Noisy Decent Graphics

Design Research urls #21

102. This analysis by the FT of central bank logos is incredible 'A comprehensive taxonomy of central bank logos, with jokes'

But this article 'sellside research notes ranked by aesthetics, not content' by the same crew is more important. Central bank logos are a bit irrelevant to be honest but research is designed to be read. If you can't read it, that's a problem. See also 'The solutions to all our problems may be buried in PDFs that nobody reads'  a recent report by the World Bank. 

 

103. Norman Foster has a new monograph published by Taschen. It's gorgeous. It's also £350. The limited edition, numbered, signed one is £3,000.

104. Neville Brody has a new book out, the Graphic Language of Neville Brody 3. That's £35. The Graphic Language 1 (1988) and 2 (1996) were hugely influential to designers of my age. Fond memories.

105. Es has a new book out, An Atlas of Es Devlin. That's £85 and has the most interesting paper engineering of the lot.

Monographs, eh? All are RDIs, Foster, Brody, Devlin.

106. The world’s largest stadiums – in pictures.

107. An AI Johnny Cash sings Taylor Swift on TikTok. Perfect.

Design research urls #20

Issue number 20. Yay!

98. Everyday Automation Observatory, this is a great initiative from Rachel Coldicutt. "Collecting everyday examples of ways automated processes are popping up everywhere. Share your pictures of QR codes, self-service machines, app interfaces and delivery robots."

99. Some New York lawyers got paid $90m for ensuring that Musk went through with the Twitter acquisition. They didn't do a lot other than being on hand to "enforce the terms of the merger agreement" if necessary. The FT has more details here. (£)

But the totally cold sales email they sent the Exec Team at Twitter is incredible. If you make cold contacts with people in your day job have a read of this and bear in mind they got paid $90m for doing not that much off the back of it.

100. We all know naming things is hard. ULEZ being the most recent example of this. What a wasted opportunity.

101. Nick Asbury has been railing against purpose + brands for a while now. I don't always agree with him but he writes thoughtfully and sensibly about the topic. This post on Coutts + Farage is a great example and really good way into a piece of critical thinking. (Also; what a mess.)

Design research urls #19

The 'Design research urls' series was one of the best things I did on this blog so let's start it up again.

93. I really don't like it when they mess around with zebra crossings. They might look fun at first but massive black and white stripes are excellent for partially sighted pedestrians or, say, a distracted driver in a fast moving car. Optical illusions, multiple coloured bars, or typography? Not so much. They say it's meant to slow down traffic, I don't buy that at all. It may slow you down but at the price of confusion which is never worth it.

94. This is a good thread on bananas and their relatives. Or lack of.

 

95. I've only just found out about the Derelict London Website. Not a minute too soon as it celebrates its 20th anniversary.

 

96. Another thread, this time the The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs.

 

97. All the newsletters are rubbish, apart from Guy's which is always full of things I've never seen before that are so beautiful they make me want to cry. Like this. Read then sign up here.

Design research urls #18

88. There’s a movie made entirely of Russian Dash Cam footage found on YouTube.

Of course there is. Yet another thing you’ve never thought of but is startlingly obvious.

The Road Movie trailer.

 

89. Tide designed some new washing liquid packaging for Amazon.

The official blurb says “to keep the convenience of online shopping for the consumer but reduce the overall impact of that convenience on our environment.” All the headlines scream how Amazon is forcing packaging redesigns. Easier to get in the warehouse and easier to deliver.

This flat letterbox friendly wine bottle is a much better example.

Two quick thoughts:

Retailers have always forced FMCG products to do this - remember for most FMCG companies the customer is the retailer not the consumer.

What's really surprising is that this has taken so long. Whatever next, making your website easy to find on Google?

How Amazon Now Shapes What Our Stuff Looks Like

The World’s First Flat Wine Bottle Won an Award for Packaging Innovation

 

90. Pentagram signed up three new partners

Three new ones since Jon Marshall joined in para 63. Astrid Stavro, Sascha Lobe and Yuri Suzuki. Stravro and Lobe are traditional additions to the Pentagram stable, but Suzuki is different. Well known for working with sound and technology. As Suzuki says, “I was quite surprised in the beginning that Pentagram approached me to join as a partner. But Pentagram wants to investigate the field of sound and interactive design. In a way, I think it’s a perfect match.” Suzuki and Marshall point Pentagram in a new, more truly multi-disciplinary direction.

Design Research urls #13 (Jon Marshall para 63)

Astrid Stavro, Sascha Lobe and Yuri Suzuki join Pentagram.

 

91. Meet the Humans of Flat Design

That strange phenomenon of abstracted non-identifiable humans, styled and flattened out of all recognition. Harmless and without personality, point of view or reality. You can follow the best examples on Twitter.

Humans of Flat Design

 

92. Another management insight from the Toyota Production System

Tom Taylor of Poplar discovered "Genchi Genbutsu" or "Go and See" recently. Genchi Genbutsu is a principle which states, "If the problem exists on the shop floor then it needs to be understood and solved at the shop floor." Obviously but rarely found in modern management or boardrooms full of PowerPoint. Genchi Genbutsu is also known as Gemba attitude. Gemba is the Japanese term for "the place" in this case "the place where it actually happens". Reminds me of Show The Thing and more broadly, user research. 

Genchi Genbutsu

Poplar 

Show The Thing

 

 

Design research urls #17

83. Good advice about email

Let's start with this excellent article in the New York Times. Detailed and accurate.

When I’m Mistakenly Put on an Email Chain, Should I Hit ‘Reply All’ Asking to Be Removed?

 

84. Design Principles

There are many design principles. The internet has given them new vigour. Ben Brignell curates a good list of them on his site Design Principles.

Here are three new ones that grabbed my attention recently, The NHS design principles, the principles behind Bulb design and Lyft on Colour. The Lyft link isn't really principles but an article on how they use colour at Lyft and the tool they built to make better colour decisions easier. It's an open source colour algorithm called ColorBox.io It's pretty epic.

The Lyft Design team are worth keeping an eye on.

NHS design principles

Bulb the principles behind our design 

Lyft on Colour

Lyft Design

 

85. Ive interviewed in an echo chamber

I think I once said on this blog that although an interview with Jony Ive will never give away much, any glimpse behind the curtain is interesting. In this new interview the curtain stays tightly shut. As much as I like Jony Ive, Ruth Rogers, Richard Rogers and indeed the River Cafe this is an echoing interview in an echo chamber.

Still, here it is. Jony Ive on the Apple Watch and Big Tech’s responsibilities (might be behind a paywall for some).

86. Sketching elephants and other animals.

Paul Rand used to sketch a lot of elephants which reminded me of Durrell Bishop's wonderful, never-ending sketches. Which reminded me again that I must sketch more pointless stuff. Maybe I'll start something on here to force me to stick to it. 

Paul Rand's Monkeys and Elephants 

Durrell Bishop's tumblr

 

87. Working late, responsibly

Alice linked to an excellent blog post about working late and techniques for handling that. I was looking for an old email the other day and found this from my advertising days.

I can't really remember the incident but it's not the fault of a particular client or agency. It's the culture of the advertising industry that makes this so commonplace. It's expected that everyone will work late and that a deadline means you must work right up until that point. That's not healthy. 

This article by Dan Carley is a good read and full of pragmatic, sensible advice.

Working late, responsibly

 

 

 

Design research urls #16

77. Pictures of colourful pigeons.

Beautiful. On Instagram too for a more regular fix.

Ornithurae by Leila Jeffreys

Leila Jeffreys Instagram

78. Man puts a huge poster of himself up in McDonalds and no-one notices

There’s a serious point here, Jevh Maravilla noticed there were no Asians in the generic photos on the wall of his local McDonalds and so took a photo of him and his friend in the same nondescript style, added the same nondescript graphics, printed it online and managed to stick it to the wall inside McDonalds. It was 51 days before anyone noticed.

Jevh Maravilla's tweet

BBC News: Poster prank hoodwinks McDonald's

 

79. Fantastic series on interesting Art and Design schools

A collaboration between WeTransfer and Lecture In Progress has identified eight art and design schools around the world “doing things differently”. Refreshingly it’s not the usual suspects and includes institutions in India, Japan and South Africa. Beautifully designed too.

I was surprised not to see any Design schools from China as they are expanding quickly, but still well worth a read.

WePresent The Pioneers 2018

 

80. How a photograph nearly started the collapse of the global banking system

Fascinating tale of what (rich) FT correspondent John Authers saw on his own personal run on his Wall St bank in 2008. What did he see? Lots of other (rich) Wall St bankers withdrawing their cash.

“I was finding it a little hard to breathe. There was a bank run happening, in New York’s financial district. The people panicking were the Wall Streeters who best understood what was going on.“

Undoubtedly a photo would have caused a stir, he suggests it could have started a global run on banks and caused the whole system to collapse. Maybe it would. Maybe the photograph would have been a modern day Don Mccullin-esque image of suited financiers. He decided not to report the story as a journalist, quoting the phrase used commonly on social media these days “The right to free speech does not give us right to shout fire in a crowded cinema.” Was he right? Make your own mind up.

In a crisis, sometimes you don’t tell the whole story (may be behind a paywall for some readers)

81. Jaguar Land Rover have been testing self-driving cars with massive eyes on the bonnet.

They are used to look at pedestrians in the same way a driver would, to help the pedestrian know when they’re stopping and so on.

Easy to dismiss this as nonsense, but I would like to see more testing of “human-ness” like this in technology. Somedays it can feel like service design and user centricity are in an ever quicker race to the bottom.

Related “i'm in san francisco, the city where I can't use the restroom as it requires me to sign up for an app with a US phone number"

 

82. Thread: Six errors in the opening scene of the Tom Cruise film American Made

Planes that didn’t exist until years afterwards. Planes they never operated. And so on. Errors in films are common, and understandable, but this seems quite major.

Thread👇

 

Design research urls #15

74. Now That's What I Call Music series reached 100.

If you're my age this is the biggest thing to happen in music ever. The Now series were playlists you could buy from Woolworths twice a year. The BBC have a fascinating story of the origins of the series. Usual business success story of opportunity, risk taking, smart people and huge amounts of luck.

"At that point, one of us said, "Couldn't we do this ourselves?" We looked at each other and literally got a piece of paper out of the bin and started writing down all the costs involved. Then we looked at each other and went, "Wow! This could be really lucrative"."

Buried away in that is a really good story about how the pig in sunglasses came to be used as a logo.

The Now website is as awful as you'd expect. Probably worse. But after all the 90s era whizzing you can look at the covers of all the albums. At the beginning they each had interesting, era-typical graphic design until 1991 (Now 20) when they tried glossy 3D rendered type and never, ever changed that. Strange and yet admirable that no marketing manager wanted a change in nearly 30 years.

If they'd stuck with a different design every time, imagine what a treasure trove of graphic design history that would be. Almost the perfect visual history.

 

BBC News Now That's What I Call Music: How one compilation came to rule them all

Now Music site

 

75. MAP project office has been bought by AKQA and therefore WPP

I'm a big fan of MAP, I think their work is elegant and smart and there's an intelligent crossover between the physical and digital product design worlds. Hard to tell who benefits most from this at this stage, but it's a very obvious signal that digitally connected physical things are more important than ever.

Barber & Osgerby’s MAP and Universal Design Studio to join AKQA

 

76. Threads 👇

How a tiny triangle of New York came to exist Thread 👇

The story of the 1970s great calculator race Thread 👇

When all the cool Sony stuff was yellow Thread 👇(original source image here).

 

Design research urls #14

68. This is a train that looks like a plane.

The Schienenzeppelin or rail zeppelin.

 

69. A lesson in non-compete agreements

Martin Sorrell has vowed to “start again”, weeks after his departure from WPP. A few weeks ago (para 64) it was revealed he had no non-compete clause in his exit agreement, unlike everyone else who’s ever done a deal with WPP.

What will he do next? From the FT article, “Leaving WPP had given him a better perspective on which parts of the industry were growing and adapting and which were held back by the “warts and problems that legacy companies have”, Sir Martin said, noting that countless clients had asked him “what is the new agency model”.”

He’s been gone 25 days. Very quick to find that perspective.

He goes on, “That model would be “more agile, more responsive, less layered, less bureaucratic, less heavy” than traditional advertising companies, he said, with a focus on technology, data and content.”

Begs the question why he didn’t think this before. (He sort of did and the share price does funny things to your perspective.) But the whole episode begs question after question. Much more to come on this I think.

Martin Sorrell vows to ‘start again’ after WPP exit

Martin Sorrell free to compete with WPP after exit

 

70. Long interview with Jony Ive about watch design.

Jony says all the Jony things in very Jony ways. The watch journalist thinks Apple have changed the way we think about watches (and time obvs) forever, just like the iPod changed music. I hadn’t thought about that before. But he could be right given Apple’s scale. I don’t have an Apple Watch but I have a Garmin and the notifications feels totally normal now. Worth a longer blog perhaps

Apple, Influence and Ive

 

71. 20 years since Apple unveiled the iMac

Tim Cook tweets the presentation. As ever Job’s enthusiasm is infectious.

20 years ago, the iMac changed the world

 

72. Amazon launches a kids books subscription box

A bit like BookStart from New Labour but backed by evil capitalism. Or something. All the usuals up in arms. I’m going to list the four easy learnings from this:

a) once you have all the platforms (identity, payments, relationships with booksellers, familiar e-commerce patterns, delivery system etc) it’s very easy to spin up a new idea.

b) Anything that can be (or could be) delivered to your door in a cardboard box is super easy for Amazon. If this is your business, be aware.

c) Subscription models for the business model win. At the moment.

d) Ideas are easy, shipping is hard.

Amazon is launching a $23 subscription book box for kids

Bookstart

 

73. Matt Locke wrote a good history of Liking stuff

How Likes Went Bad

 

 

Design research urls #13

63. Jon Marshall co-founder of MAP joined Pentagram

Always a frisson on the forums when Pentagram appoint a new partner. I’m excited by this one, Marshall is exactly who Pentagram should be appointing. The mix of classic product design with a good understanding of technology and designing for different types of connected interaction suits their heritage and future perfectly. Kano and BleepBleeps is exactly what Pentagram should have been doing.

I’m a huge fan of Map Project Studio (founded with Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby) and this must be a big loss for them.

What Jon Marshall joining Pentagram may mean for him, and the studio

 

64. Martin Sorrell resigned from WPP

After 33 years in charge of WPP Sorrell resigned, technically retired, probably before he was pushed. And that’s not the only similarity with Arsène Wenger.

It’s big moment in advertising and design as well, with many more questions than answers and a lot more to come from this story.

What happens to the consolidation of agencies now? Do the cost savings clients want come from breaking WPP up? What happens to SuperAgency? (see para 45)

WPP bought 43 small agencies last year alone. Lots of founder / entrepreneurs got rich in a tax efficient manner. Writing in the FT John Gapper describes this as essentially tax arbitrage which “paid for a lot of houses, boats and divorces”. But he acknowledges that the model “contributes innovation to the whole.”

There is a ringing endorsement from Justin Cooke who sold to WPP six years ago,

“Sir Martin practically invented the earn-out, turning WPP into a deal machine continuously injecting innovation and fresh thinking into the network as well as giving creative entrepreneurs the ability to realise value from their blood, sweat and tears and, more importantly creating a vibrant eco-system that has ensured that the UK remains at the heart of the creative economy.”

What happens when this merry go round comes to a halt? The FT is betting hard on a big break up with several articles this week. Worth noting that the idea seems to come from analysts with a desire to get in the press rather than anything concrete.

But one analyst says “Just as WPP was constructed so it can be deconstructed, think of WPP as a bank …it’s a financial engineering exercise.”

Is WPP the ad industries Carillion? The finances are nowhere near as bad but are we about to find out how much a financial construct it is versus a creative company?

Wenger and Sorrell show the costs and prizes of leadership longevity

Advertising’s acquisition carousel is slowing

WPP - breaking up is not so hard to do

Last point on this. Sorrell has no non-compete agreement with WPP. (That's the sound of people choking on their earn out deals up and down the land.)

 

65. Foster + Partners launch integrated services system

In collaboration with other design firms Foster and Partners released Node, a system to incorporate all the lighting, security, fire prevention and air conditioning services an office needs elegantly. It looks good and flexible. I’m no architect but this looks smart. I had a conversation this week where we wondered why designers are so reluctant to embrace systems. Every big successful design project involves many complex systems. I remarked that Foster + Partners were especially good at this.

Node brings building services integration into the 21st century

 

66. Reckons on Apple and its cash flow

Scott Galloway (mentioned in para 27) writes that Apple should launch the world’s largest tuition-free university. Everyone has an idea of what Apple should do with all its cash. Maybe they’ll buy WPP.

Apple should open a university that's free for everyone

 

67. Brilliant 3D printed optical illusion

Ambiguous Object Illusion

 

Design research urls #12

55. Not one mention of London's Ark

But this is still good, 13 stunning buildings that look like boats 

 

56. Citymapper made a bus but the bus isn’t the important bit, obvs

Citymapper started a bus route age ago. And that's probably a silly idea, but read this blog post about how they did it and marvel at what a small tech company can do. They built a fully functioning end to end transport system. Albeit small and with very carefully controlled conditions. But they built a prototype and tested their riskiest assumptions on real users.

"We built the entire technology stack for a bus, starting in our own office. We built a driver app, a smart display, tracking software, scheduling systems, control systems, even strange flashing headsigns.

We have been able to run our buses smoothly. We made software updates, even during live operations. We provided accurate realtime data in our app, as well as supporting open data.

All at a fraction of the cost of what traditional bus systems do.”

The agility needed to do this is the huge advantage Citymapper has. Forget the bus, it’s not about the bus. It’s about the agility.

If you are a legacy organisation this is the problem, over time you’ve lost agility. And now all you have left is, what? Connections, relationships? Customer loyalty? Brand? I think we’re starting to find out those things don’t count for much.

What happens when an app company runs a bus

 

57. Threads👇

I might start a new section just on Threads. Here’s three good ones from the last few weeks.

Why FMCG companies are struggling to find an alternative to the competitor acquisition model. Or really why FMCG companies need to find an alternative to the Marketing Led business model. Thread👇 

Maps. Loads of lovely maps. Thread 👇

A rare of example of the internet still being brilliant. 6 Music asks what’s the strongest run of three songs in a row on an album? Thread 👇here, easier to read summary here. 

 

58. A negative New Yorker article on Heatherwick’s new project The Vessel, in Hudson Yards. The article features artwork by Christoph Niemann who I love but it’s a 10MB page, that took 59 seconds to load which I didn’t love.

There’s a lot more negative press for Heatherwick these days. For my money there is still more in the positive column than the negative column.

Thomas Heatherwick, Architecture’s Showman

 

59. Street signs counting the amount of cyclists going past

Would love to see more of this. Harmless (?) data used in simple ways with low risk (so what if everyone ignores it) but potentially high reward (better public health). Better than putting ads on every screen.

 Street signs counting the amount of cyclists going past

 

60. Brand = margin, therefore Bezos is going after brands. As I’ve mentioned before we are starting to discover the true value of “brand”.

Death, for brands, has a name... Alexa.

 

Sketch from this Autocar article, not clear who drew it

61. And here’s the perfect example, the Dyson car.

Dyson should be good at this. Already good at batteries, good at engineering, good at innovation, good at supply chain. But who wants a car from a hoover company? Would you buy a Hoover car? Would you buy a hoover from Vauxhall? Does anyone care anymore?

Remember LoveMarks? (Remember Kevin Roberts?) We’re about to find out the true value of "brand" and it’s going to be brutal.

Dyson bets on electric cars to shake up industry

62. Brilliantly

I discovered recently that the Pet Shop Boys have published their own magazine, Literally, since 1989 and last year announced it would become an annual publication. Literally becomes Annually. So good.

Buy Annually here

Design Research Urls #11

* * * * John Maeda Design In Tech Special * * * * 

The fourth Design In Tech report by John Maeda is out. Looks like a Pet Shop Boys album which is no bad thing.

As usual it’s good. Interesting and detailed. Last year I asked for it to be published in html rather than as a PDF. John has obviously listened ;) and there is an html version. Maeda is pretty humble about it, which is nice. FWIW it worked fine in Chrome on my laptop.

One advantage of html is that you can link to specific sections. So here goes.

Maeda's The Key Takeaways

The recognition of design’s value grows. Especially as the big gains in tech become smaller.

The design thinking + business school romance continues. Easy to see this dominating Exec education for a while.

The big management consultancies continue to make acquisitions and hires. I wonder to what extent this is hurting WPP and the like.

There’s an interesting bit about the changing design software. As an old man I’ve been struck by this recently. I’m the only one using Adobe. Hard to see how they still have a business model when everyone uses Sketch or Pixlr or stuff from this huge list.

Voice, AI, algos.

China, china, china. (I need to get to China this year.)

 Ben's Other things worth noting

 There’s lots about Inclusive Design which is good, but it reads like the design industry is just discovering it. I don’t think that’s true and I think the coverage in this report has been driven too much by the Microsoft Inclusive Design Guidelines which are excellent, but not new news. 

Maeda talks about there now being three kinds of design. Classical Design, Design Thinking and Computational Design. I’m not sure this is right, the third one feels unfinished. But the other two are good and I like this approach. This will develop and is worth keeping an eye on.

He goes in pretty hard against the "Classical Designers". Hey, we all have links that need clicking.

 

Be afraid Marketing. Alibaba Luban, a piece of "design AI",  produced 400 million banners during the 2017 singles day, resulting in a 100% increase in conversion rate. 

There's more here, "About 10 types of robots were used by Alibaba for different applications for this year's festival. One of them, named Luban, is an AI designer who created up to 410 million product posters for the Singles' Day, according to the Alibaba statement. Another customer service robot named Ali Xiaomi answered more than 90 percent of the questions asked by consumers on the shopping festival day."

Brian Chesky on culture is interesting. “Why is culture so important to a business? Here is a simple way to frame it. The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing.” Reminded me of Russell's and Giles's recent blogs on GDS. 

The bit about designers needing to learn the skills of product management gives you a good list of skills relevant to any designer in tech. You could argue that product managers have learned those skills from design... but whatever.

Nice to see Durrell’s Line Us get a mention.

 

Design research urls #10

50. Dave Addey  who writes the blog Typeset In The Future is writing a book. I’m assuming you will all like that.

 

51. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of the Phoebus Cartel before. A cartel of Osram, General Electric, Philips and others engaged in large scale planned obsolescence of lightbulbs. Reducing the life of lightbulbs by 60%. More profits obvs.

What eventually stopped the cartel? A war and a co-op.

Read about the Phoebus cartel here.

 

52. Vallie was bonkers Silicon Valley style tech start-up nonsense in London. On demand valet parking. In London.

You can see the pitch. Location aware app, parking in London at a premium. Drive to (what exactly? fancy restaurant? meeting?) valet picks up car and returns it when you’re ready. Plenty of rich people in London with valet-able cars.

I first heard of this when EV owners started asking Vallie to take their cars and put them on charge while they went about their business. (I kinda thought that was an interesting side business. Park and ride for EV charging.)

Ran for two years and closed at the end of last year. Nash, one of the founders, wrote a decent post-mortem. Worth a read as you rarely get to hear what failed in start-ups.

tl;dr the incentives to avoid driving in London are very successful.

Vallie — A post-mortem on on-demand parking in London

 

53. The headline of this article is “Fan-made football kits that are arguably better than the real thing”. Not arguably - definitely. Proper New Aesthetic. Zazzle meets Premier League - made for each other.

I’ve wanted them to do this with sponsors logos for ever.

Fan-made football kits that are arguably better than the real thing

 

54. Thoughtful post from Ben Evans on what he calls the impending collapse in TV, retail and advertising.

“There’s a famous Jeff Bezos quote that ‘your margin is my opportunity’ - right now Amazon is building a billion dollar ad business in its own search results, but I suspect he also looks at the $500bn that’s spent every year on advertising and the further $500bn that’s spent on marketing and sees money that should be going to lower prices and same-day or 1-hour delivery. P&G spent 11% of revenue on advertising last year and plenty more on marketing. What will that look like in 10 years, where will it be spending it and how will people be buying?”

TV, retail, advertising and cascading collapses

 

Design research urls #9

44. Modern Matter have laid out the latest issue of their magazine on a billboard. Fun and I bet sales go up.

Modern Matter Billboard (via MagCulture)

 

45. WPP merged together five of its design consultancies; Brand Union, Lambie-Nairn, The Partners, Addison and Vbat. Being brand experts they’ve named the new company Superunion. Other WPP design firms remain separate; Design Bridge, AKQA and Fitch.

This is an interesting development. It looks like nothing has changed apart from some senior management musical chairs. No redundancies, no relocations. WPP and other holding companies have traditionally stayed away from this sort of merger preferring to keep the individual “hot shop” brands. In fact there was a lucrative career to be made inventing small hot shop brands and flogging them to Sir Martin.

Is this a change of direction? Will we see the same happen to ad agencies? There must be savings to be made at a time when margins are low and the sector is under huge pressure. More of this to come? Will it make a difference to clients? To the quality of work? Is one huge ad agency on the horizon?

Brand Union, Lambie-Nairn and The Partners become Superunion in huge WPP merger

Oh and Michael Wolff isn't happy about the new logo.

"I rarely make comments on the work of colleagues in design. I only do so when I’m angered to see work that I consider trivialising and shameful.

Whatever sense this merger may make to WPP and its clients, this logotype is a disappointing, mediocre and demeaning one.

If it’s an indication of the creativity and intelligence that a merger on this scale is promising, it represents a bleak outlook. Logotypes and names of this banality do a serious disservice to the world of design."

 

46. Nintendo launched Nintendo Labo and it looks brilliant.

Labo is a series of cardboard cut-outs that work with the Nintendo Switch and Joy-Con controllers to create "Toy-Cons" that can interact with game software and vice versa.  Apparently Nintendo designed them as a way to teach the principles of engineering and physics to kids.

It is completely different to other games add-ons and perfectly mimics how kids play. Reminds me of the sort of thinking that led to the 5 second minigames in Yoshio Sakamoto's Warioware Smooth Moves.

Nintendo is so good at this and it’s a shame the world doesn’t get more of this type of thinking in areas other than games.

Nintendo Labo

 

47. Shell have applied for a minicab licence in London. We're about to find out, quite dramatically, the true value of "brands".

I expect to see a lot more of this type of "brand extension" as Big Legacy Cos work out where the value is in their business. As new businesses emerge and grow, will legacy businesses find that all they have left is their brand? That's supposed to be worth billions. Or is the real value in Big Legacy Cos the actual physical assets, rendering the brand worthless without a decent business model.

Could you stretch a fuel or power brand to a taxi or mobility company? Could British Airways do that?  The black cabs have an incredibly well known and well established "brand". Uber was an unknown start up with a weird name.

 This is going to get interesting and disprove a lot of Thought Leadership pretty quickly. There will be blood on the walls. 

Shell subsidiary applies for minicab licence in London

 

48. Someone please do a podcast of people like this.

Tweet from M Plummer Fernandez

 

49. Philippe Starck, remember him? He made sculptures that hated lemons and now makes perfumes.

In an interview with the FT he said “Two hundred years BC, Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the earth with only a 2 per cent error, using a camel, a well and a 30cm wooden stock. That’s design.”

That’s not design, that’s maths.

Don't bother reading this typically ridiculous interview with him. Instead of read this Q&A with Richard Turley. Far more interesting. 

 

Design research urls #8

36. No idea what rabbit hole I went down to find this, but y'know - internet. Last year Mike Ashley gave an update at the Sports Direct shareholders meeting which was held at the London Stock Exchange. Profits had dropped 59% that year. He urged investors to note down every word he was about to say. He stood up, spoke 17 words and then sat down.

“It’s clear we have smashed the ball out of the park with our Selfridges of sport concept”.

For our international listeners who haven't heard of Sports Direct here's a picture. 

Mike Ashley confounds investors with 17-word presentation

 

37. Strange goings on at British Vogue summed up well by Jeremy Leslie the king of magazine blogging. Two covers using exactly the same picture, styled by new Vogue editor Enninful. No obvious tie-up. Odd.

I’m actually excited by this. The whole sector needs a shake up design-wise and you’d think the combination of 2018 + Vogue + Enninful would be potent. Here’s hoping that’s what this is and not just circumstances.

MagCulture: What's happening at British Vogue

 

38. Muji have launched a hotel in Shenzhen. It is as beautiful and as graceful as you’d hope. Makes me wonder what took them so long. But I always think that about Muji and maybe that’s the key to their success. Not following trends or being driven by the same short term goals as everyone else. Imagine Muji as a pace layer.

(On another note, I’m now imagining Ive and Jobs staying in Muji hotels while visiting Foxconn factories. “I’d leave my bags by the door. I wouldn’t unpack. I’d go and sit on the bed and wait for the inevitable call from Steve”)

Muji offers look inside anti-cheap hotel

 

39. Frustratingly light article by the Guardian on the cover design of 2018’s must talked about book - Fire and Fury. The boring cover design does seem odd given the magazine covers Trump has inspired. Political books are supposed to look kinda boring… but this is not a business-as-usual presidency. Deserves a longer article.

Why is the cover of Fire and Fury so ugly?

 

40. Digital banking consultancy 11FS gave out their awards for 2017. 11FS are smart and have worked in proper digital banking so it makes interesting reading. Lots of good stuff and not a surprise to see BBVA “win” Best incumbent bank. Derek White and Rob Brown have built an impressive design team just like they did at Barclays (where they worked with some of 11FS.) BBVA we’ve talked about before in para 21 "BBVA has 150 designers in 11 countries, all with different specialties, not that unusual but they are also training 1000 design ambassadors."

But, the most interesting bit? Google Tez a Google payment layer for banking in India.

Google Tez

11FS Digital Pulse 2017 Awards

 

41. Fast Company wrote an “update” of Dieter Rams 10 Principles of Good Design. Some good stuff in there and it’s nearly worth a read except - beware, it's one of those annoying web pages where everything moves around for five minutes before you can start reading.

Oh and as Ben Brignell points out 

But if you can put up with all of that 10 New Principles of Good Design

 

42. Here are the Top 10 Asymmetric planes.

 

 

43. In Ben Evans’s widely read tech newsletter he points out that

“Apple's privacy changes in iOS 11 knee-capped one of the largest independent ad-tech companies. The most interesting thing about this to me is how little people in tech seemed to notice - people in Silicon Valley really don't talk about advertising unless they're actually working on it themselves.”

If that doesn’t scare ad world, nothing will.

 

 

Design research urls #7

Illustration: Pete Gamlen

31. As we’ve talked about before in-house design teams are growing. This post by Alice Bartlett, Principal Engineer at the FT, is full of practical tips for teams working in-house. The post is about a Front-End Dev team but that is an integral part of design. And to be honest the post could apply to any in-house team competing with external suppliers.

Tips for in-house teams in a free market software culture

 

32. A thought provoking post by Terence Eden - How do you move out of a smart home? Example, I own some Nest Smoke Alarms, if I was to move house but leave the smoke alarms Nest recommend doing a factory reset. Magnify that by everything that has a wifi connection and you can add another day to the already stressful moving process.

I gave a talk a few weeks back at Service Design Network  and also speaking was Alberta Soranzo from Lloyds who spoke about “off boarding”. We expend lots of energy "on boarding" people but nothing on how you leave services.

Great comment from the audience. If a company made it easy to leave their service, even if I was mad at them, when I (inevitably) got mad with another company I’d go back to the one that made it easy to leave.

There is profit to be made if you let people leave your services easily. Is this another example of long held economic assumptions shifting?

How do you move out of a smart home?

 

33. Tom Whitwell works at Fluxx a service design agency. I think he’s written a “52 things I learned” list before but I can’t find it . Anyway, the 52 things he learned in 2017 are all excellent. They should put them in Christmas crackers instead of shit jokes.

“China opens around 50 high bridges each year. The entire rest of the world opens ten.”

"Vice media is worth more than the New York Times, Washington Post and Financial Times combined."

“The National Health Service in the UK uses more than a tenth of the global stock of pagers.”

And 49 other crackers. 

52 things I learned in 2017

Update: Phil found the other years for me 2016, 2015, 2014

 

34. Most fascinating thing I’ve read in ages, the history of the packaged sandwich. Invented by an economics graduate named Roger Whiteside, who went on to start Ocado and is now CEO of Greggs. Lots of interesting behaviour changes over the last 30 years and a clear move towards “Instant gratification and total convenience and delivery.”

How the sandwich consumed Britain

 

35. Netflix did a creepy tweet using personal data and the internet went nuts. Just like Spotify last year.

Two thoughts. One, ad agencies have been getting into data for years and we're about to get a tsunami of this nonsense. Two, it's got no data behind it whatsoever, it's just a copy line and no-one in the ad agency can see what all the fuss is about.

 

 

 

Design research urls #6

28. New York launched a service design studio dedicated to improving services for low-income residents.

The announcement took place at Parsons School of Design at the New School, where over 400 public servants, nonprofit leaders, and members of the design community gathered in support of the new initiative.

All good. But it sounds more like assurance and consultancy than delivery and making stuff. Early days though, early days.

The Launch of the Nation’s First-Ever Municipal Service Design Studio Dedicated to Improving Services for Low-Income Residents

29. ustwo released the second book to come out of their Auto division. It’s gorgeous and super smart as you might expect. At over 500 pages it’s comprehensive too.

It’s also an interesting way for a design studio to work. Heavy research - design fiction? But it’s not fiction it’s the future we’re already living in. Will be interesting to see where this takes them. Remember in para 19 I wrote no one seemed to be doing this in the open. Open design as competitive advantage?

MUST READ Humanising Autonomy - where are we going?

30. More creepy marketing news “Channel 4 today announces a brand new interactive VoD format that enables advertisers to incorporate the individual names of All 4 viewers into the audio of their adverts for the first time.”

You read that right, into the audio of adverts. The first iteration of this is really clunky. And not a very good ad.

As ever there is a fine line between being useful and being creepy. Too often advertising is the line.

People used to say that the Minority Report end game was too rubbish to come true for advertising. The future would be smarter, more creative, better curated. Yet it increasingly looks like advertising will be lucky if it gets be to as classy as Minority Report. “John Anderton you could use a Guinness right about now” is a lot better than that Channel 4 ad. And still terrible.

Channel 4 launches world's first audio personalised TV ads
 

 

 

Design research urls #5

23. Statistically no-one wants your new app (that line credit Alex Russell). A few weeks ago there were lots of “Apps have won!” blog posts after the FT ditched its web app in favour of a native app. Now here’s the counter argument, although this time the stats are more compelling.

"Since January 2015, there has been a 68 percent increase in smartphone web traffic in the U.S... Americans have opened apps 22 percent less on smartphones and nearly 50 percent less on tablets compared with the beginning of 2016."

I guess the reality is that fewer people are downloading *new* apps meaning things like Facebook, Twitter and banking apps dominate. (Also the stats are US only.)

Smartphones are driving all growth in web traffic. Just not through apps. 

In 2011 FT “ditches” the app store and in 2017 FT “ditches” web apps

 

24. John Deere buys Machine Learning company. I love this. That is all.

 

25. In the UK, Facebook says it can reach 7.8 million users aged between 18 and 24. The Office of National Statistics, however, says there were only 5.8 million people in that age group in the whole in the country in 2016.

I'm sure traditional media outlets were completely honest and transparent about audience data.

Facebook claims it can reach more young people than exist in UK, US and other countries

26. Apple releases Augmented Reality Interface Guidelines. Apple has a track record of good guidelines that quickly become industry standard. The famous Human Interface Guidelines being a good example. So this is worth a read. 

Human Interface Guidelines - Augmented Reality

27. The most fascinating thing I came across since the last notes was the alphachat FT podcast with Scott Galloway. The death of advertising. File under 'a regular drumbeat of stories like this but with better charts'. Or as Larry Summers said, “Things take longer to happen than you think they will and then they happen faster than you think they will.”. (Actually loads of people have said that, seems like Hemmingway was the first. Thanks Russell.)

There is far too much here for this blog. But a few notes:

Wherever people can afford to opt out of advertising, they do. (Leaves advertisers with the audience they don't want.)

So the ad based revenue model is dying. “What does that mean for the advertising industry, if the way they built these huge streams of revenue is collapsing? what does it mean if I’m trying to buy and sell advertising?" Short answer - it means they’re screwed.

If the ratio of sub revenue to ad revenue is more than 50% means you’ll stay in business. (NYT and FT, few others.)

Build a better mousetrap and the brand will build itself. Discovery not persuasion. And therefore Amazon, Amazon, Amazon. (Amazon paid $0 for Whole Foods as the increase in Amazon’s share price more than covered the cost of acquisition. Terrifying. Remember this?)

Please listen to the podcast Don Draper has been drawn and quartered

And read the charts Death of the Advertising Industrial Complex

Here's a selection here. 

 

Design research urls #4

16. Google Design released a guide to designing with machine learning.

I say released a guide, I mean published a Medium post. Such is the way of things these days.

There’s a lot of hyperbole talked about ML and this was the most sensible thing I’ve read about it so far. Called “human-centered machine learning” it’s simple, practical guidance. The bit about email attachments is lovely. If this is as successful and useful as Material Design, Google are on to a good thing here.

Essential reading Human-Centered Machine Learning by Google Design

Unusually Fast Company have written a good summary. Beware, it's one of those annoying web pages where everything moves around for five minutes before you can start reading.

Fast Company - Google’s Rules For Designers Working With AI

17. The Parliament Digital Service has taken photographs of every single MP. For the first time ever.

They photographed 90% of 650 MPs in just one day, shot against the same background as they were sworn in after the election. Each sitting averaging less than a minute. That’s impressive. They are all reusable under a Creative Commons licence. This is a simple but brilliant piece of work and exactly what parliament should be doing.

Making history: official portraits and open source images

(Not everyone is happy obvs, but this twitter thread is an absolute joy )

18. Imagine having a bookcase named after you. Hello Billy Likjedhal if you’re reading this.

Naming is always fascinating. Ikea have a team of product namers, who assign names from a database of Swedish words. Bookcases are named after professional occupations (Expedit means shop keeper) or boys’ names (The bestselling Billy bookcase is named after IKEA employee Billy Likjedhal).

The secret taxonomy behind IKEA’s product names, from Billy to Poäng

19. Good article on car UX.

But, a long article about car UX that only mentions Tesla twice. Which I found odd. Makes me think no one is writing about this stuff openly. Which is maybe understandable, but I still find unusual.

About car UX

Special mention to ustwo who are thinking and writing about it as ustwo Auto 

20. Canyon is named Red Dot design team of the year.

The Red Dot awards are credible and Canyon are doing good work not just in bike design, but service design too. Worth watching this team.

Canyon is Red Dot: Design Team of the Year 2017

21. BBVA has 150 designers in 11 countries, all with different specialties, not that unusual but they are also training 1000 design ambassadors. That’s interesting. Led by Derek White and Rob Brown previously of Barclays superb digital and design team.

BBVA trains 1000 'ambassadors of design’

22. Procter & Gamble cut $140 Million from digital ad spend and saw no effect on sales.

Lots and lots of reckons around this, obvs. Some context, P&G spent $2.4 billion on advertising last year, so $140M is around a 5% cut.

I’m sure most large companies could stop $100M of lots of things and have no effect on sales.

But still, there is a regular drumbeat of stories like this. And what I found most interesting is that the CFO explicitly called it out in the earnings statement. A shot across the bows, methinks.

Procter & Gamble Cut Up to $140 Million in Digital Ad Spending Because of Brand Safety Concerns

 

Design research urls #3

9. Will an algorithm steal my design job? Some of it, yes. Like coding two decades ago, understanding algos, how they work and what they’re good at is crucial for designers. To get you started Yury Vetrov has made a handy list of articles covering which design tasks they are already being used for and it’s easy to work out which bits they are better at than designers.

 

This is a must read algorithms.design 

 

10. In case you missed this. Someone hacked the digital OOH at Union Station and put porn on it. But the most interesting bit of this story is a witness who when interviewed "spoke on the condition of anonymity because she did not want an article about porn to come up when people Google her name”. A reminder that designing for privacy is crucial skill - IF are doing great work on this (mentioned in design research urls para 3) and we’ve started discussing it at Co-op Digital.

 

PornHub played on the big screen at Union Station (SFW)

 

11. The story is a year old but Google has closed Google code. Is GitHub the last piece of the tech jigsaw not owned by Amazon or Google? Would owning the world’s code would be a valuable asset?

 

Google and Amazon are now regularly and publicly shutting things down. Amazon in particular are getting very good at failing. Just another of the skills older “legacy” organisations seem to find impossible to master.

 

12. This is worth reading on why Amazon’s management structure and style sets it up for success as much as it’s technology. The ruthless operation of management as API. This feels like a future skill, so where is the MBA or HBR book that covers this? (Something longer than a medium post.)

 

Why Amazon is eating the world

 

13. At a dinner with some product design luminaries a few weeks ago, many felt that Jony Ive had boxed Apple into a corner design wise. There’s simply nowhere left to go without a major change in direction. And that couldn’t come from him.

 

With this week’s launch of the $5k iMac Pro and HomePod, I can’t help but feel they’re on to something. And I’m also sure neither Jony nor anyone else at Apple cares less what they think ;) and I’m equally sure lots of those luminaries would like to shine as bright as Jony :)💡

 

Gruber gets the low down on the Mac Pro

 

14. Tech is neither good nor bad, just different. This could be a regular feature #neithergoodnorbadjustdifferent In this week’s instalment, because people won’t stop staring at their phones the Dutch put traffic lights on the ground. Neither good nor bad, just different. 

 

The Dutch put traffic lights on the ground.

 

15. The latest in the regular drumbeat of marketing moving in-house or away from agencies. Adidas annouced they are stopping TV ads. "It's clear that the younger consumer engages with us predominately over the mobile device,” said Chief Executive Kasper Rorsted "Digital engagement is key for us; you don't see any TV advertising anymore."

 

Design research urls #2

 

5. John Maeda released the third version of his Design in Tech report at SXSW. I’m a fan of this report, as someone needs to make the link between design, technology and business more explicit and easier to quantify. (GDS were mentioned last year.)

It’s the best report yet. Comprehensive with numbers and examples. It chimes with my view of the design industry and where it’s heading.

There's loads to write about this. It's worth downloading and reading all of it, but the headlines are: business is taking design, or rather “design thinking” seriously; McKinsey and IBM have made senior hires this year; design M&A is a thing; designers are in huge demand; Amazon, Google, and Facebook have grown their design teams by 65%; there’s a lack of design leaders; learn to understand code; learn to write; China obvs.

PDF of Design in Tech 2017

Slideshare of Design in Tech 2017

 

VentureBeat article on the report where I took the above picture from

 

6. Related, last week saw the release of the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings. For Art and Design London's Royal College of Art came top and University of the Arts London was 6th. Another seven of the top ten were from the US. That feels unsustainable, especially as applications to design A-levels (and therefore degrees) are falling off a cliff in the UK. With Brexit, US visa bans, general protectionism and given the John Maeda report on design in China, what will these rankings be like in 10 years time?

 

Caution - there are lots of these rankings about. In this case the art and design list seems consistent with other rankings.

Disclosure - I'm a governor at UAL.

 

Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings

 

Design Week story on global university rankings

 

NSEAD report on the drop in GCSE art and design numbers 

 

7. Here's a good interview with Tracy Ma a designer on Bloomberg Businessweek.

 

8.  "There is a slow but steady leakage of marketing services away from agencies and toward either specialized firms or in-house operations" That's a comment from Bob Hoffman, ad industry veteran. There is now a regular drumbeat of these articles in the ad industry press.

 

See also Ben Evan's sarcastic comment a few newsletters ago, "Martin Sorrell is worried about Amazon's ad business (and also, one would hope, Amazon's threat to advertising use cases themselves)". 

 

Bob Hoffman The State of Agency World podcast

 

The CEO of the world's biggest ad company says Amazon is what keeps him up worrying at night