Posts filed under 'design'
Designing for austerity
Andrew Curry writes:
Alice Rawsthorne has an interesting article on the impact of recession on design in the International Herald Tribune. It seems it’s all good news. This shouldn’t be a surprise; innovation thrives on scarcity and constraint, and design is no different. And certainly the historical evidence bears this out. The Bauhaus and the Modernist movements emerged in the 1920s and ’30s, and the Italian post-war design boom from the depths of its post-war austerity.
The current financial and economic crisis requires that we think again about how our systems work, and - as she writes - designers excel at simplifying complex issues and collaborating with other disciplines. Rawsthorne anticipates that designers will help companies to cut costs by thinking about new ways to use materials and by imagining new service models (for example part-ownership or ‘renalism’ rather than outright purchase, as is happening with the Parisian Velib bicycle initiative - or Streetcar and Zipcar, come to that).
Beyond this, there are whole new approaches to service and system design, and she commends the work of Live|Work, which has redesigned support services, for example in its work in Sunderland, to put the user at the centre and access resources from multiple agencies rather than being caught between them.(It also works in the private sector).
The final bit of good news? The market for expensively designed objects has tanked. Half of the lots at Sotheby’s design auction last month went unsold.
Thanks to core 77 for the tip. The picture of a Velib station at the top of this post is from an article about the Velib scheme in Post-Carbon Cities.
Add comment 1 December 2008
Flying the flag (post 2 of 2)
Jake Goretzki writes:
In the first half of this post, I wrote about flags as brands with an army and navy - but still in need of relaunching or repositioning from time to time. When they do work, relaunches are marvellously transformatory. Imagine Canada with this blazer badge of a flag (below) - unbelievably, this survived until 1965. It seems to convey the notion of Canada as some kind of British backwater. How could it ever have stood out? The Maple leaf on the other hand is ownable, differentiated and unifying. That said, of course, Quebec might beg to differ – anyone for a rebrand?
Canada Pre-1965
Canada Post-1965
Add comment 22 April 2008
Usability and simplicity
Andrew Curry writes:
Our former colleague Chad Wollen, who has spent the last few years working for digital media companies, sent me a cartoon by Eric Burke that’s being going the rounds in the digital community:
Judging by the response to the original post, it’s clearly struck a nerve among designers and programmers, even provoking some discussion about the purpose of jokes.
What’s interesting, reading the comments, is that people are taking a somewhat ‘binary’ view of simplicity (it’s either ‘good’ or ‘bad’). As John Maeda reminds us in his Laws of Simplicity, it’s a bit more complicated than that. One of the ‘laws’ of simplicity, he suggests, is to ‘reduce’, for example by removing functionality - the Apple and Google trick. But he also reminds us that simplicity often requires knowledge on the part of the user, that “simplicity and complexity need each other” - and that “some things can never be made simple”. The design skill is knowing what can be, and why.
Add comment 17 March 2008
Unravelling the cassette
Stacey Yates writes:
The audio cassette is 45 years old this year, and is reaching the end of its life, at least in Europe and the US. It peaked in the 1980s, but started to decline after the CD was rolled out in 1993. As our music consumption becomes increasingly intangible, people are pointing to some of the pleasures of more tangible forms - as a amusing post at the design blog Core 77 recently reminded me: the cassette as a design convention.
In contrast to the age of digital, the cassette was a lo-fi, low tech object and it was the first hard format to emerge in response to a more mobile society - the age of the Walkman preceded the iPod generation by 25 years. It could get stuck down the back of your sofa or crammed into your banger’s glove compartment for months, and you knew you could still rely on it to work when you found it again. Unlike the CD, it was near unbreakable and was always ready to play just where you left off. If it did get a bit chewed up, all you needed was a pencil or a biro to sort it.
The one time you might have been precious about a cassette was when you made a mix tape. In the 1980s creating a mix tape for someone was an act of dedication. Sitting through selected tapes with your finger hovering above the pause button took time and choosing the right mix of songs took creativity. The mix tape could also be a personal selection, creating a whole new way to mix and match music that has been reinforced by the rise of the celebrity DJ and by digital music. But let’s face it, there’s no romance in a USB stick. So perhaps it’s not surprising to find a site which, perhaps cunningly, is selling the ease of the digital ‘mix-stick’ - but in a package which offers all the personalisation that you used to get from the cassette.
Image © Stacey Yates
[Correction: A typo above has the CD launched, incorrectly, in 1993. In fact, it was launched commercially in Europe and the USA in 1983 (late 1982 in Japan). Thanks to Harry, in Comments, below, for pointing this out.]
6 comments 5 March 2008
Collectibles of the future
Trevor Harvey writes:
Which collectibles will be worth something in 2030? The Times this week asked some experts what they’d spend £100 (or less) on in 2008 in the hope of a return in 20 years time. The answers varied from an Anya Hindmarch ‘not a plastic bag‘ to celebrity autographs to David Linley pencils to mousemats (on the assumption that they’ll be as old-fashioned as antimacassars by 2030, so will be a social history of our times), to advice to hunt out a craft objet. Of course, such exercises say as much about the present as they do about the future. What I learned from this was that the experts think that celebrity culture will still be alive, and booming, in 2030, and we’ll still be chasing after ’stuff’. It’s possible that this won’t be the case. What if evidence of ideas are more valuable instead - notes or drawings or sketches? Or if our interest in fame has moved beyond the circle of royalty, entertainment and sport?
And since collectors like their collectibles as mint-condition as possible, better not use any of this stuff. The advice on the Anya Hindmarch bag is to wrap it carefully and put it away somewhere safe. And keep on using the plastic bags, no doubt.
Image source: www.davidlinley.com
Add comment 8 February 2008
Cultural values, design, and global production
Eleanor Cooksey writes:
I recently read WPP’s annual journal of marketing insights, Atticus, and noted an interesting point towards the end of an article called ‘Getting the little things right’, by a team at the digital agency Digit, in London. [Not currently online, unfortunately].
They discuss how product and service design, in particular for electronic media, tends to reflect ‘Californian’ values, which include ‘pragmatism (a can-do attitude and belief in prototyping), audacity (focus on innovation and the pioneering spirit) and a certain lightness of touch (playfulness and optimism)’. Perhaps not surprising, they say, since so many user interface principles came out of Silicon Valley in the ’80s and ’90s. When one thinks of Apple, for example, it’s easy to see how these values translate into product experience.
But users in other regions expect an experience which reflects their important values. In Europe, this might include ‘conviviality (social not solitary) and quality (craftsmanship, individualism, local provenance). Nokia, for example, has recently shown prototype handsets which embed ‘green values’ and social responsibility.
But as the global design market becomes more integrated, it may become increasingly hard in the future to work out whose values are inherent in services and products.
Image ‘ipod’ copyright 2007 Apple Inc.
Image ‘eco phone’ copyright 2008 Nokia.
1 comment 22 January 2008
The power of packaging
Jake Goretzki writes:
Belgian chocolate - while evidament the best in the world - has always let itself down by the conservatism of its brands (Cote D’Or’s range hasn’t really changed for the last 40 years). So it’s a pleasant surprise to find some innovation, from ‘Dolfin’, a brand which I hadn’t previously heard of but is apparently making friends and influencing people in the supermarkets of Bruxelles.
I like the way the packaging communicates the brand. But even better, the wrapper is like a re-sealable rolling tobacco pouch, and really gives the chocolate the feel of something specially blended for the special moment, to be taken in small doses in reflective interludes. It takes Galaxy’s ‘indulgence’ to another… galaxy, ah oui. But be warned; it’s 70% cocoa - so you’ll love it or hate it.
Add comment 11 January 2008
Mapping the new Shanghai metro
Andrew Curry writes:
Our collegue Suvid Bajaj sends this map (click on the thumbnail) of the planned Shanghai metro - planned to reach 960 kms of track by 2020. In comparison, the London tube has a total track length of 450 kms, and the New York subway runs to around 400 kms.
One feature of the map which struck me was the fact that Harry Beck’s ‘wiring diagram’ model of mapping a subway system - which revolutionised the way we thought about the London tube in the 1930s - seems to have become ubiquitous.
2 comments 15 December 2007
Signs of their times
Andrew Curry writes:
Great designs are of their moment - but they are also a vision of a future as well - future materials, future aesthetics, future lifestyles. Which is why I enjoyed finding this poster - a history of the future in an A-Z of classic designs from the 20th century.
From Blue Ant Studio via the Core 77 blog.
Add comment 24 October 2007
The simplicity trend
Andrew Curry writes:
One of the trends we’ve been following for a while is that of increasing simplicity - a response to increasing product complexity. One of the signs of this was the emergence at MIT of John Maeda’s Simplicity consortium, attended by various leading businesses. (Another was the success of Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan ’s book Simply Better).
John Maeda has recently distilled his thoughts on simplicity into a book, The Laws of Simplicity - currently running at #1,333 on the Amazon best-sellers list. The blog at TED.com has a video of him doing his Simplicity thing. (It runs just under 18 minutes).
Thanks to flatcrabs for the image of the poster.
Add comment 24 September 2007
