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.

  • Daihatsu + other news

    Daihatsu

    Daihatsu Releases 3rd Model of Copen Sporty Minicar – Nikkei Technology Online – the Daihatsu customisable car, with manufacturer kits to change the vehicle appearance dramatically. Daihatsu is one of Japan’s smaller manufacturers with budgets dwarves by Toyota and VW, so this move makes a lot of sense

    Culture

    Chevrolet Issues Press Release Written Entirely in Emoji | Technabob – nice gimmick

    Design

    How It’s Made Series: Beats By Dre — Medium – pretty damning. What is particularly disheartening is the weights to make the headphones feel like they are of a higher quality than the really are. More design related content here

    Beats By Dre Teardown Finds Metal Included to Add Weight | Digital Trends – not terribly surprising but interesting analysis on the product.

    Media

    WPP, Daily Mail and SnapChat launch content agency Truffle Pig | Campaign – its like war, pestilence and famine coming together to form an agency. I would imagine that it could be a struggle to sell into clients, at least in the UK

    The Mayor vs. the Mogul – POLITICO Magazine – challenges of ethics that Bloomberg faces

    Security

    Why We Encrypt | Schneier on Security – another good read by Bruce Schneier

    Software

    The Web is getting its bytecode: WebAssembly | Ars Technica – interesting asm.js is actually a subset of Javascript than something completely new

    Technology

    Google opens up on its SDN | Network World – what might suit Google. won’t necessarily work in the enterprise data centre or the telecoms network. Organisation optimised products do inspire more general purpose open source products and this might be no exception.

    Web of no web

    Enter the video helmet – a 130 inch world of your own | TelecomTV – interesting product in terms of immersion. If this was fictional, one would have to ask if this was part of the ‘deck’ used by console cowboy Case in William Gibson’s Neuromancer?

  • Quibb + more things

    Why aren’t App Constellations working? Quibb members share some diverse opinions | Quibb – interesting that there are only US examples used in the Quibb research. There are wider issues with some of the companies mentioned especially Foursquare and the app constellations that they are building according to Quibb

    Beware the Listening Machines – The Atlantic – Orwell was only a few decades out?

    Royal Mail to deliver junk mail to shoppers after clicking on a product online | Daily Mail Online – offline retargeting

    Oculus Rift Inventor Palmer Luckey: Virtual Reality Will Make Distance Irrelevant (Q&A) | Re/code – better video conferencing and gaming sound like initial big applications

    Amazon’s New Plan to Pay Authors Every Time Someone Turns a Page – The Atlantic – novelists go with Gawker Media-esque model

    Apple Pay Coming to MBNA Customers in the UK | MBNA – interesting that MBNA is pushing this release directly out to consumers via email marketing

    Google’s DeepMind uses Daily Mail to teach computers how to read human language | Daily Mail Online – its actually about the bullet point summaries, but I can’t help feeling we are about to get screwed over by terminators with a fascist political outlook

    A Robotic Dog’s Mortality – The New York Times – dealing with loss as your Aibo no longer works and can’t be serviced (paywall)

    Kids like to beat up robots | Fusion – Half of the devil-children said they perceived that the robot seemed pained and stressed out by what they were doing to it. But they were unbothered by this, because children are evil.

    6 reasons killing off Yahoo Pipes was a bad idea | VentureBeat – interesting piece on the pervasive influence of Yahoo!’s shuttered Pipes product. More online related content here.

    China Inc is leaving Wall Street for wrong reason | SCMP – market arbitrage play, privatise in the US, sell at a higher price on the Chinese stock markets (paywall)

  • Prada ‘it’ bag + other news

    Prada ‘it’ bag

    Here’s Prada’s New ‘It’ Bag, the Inside – Racked – interesting that Prada is trying to design itself out of its current financial slump due to low demand in Asian markets. Part of the problem that Prada has is retail presence, the poor experiential aspects of the brand and the ease of faking Prada products, especially Prada Sport products. More luxury related posts here.

    Ethics

    The “dreams” of Google’s AI are equal parts amazing and disturbing | Quartz – I can see this taking the place of fractals and stereographs in culture

    Class ceiling? City firms enforce ‘posh’ hiring test | CNBC – and this is news because? It’s been this way for decades

    Gadget

    Apple TV’s 4K Future – I, Cringely – interesting data around bandwidth requirements. More gadget related posts here.

    How to

    Google Trends Now Shows the Web’s Obsessions in Real Time | WIRED – absolutely huge for marketers and PRs

    Luxury

    Montblanc touts adventure with elaborate video campaign – Luxury Daily – interesting how this links back to sales

    Media

    Introducing autoplay video and a new standard for viewability | Twitter Blogs – because consumers want auto-playing video ads (NOT). This is going to be as annoying AF, I am surprised that Twitter learned the wrong lessons from watching Facebook

    Online

    Facebook Moments App Helps Users Swap and Organize Photos | SocialTimes – interesting expansion of Facebook’s app constellation into pictures

    Security

    Why Facebook’s New Photo App Isn’t Coming Out in Europe | TIME – creepy facial recognition technology

    Software

    Android-based Huawei smartwatch delayed in China due to ban on Google services | South China Morning Post – at the moment Huawei doesn’t have an alternative to integrate with, but that may change (paywall)

    Web of no web

    China’s NetDragon makes bid for Promethean World to widen its compass in online education | South China Morning Post – really interesting acquisition. Online games to smart boards (paywall)

  • China bubble + more things

    Stand Back: China Bubble Will Burst – Bloomberg View – I don’t think it will go pop, though it will correct, probably not this year. The China bubble has become an existential threat to global markets, because of the scale of the China bubble. At the end of the day, China’s retail investors are starved of investment opportunities, that is one of the factors driving the China bubble and it won’t change suddenly. More finance related content here.

    Apple News curation will have human editors and that will raise important questions | 9to5Mac – big implications for PR news stories and media exposure

    Western Firms Caught Off Guard as Chinese Shoppers Flock to Web – WSJ – over estimated bricks and mortar sales, but also resurgent local brands utilising online channels

    WSJ moves to a single global edition | Marketing Interactive – higher stakes for PR people and advertisers

    White hackers in China young and underpaid | WantChinaTimes.com – explains motivation for black hat activity beyond the intellectual challenge

    [WATCH] Google’s Amazing Location-Aware Search Finds Answers About Nearby Places – not terribly surprising definitely the direction that Google and others have been looking to go with location as a context to user intent in search for a good while

    8 Smart Folders You Need on Your Mac & How to Set Them Up | Makeuseof – handy way of getting organised on the Mac

    Alice Rawsthorn on the pros and cons of new digital interface design | Putting People First – interesting as it touches tangentially on dedicated purpose design and the faults of icons under glass and digital menu driven design

    Paul Ford: What is Code? | Bloomberg – interesting long form article

    Exclusive: Facebook earns 51 percent of ad revenue overseas – executives | Reuters – Facebook using specific methods tailored to the country including optimizing video and pictures for slower connections in India, where an ad product called “missed call” also helps customers avoid phone call charges. Many people in India dial a friend and hang up to send a signal without incurring charges. Facebook incorporated this system into its ads. A person can place a “missed call” by clicking on a mobile ad from Facebook and receive a return call with information, for example the score of a cricket game, sponsored by a brand.

    LG G4 Teardown – iFixit – beautiful inside and out reminds me of the Mac design approach

  • Yakuza Apocalypse + more

    Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War Of The Underworld

    Awesome trailer for Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War Of The Underworld from Takashi Miike

    Yakuza Apocalypse is a visceral shock to the system. It strips away the glamour that surrounds the yakuza in Japanese culture, a bit like like the way the Krays are glamourised in British culture. The reality is rather more squalid, like Tadamasa Goto who is known to have provided information to the FBI. While they didn’t get anything, a grass is still a grass.

    Optical data communications technology

    Really interesting Panasonic technology for data transfer, is it more than a less obvious QRcode in terms of the data that it contains?

    Stüssy x Sophnet

    Stüssy have done a really good collaboration with Japanese brand Sophnet which dropped this week. I managed to pick up a Stüssy x Sophnet t-shirt and hooded top. I was surprised by two things. The quality was more up to the old school Stüssy standard than is usually the case now. Secondly, for a Japanese brand collaboration, they both came in western XXL size. We won’t see the like of this collaboration for a good while again, if ever.

    More luxury related content here.
    stussy

    SoftBank changes tack with adverts

    SoftBank seem to have moved away from their kooky ‘family’ adverts using modern samurai Isao Machii cuts many objects with ”Iaido” sword strokes