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.
Check out these beautiful infographics by Jane Pong. She previously worked at the South China Morning Post. Jane Pong comes up with amazing ways to visualise information in an easy-to-digest format that works equally well in print and digital. More design related content here.
How the ideogram structure and smartphones are affecting Chinese literacy. Chinese people learn thousands of characters as part of their literacy in their own language. But unlike alphabets in languages like English or Russian; you can’t guess at a lot of words. This is especially problematic because of the tonal nature of the languages as well.
Electronic character input tries to get around this by suggesting characters based on pinyin or character auto-prediction. This means that if you haven’t written the character in a long time, due to auto suggestion in apps, they lose handwriting muscle memory.
Trendwatching on the future of retail. What’s coming through this is the importance of retail in terms of culture and experience as well as consumption.
Saul Bass on Why Man Creates via Jed Hallam’s newsletter. Bass made his reputation in developing branding design for US companies from the post war years, well into the 1980s. You might not know his name, but you will recognise his work.
Movie posters for:
Vertigo
Psycho
Movie title sequences for:
Broadcast News
Goodfellas
Cape Fear
Casino
His logo designs include:
AT&T
Quaker Oats
United Airlines
Warner Communications
General Foods
Saul Bass’ logo designs were seen as an unusually good investment for brands. The average life of a Saul Bass logo is more than 34 years. The logo was most often retired because the company was merged or disappeared. More here.
The heat. At least in Hong Kong I lived with air conditioning, but there is no respite from the heat in London. In my area of London there hasn’t been much of a breeze either, the heat has been inescapable. At least my music needed to be cool, and I reached back to nu-disco and space disco over the past few years. If there was one tune of the week it was this on
I still lust after Ferris Bueller’s Carver M-500t power amplifier (on the top in the screen shot above), E-mu Systems Emulator II sampler and his l33t maker skills. Check out this blog that collated all the immense taste that went into his bedroom design: TimLybarger.com: Ferris Bueller’s Bedroom
Scooter is one of those guilty secrets with catchy melodies and nonsensical lyrics that confound comprehension for English speakers. It was unusual to hear ‘How Much Is The Fish ‘ played on the piano and its a pleasant surprise. Scheps is better known as a classical pianist in Germany and has brand sponsorship deals with Audi and Chopard – so a world away from the image of Scooter.
Here is the original for comparison purposes….
As a student of Silicon Valley history, I was aware of General Magic. It is now getting a well deserved documentary about it. General Magic tried to build the predecessor of the Palm PDA and modern smartphones, before the the internet wi-fi and very nascent cellular networks. I’d heard of some people using them as a desk phone replacement
Here is a guide to their DataRover 840F. Check out the skeuomorphic interface that is reminiscent of Microsoft Bob. Stylistically the fonts, design details and Easter eggs reminded me of the early Macs that I used. This isn’t surprising as it was started by Mac veterans. Why is General Magic important now? Like the later PayPal mafia the General Magic alumni have been all over Silicon Valley developing some the most successful products and services. More on technology here.
If you’re reading this blog, you will have heard of the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. Kickstarter has become synonymous with crowdfunding and has become a verb. There are several crowd funding platforms out there including Indiegogo and China’s Demo Day but none seem to have caught the public imagination in the same way Kickstarter seems to have.
Major companies like Sony have trialed offerings of products on crowdfunding platforms as a way of accessing market size and viability for new products. Bands from Public Enemy to unknown artists have financed their album recordings and production in a similar way
Kickstarter failure rate
I’ve personally subscribed to projects with very mixed results with Kickstarter projects that I have funded. My experience of my first couple of projects were very positive. My most recent experiences have been one of disappointment to the point that I no longer use it. They failed. There was production problems, the timelines over ran. And at least one of them looked as if they took the money and ran when the project seemed more difficult than they originally assessed it to be.
Therefore it was interesting to hear Kickstarter used in a different context, that reflects my experience with the platform.
I like the Techmoan YouTube channel as a good deal of its content introduces retro technology, many of which is is equipment or media formats that I hadn’t come across previously.
The channel host Mat used Kickstarter not as a brand, but as a verb to imply that a product was somehow inferior and lacking in quality. It has become synonymous with an amateurish effort. Just because technology and globalisation have democratised access to manufacturing; doesn’t necessarily mean better quality products. That can’t be good for the brand.
This is on top of crowdfunding’s high degree of funding failures, product failures and increasing numbers of alleged fraud.
Why we should relish putting ads into testing – VCCP – bit of an odd concept. The TV ads that I’ve worked on have all gone into testing at concept stage. Ads put into testing have their concepts polished using research from Kantar to maximise effectiveness. I couldn’t understand not putting ads into testing of some sort. More related content here.
Death of corporate media relations | WSJ – brands don’t trust or need media according to one editor. With their own social media accounts, blogs and websites, they go directly to their audience
The architects had a bold plan for the executive suite. They wanted to station Mr. Ma and his top lieutenants in a central command post with high visibility, like the bridge on a battleship.
That wouldn’t do, architects were told. One reason: Too many government officials come calling, and their visits need to be discreet. The executive offices were placed instead in the upper reaches of the highest tower.
Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras – The New York Times – “Reform and opening has already failed, but no one dares to say it,” said Chinese historian Zhang Lifan, citing China’s four-decade post-Mao policy. “The current system has created severe social and economic segregation. So now the rulers use the taxpayers’ money to monitor the taxpayers.”
Google Cloud changes abuse prevention process after viral customer complaint – Business Insider – Google appears a lot more vulnerable. In the many discussions about this incident on Reddit and other online message boards, a big complaint that has surfaced is an inability of Google Cloud customers to contact human customer-service reps in emergencies – not ready for enterprise use
Music’s ‘Moneyball’ moment: why data is the new talent scout – all of this can get gamed thru payola very easily. It recognises popularity rather than talent and begs the question, why would you go with a record label if you were already ‘making it’ nowadays?
Demo One disc that came with the early PlayStation’s had an application called V-CD that played music CDs and had a great visualiser to go along with the music. As I am not a gamer, this is why I miss the original PlayStation so much.
Negativland Interviews U2’s The Edge :Negativworldwidewebland – for many people the hypocrisy that is U2 didn’t manifest itself until some time in the noughties. Negativland’s dispute with them back in 1991 was one of the reasons why Mondo 2000 had them interview The Edge a year later and showing him up. I bet the publicist got fired for this
Quantum computing explained for different skill levels. The explanations of quantum computing are amazing. The simplicity of the quantum computing explanations should be must watch content.
A video on Sony‘s old school copy protection for the original PlayStation. It is the height of ingenuity. I had a couple of CDs with black faces like a PlayStation disc. They were a Sisters of Mercy Japanese import disc and a limited edition disc by Yello that I picked up secondhand. I have got no idea where they are now.
The black coating was a ruse from a copy protection point of view; except that it may have concealed the real copy protection system (if you had a microscope good enough to see it). The technology is down to the way wavy data lines were put down on the PlayStation disks rather than a copy management style encryption.
