Stussy World Tour trailer - freakin' awesome

Some of the biggest names real art including Futura himself in a documentary. The world series refers to Stussy's guest range of world series t-shirts, but the film is more than an advert; it captures the thoughts of dozens of artists and designers who've led the cutting edge in graphic and visual design for the past two decades.

Starbucks Holiday Season

Starbucks do a different mug every year for Christmas. This year's design echoes the red paper cups that the coffee shop is selling to take out customers even down to the faux rolled lip at the top of the mug. I liked the way the theme had been carried through faithfully from paper to porcelain.

Toblerone packaging

Toblerone have got some really cool packaging design with a sense of humour.



This is what the more usual design looks like.

Roadwarrior design classics

A little while back I wrote about my multi-adapter that some clients have coveted in the past. Another item in my laptop travelling kit is this natty retractable ethernet cable by Targus.

Wi-Fi despite what the techno-pundits would have you believe is rather unpredictable and reception areas can be like Swiss cheese. If I have the chance I prefer an ethernet socket to hook up my MacBook Pro.

Rather than having a coiled cable that ends up looking like a plate of spaghetti and damaged connectors I have a small plastic block about the size of a fat audio cassette. It makes it a lot easier to pack.

It recoils back into its plastic shell automatically like the power cord on my vacuum cleaner.

The Dipstick

I am not a great kitchen and cooking person but this really appealed to me. The Teastick.

For years my parents and my Granny claimed that teabags contained the worst sweepings of the tea and insisted on drinking Barry's Tea in leaf form only.

You can only hold so many years making a quick mug of tea and drinking carefully to allow the leaves to settle at the bottom of the cup if the tea strainer had been mislaid. Which is where the Teastick is a stroke of well not exactly genius more like something that has been staring you in the face, its so obvious. But I guess that's where great product design comes in.

A curious mix of influser and teaspoon, the Teastick is old school tea for a post-modern time poor world. What's more paper-making manufacturing for the cases of tea bags consumes a huge amount of energy, pollutes a lot of water, so the Teastick should be appreciated by Guardian-reading types.

Blog Post 1,000: The Change Function

As a PR person, it is not enough only be a good paid-shill, but to understand something about your clients. Are they a winner or a flamer?

If they are a flamer, you want your cash up front and start contingency planning for how you replace them with another piece of business.

If they are a winner, then you can be more flexible and possibly take a bath if they are going to be a flagship brand on your client list.

What is the compelling reason to purchase their product or service.

Rule one: Clients are generally too close to their products, consumers will work out how they become relevant to their own lives or not

Rule two: The greatest lie after 'I love you' and 'I can guarantee you coverage in the Financial Times' is 'Our product is unique'. If the problem can be solved another way, it means that the product is not unique because the customer has a substitute choice. Believe: flickr was not unique, it was an innovative way at looking at the same problem. The iPod was not unique, Compaq made the first hard drive-based MP3 player back in the late 90s and the Mac wasn't unique because it got the queues from Doug Engelbart and Xerox PARC.

The Change Function by Pip Coburn makes an interesting read as it shows by example why some technologies take off, while others flame out.

What's the crisis the product or services solves? People will generally only adopt the new, new thing if there is a compelling reason for them.

Is the crisis one for real-world people, or just for rich people (who fly business class three days in every week and think that having a social life is messaging fellow college alumni on their Blackberry once every six weeks)?

How high is the total perceived pain of adoption?

Is your client user-centred: do they use language that shows they look at things from the users point of view?

Do they have an iterative development cycle? (Do they roll out improvements on a regular basis, based on user feedback and their technological roadmap rather than blockbuster updates.)

Pip Coburn elegantly codifies common sense; its the stuff you know instinctively, like the smartphone that you only use voice and texting on and yet still listen to music on your iPod, or the latest cool web 2.0 service that you registered for but then never seem to go back to.

Anatomy of a train wreck

BenQ is pulling the plug on the Siemens mobile business that it bought about 12 months ago.

The blogosphere is strarting to analyse the business. It is a tragedy for the people employed by the company and a sad way to see the Siemens brand disappear.

It is bad for consumers in that it concentrates power in fewer and fewer hands and robs the market of a player who came up with some of the most interesting product designs; from the rotating keyboard of the SK65 to the SL series of slider phones that Nokia aped with the 6111.

Siemens was known for its good quality low-end phones and to be honest I can't ever recall seeing any of their business-orientated phones in action. Maybe their distribution was patchy in the UK.

BenQ however didn't bring the necessary skills set to the table: products were delayed, the product design of many of the new BenQ phones isn't very impressive and to external audiences they didn't seem to have a clue about consumer marketing.

BenQ's great skill is in the process of manufacturing mobile phones not selling them. Someone like Ningbo Bird who have some consumer marketing smarts would have been a better partner. BenQ will continue on in the mobile business as a vassal of the big manufacturers who need products manufactured on their behalf to their own designs.

Where BenQ will have a problem is with German consumers. Germany is the largest IT market in Europe and its consumers love their gadgets. They are one of the key target markets for BenQ's other offerings for value-conscious consumers, although now the BenQ brand is tainted.

Picnic with the greys

Slate has an interesting article about how modern computer game design is out of touch with the gaming demographic.

Games are becoming deeper, increasing in complexity and the time required to complete them. Yet the average age of a computer gamer is now 33 years old. That means commitments and time poverty, not exactly conducive to spending 40-plus hours completing a state-of-the-art game.

This sounds like the Nintendo Wii with is more casual approach could be coming out ahead by better understanding and providing for their clients needs.

However there is lessons that all game designers could learn from modern television programmes like CSI or 24, particularly the way that complex experiences are broken down into bite-sized chunks of time. More here.

Great information system

The periodic table was a classic piece of information design by Dmitri Mendeleev where function dictated a cool form. However the one pictured above isn't your average version of the periodic table. More information here.

Great information systems

DDO a US based design and branding consultancy have produced some great information maps to showcase their skills. Not only are they beautiful but useful references as well. You can find out more here.

Design Matters

A nice video interview by VNUnet.com with HP about product design. The interview puts a particular focus on a consistent user experience across all their devices from kiosks, living room PC remote controls, rack systems to cameras and printers. They are looking to create a HP look-and-feel. Much of their challenge seems to be constantly re-learning the wheel and trying to provide the kind of vertical sense that Apple can drive in their business.

HP thinks that the experience should be shared across over between the business and consumer space. This common experience is designed to help them to go and do battle with Dell. I am looking forward to have my SuperDome media center.

The elephant in the room they don't seem to have addressed in the interview is their PC OS ;-)

Design Matters

I decided to freshen up the look and feel of the blog, I think that it looks much cleaner, the blog was starting to get weighed down with all kinds of web 2.0 tat from a feed of my bookmarks from Yahoo! MyWeb to a flash feed of my pictures on flickr it was starting to looking like a racing car.

I was given a copy of Factory Records - The complete graphic album compiled by Matthew Robertson which has all the iconic factory artwork, growing up in the North of England during the 1980s this book was like some weird time machine taking back to places I'd long since left .

If I'd realised that my Hac membership card was really such a piece of design history, I wouldn't have thrown it way when I moved down to London after 11 - 13 Whitworth Street closed for the last time.

Having done press work with Bradley Horowitz I know that he's a stand-up guy. So I took his recommendation of Chris Anderson's The Long Tail as a good read seriously. I have had my doubts about Anderson's book, I mean anything that has been hyped that much has got to be distrusted. right?

Online value

Bob Cringely's article got me thinking about a number of questions.

- If a story is less likely to be read because of the nature of online media versus print media, how should this be factored into credibility and reputation (like opportunities to see numbers do currently for print and broadcast)?

- Does the nature and intensity of engagement between media and reader change for online outlets, and if so how does it impact on the relative benefit of PR?

- How can PRs take advantage of the slowed down media agenda online?

- Is there economic case for PRs to move from media influencers to creating their own media, given the diminished power of online media (large and small)?

Let me know any thoughts that you have on the subject.

Adidas Originals boutique

Adidas Originals boutique
Originally uploaded by renaissancechambara.

I love this clever piece of window dressing. The cathode ray tubes and innards have been removed from some vintage televisions and replaced with gels of imagery from this years Adidas Originals collection and backlit with a fluorescent tube inside the cabinet.

Nape

Nape
Originally uploaded by renaissancechambara.

A Bathing Ape's trainers were inspired by Nike's Air Force One designs.

Now Nike has returned the complement co-opting Bape's use of bright candy colour pastels and patent leather type finishes in its summer limited editions for sneaker freakers.

Seen at Size? in Covent Garden.

Oprah Time and the elemental truths

Over my lifetime I have had a number of moments when I felt like I saw things with crystalline clarity: one time was when I was in the library doing a job search in the papers (this is pre-Monster.com kids).

I suddenly came to the conclusion that even if I got a job that I would be in the same cycle soon again and I needed to get out of the blue-collar roles, even if it meant leaving vast tracts of my life behind.

The next one was in April 2000, the internet business had gone mental, the PR agency I was employed in was in mid-flow of the dot.com boom and all the mini-bubbles that went alongside it like the Java boom, the Linux boom, the broadband boom, the web business marketplace boom, the mobile web boom and rise of the PDA.

In fact, about the only thing that we didn't promote was micro-scooters, though we did employ a German freelancer who commuted in from Brighton and rode one everywhere he had to go around London.

Anyway, things got so busy that we had to interview clients and decide whether we wanted to work for them. I met a gentleman from an incubator fund and quickly decided that they were start-up roadkill, but I couldn't work out why this man who was obviously a lot more clever than me was involved in the enterprise.

I asked him what made his companies offering different, to which replied "Ged, I am surprised that you asked that, we are trying to move at internet-speed, so aren't thinking about things like that." I had a sudden jolt of crystalline vision and saw how horribly it was all going to end and that my pension fund wasn't worth squat. The elemental truth in this moment is that common sense trumps eloquent words and intellect every time.

Which brings me on to 8vo On the outside by Mark Holt and Hamish Muir. Steve bought this for me as a Christmas present and up until my apparent non-redundancy and move back to agency life I hadn't really had a chance to read the book in full.

The book charts the rise and fall of the design agency 8vo, their work and puts into context their pivotal role in modern UK graphic design.

The book is a collaborative work written by 8vo, former employees, former clients and industry observers. It is part history lesson focusing on design and the business of design, part a tale of technological change and part catalogue.

The way the book is written it is almost as if it is therapy for Hamish Muir and Mark Holt, I found it in turns fascinating and uncomfortable as they progressed through their work and found some elemental truths in their approach to design.

Much of their style of work has been co-opted by their modern day peers, so it is no longer remarkable, however what their peers lack is a good understanding of their approach to work.

Iain Tait over at Crackunit had a link to an interesting interview with Eric Reiss who learned the same elemental truths as 8vo, but via a different road: in his case Vinterberg and Von Tier's Dogme 95 rules for film making.

• Anything that exists only to satisfy the internal politics of the site owner must be eliminated.
• Anything that exists only to satisfy the ego of the designer must be eliminated.
• Anything that is irrelevant within the context of the page must be eliminated.
• Any feature or technique that reduces the visitor's ability to navigate freely must be reworked or eliminated.
• Any interactive object that forces the visitor to guess its meaning must be reworked or eliminated.
• No software, apart from the browser itself, must be required to get the site to work correctly.
• Content must be readable first, printable second, downloadable third.
• Usability must never be sacrificed for the sake of a style guide.
• No visitor must be forced to register or surrender personal data unless the site owner is unable to provide a service or complete a transaction without it.
• Break any of these rules sooner than do anything outright barbarous.

Oh one completely useless piece of information that I found out today, the ZIP in ZIP code stands for Zone Improvement Program.

On line and on heavy rotation

I got sent a link to the Seventh Information Architecture Summit and found this map of the Yahoo! network (the different properties like astrology, news, finance, search etc that make up the Yahoo! portal) it would have been damn handy to have it when I was working there!

I picked up some choice cuts from the nice people at Phonica and ran into my old friend Freddy 'Love' Garcia who is now working at Vinyl Factory.

Franz Ferdinand - Outsiders (JD Twitch remixes) - Dominion Records. Despite being a bunch of Roxy Music wannabes who shop in thrift shops, their song Outsiders is polished into a gem with the touch of a skilled remix team.

Peech Boys - Don't Make Me Wait - TMT Records. Don't make me wait another night, tonight I want to love you... sampled to death and still sounds as good as the first time I heard it on a club sound system a couple of decades ago. The big disappointment is that the pressing doesn't feature the Larry Levan mix, but don't let that stop you from stocking up.

Onionz - If only I had a brain - Industry Records. Ok, I am biased I am a great fan of Onionz production, he seldom does a bad tune and this one proves the rule: a jacking title track and a hip-house tinged b-side. If this doesn't pack your dance floor, retire and go become a chef.

Maurice - This is Acid - Trax. The low-pitched vocals and 303 sound as fresh today as they did in 1988. Freddy said that 1988 is the sound of now, getting away from all this electro 80s stuff, I told him acid had never gone away

DJ Said & Hideo Kobayashi - Children Of The Drums - Chez Recording. A new fresh sounding house track, quality tune; a solid kick drum and a trippy groove that would fit in most sets.

The Clash - Rock The Casbah/Mustapha Dance - CBS. Ok so The Clash were punks, but the music had dance floor sensibilities, buy this for the dub of Rock the Casbah called Mustapha Dance.

Finally, this Bell South clip below is great despite the fact that is was obviously seeded by professionals rather than kids who had pirated it off their TiVO box, proving that the most subversive media channels are being taken over by the man.

KultureVulture

I went to the V&A in South Kensington with Stephen and David to check out the Modernist movement exhibition that is currently on.

Modernism: Designing a new world 1914 - 1939 speaks to a more continental European experience than a British one. Much of the modernist work that I most like (such as the work of Charles and Ray Eames) was post-war.

The exhibition has been well put together, highlights include an original Tatra saloon, though the exhibition is 'disrupted' by the exhibitors not wanting to address modernism in Fascist-era Europe. An exception to this is a statue that takes the profile of Musolini and rotated through 360 degrees so that it gives it an abstract but recognisable shape.

A man walks into a hotel bar and asks a ballerina where he can find some refreshments

It sounds like a joke, but actually was the surreal climax of a cultural day out that Steve and I had.

We started off at the National Portrait Gallery and completed that in a surprisingly short time. The modern photography and painting was more interesting than the earlier dull-but-worthy material. Some of the most admirable material was actually the architecture of the building itself. There was a particularly good picture on display of Mo Mowlam.

We had a leisurely lunch at the ICA on Pall Mall and then headed over to White Cube.

White Cube was a disappointment. I hadn't realised how small a space it was. We wandered back to Liverpool Street station from a very quiet Hoxton Square and where stopped by what I assumed to be a chugger (charity mugger, someone who gets people to sign direct debits for charities on the street. These people are often aggressive as they're on commission,) or market researcher. Instead she was a photographer's assistant.

Stephen and myself were models in an art photo shoot for Bernhard Deckert where we sat around in the gallery bar of the Great Eastern Hotel and ignored a ballerina called Geida. Geida is a performance artist who does electro versions of cabaret classics: think Al-Naafiysh meets the Blue Angel.

Anyway midway through the shoot a well-dressed man walks up to Geida without batting an eyelid that she is in a tutu and ballet shoes and asks her where he can get refreshments.

She is able to give him directions as she used to organise the Electric Stew nights there. He then nips to the toilets and comes out a couple of minutes later as if everything was the most natural thing in the world.

I suspect that Steve and I will end up as blurs in the background, but that doesn't mean that we won't be milking our 'male model' status for all it was worth.

Style n Fashion

Style pimps Oki Ni have some great jewellery by Japanese graffiti artist Daisuke Sakaguchi as ultimate b-boy wear. Splurge your snaps here.