Canuckflack

Persona. A persona is an artificial identity derived from demographic analysis, survey results, focus group findings, and secret shopper interviews. It’s a convenient shorthand in the toolbox carried by user experience specialists - people like product designers, process architects and interior designers.

A shorthand that allows them to pick and choose behaviours, attributes, prejudices and generational stereotypes to support their artistic work.

(let the flood of emails begin - the ones where I’m accused of understating the value and overstating the harm created by personas)

I found this gimmick popping up in a discussion of the design aesthetic (and financial assumptions) behind Aloft, a new chain of high concept, low service hotels.

“… “We believe in trip personas,” [VP of Aloft Brian] McGuin­ness says. “You go somewhere with a persona in mind.” Project architect Bakos talks about the personas he expects will be drawn to a place like Aloft. They’re on-the-road, business-oriented people. And they don’t need shoe shining, laundry service, or a great restaurant. What they need is a place where they can check in, access their e-mail, go to sleep, wake up to natural light, and be able to grab a quick banana on their way out, all in an atmosphere of aesthetic attention and awareness of design. What they don’t need is another Ramada, Quality Suites, or La Quinta….” (Metropolis)

Ahh. So Aloft is like Target. It’s essentially a discount chain, but charges a slight premium for the appearance of exclusivity and the inference of personal taste and influence.

As a concept, it may just work. If Starwood, the chain behind Aloft, can find a way to design and construct visually appealing overnight accommodations while keeping room rates low, it may be able to draw in high-falutin and snobby travelers who suddenly find their expense accounts trimmed.

Of course, you can always wake up to natural light by … camping. Better have a Perma-Prest suit, though.

You know, with all the focus on immediate prototyping and taking Alpha products to market, I think we forget the basic principles that underly most theories of public opinion research.

If you rely on user testing, your development process is only as strong as the variety and depth of demographics in your user pool.

Image courtesy vcwear.com

• Is George Foreman a design genius? Otherwise, he’s just a thief. Remember the Meat Toaster! (Armagideon Time)
• Los Angeles is awash with illegal billboards - and not small ones. (LA Weekly)
• You know what would make a cool business card? Something that looked like the card from an old-school library card catalog.
• How “historical sociologists” work, by Charles Tilly via MR.

Oh lord. I go to sleep hoping that some combination of technology and ingenuity will result in a presentation tool that outstrips powerpoint.

But that would likely mean a thorough and fundamental failure of the MS Office franchise.

But one can hope.

I present to you three powerpoints. All delivered recently. One is twelve pages long. Another is 162 pages long. And this is one is called “Death by Powerpoint,” and is 61 pages long.

I argue that the shortest presentation is the worst - and probably would take the longest to present as well.

Ever catch yourself looking at a courtroom sketch, either in the paper or on television, and wondering “that’s great work, but how much demand is there for a courthouse sketch artist?”

Ironic Sans provides an overview of the work of seven artists - inside the court and out. Did you know that one courtroom sketch artist also did the storyboards for The Day After Tomorrow?

There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of reporting on the work of these artists, as any Google search will reveal. Some of the comments, however, reveal that the job can driven by multiple deadlines in a day, restrictions that vary from courtroom to courthouse, and even criticism from your subjects:

“… [Maryiln] Church was sketching at the first World Trade Center bombing trial, she said, when “at one point the lawyer for one of the defendants came over to the juror’s box (where we were sitting) and said, ‘My client thinks you are drawing him looking like an angry terrorist and he resents it.’” (Columbia News Service)

Forget beta testers in Russia, India and Iowa. Forget launching a 0.6.3 version with only 10,000 users. Here’s an excerpt from a 1981 market research report on the first version of the arcade classic Centipede:

“… Although test results from these locations should still be valid, the CENTIPEDE games tested at the Mountain View Time Zone, the Cloverleaf Bowl, the Albany Bowl and the Ice Cream Dock are not identical to the production version of CENTIPEDE …” (Atari documents, pg. 26)

What names! You can imagine each of those locations, down to the placement of the snack bar and the stoners hanging out in the back. Here’s some more insight from Atari Marketing Management:

“CLOVERLEAF BOWL: This location does not seem to have a large base of highly skilled players. The clientele is similar to a typical street location in terms of the level of game play. The average age of players seems to be 9 to 16, with a fairly high ratio of female players.

For the first 2-1/2 weeks CENTIPEDE was placed near the bowling lanes. The game was then moved near the front entrance of the bowling center and seemed to pick up slightly in earnings …” (pg. 29)

In case you’re wondering, the game made between $210 and $260 a week.

“… ICE CREAM DOCK: During the fourth week [of the beta test] the ASTEROIDS CT game was robbed, which resulted in an artificially high percentage of gross figures for the other three games…” (pg. 31)

Here’s some statistics on the Mountain View Time Zone:

“… There are a total of approximately 87 games … with a mix of about 75% video and arcade pieces, and 25% flipper games. Berzerk, Gorf, Pac-man and Rally-X are the newest videos in the location…”(pg. 37)

This from the “lessons always repeated, never learned file”:

“…The most frequently mentioned negative attribute of CENTIPEDE was the trak ball… [34% did not like it]” (pg. 39)

And, finally, an observation from focus group tests:

“…The older group discussed cabinet styles [between the “upright” and the “cocktail”]. A strong preference was stated for the standard upright cabinets over the shorter versions because it gives them a feeling of control and allows “body english.”

You just KNOW that their “body english” was accented by tight jeans, headbands and maybe even mullets.

h/t to Banner Blog

Technorati Tags: video games, 80s, Centipede, bowling

The forecast is in, and the men’s fashions for winter 2008 have strolled down the runways of Milan.

I love reading fashion reporting because the beat offers good writers the chance to take their adverbs, allegories and analogies for a wild ride. Throw in some strong personalities and a hint of industry desperation, and you have an entertaining mix.

Still, I thought the following passage strove a little too far to connect the world of fabric, buttons and pegged pants to real-time economic disruption:

“…DESPITE an occasional obligatory reference to the failure of the subprime mortgage market, there was little about the shows here to suggest that anyone was suffering the financial jitters. Yet perhaps the sobriety of the Armani show, whose keyword was “regal,” was a cue.

Design surprises were few in an Armani collection built on caution and control. Those are values that made the designer one of Italy’s wealthiest citizens and his brand among the most recognizable in the world. Those are his creative defaults. Thus his show read as the sartorial equivalent of a stop-loss order. The message was risk-averse…” (New York Times)

What is a “creative default”? Is that the same as “phoning it in”? Would contrasting plaids, an over sized logo and baggy fit be Tommy Hilfiger’s default?

If you were challenged to describe the spirit and atmosphere of your home town, could you single out a palette of colours that would immediately seem familiar and evocative?

Todd Falkowsky has distilled the colours of each and every provincial and territorial capital - including Ottawa. That’s his Pantone colour palette for the city, which I’ve illustrated with pictures

If anything, the colours he’s singled out for St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador, seem too muted. Check for yourself.

Technorati Tags: Pantone, Ottawa, Falkowsky, Walrus

Indulge me here. When I was a kid, everyone smoked. Everywhere. Which meant that lighters and ashtrays were an everyday fact of life.

So common, in fact, that they were considered accessories to your home decor. There were ashtrays that looked remarkably like appetizer plates, or maybe highball glasses. Popular in  my house were ceramic ashtrays from Mediterranean countries like Spain, Greece and Italy. As for lighters, they resembled hookahs, and others looked like cubist party favours.

In fact, lighters could be divided into the personal (whether a small Bic, a showoff Zippo, or a swanky Davidoff) and the communal - a larger piece that suggested careful design and a shared experience (like a big hunk of silver or brass sitting on the coffee table)

Sort of like the Braun lighters to the right. I found these in a Gizmodo post on the similarities between Apple’s design and the work of Dieter Rams for Braun - in the 60s.

Technorati Tags: cigarettes, lighters, ashtrays, home decor

Last week, three separate publications asked me for a headshot (because I’m a spokeshead, not because I’m a popular blogger with an extremely photogenic mug). I have several options available, and I found myself flipping between the professional and the amateurish: a headshot prepared by a professional photographer, and a handful of profile pictures snapped with a number of camera phones.

You see, I’ve been in public relations long enough to remember when professional photo shoots were required for all your spokespeople. You always had to have a ready selection of half grinning/mildly worried looks on hand, just in case.

As I was sorting through my options, though, I realized that the bar had moved. The public no longer expects a formal upright, slightly angled shouldered look to their authority figures. In fact, I had to screw around with my headshot in Photoshop before sending it off to one publications.

A co-worker of Jason Oke has noticed that the younger generations do not have a problem finding a headshot - in fact, there seems to be

“… an age-related gap on social networking sites like Facebook in personal photo quality - anyone under 25 looks really good in all of their pictures, while the rest of us look pudgy and a bit stunned.

His theory is that it’s because those of us of a certain age grew up with pictures being taken mostly on special occasions like birthdays and holidays, and usually with some warning of “say cheese.”

We never really learned how to have our picture properly taken. But with ubiquitous casual digital photography, the young ‘uns grew up being used to taking and seeing many more photos of themselves, and have learned to quickly throw a pose in any situation. They are photo-literate.”

Me? I can’t quite pull of the casual concentration look. I don’t really like Starbucks, so I’m never at ease enough to pull off the “working in casual luxury while sitting on a loveseat” look. And every time I try the “you caught me in mid-action” pose, I look like an out-take from a Sears catalogue.

Technorati Tags: photography, headshot, publicity still, corporate look, spokesperson

It’s a graphic identity designed for Movable Type. Just look at tonyblairoffice.org. There’s the Serifa headline. The gray, olive and off green stripes that provide the only colour on the page. The tab-based navigation.

Wallpaper magazine gave Lucienne Roberts* the award for best stationery for her design, and some have criticized the simplicity of her work.

“…Good letterheads are a challenge to the designer because the means are very limited, but the effect here is disproportionately grand. The typeface chosen is probably a weird period piece - vaguely Festival of Britain - known as slab-serif. Its effect is dated, looking to my eye rather what a prosperous and socially ambitious provincial garage proprietor might have chosen circa 1974…” (Steven Bayley, Guardian)

While I may lack the professional design training - and the aesthetic sensibility - to really judge this work, Tony Blair’s new corporate identity works well for a statesman trying to shape a quiet but influential role after fundamentally shifting the course of politics in Great Britain.

After all, let’s remember that some politicians have made some foolish alliances as they left office. Just ask Henry Kissinger if he enjoyed watching Conrad Black’s empire collapse.

If we’re to believe Blair’s advisors, he has been selective about the work he has taken on, and has dedicated a lot of his time to his role as a special envoy.

Especially if he wants to become the first President of the European Union Council of Ministers.

That’s right. Pick a nice letterhead, with a touch of colour but no ideological baggage.

*here’s an interview with Roberts, found on the British Council site. (.doc file)

h/t to Creative Review and The Serif

Technorati Tags: graphic design, corporate identity, stationery, business card

Just finished ginning up a new headshot.

Thought I would share it.

Note: there is an iconic Canadian design detail hidden in this photo.

Didja hear? The traditional enclosed mall is in decline. Apparently, someone told The Economist, because they’ve run a long piece on the original enclosed mall, Southdale Mall in Minnesota.

In Rise and Fall Of the Shopping Mall, we get the magazine’s well-written and comprehensive look at mall culture - especially as it developed under the imagination of Victor Gruen, Southdale’s architect.

“Gruen got an extraordinary number of things right first time. He built a sloping road around the perimeter of the mall, so that half of the shoppers entered on the ground floor and half on the first floor—something that became a standard feature of malls.

Southdale’s balconies were low, so that shoppers could see the shops on the floor above or below them. The car park had animal signs to help shoppers remember the way back to their vehicles.

It was as though Orville and Wilbur Wright had not just discovered powered flight but had built a plane with tray tables and a duty-free service.“

I thought that analogy was worth a mention, but there has been much more written about Gruen and his impact on the culture of North America. Ten years ago, the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages wrote about the “Gruen effect” and the “mauling of America.”
In a 1957 interview with the New Yorker, Gruen recognized that urban populations need common spaces (the precursor to the “third place”?) - and also fingered merchants as the guiding force in the development of North American culture.

… Mr. Gruen grumbled that “planning” has become a dirty word in this country. “Almost as bad as if Lenin had invented it,” he said. “The fact is no city was ever planned enough. Planned and replanned. Here in New York, we’re like a big family that’s all dressed up with no place to go. Wherever we turn, it’s jostle and bustle and frayed nerves and bad tempers.

In Detroit, six or seven thousand people make their way to Northland on Sunday afternoons. The stores are closed, so what are they doing there? Looking for open space. They window-shop and stroll through the gardens and sit on benches and soak up the sun and enjoy the fountains and sculpture.

What Northland teaches us is this—that it’s the merchants who will save our urban civilization. ‘Planning’ isn’t a dirty word to them; good planning means good business. Besides, any improvements they make are tax-deductible. Sometimes self-interest has remarkable spiritual consequences. As art patrons, merchants can be to our time what the Church and the nobility were to the Middle Ages.”

Well, fifty years on I would be willing to debate the value and quality that a merchant-based culture has brought to our society. I guess that’s what being po-po-mo is all about.

Ten years ago, the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages touched on the “Gruen effect” and the “mauling of America.”

In practical terms, it seems that quite a few cities commissioned Gruen to design new urban centres, but only cherry-picked his designs for pedestrian malls for actual construction:

“…Kalamazoo, however, adopted only the pedestrian mall from all the recommendations of the plan, as many other cities would do with their Gruen plans. Fresno, California would build a downtown pedestrian mall in 1964, based on a 1958 Gruen plan; Honolulu, Hawaii would also convert two blocks into a pedestrian mall in 1969, three years after commissioning a Gruen plan.”

Malcolm Gladwell wrote about Gruen three years ago (which I blogged about).
There’s also a book about the man, and how about an academic analysis of his work: “Victor Gruen and the Construction of Cold War Utopias“?

Technorati Tags: Victor Gruen, Southdale Mall, suburbia, pedestrian mall, retail, mall

All I wanted for Christmas was a taste of 1982:

Enjoy this clip from the BBC Micro program, explaining how to access email in 1982.

• Oh lord. Parma Ham and Pesto toasties. mmmmmmm!
• Russell’s widgety goodness (1, 2, 3, 4). I’m professionally partial to part three.
• Tobias Wong, interviewed by Rob Walker,

(Wong) … Before, corporations commissioned work with parameters—they wanted specific things. It seems that they’re taking bigger chances now. That’s what I’m seeing.

(Walker) Yeah, that’s true. I just read about Thurston Moore doing some compilation CD for Starbucks. Frankly, these big companies doing stuff like that kind of bums me out.

(Wong) Well, they’re desperate. But there’s got to be a way to make it work for us.”

Technorati Tags: industrial design, consumerism, tasty sandwiches

There will be pretty pictures. There will be enigmatic pictures. There will be badly composed pictures. But the idea is fantastic. Two minds quite capable of making the leap between diverse subjects, disciplines and concepts have cooked up a competition to identify the World’s Best Urban Places and Spaces.

In typical fashion, Russell Davies and Dan Hill have taken a largely critical idea (the World’s Worst Urban Places and Spaces) and shined it up.

I like the idea because it is so loosely defined. Sifting through my memories of my favourite places, I can sort memories and images according to the effect of space, weather, feelings elicited by crowds, an absence of others, or my reaction to a conscious attempt by some smarty-pants architect or artist to define the place.

Here’s Russell’s description of the project:

“We’ll leave you to interpret ‘best’ ‘urban’ ’space’ and ‘place’ as you like. Could be anywhere or anything; bus shelters, buildings, bombsites or benches. Rather than wait until we’ve got enough for a book (which, of course, may never happen) we’re planning instead on doing a series of pamphlets. We’re going to try and persuade some top designers to do them for us. There’ll be a free one as a pdf online and lovely specially printed ones for everyone who contributes and/or who’d like to buy them.

Obviously we’ve not really worked out all the details on that yet, but will let you know when we have.

Does that sound interesting? I think it might be. Pile in, if you’d like to.”

You can find the Flickr pool they’ve set up, either to contribute or simply to gawk. Consider the submissions according to your own criteria, or to explode in Photoshop looking for naked ladies and other privacy violations.

Technorati Tags:   World’s Best Urban Places, urbanism, place

Lego building blocks and economic history. Two of my favourite things. Yes. I know I need professional help, thanks.

Glancing through Stanford magazine, I came across an article on the SEE Science Center, where you can find a reconstruction of a late nineteenth century millyard: the Amoskeag Millyard of Bedford, New Hampshire.

The millyard itself was quite impressive, with mile upon mile of mill buildings, canals, railway spurs and tens of thousands of workers.

The display, built of millions of Lego building blocks and housing thousands of Lego workers, seems to make an equal impression.

There’s even a YouTube video of the train that circles the display.

Of course, mills were often horrible and depressing places to work, with long hours, relatively low pay and a significant possibility of workplace injury.

Today, many small towns with a proud industrial heritage are re-purposing these mill buildings, encouraging loft developments, craftsman industries and incubating web businesses.

Lego and yuppies. Isn’t progress wonderful?

Technorati Tags: Lego, New Hampshire, Amoskeag Millyard

I present a quick analysis of the character traits and scene-setting found in popular rock hits from the 1980s, and from hit music topping the charts today.

Technorati Tags: music videos, stereotypes, casting, music hits, Lee Aaron

Lawrence Metal Products hit a homerun. The makers of Tensabarrier, the flexible in-store “queue systems,” got a nice placement in Newsday.

Who knew you could spin a holiday shopping feature out of some basic information about the efficiencies of installing in-store guideposts and barriers?

It helped that the final story covered three hooks:

• business efficiency and cost savings
• customer frustration at long lines and poor cash placement
• a link to Curb Your Enthusiasm

That’s right. Money, emotion and celebrity. All in one tidy story about lineups in stores.

“…An episode of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” makes the company’s case: To make up for a bad deed, Larry David goes to a store to buy his wife’s favorite perfume and finds two lines. He chooses one line and then jumps to the other because it appears to be moving more quickly. David gets stuck behind a woman sampling fragrances and is unable to buy the perfume because another man — who got on the other line, behind David — nabs the last bottle. David goes into a rant, asking why the single-line system isn’t used everywhere.

“We’ve proven that the fairest and most equitable way of queuing is the single corral, as Larry was demonstrating,” said Nick Byrne, vice president of sales and business development for Lawrence…”

Whoever media trained that man (or ghostwrote the pitch) gets a prize!

But there’s more: clear advice for retailers designed to increase sales on high profit items!

“…One of Lawrence’s British retail clients filled bowls fixed to a Tensabarrier with lip salve, tissues and playing cards and found that sales of those items increased 400 percent.

“A lot of retailers make the mistake of thinking that it’s just more retail space, but it’s not,” Byrne said. “They need to clearly display prices. It has to be an impulse-buy item, and there’s got to be lots of it.”..”

Today is the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of William Blake, the British engraver, illustrator, poet and all-around artist.

It might be my Anglo-Saxon heritage, where this hymn is virtually required at every church service, but Blake’s Jerusalem really evokes an image of England midway through its industrial development.

These videos evoke no such nostalgia, but the first uses Billy Bragg’s fine cover of the hymn, and the second includes an entire stadium of Britons singing along.

Technorati Tags: William Blake, Bragg, arrows of desire

Packaging can be key to a consumer’s perception of a product. In some cases, packaging forms a substantial part of the product - like the greeting card industry.

I didn’t realize this, but the U.S. Postal Service charges a surcharge for mail that isn’t oblong or rectangular in shape. It seems that equilateral mail screws with their incredibly complex sorting system.

This surcharge is a major hiccup for greeting card manufacturers. Mail that doesn’t get identified at the sorting plant is delivered with a request for additional postage.

“… At Great Arrow Graphics … From 60 square cards for Christmas, Mr. Friedman’s silk-screeners are down to nine this year. Other greeting-worthy occasions have been fully oblongated: for instance, death. “Nobody wants sympathy cards returned,” says Mr. Friedman. “We don’t mess with sympathy.” In his sympathy line, only pet sympathy is still square…” (WSJ)

I hadn’t thought of this (mainly because it doesn’t happen in Canada). The handling of a sympathy card by the postal system effectively undermines the message and emotion being conveyed by the sender.

So - how much does a square card cost the Postal Service to handle?

“…When the machines fail, humans get involved — at a cost, Mr. Mazurkiewicz [the sorting plant supervisor] explained, of $52-per-thousand envelopes instead of $4.

Still, it’s extremely heartwarming to read the closing paragraphs of this piece, largely because I hold the same feelings:

“.. “I love that letters are touched by people here,” he said.

“It costs more money,” said Mr. Mazurkiewicz, but his guest had wandered off to gaze at a procession of postal trays spiraling upward on a blue conveyor. “The ballet of the mail,” Mr. Friedman said. He watched for a few more moments and then, with feeling, he added: “The post office really is a very beautiful organization.”

One final point: here is a question sent to the Greeting Card Association witnesses that appeared before a Postal Service committee considering rates in 2006:

“… Are you aware of any econometric studies pertaining to the demand for square greeting cards or the cross price elasticity between square and rectangular greeting cards that take into account the history or symbolic significance of the square? If so, please provide a copy of any such study.”

I’d like to see the answers submitted to that question. That would be the work of a very esoteric economist.

Technorati Tags: greeting cards, mailing, sorting, post, packaging

Darren Barefoot is a genius. As rockers and alt-artists and indie bands turn to their fans to find revenue sources, Darren issues a challenge for us all to come clean about our music thievery:

“… I’ve owned over 250 CDs, but I’ve also downloaded a lot of music or received it from friends. That process has enabled me to discover a bunch of great artists, and in many cases I’ve gone on to buy their CDs or attend their concerts. That hasn’t been true for every artist, though, and I’ve always felt a little sheepish about that.

In the great debate about the RIAA and the future of digital music, I think we sometimes forget that musicians still need to make a living. So I thought I’d help out some of those musicians that I hadn’t otherwise compensated, and encourage others to do the same.

I also thought it’d be fun to get people to deploy their craft skills, in a vague homage to Post Secret. You don’t have to decorate your letter, but I think you’ll enjoy it more if you do.”

The result? Dear Rockers, a site where you send a letter and $5 to compensate a rocker.

Here’s my submission, which is in the mail:

Technorati Tags: Honeymoon Suite, Lee Aaron, Dear Rockers, Darren Barefoot

After spending all that time building intricately detailed and personal profiles in closed-off social networks, how in the world do you bridge between identities?

When you’re cruising so successfully in your tight slacks, how do you alert the world to the vast repository of flixster reviews, TV trivia team scores, thrown sheep and ironic 70s profile photos just a few keystrokes away?

With Open Social?

No - with the “are you social” t-shirt, designed by Aram Bartholl!

Just scroll through the dozens of social networks displayed on the front of the shirt and check off each one you belong to.

Now, those unsuspecting young women at the campus bar won’t have to spend endless minutes wondering exactly when you’ll abandon the polite chit chat and start discussing one of five things:

• the size of your “friend” network
• your progress on World of Warcraft
• the “open relationship” you have with your Bebo girlfriend
• how you and Tom Byron use Orkut to pick up Brazilian chicks, and
• Padma or Leia?

Life could be a lot easier, though. You could just print up a tshirt with your Facebook profile on it.

In all seriousness. Both of these tshirt ideas poses a tremendous risk to your personal information and the security of your identity.

You might as well have a bumper sticker on your car that reads “I keep my driver’s licence in the glove compartment.”
via Dino and Valleywag.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Bebo, Orkut, privacy, identity, social network

Thirty years of teenage angst. Thirty years of rage. Thirty years of commercial manipulation.

It’s been thirty years since the Sex Pistols desecrated “God Save the Queen” - for the good of music and to add to the arsenal of expression available to citizens overlooked or oppressed by their government.

It’s a pity that a large part of the punk rock identity has been appropriated. Not just by large corporations peddling Never Mind The Bollocks tshirts or using London Calling in mobile phone ads, but by snot-nosed suburban kids with no real idea of the severe social, political and economic dislocation that prodded punk rock into existence.

Now, I don’t mean that punk rock MUST be reserved for the dis-associated sallow-skinned British youth. Punk has a mutli-cultural (and multi-generational) appeal and a highly personal relevance.

Instead, I am obsessed with the appropriation of punk imagery by the customers of mainstream marketers. My kids like a Canadian retail chain called West 49. There, they can find studded belts, skate decks, DC shoes, plaid pants, and $100 Billabong hoodies. And all these things sell very well.

But that sort of behaviour has to be expected. These retailers are serving the market.

But what is wrong with the GD kids? Why are $80 ballet flat Vans with death’s head appliques selling so well? Why does the young woman boarding that suburban bus have a “punk rock” tote bag? Why can kids pick up temporary hair colour in purple, yellow, green and orange?

DIY punk seems to be dead, at least in middle-class Ottawa. Is this the result of increased brand awareness among children?

Do kids now look for “punk” brand attributes? Are they looking for their rebellion, their outrage and a radicalisation of their family, neighbourhood, city or society in a well-designed box?

As we keep pushing youth and children to identify with brands, with products or with sentiments, are we undermining their ability to express themselves?

Are our marketing dollars making brand attributes so prevalent and so culturally predominant that it takes a truly dissociative individual to build a truly independent identity as a punk?

Is it even possible to buy white Chuck Taylors to colour and “bedazzle” with spikes and pins?

To quote Hot Topic Is Not Punk Rock by MC Lars:

“…Hot Topic uses contrived identification with youth sub-cultures to manufacture an antiauthoritarian identity and make millions.

That $8 you paid for the Mudvayne poster would be better spent used for seeing your brother’s friend’s band.

DIY ethics are punk rock! Starting your own label is punk rock! GG Allin was punk rock!

But when a crass corporate vulture feeds on mass consumer culture, then spending Mommy’s money is not punk rock!

Technorati Tags: punk rock, Sex Pistols, brand, brand attribute, self expression

What do you do when a review process goes horribly, horribly wrong? When the judges are just staring blankly past you, hoping that you’ll get the hint and leave? Sort of like any one of the first five episodes of every season of American Idol?

Apparently, one option is a blowfish:

“…Puff out your cheeks and point your fingers out around your face, like dangerous spikes…”

That’s from Blowfish: What To Do When A Design Jury Attacks, in the Fall issue of Harvard Design Magazine.

There’s another 109 responses in the article. Here’s a sample:

2. Pre-emptive abuse

Slap your head violently and mutter “Stupid, stupid, stupid, I should have thought of that.”

6. Throw down the gauntlet

Gesture aggressively toward the jury and yell, “Ya wanna go? Ya wanna step outside?” For a hockey motif, bear-hug a critic and try to pull his or her shirt up over the head. This renders your opponent both blind and open to your punches.

10. Postmodern simulation

Leaf through your sketchbook and then look up and say, “I’m sorry, that’s not in the script. What page are you on?”

24. Euro-advertising

Say nothing. Whip out a roll of Mentos, smile at the critic, and freeze.

43. Focus power (chi)

With a serious manner, straighten your body, look at the critic severely, then explain, “Architecture here!” (tapping on your chest), “No here!” (tapping on the critic’s head).

45. Special interests

Make your rebuttal based on the endangered mystical animals that inhabit the area of the critic’s concern. For example, “But unicorns are fatally allergic to exhaust fumes, so there can’t be parking anywhere near there.”

51. Bill and Ted

Make the devil sign with your hand, raise it above your head and shout, “San Dimas High School Football Rules!” The audience should cheer loud enough for you to make an exit.

59. Lost childhood

Look sad and mutter, “This is the worst school for show-and-tell I’ve ever been to.”

94. News anchor

Stick a finger in your ear, as if receiving a bulletin through an earpiece. Haltingly inform the critic: “Wait a minute . . . yes. . . . I’m receiving word that. . . It is indeed as you say, not like it looks here. Again, the latest news is that you are correct, and this drawing is NOT accurate.”

Wow. There’s actually 164 in the Harvard Graduate School of Design Student Forums.

If you want more of a personal look at the design jury, Oren Safdie wrote a play (excerpt and play itself) set during a design jury.

More recently, Michael Schrage wrote about his experience as a juror for the Industrial Design Society of America’s global design competition.

Technorati Tags: blowfish, design, review, judge, creative, design school

This may reveal what sort of programming I used to watch on 80s and 90s-era cable television, but I find the choice of ambient soundtrack for the DeLuca International Communications and Fundraising firm a little … distracting.

Combined with the stock photo imagery used throughout the site, I keep expecting semi-revealing shots of Shannon Tweed or Erika Eleniak … or Daniel Baldwin.

The results are in, and this year’s Nobel Peace Prize was won by Microsoft’s Powerpoint and Steve Jobs’ set designer.

Oh, sorry. I meant to say Al Gore and the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It takes Mother Theresa forty thirty years, and Big Al only ten?

Terry from Calcutta should have hired a good new media designer.

Technorati Tags: Nobel Peace Prize, Al Gore, climate change,