It is no secret that we at Shift. love Legos.
However grown men putting together fire engines inevitably attract some strange looks. But fear not, now there is a good excuse for anyone to buy Legos again regardless of age.
The new Architecture series released last week includes models of five iconic American buildings such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim museum. We’d rather see the other Frank’s version attempted in Lego, but it’s a good start.
As our G-20 masters hobnobbed across Europe last week they issued communiques with some staggeringly large numbers.
As humans we can understand quantities of ten by looking at our hands. We can understand quantities of a hundred when we cram ourselves into a budget airline. We can even understand thousands when we go to the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens.
But millions, billions, and trillions? They are just so far removed from our everyday experiences that they are nearly impossible to comprehend.
What does 1.1 trillion (that’s 1,100,000,000,000) really mean?
Fortunately Ray and Charles Eames have come to our rescue.
Their remarkable 1977 film puts things in perspective. Try and guess the scale of a trillion (10^12) before you start watching.
Chinese New Year is a time for, among other things, paying respects to one’s elders. We were delighted to see the newly launched W+K Radio follow this tradition and air a wonderful little interview with David Kennedy, the grand daddy of Wieden+Kennedy.
Those of you blessed with an attention span and a remote interest in advertising history should definitely check it out. There’s nothing quite like listening to war stories straight from the source, and Mr. Kennedy doesn’t disappoint.
Segment one teaches us about the joys of timber, the value of scotch, and how to resign from your boring, stuffy, big-agency job.
Segment two offers lessons on how to win back clients, the services of stylists, and how trying to save your ass can transform youth culture.
Background viewing is here, here, and most definitely here.
Last year I borrowed a funny looking yellow book from one of my esteemed partners. Now, months later, I can finally return it.
It has taken forever not because I’m a slow reader. Not because book got relegated to the skim-and-get-to-someday pile. But because it is one of those rare books that sucks you in and demands you go and find out more.
It is impossible to read a few pages and just go about your business. Essay after essay your curiosity is activated and you simply have to go digging for the examples, the references, the history. And the secret, I think, lies in its incompleteness.
This is a 272-page book on design without a single image. Not a single one. The essays in the book get you to do things because your brain needs to complete the visual part of the story, much like the Andean pan flute covers of 80s tunes at airports get stuck in your head because your brain needs to complete the song.
Here is my to-do list after getting through it. 22 out of the 79 essays made me go explore something else. From what little I understand about Americans, .278 is not a bad batting average.
Set by the whims of your web browser probably in Helvetica, designed by Max Miedinger in 1957, if you are on a Mac; or Arial, designed by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders in 1982, if you are on a PC.
As gold and diamond-encrusted frequent fliers we have been fans of Dopplr, the social network with an iPod-like focus on travel, for a while now. However their latest feature has ratcheted our fandom to a new level.
We are, of course, talking about Dopplr’s personal annual reports that came out last week. A masterpiece of information design, the report uses your individual travel data from the past year to display a visual travel timeline somewhat reminiscent of a genome sequence.
Not only do memories of specific people and places come flooding back, but all the data is put into context. The hardest hitting of these is the Hummer-meter that translates your flight CO2 emissions into the equivalent number of Hummer H3s driving year-round.
22,300 kg of CO2 means nothing. 2.2 Hummers makes you feel more disgusted about yourself than eating three diavolas in one sitting. A great example of how making the invisible visible can change behavior.
We’ll try to do better in 2009. Sorry, CX.
A little gem of an interview in which Steve Jobs talks about his experience working with Paul Rand on the development of the NeXT identity. Think of it as a seven-minute masterclass on client-designer relationships that produce great work. A high bar to meet for both parties.
Back in September 2001, President George W. Bush urged Americans to go shopping as a patriotic duty. Now, as the clock counts the minutes down to his coronation, President Barack H. Obama has actually done it.
Yes, he can. At least symbolically.
The creator of the iconic HOPE posters from this year’s campaign has just designed a series of shopping bags and ads for Saks Fifth Avenue, a high-end American department store. That’s right, shopping bags. It strikes us as a fitting conclusion to the Obey phenomenon.
God bless America.
Recession. Credit crunch. Gifting season. What better time to discuss bargains.
For the past few months, Nokia’s design and research team have been hosting an interesting online initiative to compare what $5 can buy you around the world. Our top 3 picks from the submissions:
However, more recent news suggests $5 might well pay the 2009 salaries of the CEOs of GM, Ford, Chrysler and AIG. And we’d still have a dollar left for the piggy-bank.
When Douglas Rushkoff speaks, people listen. One of our favourite media/cultural/theological critics is coming out with a new book next July.
We can’t wait, but thanks to last week’s Bloomberg/Ofcom conference we don’t have to.
Strap in for an explosive 45 minutes that previews some of the thinking from the book and takes you from Lehman’s non-existence to open sourcing the laws of the economy. All while stuffy British media regulators struggle to understand what hit them. Beautiful.
V is a powerful letter. It has a natural energy rising up from its “vertex” (the base of the V) in a celebratory outstretching of its “arms”. If you don’t have any better ideas for your logo, and your company name starts with a V, you could do worse than creating your own version of a V symbol.
Here are the five greatest V’s in branding history.
If the Volkswagen V feels very Germanic and engineered, you’re on to something. The logo was the result of an office competition to come up with a logo. The winner of the competition was an engineer named Franz Reimspiess, the same man who perfected the engine for the VW Beetle in the 1930’s. He won 50 Marks for his efforts.
The Vertu wingspan, on the other hand, exaggerates the stretch of a V like a soaring eagle. Not surprising given Frank Nuovo, the chief designer of Nokia’s luxury line also known as the Calvin Klein of mobile phones, brings Italian flair to his work.
The Visa V was a recent update of a 50-year-old classic. After eight months of working with mammoth, process-obsessed brand consultancies Landor and Wolff Olins, the brand was getting nowhere. Internal designer Greg Silveria who recognized the unique serif on the Visa V was its most distinguishing characteristic simply added a highlight to it to create an elegant solution to the problem and break the logjam. Rumour has it, it took him 30 minutes to come up with the idea.
The spontaneous and energetic Virgin V is another example of an instinctive solution. Richard Branson went to see Trevor Key, a photographer, back in the early 1970s about changing the Virgin logo. He drew the current Virgin logo known as “The Scrawl” on the back of a napkin, which Branson bought for a princely sum of 200 pounds. The angle of the logo apparently stems from the fact that napkin happened to be at an angle at the time.
Last, and most definitely least, we come to the Von Dutch V. Popularized by the likes of Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears in 2003, the faux anti-status symbol has become an essential part of any hip-hop wannabe’s uniform. However, the true origin of the brand is much more authentic and goes back to Kenny “Von Dutch” Howard, the father of the 1960s custom car culture. He developed the logo as a teenager and used it all his life. Many of his friends are convinced he would now be turning in his grave.
So there you have it. A few happy accidents have made the V into the most powerful letter in branding.
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