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.

  • Toyota Hilux & more stuff

    Toyota Hilux

    This is spot for the Toyota Hilux was done by Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand. I was reminded of how growing up in Ireland, people would pull up in their cars, vans, trucks or tractors like this and chat in the middle of the local market town.

    It touches on quirkiness, the diverse nature of use cases for the Toyota Hilux and social distancing.

    Big Car did a really good history of the Toyota Hilux. It is impressive how little the Hilux has changed over the years. It’s simplicity has made the Toyota Hilux a very reliable vehicle

    General Magic Personal Communicator

    Film maker David Hoffman, put together a super cut of film that he’d shot for US carrier about General Magic’s Personal Communicator.

    What becomes apparent is that mobile computing has got smaller, but conceptually hasn’t changed that much. Yes the literal ‘desk’ from General Magic seems a little strange. It was a software metaphor that Apple deployed on the Lisa workstation. It also feaArktronics Jane and Microsoft ‘Bob’ a year later in 1995.

    You can see thinking not that far removed from it in the early skeuomorphic designs in the early versions of iOS. (The notepad app had spiral binding and ‘textured’ paper.)

    General Magic’s icons are the predecessor of today’s emojis and stickers found in Messenger applications by the likes of Apple, LINE, WeChat, Kakao and Facebook.

    Electronic personal assistants, later became ‘software agents’ that went out on the early web. It isn’t that far from Wildfire, Hello Google or Siri.

    Brexit

    I am not a fan of John Major, but this speech has got a lot of good content in it, particularly on the subject of Brexit. More on his speech here.

    Markku Alén

    And lastly, just for the hell of it; vintage Chris Harris. In the cockpit with Markku Alén piloting a Lancia Stratos.

  • Type Matters by Jim Williams

    Why would I care about a book like Type Matters? Back at the beginning of the PC era; Apple sought to differentiate itself through its understanding of design. Steve Jobs had the Macintosh team apply the knowledge he’d gained dropping into a college course on typography. Fonts and kerning became important.

    Type Matters

    Jobs also drove his team to distraction. The original Macintosh operating system had a 2D graphics library called QuickDraw that was a core part of the system. It could create primitive objects such as lines, rectangles, polygons and arcs. Jobs berated his developers. They didn’t have an oval or a rounded rectangle in its capabilities. He took them outside looked around the real world and pointed these shapes out to them.

    Decades later, we care about the principles of UX; but don’t pay quite the same attention to typography. Books are often designed to be to be read on screen and then a paper version is printed from the same layout. Often the sole consideration that will be given to typography will be by the digital designer who will be wondering what web font will be used. Spacing and kerning won’t have that much attention paid to it. Instead we accept ‘good enough’ in the way that the word appears on the web or in an app.

    Which is where I think Type Matters comes in. Jim Williams brings decades of experience of graphic design to the book. The book is a thin Moleskine sized volume that provides a good guide to fonts and their use. It’s a book that is easy to read cover-to-cover, or dip in and out of as you feel like it.

    It combines good design practice with a history lesson on the elements and consideration of putting words on a page: whether its made of velum, paper or pixels. Williams’ writing is accessible for the non-designer. It provides a better understanding about readability and legibility considerations. More design related posts here.

  • Things that caught my eye this week

    House music producer Roy Davis Jr put together an amazing mix for Phonica Records and I have been vibing off it for most of the week.

    Roy Davis Jr for Phonica Records

    An old, but good music video put together by my long time colleague Haruka. It’s a mix of found footage and painting done on 16mm film.

    Gates to the city by Haruka Ikezawa

    I’m not so sure if it was the best portable stereo; but the JVC / Victor RC-M90 was an archetypal boombox of the 1980s beloved by hip hop fans and gadget lovers. Techmoan does a good tour of the device. What’s interesting is how quality seems to have reached a peak in the late 1970s, early 1980s in hi-fi equipment. Quality seems to have declined as more overseas manufacturing was undertaken by the Japanese brands.

    If you are buying a major Japanese brand like Sony etc; try to buy a ‘Made in Japan’ product is still a great rule of thumb. More gadget related posts here.

    Leo Burnett did a great advert for McDonalds. It tells the story of story of a single mum trying to get her son into the Christmas spirit. However, she faces an unresponsive child; until his inner child wins out. The Drum did a walk through of the ad with the creative team who worked on it at Leo Burnett here.

    Leo Burnett for McDonalds UK

    Finally, the IPA did a three hour webinar A New Way to Track Consumer Demand, that is now available online.

    Finally Sony launched the PlayStation 5 in the UK this week. As I write this, there is a strong secondary market at three times the original retail price of the consoles. They’re the hot item for Christmas.

    This was supported by buzz marketing with a takeover of London Underground signs at Oxford Circus station. The square logo (all the shapes are from the PlayStation controller) contrasts with the closed Microsoft store behind it.

    Social media spread images of the signs and it was all very nice. I think part of its success was the counterintuitive aspect of a stunt in a high footfall area in central London – during the COVID19 lockdown, when other brand marketers are spending their budgets online…

    playstation5 taken by Ian Wood
    London Underground sign photo by Ian Wood

    Bonus content: Clifford Stott is an expert in policing. He walked away from a Hong Kong government review into the 2019 protests. He goes into failings of the review and everything that went on in this report: Patterns of ‘Disorder’ During the 2019 Protests in Hong Kong: Policing, Social Identity, Intergroup Dynamics, and Radicalization by Clifford Stott, Lawrence Ho, Matt Radburn, Ying Tung Chan, Arabella Kyprianides, Patricio Saavedra Morales.

    He talks about his findings with the Hong Kong Free Press.

  • M1 processor + more things

    Apple’s M1 ARM Pivot: A Step Into the Reality Distortion Field | Chips | TechNewsWorld – pretty much many of the points that I was thinking about. More here on the M1 Apple M1 Processor, Passing on the Chiplets | EE Times 

    BMW Unveils Anime-Like Electric Scooter Concept – Core77 – nice but I would still want Kenada’s bike

    The Biden team’s tug of war over Facebook – POLITICO – Facebook is the new Goldman Sachs….

    5G has been heralded as a tech game changer but consumers in China are underwhelmed by spotty coverage and hard sell | South China Morning Post 

    How to appeal to Gen Z in Asia | Vogue Business – “Chinese luxury consumers’ offline and online lives are becoming increasingly intertwined,” says Mark Morris, Burberry’s senior vice president of digital commerce. “They are demanding a more seamless blend of content and capabilities across their two worlds.”  Working with local experts like Mr Bags and relatively lower-tier influencers (Ching has 6.6 million fans on Weibo, which is mid-range for a Chinese KOL) helped reach this level of engagement. “Gen Z wants to be approached in a narrow and deep, insightful way instead of using a mass approach with a big talent [and] hashtag ads,” says Rie Tanaka, senior business strategist and senior researcher at Japanese PR firm Dentsu

    Europe is ready for Biden to start, says E.U. foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell – The Washington Post – Western governments may have been “a bit naive” about Beijing’s manipulation of global trade rules – strategic reset inbound

    Five-Year Plan, 15-Year Vision by Geoff Yu, Bank of New York Mellon – at the outset a new long-term objective for 2035 was established: China is expected to “largely realize socialist modernization” by that year. Specifically, this means achieving GDP per capita of a “moderately (or mid-level, depending on the translation) developed country”. Again, we underscore that the FYP itself does not contain a corresponding numerical target, but during his remarks at the plan’s launch, President Xi Jinping remarked that “it is fully possible for China to realize a doubling of the size of the national economy by 2035”. Assuming the doubling happens in real terms, this comes to around 4.7%y/y p.a. real GDP growth over the next 15 years (PDF)

    Micron Leapfrogs to 176-Layer 3D NAND Flash Memory | EE Times – everyone else is on 128 layers

    Japan gov’t may turn to YouTubers to promote ‘My Number’ ID cards – The Mainichi – To publicize the system, the government has inserted advertisements in newspapers and used digital signage to stream commercials at stations and in the streets, among other methods. However, it has not received as many applications as anticipated, and now places a big hope on the YouTubers’ power to transmit information. The choice is also apparently because labor costs are not as high as appointing nationally popular actors, celebrities and other public figures. Moreover, the Japanese government, by eradicating its image of stubborn bureaucracy and having people watch videos on YouTube without reserve, aspires to remove anxiety and concerns about possible personal information leaks that accompany the My Number system – surprised that Japanese influencers would be that cheap relative to their reach. More on marketing here

    Resharing this as many people still don’t know about this old paper from Ogilvy on Facebook organic reach

  • Things that caught my eye this week

    This project among older Irish people in the UK caught my eye Dementia and Music | Comhaltas in Britain.

    Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (to give it its proper name) is an Irish based organisation with international branches that promotes Irish traditional music. It puts on grass roots sessions in local communities, trains young musicians and organises touring parties of musicians from Ireland around the world.

    As a young child the Comhaltas tour of Britain meant a night out in the then packed Irish centre. There was the stress of getting ready; seeing my parents getting into their Sunday best (which has become less formal over the years) and my Mum never being able to find the shoes she wanted.

    I would be wearing scratchy formal wear listening to Irish comedian / MC, mournful sean-nós singing and the lively céilí music with the occasional puirt à beul accompaniment.

    A YouTube video with classic Irish tunes like these take me back playing records on my Granny’s turntable as a child; or my Uncle, Granny and I dancing like dervishes around the Marley tiled farmhouse floor as we whooped and clapped.

    So the fit with Comhaltas and dementia made a lot of sense given the long term memories that would be likely accessed. And its amazing that something like this is specifically developed for the Irish community in the twilight of their years. Other organisations have looked to build something similar, such as Boots’ multi-sensory box. But this lacked the same degree of cultural relevance.

    I loved Akira from the first time I saw it at an arthouse cinema in Liverpool in the early 1990s. It mirrored the cyberpunk culture I had loved since I originally watched Blade Runner. Akira had a quality and visual style way beyond what I had ever seen before. I’ve watched it many times since. But this video by an animator, going through a small section frame by frame was a revelation to me. The clever hacks that the animators did were amazing.

    https://youtu.be/2ltgr21jMag

    While we’re back in the 1990s, here’s Public Enemy live at Brixton Academy. Yet in 2020, Chuck D’s monologues feel even more relevant now than they did in 1990.

    https://soundcloud.com/flip-the-script/public-enemy-live-at-brixton

    TikTok could be used for more than repeatable dance moves like BlackPink’s Samsung #danceawesome routine collaboration or Dettol India’s hand washing meme. This is a great video on publishing ‘serious content’ based on the experience of the World Economic Forum.

    Google has launched a new workflow tool in the US. It looks interesting, here’s a YouTube walkthrough of it.