Month: July 2016

Links of the day | 在网上找到

Post author By admin
Post date July 31, 2016

Reading Time: 2 minutes

WSJ City – Post-Brexit, The City Has English Law on Its Side – “You can think of London as a Silicon Valley of international business law. The robustness of English law and its utility are not going anywhere.” – But Ireland has a similar legal common law system and would still have an EU passport for its financial system. More on Brexit here.

WSJ City – UK and Eurozone Part Ways on Confidence | WSJ – no real surprise there. Waiting for this to be attacked as ‘project fear’

In defence of Byron | FT Alphaville – interesting run down on UK immigration law

Twitter quarterly results – interesting increase in cost of revenue and corresponding reduction in R&D. Sales and marketing costs increased substantially as well

The guy trying to demolish Android with Cyanogen uses an iPhone | TheNextWeb – actual LOL. I get why he might use competitor products to understand them, but the optics on this are bad

Steam On Windows 10 Will Get ‘Progressively Worse’: Gears of War Developer – Slashdot – interesting accusations of ‘antitrust’ busting practices in gaming by the beast of Redmond

I, Cringely Is anyone at Yahoo! paying attention? Probably not. – I, Cringely – unfortunately its already game over. The money is committed to be returned to shareholders, patents will be licensed and approaches to get rid of Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan stakes. I wonder how they will juggle the rights to the Yahoo! name which now sits with the Verizon business for the Japanese JV?

Preliminary EDPS Opinion on the review of the ePrivacy Directive (2002/58/EC) | Europa.eu – interesting pro cryptography stance (pdf)

Companies Are Promoting More Than Ever, With Too Little Success | SocialBakers – interesting Facebook data points

Gigaom | What’s going on in Phoneland? — is leading to consolidation, the classic market maturation that comes right before a new era of breakthroughs and growth. But those breakthroughs won’t be in 2016

初 | hygiene | 기본

Things that made my day this week

Post author By admin
Post date July 30, 2016

Reading Time: < 1 minute

A great summer soundtrack by Amerigo Gazaway who do some of the best blends of hip-hop with soul. More on Amerigo Gazaway here.

I got this from an old college friend who studied industrial design. The crash test of a modern car versus a 1959 model tells you a lot about how safety and design has come on in leaps and bounds. It owes a lot to Ralph Nader’s Unsafe At Any Speed. In his book Nader posited that cars were deliberately designed to be unsafe. I don’t think that it was intentional design decisions, I just think that it didn’t explicitly put safety on the design brief. More on design here.

Moby did a great mix for Dazed Digital

Weiden & Kennedy for Nike came up with the Unlimited Future campaign. Nike opponents pointed out that it could be construed as a reference to their sweat shop factories. Either way you don’t see other sports apparel brands doing powerful brand anthems like this

Pirate Printers: Shirts and Totes Printed Directly on Urban Utility Covers | Colossal – just waiting for a Stanton Warrior t-shirt…

US public broadcaster has been bringing some of its vintage interviews to life like this video featuring Marlene Dietrich

Benetton – new positioning

Post author By admin
Post date July 29, 2016

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Benetton was, from my personal perspective, a photo-streetwear brand of the 1980s and early 1990s. It had a particular European look.

This was back when European tennis wear like Lacoste and Australian by L’Alpina were exotic. The Pet Shop Boys were singing about the Paninara sub culture that was obsessed with designer clothing and American movie style. Benetton made highly branded t-shirts and rugby shirts, but it was best known for its knitwear. It was a family run business that pioneered the use of technology to automate clothing manufacturing in the face of globalisation.

At that time, thanks to Fiat adverts about its production line for the Fiat Strada, Italy was considered in the UK to be a highly sophisticated manufacturing power. There was a clear contrast with the striking British Leyland factory workers. Of course, the Fiats still rusted like their predecessor cars.

Being a family business Benetton was also able to do a famous series of adverts that provided progressive social commentary through shock tactics.

It’s new positioning is a marked move away from this heritage. It’s ‘Clothes for Humans’ tag line moves the brand towards the everyday – almost norm core in its message. It positions the brands as clothes for everyone – more Uniqlo or Gap than designer wear.