2 minutes estimated reading time
Political polarisation between Democrats and Republicans
Political polarisation has been talked about for years. The schism in UK society caused by Brexit has been exhaustively examined including sometimes on this blog. This video is based on research by PRRI, you can see more about the research here. There are a number of outtakes in the data including the different party supporters relative openness to diversity and by implication societal change which was covered by Vox a couple of years ago. Republicans were reluctant to have a trans person in their family. Scott Galloway highlights that prejudice isn’t only about colour or gender identity.
We’re seeing Democrat supporters who believe that their personal identity is intrinsically entwined with their political opinions. They believe that a confrontation with your opinion is the same as a confrontation with your identity. All of which implies an underlying brittleness and lack of resilience to their prejudice rather than ignorance.
When Shinto became a religion
Really interesting video on the history and nature of Shinto, the Japanese belief system.
Artist creates personas for Singapore
I loved this project design that uses iconic every day items to reflect what Singapore might look like as a person. In many respects the items selected also reminded me of everyday live in Hong Kong. Which I guess goes to show that we have more in common than things that separate use.
Pets.com
I was looking at vintage ads as part of a wider internal project at work on Super Bowl advertising. During that time I delved into Pets.com content. One of the things I found was some outtakes that TBWA\Chiat\Day shot for use by San Francisco interactive agency Lot21. (Interactive agency ages this to the late 1990s, back to when the agency wanted to do both CD-ROM type experiences and websites in their agency in case this web thing turned out to be a fad.)
This content was designed to be held on the Pets.com puppet profile page, think a Geocities type page or author profile page on Blogspot or Live Journal. It all feels like the kind of things that brand teams would so for social platforms now.
Koyaanisqatsi
Philip Glass’ soundtrack for movie Koyaanisqatsi gets the 8-bit treatment with a remake by Shiryu. Shiryu calls it a remix, but really its a cover version.
Product design is pain
Mike Glover talks about how he and his colleagues problem solved to come up with the specification for the modern Opscore military helmet. Its an interesting story from a product design point of view.
You can hear about how they modified their old equipment and these alterations were then parleyed into the current industrial design by the manufacturer.