A public policy wonk, I’m interested in the intersection between commerce and individual behaviour, and sources that can turn multi-disciplinary observations into fundamental insight.
Hey social media douche. Stop worrying about monetizing things and building brand awareness. Your life shouldn’t be measured by the comments you plant and your own mainstream media mentions. Give up on Brand Me and try a little Brand We.
“ … contestational designers challenge the way that design is positioned relative to the broader society in which it operates. Contestational designers are openly partisan practitioners who take sides in pressing issues of the day. They are neither objective designers nor hired guns — images that continue to dominate the technical development commmunity.
Contestational designers are autonomous agents, striving to unleash the full potential of their powers to advance agendas to which they are personally committed. Their collaborators are neither clients nor consumers, but full partners committed to ongoing struggles for human rights and social justice. The work may be unpaid, but it is deeply rewarding. As such, it should be an inspiration to designers everywhere.”
- Tad Hirsch, Learning from Activists: Lessons for Designers, Interactions magazine
” … A fast-food cheeseburger is like a drunken assignation with a stranger met at a wedding reception: momentarily delectable but often leading to shame, nausea, and possibly even health issues …”
- The Boston Phoenix discusses a flat patty available at a mini-mall food court near Harvard Square.
“The first time the lighting of the Olympic torch used advanced technology was during the 1976 Olympics. From Athens, the flame’s energy was transformed into an electric signal and then transmitted to Ottawa by satellite. It was then restored using a laser ray. And it only took a second!” – plaque in the lobby of Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.
This was all much more impressive before the internets.
Korla Pandit, that is. An accomplished organ player who assumed a mystic identity and mesmerized thousands while rounding out the broadcast schedule of fledgling television station KTLA in Los Angeles.
He just sat there, staring and playing smooth licks on his Hammond organ.
I’ve got five national grocery chains – with massive square footage – within a two kilometre radius in my suburban neighbourhood. And I have some overwhelming and unexplained fascination with store planograms, integrated marketing campaigns and promotional programs.
” … Tom Mylan, a butcher who breaks down whole carcasses at Marlow & Daughters in Brooklyn, says the cattlemen are not inventing anything.
“The old Italians and French butchers have been doing this forever,” he said. The surprise, he said, is that it took the big producers this long to figure out how to process and market off-cuts.
“The difference in a good name is worth $3 or $4 a pound,” he said …”
And there’s the rub.* There’s big money to be made in meat, especially if you differentiate according to quality, cuts, point of origin and whether they’re “raised right.”
I can’t believe, though, how sweetly the campaign for the President’s Choice meat program is written. “Restaurant quality at an affordable price,” it seems. These over-the-top but still mouth-watering quotes are from the news release:
“… in-store fresh meat program with a meaty makeover …”
” … we’ve taken the meat shopping experience to the next level …”
“…The solution: President’s Choice Tender and Tasty beef …”
“…Take a steak-ation … with PC Certified Angus Beef”
Twenty-six years ago, there were some fairly clear-cut fashion choices to be made by the average high school student. Preppie, rocker, punk, townie, slob, nerd, idiosyncratic yet creative soul, mod, skinhead, loner, doper, music obsessive, new romantic, dealer, kid from the backwoods of Northern Ontario, artist and normal tormented teenager. You could find some Euro douches. There were even a few vegans, but our classmates tended to suspect they were actually witches.
In many ways, we were actually living Pretty in Pink – the Molly Ringwald/Jon Cryer Fred Perry paean to awkward relationships and extreme economic differences. Among the mods, we went to tremendous lengths to dress like our fathers did – in 1968. Among our cultural touchstones were a number of English brand names including Fred Perry, the venerable English tennis supplier, sportswear manufacturer Lonsdale, and several smaller designers.
” …First, they looked fucking great. If you weren’t there, Britain was transformed into a mail order version of The Wailin Wailers album cover almost overnight, though it probably didn’t know it at the time. Before the birth of the woeful sports casual, the working class dressed up for the weekend and the easily attainable and striking evocation of mid 60′s Jamaica was too irresistible for those who found punk’s sartorial alienation just that bit too alienating ..”
How did a bunch of teenagers from Ottawa pick up on the music varieties, cultural signals and fashion markers that helped to define the second wave of mod? Bootlegged concert tapes (still have some in my basement), copies of British magazines like The Face, gigs by local mod, ska, Northern Soul and 60s R&B bands, the rare video of old Ready, Steady, Go! or Top of the Popsappearances, and an s*load of British and Canadian ‘zines.
In June, Fred Perry will be releasing three new styles in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the arrival of two tone band The Specials (if you’re under the age of 30, you probably know them from their collaboration with Lilly Allen). That’s the bespoke logo over there – the longstanding crown of laurel leaves, but rendered in both white and black, as well as a underlying two tone patter.
Fred Perry has set up a site to take advance orders for the shirts – and its design mimics the clear sans serif text, open layout and tonal clarity of late 70s and early 80s two tone records. It even looks like it was ripped from a zine!
(Don’t tell anyone, but the same design firm that drew up the Fred Perry ecommerce site designed this and The Specials’ anniversary site. The Specials even have a blog!)
For more on the two tone design that characterized releases from the Specials and the Beat, Marco on the Bass has tracked down some interviews with two who brought together the look: Jerry Dammers and David Storey.
