expatriates | Financial Times – they’ve tried to do this previously. Lycamobile was usually the first SIM that EU migrants got to establish themselves in the UK. They then moved on to domestic aimed products. Brexit has made this move a life or death struggle now

    Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile kill their cross-carrier RCS messaging plans | Ars Technica 

  • Metabolist architecture + more things

    Metabolist architecture

    kisho kurokawa’s metabolist ‘capsule house K’ from the 1970s to be preserved in japan – the metabolist group, formed by architects, designers and critics, imagined a world of flexible cities where buildings, like people, were transient and ever changing. designed and built between 1971 and 1973, ‘capsule house K’ exemplifies the ideas of metabolism, recyclability and exchangeability – What separates the Japanese metabolist architecture and design movement from the western prefab manufacturing is that it was genuinely modular. A single capsule like this house could exist on its own, or could be part of a tower structure. The focus on flexible cities at the centre of metabolist design and the idea of recyclability. The western prefab approach is all about bringing product line techniques to create quick builds.

    Consumer behaviour

    Taking Stock With Teens – Spring 2021 Infographic 

    Marketing

    Did pharma overshoot digital sales rep calls? Study charts decline in effectiveness | FiercePharma – I think that there are interesting implications for a lot of digital marketing activities, like LinkedIn and email marketing

    Media

    The Wall Street Journal’s Internal Audit – The New York Times – none of the editors understand digital and that the paper is unlikely to have any success reaching the younger readers they desperately need without managing to write something about either race or gender. More media related content here.

    Security

    A secretive Home Office unit has hoarded data on millions of people | WIRED UK – more than 30 data providers are listed in the documents. Only two of these, fraud prevention company GB Group and data analytics firm, Dun & Bradstreet, were not redacted. GB Group acknowledged it provided data to the unit but declined to provide any further details citing “confidentiality obligations”. Dun & Bradstreet says it is against its policy to comment on its work with clients. I’d be surprised if they weren’t

    Technology

    Microsoft accelerates industry cloud strategy for healthcare with the acquisition of Nuance – Stories – I wonder what this means for Apple and Google voice recognition

    Wireless

    A booming industry based entirely on missed calls helped bring India online — and vanished overnight – Rest of World – Kumar’s friends and family members began ringing each other but hanging up before being charged for a call; the resulting missed-call alerts functioned as a kind of code between them. “It was decided in advance,” Kumar says. “We would say, if I’m coming to pick you up, I’ll give you a missed call, and you come out of your house.” 

    Leaving missed calls in this way — effectively using a mobile phone as a kind of latter-day pager — was a consumer hack that, in the 2000s, before India’s cheap smartphone and data revolution, grew more popular than texting. The missed call emerged in India as a critical means of communication for those who counted every rupee spent on recharge credit. But the practice soon spread, became trendy, and, even as call rates plunged in the 2000s to among the lowest in the world, evolved into a general tool of convenience: a missed call could mean “I miss you,” “Call me back,” or “I’m here.” The fact that the missed call demanded only basic numeric literacy made them accessible to the third of India’s population that was illiterate. In 2008, one study estimated that more than half of Indian phone users were in the habit of calling people with the expectation that they wouldn’t pick up – you had similar consumer patterns around the world, but Indians seem to have taken it to a new level