Design

28 Nov 2007 1030H

NYC: Muji, Uniqlo

Need to break out the category ‘design’ into multiple categories: print design, packaging design, interaction design, information, retail presence, blah blah blah. Having said that let’s talk about MUJI and Uniqlo, Japanese retailers that have landed, where else? Manhattan. Details about my next big shopping trip follow:
While I was working in Hong Kong during the [...]

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08 Nov 2007 1400H

Arrow to the Sun

In the middle of a presentation today, I saw something that brought me back to 2nd grade, a book that probably influenced me as much as any other to try and become a designer someday, which is Gerald McDermott’s Caldecott Award winning book of 1975, Arrow to the Sun, a retelling of an Pueblo Indian [...]

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23 Oct 2007 1121H

Artifacts during the visual communications design process

So the other day I ran into discussion about several different kinds of design artifacts, namely, mood boards, theme boards, and design keys. What are these things, when do we use them, why, how, who, blah blah blah?
To understand the contexts which forced these artifacts into being, we need to step back and remember the [...]

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15 Aug 2007 1135H

How not to design a form, part 2

As reported back in March, when my third Xbox 360 failed and I was sent a box with instructions on packing it in and sending it back for repairs at the UPS facility in McAllen, Texas, we looked at the form and tried to figure out how to make it better. Well, I have mixed [...]

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10 Aug 2007 2052H

How to keep Lego going in the early 21st century

Fantastic Monocle interview with Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, the CEO of Lego about how they are trying to make the product and brand relevant in a video game dominant, global age. Pay attention around Minute 12 when he starts talking about the Lego family personas. 20 minutes, flash video.

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28 Jul 2007 0726H

Monocle

I’ve just twigged to this newish magazine, Monocle, through a series of videos on city design at the International Herald Tribune, one of my favorite designed readings on the net.
Look at this gorgeous modernism that does not use sans serif type for its headers. It’s simply beautiful. I can even forgive the black background [...]

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24 Jul 2007 2051H

Design notes, on PBS

Was watching NOVA tonight, and saw a sculpture called Kryptos, which contains coded messages about light and darkness, and the wonder of discovery, embedded within it. An awe inspiring piece. (As a complete aside, there was also a marvelous piece about the discoverer of gravitational lensing and how he’s giving back to his community.)
Then followed [...]

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18 Jul 2007 0604H

Designing human error out of windows, doors

Not that windows, made by that firm in Redmond, WA, but glass and wood and plastic windows. Some kid fell out of a window in a high rise in Toronto, reports the CBC and so on Metro Morning this morning, they brought in an industrial designer to talk about how they might approach the problem [...]

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13 Jul 2007 1000H

Customer service as design investment

Just wanted to talk about this article from MSN that says Sprint’s dumping 1000 customers because they complained too much. I can’t say that this is entirely due to consumer fraud, because if it were the case, would Sprint rate so far down the scale in consumer service? (Perhaps Sprint should not have rebranded with [...]

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04 Jul 2007 1825H

Two notes for July 4th

We had a Weber grill, a black one, for about 20-30 odd years, which we trundled out every summer for the obligatory cookout. This year, since the family has expanded now that my sister has two kids, and we’re no longer stoked (so to speak) about using charcoal, I bought another Weber to replace it. [...]

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