And, having since looked at the chain's website, they certainly do cash-in.

They sell goggles, an item so stereotypical that I abandoned making a pair soon after I began.
[And for some people (not me) making things oneself rather than merely purchasing finished items is a key tenet of steampunk 'culture': the very concept is that the goggles-wearer is some sort of artisan or inventer who lovingly crafts technology by hand. And steam. Plenty of steam.]

Anyway; the commercial version is:

Hang on: "100% authentic"?
Well, yes. Authentic gas welding goggles, to precisely the same design as those sold for £7.60 by Amazon, or less at eBay – my aborted project is based on a pair currently available for £4.99. And I do mean precisely: seemingly from exactly the same moulds, presumably from the same factory.
The only difference is that the 'steampunk' version has been part-painted and has had a pair of filigree decorations glued on; I was going to add similar details to mine (though rather more of them, better integrated into a properly-considered design), for which I paid less than a pound. The outer lenses are transparent magenta, too, and presumably cheaper than the BS EN 175-compliant protective lenses of the real thing.

Rip-off? Not if one considers the convenience of saving hours of conversion work, but certainly a matter of caveat emptor, hardly in the steampunk spirit and – sorry if it sounds precious – somewhat distasteful.

And, incidentally, gas welding goggles definitely aren't "sleek" – apart from the stereotype factor, one of the reasons I abandoned my own version was that the goggles looked disproportionately huge hooked over a top hat.

Okay, there may be some, very specific situations where it might make some, very limited, sense to offer hyperlinks as footnotes on a web-published article rather than scattered through the text....

No. No, there really aren't. The whole purpose of inline hyperlinking is to connect to an external resource at the point of reference. If you find inline links genuinely impose a "cognitive penalty", you might try disciplining yourself to avoid following them until you've read the main text; I'm sure it'd become second-nature fairly quickly.

If they're available, readers can follow them, but delicate readers don't have to. If they're withheld (at the point of relevance), the cognitively-impaired hold everyone back. And that's unacceptable.

Partly because the designers have optimised for webkit-based browsers, the images don't appear perfectly in Firefox (and who cares whether they work in IE?), but there are pre-rendered images for the rest of us.

An image of an iPhone.
Eleven iOS icons.

Impractical? Maybe, but still a fascinating proof of concept.

I really don't want to be overly picky, but the adoption of the Mac aesthetic possibly diminishes the achievement for me. That slightly-cartoony visual style, making extensive use of drop-shadows and smooth gradients, inherently favours the CSS approach.

Not one of mine, I hasten to add, but I think I'll have to, er, 'gently chide' the author....

The curator explains that:

What's its catalogue number?

In explaining why the US standard is unlikely to change, Robert Solomon of the National Fire Protection Association says that:

Apart from the one major error which drew attention to the image, it isn't grossly distorted (well, if one doesn't include skin colour), and some manipulation is explained by the purpose to which it was put (a web catalogue, in which users could view the same dress in different colours), but it's still interesting to deconstruct the processing routine within the industry.

A particularly fine example is the 'Mojito' shoe designed by architect Julian Hakes: a single curved and folded strip of carbon fibre (laminated with rubber and leather) forming a high-heeled shoe lacking a footplate. As Hakes observed, weight is carried by the ball and heel of a foot, so he was able to omit the standard linking element and produce a striking, attractive and functional object.

Inasmuch as any high-heeled shoe is functional, but let's not pursue that topic....

Because I never use them myself, I've forgotten to build a spellchecker into my latest editing interface. Bugger.

Not that I have infallible spelling of course (only very nearly...). It's simply that I always have a spellchecker at the top right of my browser: it's called 'Google'.

I suppose it'd be good for one-use applications such as tiny bottles of shampoo provided by hotels, but as an everyday drinks container I feel it misses the point. Recycling is rational (not 'good'), but less so than reuse: what one really needs is a robust, washable container one could keep for years. If that bottle is recyclable, so much the better.

I'm ashamed to acknowledge the level to which my perceptions had been influenced by the rants and unsubstantiated opinions of both Mac-haters and Mac cultists (including Apple.com itself) rather than objective facts or my own experiences.
For example, a small part of my (undiminished) dislike of the OS X UI and Mac hardware was a reaction against Mac cultists who think the products are "gorgeous", a factor I consider less than irrelevant: on reflection, my contempt is for the cultists, not really the kit.
Conversely, I'd absorbed Mac-hater's hostile interpretations of Apple's corporate intentions, which were somewhat dispelled by hearing policies convincingly rationalised, in person, by a senior manager.

I still see a lot wrong with Macs, but I hope I'm now a little more open to being persuaded, on the merits of the products rather than the prejudices of users/non-users. I can't imagine replacing my desktop PC with a Mac, but if I ever feel the need for a web-enabled phone (most unlikely at present!), I wouldn't automatically dismiss the iPhone – ~26 hours ago, I would.

[Ugh. Writing this entry inspired me to look at Apple.com again, refreshing my animosity:
"Why you'll love a Mac: It’s gorgeous. Inside and out. Even the keyboard is beautiful."
**** off, you shallow, pretentious ****s. You may – may – have products worth investigating, but you'll never, ever sell me one on the basis of image or emotional 'appeal'.]

I'm sad to report that Escher has been contacted by the Westminster Estate, instructed to dismantle his installations and banned from making any more on the Duke's land – and I believe he happens to be the primary countryside landowner in Northern England.

I can't understand how someone could object to the artworks, but it has to be acknowledged that they are (were...) on privately-owned land to which the public only has a right of access, and the Estate is perfectly entitled to object to the artworks. I suspect they were making Clougha too popular: I know several people who have visited specifically to see the Egg Cairn, and though we have a statutory right to do so, that doesn't mean the Duke has to encourage the grubby general public to wander all over his grouse moors.

As I've mentioned before, there is a 'genuine' Andy Goldsworthy installation on Clougha, commissioned by the Estate, so it's not as if the Duke has an aesthetic aversion to land art or dry stone structures. However, I've also speculated on its odd location: well away from the main public footpaths and out of line-of-sight from the summit of Clougha Pike, but mere metres from a shooting track. It's as if the Duke wants the prestige of a Goldsworthy piece, but intended it to be 'exclusive', readily viewable by his shooting guests rather than any but the more determined members of the public.

I'm deeply disappointed, but I hope Escher isn't discouraged. Some of the best land art (indeed, some of Escher's) is ephemeral, and his photos are an excellent portfolio with which he could approach more amenable landowners.

As an adult I don't particularly like sweets, so whilst visiting my mother today I encountered the modern refinement of the wrapper for the first time.

It looks identical, but the twisted ends are actually sealed – pull on the ends and the sweet doesn't neatly unwrap itself. Instead, one is supposed to tear along the wrapper's middle.

All very... sanitary, I'm sure, but it's not the same. It may seem trivial, but it's oddly dispiriting. Aesthetically, it's the difference between elegant simplicity and ripping apart one's memories; between quaint and clinical.

That link just goes to an over-designed page (of black & white text, in multiple fonts, on a bright red background) which simply asks the question. There's no explanation or expression of Essl's own view, nor an opportunity to add either oneself. No substance whatsoever.

Okay, "no" is too simplistic: my actual view is that graphic design is not inherently art but craft, but that art can arise from graphic design.

It has two adjacent levers. Hold one down, and water flows until one lets go and the lever springs back. Lift the lever and it stays raised, providing water until the lever is specifically pressed back down. The other lever works the same way. There's a safety interlock theoretically preventing one from releasing boiling water unless a secondary button is simultaneously depressed. It doesn't work.

However, aside from that error of implementation there's a fundamental design flaw: there are two 'off' positions. Lift both levers and no water flows. Imagine that the next user then arrives and pushes the chosen lever down. Think about that: the resulting configuration is to return the lever to its proper 'off' position, whilst the other lever is 'on' – and that's what one gets. Tea made with chilled water is annoying, but a thin-skinned plastic cup of boiling water is a hazard.

*: not bubbling and steaming, but at least as hot as poured from a freshly-boiled kettle.

*: Which, amusingly, the University's Student Union shop insisted on including in my change when I spent the £10 – they'll accept a Scottish banknote so long as they can get rid of one in return.

It's frequently annoyed me that architects tend to be automatically blamed for unforeseen additional expenses in major public building projects, rather than the additional costs frequently being the results of subsequent revisions, by committees of 'back-seat designers'.

I was going to say that architects seem to be the soft target for media criticism: dilettante artists squandering public money on unnecessarily grand designs when 'no-nonsense' brick boxes (with a little pedestrian neo-Classical fluff if the building needs to be 'fancy') would be more than adequate.
I was going to point out that that's distressingly reductionist, and architects have a key role in defining the soul of public spaces; that in terms of usability and aesthetics architecture is infinitely more important on an everyday basis than mere construction.

I was going to, but in the comments on the Glancey article, Antipode has already said precisely that, more eloquently. Damn.

It's the idea of Freddie Yauner who, at the other extreme, has also designed the longest lipstick in the world (a year's supply).

Possibly because there won't be a picture to click on?

No, I won't identify the site – it deserves some credit for considering special needs, if not for lateral thinking.

The Register offers a prime example.

The corporate logo of an IT company (I think; their 'About Us' web page is so full of buzzwords that I literally don't know what the firm actually does) has recently been redesigned, with an uninspiring result which I think looks pretty good in the context of a website header bar. Fair enough.
Yet the brand implementation guidelines make the fatal error of rationalising each aspect of the logo's design, thereby 'cranking up the whalesong to 11', as El Reg says. Read the ensuing marketing bollocks in the linked article.

The payoff of the story is that a (apocryphal?) customer's immediate impression is far more compelling and memorable than the designers' over-considered waffle: if one feels a need to read 'messages' into logos, this one implies the company cuts corners.

Yet further analysis seems to show that of those returns, only 5% are genuinely malfunctioning (is that 5% of 11-20%, ie. 0.5-1% of all items sold?). In 68% of cases, the items function correctly but either fail to meet the customers' expectations or have been merely misconfigured. Over a quarter of returns are ascribed to customers simply changing their minds.

This may be considered to be a marketing issue, but there are implications for designers too. If, as a related study shows, the average consumer will only invest 20 minutes in configuring, say, a DVD player before totally giving up and returning the item as 'faulty', that can't be entirely dismissed as customers being lazy: there's an interface problem. Yes, the average customer may well be lazy – so design for lazy customers, not fellow interface designers.

Dark Roasted Blend has a gallery of interesting examples, including highlights of D-Barcode's work, plus the use of barcode motifs in other areas of design.

Oh, and there's one on every page of the Ministry, disguising a functional image (which doesn't otherwise suit the site design) since 2001.

*: The D-Barcode website is in Japanese, and text is presented as graphics, defeating online translation; I offer the link as acknowledgement but don't necessarily recommend following it!

I'm sure it'd be possible to replicate some of the effect oneself, with well-printed photos and perhaps a cheap lightbox; in fact I might prefer that, as the 'official' images are slightly too sanitised and twee for my taste.

[Via BoingBoing.]

Yes, really.
Yours for $5924 plus $250 shipping charge or for a further $794 one can buy a cube pre-hammered by the designer.

[Via BoingBoing.]

However, £25 per hook plus £20 p&p (whether to Rotherham, UK or Rothera, Antarctica, and they do despatch to Antarctica) is a bit... cutting.

[Via BoingBoing.]

There must be a way of integrating a motor which only engages when needed, so the majority of people can use the door manually. Unnecessarily automatic doors are a waste of electricity and totally unusable in power cuts – many don't even have handles on the 'pull' side.

Twice within the past year, once at the University of York and once here in Lancaster, I've been totally unable to access buildings as I haven't been able to find the 'open door' buttons. I've now learned to look behind me – some buttons are unmarked and set 3-4 m away from the doorways.

However, there are a few questionable points:

• The arms feature icons of England, Ireland and Scotland, but not Wales. In the context of the royal arms, that's correct, but I'd have thought that to be a reason to avoid the arms, and to choose something more representative of the entire UK.
• The new designs are for the reverses of the coins, but the monarch's profile will remain on the obverses. Is it really necessary to have royalist symbols on both sides? Hardly representative of modern British attitudes.
• The denomination of each coin is solely stated in words, in English. Stating the value as numerals would be better for non-Anglophone visitors and again, this seems to falsely stress the primacy of England within the UK.
• And the biggest objection: why the **** has the Royal Mint spent ~£35,000 on new designs, when that money could be far better invested in scrapping the isolationist pound and introducing a real currency, the Euro? At best, this is a short-sighted waste, revamping coins which will be obsolete within the near future. At worst, it's an illegimate attempt to sway public opinion towards irrationally retaining the Jolly Old English pound.

This isn't petty resistance to change, but an objection to flawed design.
My main problem with the interface is that the individual widgets can be moved around the page apart from the double-width promo area (and of course it's promotional, advertising BBC resources, despite their denial). Hence, if I choose to eliminate the 'sport', 'entertainment', etc. widgets to retain only those I do want to see ('news' and 'weather'), they don't fit above the fold unless I turn off all supplementary content in the 'news' widget, forcing an irritating scroll and adding irregular blocks of dead space.

Evidently others have cited the same objection, as the BBC's web editor responded as long ago as 14 January. I disagree with his reasoning.

"But it's shiny"
"I don't ****ing CARE."

That's the fundamental risk of offering customisable content (and one reason why I don't!): the designer is obliged to step back and let the user display it in a way the designer might think absolutely foolish, potentially rejecting content the designer thinks particularly valuable – but that's the user's choice.

The easiest solution is the one I've employed: I've simply bookmarked the 'News' and 'Weather' home pages separately, avoiding the overarching home page outright.

Incidentally, I don't think this contradicts my normal stance, that the site owner has the ultimate right to decide what is and isn't presented on the page, not the visitor – I still oppose Greasemonkey-type modification of a site's content without the owner's explicit permission. This is different: the BBC is defining what's on offer and claiming to let visitors decide how it's displayed, then withholding the ability to really customise it.

I really wish interface designers would set DVDs to autoplay as far as the main menu and stay there awaiting specific instructions. I tend to load a DVD then leave to make a cup of tea or otherwise ignore the offensive 'piracy's bad, m'kay?' notice, returning when I'm ready to watch the film.

Yes, it's a matter of a moment to press 'Menu' and start again (I did say it was trivial), but I'm just about enough of a designer that I find flawed functionality irritating.

These triangular steps are hideously impractical, of course – too narrow for anything bulky to be carried up them, and about as steep as a stepladder, but they look good.

I saw the basic design last summer, in fact, on the roof of Dolwyddelan Castle in North Wales, and preferred that less boxy execution, but still... want!

[Via BoingBoing.]

However, this solution would be far more satisfying.

[The links are to items in a webstore, so they're likely to break eventually. For the record, the first item is a pack of business cards, each of which simply says "Stop talking". The second is a 60 m roll of packing tape printed with "Shut Up Shut Up Shut Up..."; the accompanying photo shows an annoying person bound and, more importantly, gagged with the stuff.]

I couldn't help noticing that the end wall of each rectangular crate is printed with a square marked 'LABEL' i.e. a preferred location in which to attach a label indicating its destination. Presumably, this is to assist the removals staff, who presumably stack the crates in their van in such a way that the end walls are readily visible.
Yet no-one, not one person, has actually used that designated space – all crates are neatly labelled, but on the long side wall, or on top.

I wonder who's at fault. Is it the office staff for not paying attention? Or could it be that the crate markings themselves are poorly designed, failing to convey their message?

*: Yes, 'decant' is the officially documented term.

Whatever my opinions of the UK's Ministry of Justice* , I quite like their logo: clean and simple, with a typeface midway between businesslike and approachable, evoking the London Underground and 'Britishness'.

*: In short, I think they're the acceptable half of the old Home Office, which remains the cutting edge of state erosion of individual privacy. But I digress....

Er, nor me (I favour square Post-its), but at least this sketchbook makes me smile. It's portrait-orientated at the front, but the dimensions of each subsequent page are slightly different, until the back page, which is landscape-orientated.
I wonder how the edges were trimmed.

Nice concept, but a limited edition of 500 hand-bound books, for $80 each? Perhaps not.

Via Calephetos.

Never mind why, how did someone even think of this? Worse, how did that odd idea get past the prototype stage? If it's unclear, this is a retail product, not a one-off.

[Via BoingBoing.]

Dynamic text formatting is fine, but graphics have always been a problem.
However, work by Shai Avidan and Ariel Shamir on 'seam carving', is moving towards images which rescale 'intelligently' as page dimensions change.
Rather than an entire image shrinking or enlarging uniformly, maintaining its aspect ratio, parts of the image are discarded (or generated) preferentially. For instance, in a picture of a person on a beach, areas of background are discarded before the figure is affected at all, and even then, areas such as the face can be protected to avoid distortion. See the video at the aforementioned link for examples.

The technique can already be applied to one-off image resizing (rather than dynamic resizing), which is itself very useful. Lifehacker suggests two free utilities (whilst noting that the results don't necessarily match the standard in the research video). One is a downloadable plugin for GIMP, the open source image editor, whilst the other is a standalone online utility, 'Rsizr'. I can certainly imagine this being built into the next generation of commercial image editors as standard.

*: I hope web designers are also aware of the distinction between liquid and elastic layout, and tend to use the latter!

Quite.

Catwalk, pop video and bedroom are one thing (er... you know what I mean), but the everyday mass-market? Let's not get carried away.

Some were nothing special; there's nothing conceptually remarkable about inserting solar cells into a bikini, allowing the wearer to ambiently recharge his/her (er, probably her) mp3 player, though it's a media-friendly idea.

The BBC mentioned two designs specifically for couples. One was innocuous – a pair of jackets which display illuminated (LED) text scrolling across both backs when the wearers hold hands – and one less so.

That was something like the 'Dance Dance Revolution' arcade game (in which one presses pressure-sensitive pads in time to music, thereby 'dancing') though with the pads attached to a pair of boxer shorts and a bra. The 'DDR' variant is merely the simple game chosen to demonstrate the technology, but I suppose the touchpads could function like a standard controller for any game.

That's a compelling thought, but the one which impressed me most was clothing printed with designs only detectable by the CCD/CMOS sensors of digital cameras. To the naked eye, the vest in the linked example shows a thundercloud, but a photograph would show a lightning bolt too.
The technology can be applied to digital media too. The project's own website suggests that subtitles could be invisibly incorporated into feature films, so that those needing that assistance could access them by watching through a cameraphone's screen. I can't imagine that being an enjoyable experience, nor one that'd be encouraged by cinema managers – I suspect it'd be more likely to be used to obscure the image recorded by a camaraphone, perhaps with an anti-piracy logo.
One more interesting application could be 'electronic makeup' which would protect a wearer’s anonymity by discreetly disrupting the features required by electronic face-recognition software. ****, I'd wear that!.

Others were less practical, either illustrating a principle or frivolity (which is fine). For instance, Joo Youn Paek's 'Self-Sustainable Chair' is a polyethylene dress incorporating an inflatable bustle connected to two foot pumps. As the wearer walks (laboriously), the rear inflates until the wearer is obliged to stop and sit on it, thereby expelling the air. Why?
And an exploding backpack of confetti deliberately imitative of a suicide bomber is a seriously bad idea nowadays.

*: I've since found the fashion show's own website, as yet unpublicised by SIGGRAPH.

[Argh! Somehow I saved over my completed draft of this entry, so I've had to retype it from memory. I think it makes most of my original points, but writing's never as good the second time, is it?
I have a couple of URLs left over, too. I forget the contexts in which I linked to the fashion show's programme (.pdf) and this hideously impractical yet oddly attractive (as a hanging object, not as a garment) shirt.]

Dava Bowman Newman and her team at MIT have had the wonderfully elegant idea of identifying the lines of non-extension on the human body – those areas of skin which don't stretch during activity. Since they don't need to move, the material directly over them can be near-rigid, collectively providing what amounts to an exoskeleton of lines set into an otherwise flexible suit.

*: considering it's the only non-English language in which I have any formal qualification, and my French is now drastically worse than my Norwegian, Polish, German, Welsh, Catalan, Spanish and Italian (and those are only nominal), yes, I'm appalled.

I'm not sure Mr. G's employers at the Guardian would agree with his closing paragraph, though. That the OS is a state-owned body and "OS Maps are ours" is an ongoing argument, as the Survey is somewhat reluctant to share 'our' data, even within the government sector.

Incidentally, Mr. G (or the Guardian, anyway) illustrates his article with a map extract of my local area. A line on the road at the point marked '176' is precisely 10 miles from Lancaster.

That happens a lot. For years I used to buy my mother a road atlas each year, and a disproportionate number of covers depicted Lancaster or at least NW England. I even started to wonder whether publishers produced regional editions, with an atlas for sale in the North-east illustrated by a map extract of Newcastle and one sold in London showing London, but that doesn't seem likely. Maybe the configuration of NW England and the North Wales coast simply suit graphic designers' requirements.

It's a custom font, created by Dalton Maag. Ah. No, that's the font Tesco uses in writing, not in the logo.
The principle still applies, though: the logo font is proprietory, and it's unlikely you'd find a (legitimate) usable copy of the character set.

Most such corporate fonts are purpose-designed, in part specifically to prevent reuse of part of the brand image by others. If the company owns and restricts access to the font, it reduces the risk of 'passing-off'.
I can't think of any major company which uses a generic or publicly-accessible font in its logo, and couldn't imagine why any would.

Via Boing Boing, I've found the artist's website. Visit the 'Gallery' page for numerous examples of Livio De Marchi's excellent work.

Slightly uncharitable thought, though: is this art?

*: Which wouldn't remotely conform to accessibility legislation, but let's not think about that.

Nice idea, but £285 each?!

[Via Boing Boing.]

[Via Boing Boing.]

Since the almost-completed remodelling work, that has become slightly more likely, as the new signage is too confusing. Rather than a clear indication that 'You're on C Floor: Press, Publications, Admissions, International Office, Lingerie and Soft Furnishings', the new signs list every department in the building, with slight shading indicating one's current location. There's too much information, and one's eye doesn't naturally fall on the required aspect.

There's also a related article by another Jonathan, Glancey, on surrealist architecture. In the first draft of this entry, I explained, thankfully briefly, that Glancey was wrong. Gaudí wasn't a surrealist, though his work was very novel, organic and influencial on those who were surrealists. Likewise, the further supposition that the Scottish Parliament building is Gaudí-inspired, and therefore surrealist, is flawed. However, I then realised that that was Glancey's exact point: the best surrealist architecture wasn't the product of deliberate surrealism.

My headline is the key point, which seems to have eluded Glancey's subeditor (who I presume wrote the introductory paragraph): there's far more to surrealism than merely being 'weird and wonderful'.

It's a great space-optimisation idea, though one couldn't have anything permanently outside, such as a garden of potted plants. There's also the key consideration: could you really relax on a folding structure dozens of metres above the ground?

[Via BoingBoing.]

• 'Wake n' Bacon' is, as the name suggests, an alarm clock which wakes the sleeper by cooking a rasher of bacon, generating the characteristic odour. In one's bedroom.
• I can't improve on Cory Doctorow's review of the 'Blade Runner'-style 'Light Saber Umbrella' for Boing Boing:
  you glow like an eerie mugger-beacon as you stalk the wet streets of town, blinded by the night-vision-destroying light-source inches from your face.

Milk cartons are a bit of a problem: the waterproofing in paper-based cartons prevents them being recycled as either paper or plastic (Norwegians are encouraged to crush and insert them into another empty carton, then burn the result as fuel) and empty plastic cartons are bulky items to transport for recycling.
The bags take up negligible space when empty (a 90% reduction in landfill volume is cited), can be disposed of in landfill, and biodegrade fully within nine months. I wonder if that means they'd be suitable for domestic composting too.

There's still the commercial/environmental cost of bag production, of course, so I hope they're not proposed as a replacement for near-endlessly reusable glass bottles in doorstep milk deliveries, but for the supermarket or corner shop sectors, this sounds very promising.

If not, why not? A supermarket chain could even gain a marketing advantage if it could partly justify packaging, and offer one step better than recyclable.

[Via BoingBoing.]

Isn't that the stereotype once applied to Soviet Eastern Europe? Strange how the ideological enemy seems to have achieved the same result.

I do have a few pictures on my walls.

• In the living room, I have 'Brave', by Carl Glover (I think) at Bill Smith Studios, plus a lot of blank space. It's a small room; I don't want to clutter it up, and besides, I don't use it much myself.
• In the kitchen, there's a photograph over the sink, depicting a gorge in North Wales, and Gotti Bernhöft's 'Angel Foetus' by the stairs (actually, mine is the negative of the linked image, and hence looks a little more like an ultrasound scanner's output).
• There are four postcards of Edward Burne-Jones' 'Pygmalion And Galatea' series down the side wall of the stairwell, whilst John Blackford's 'Signify' hangs over the stairs.
• In the 'office' (back bedroom) there's a print of D.G. Rossetti's 'Dante's Dream At The Time Of The Death Of Beatrice' plus various postcards on the noticeboard.
• In the bedroom, I have two original paintings by my mother (all other pictures mentioned are prints, if that's even slightly unclear) and J.W. Waterhouse's 'Hylas And The Nymphs' (I wonder whether waking to the sight of seven nubile nipples has a subliminal effect on the rest of my day).

Is the original published context really the defining characteristic, and is it impossible for the artwork to be considered on its own merits? That's surprising, and somewhat disappointing.

I discovered this via BoingBoing, but Lloyd's site also features saucers in the shapes of teacups' shadows; another elegant idea.

Annoyingly, the least derivative thing I've managed to produce today is a simple geometric shape, a sort of swoosh-y open-sided frame, which I really like but which is absolutely useless for this project....

[Discovered by Lifehacker, er, a year ago.]

I spot a gap (or two) in the market: an undergarment for when one wants to be warm without ruining the line of one's clothes.... Perhaps there could be two versions: with legs, as chaps to avoid chapping, or without, as a thimple, er, simple thermal thong.

Yes, I'm easily amused; it's been a boring afternoon.

*: that's apt.

When I saw these Helmut Newton T-shirts (via BoingBoing), I was immediately interested. I'd definitely wear an x-ray image of a foot in a stiletto shoe. Yes, really.

As soon as I returned home to my credit card, I visited the site to submit an order. €32 (£21.45) is a little more than I'd ordinarily pay for a shirt, but I wouldn't object to supporting the Helmut Newton Foundation.
However, €27 (£18) for postage, presumably from Berlin, is ludicrous. That's just short of £40 ($74) for a T-shirt.

I don't think so.

[Update 1/12/06: The postal rates have been revised, to €12 for the shirt, which is expensive but not excessively so; the revision cuts over £10 off the total price.]

The divider design at Sainsbury's is a clear plastic tube with a triangular cross-section, into which is inserted printed paper displaying the company name, a specific message (e.g. '10 items or less') or whatever promotional message the management wishes to push.
Booth's, a regional supermarket chain probably little-known outside Lancashire & Cumbria, dispenses with the plastic tube. The dividers are simply cardboard triangular tubes.

Some would say the latter is 'better', as paper is more readily recycled and biodegraded than plastic, but the flimsy card dividers wear-out rapidly and need to be replaced drastically more frequently than those protected within Sainsburys' plastic tubes. It's false economy to use lots of printed paper rather than a little plastic; the plastic tubes themselves could be in service for years whilst each paper insert could last for weeks, even months.
From a less environmentalist point of view (which is equally valid), the lightweight card dividers fall over even before the conveyer belt moves and they just look cheap, especially when a little tatty – they're a poor advertisement for the company brand image and and its shopping environment.

Quite apart from that, the Booth's staff are scandalously rude: "Sorry about your weight." Well, really.

Just seen: a man in a mottled pink and purple fleece, with the large, white letters R, A, P, and E across the front.

Pink & purple.... What was he thinking of?

A surprising number of pieces were 'reissues', already published in his (excellent) book, and I'm not entirely sure what he was saying about the art world by selling works for ~$100,000 each, but the photos are worth seeing.

Oh, and those who complained about temporarily dying a trained elephant pink red: reconsider your priorities.

I'd presumed they were art installations – there is an ongoing exhibition of work by MA Arts students (is 'Master of Arts in Art' tautological?), but I belatedly discovered today that I was mistaken. They were temporarily installed as part of some agriculture-related conference, and really are livestock enclosures.

Oops.

So which fool redesigned the pots to incorporate ridged bases? They might provide excellent traction when eating off-road, but needlessly waste 2-3g of food trapped in a dozen inaccessible hollows.

Yes, it's trivial, but this sort of pointless intervention by a designer merely justifying his/her continued employment really annoys me. If it isn't broken....

The excessive packaging and waste of production/distribution resources comprise one major objection, but more than that it's the OTT convenience of it, pandering to and encouraging a total absence of forethought. Someone who can't think ahead far enough to organise it for him/herself doesn't deserve breakfast.

J. tells me this product line is nothing new, but it was to me.

'Mleak' has made a pair of metal 5” stiletto sandals with hinged straps which secure the shoes onto the feet, using padlocks. Personally, I don't like the shoes as shoes – I don't find anything attractive about feet that contorted – they work better as empty items. I doubt they were designed to be wearable, being more of an artistic/political statement. It's that stated rationale which I question (hey; it's art; if it provokes a response, it's succeeded).

Unsurprisingly, I support individual choice ahead of politicised groupthink. Believe it or not, there are people who do genuinely choose to wear heels, and not because they 'have' to. It is conceivable that some wear them for comfort – mental, if not podalic.

To be fair, Mleak doesn't condemn heel-wearers outright:

It's fashionable to criticise the 'bondage of feminine beauty', especially amongst male feminists, for some reason (overcompensation?): "I feel your pain." Bollocks. By definition.

It does irritate me immensely when I want to go sightseeing (which involves walking) and Helen wears heels to be seen, or when I'm restricted by the inability of H's shoes to cross/stand on certain surfaces, but I respect her right to feel good about herself, for herself, without being accused of merely conforming to male-defined social values.

*: imply, but not state. If I'm ascribing intent wrongly, I apologise. Hopefully my more general point stands (Ooh! Two unintentional puns in one!).

[Via BoingBoing.]

The example which inspired my initial thought is this pair of billboard adverts shown by the Cool Hunter. To save clicking the link: a billboard on the left of a road shows the inner side of a bare female leg. The billboard on the other side of the road shows the right leg. The ad is for lubricating cream. I'm sure some people might find it offensive; I think it's in at least questionable taste. How did it get published? This wasn't the result of one man's idle thought, but must have passed several states of corporate approval. Did no-one have doubts?
I presume the designer was male and in his early twenties, and I presume the commissioning panel were in their late forties and fifties. The only way I can think the ad was authorised was that the former convinced the latter that although fiftysomethings might find it distasteful, the 18-34 target audience would be more accepting of 'racy' humour. Not knowing for sure whether that was true, the executives felt obliged to trust the 'youth expert' and ran the ad.

Another example I encountered recently is that of a HE institution which hired external web designers to refresh its home page.
When the proposed designs were first shown to the commissioning team, they disliked the imagery and direction taken but were assured that the designs weren't intended to attract administrators and academics in their forties, but were targeted at school-leavers, even 15/16-year-olds. This advice came from the design consultancy, which had something of a vested interest in saying their designer was right. For that matter, I wonder whether the fortysomething account manager knew whether his/her thirtysomething designer was adequately targeting teenage tastes.
So far as I'm aware, a small amount of focus group testing by the consultants suggested that the design was appropriate, but I get an overarching sense of 'emperor's new clothes' about the whole process – which fiftysomething accountant was going to have the courage of under-informed convictions and say he/she thought this was a huge mistake?

[Via BoingBoing.]

[Via BoingBoing.]

[Via BoingBoing.]

The scale and brash grandeur of these monumental designs is astonishing. The only one I already knew about, the abortive Dom Sovetov (Palace of Soviets), was to have been the tallest building in the world, 415 m (1365') tall, of which 100m would have been a vast statue of Lenin. The other plans were almost as grandiose, and just as overpowering.

It's a fascinating insight into Soviet architects' (in terms of both social- and civil engineering) Neo-Classical yet futuristic dreams, which were abandoned in 1955 with the Central Committee's condemnation of 'excesses and over-ornamentation in architecture'.

The Victorians considered cemeteries as an environment to be visited and enjoyed, and I certainly regard Lancaster's* as a good place to take a book (partly because few others do...), but it's pity that modern designs have become so boring and off-putting.

*: the Victorian one on Quernmore Road, last resting place of such prominent and less-prominent Lancastrians as Lazarus Threlfall Baines, Pythagoras de Nicteroy and Lord Ashton.

[Via BoingBoing.]

[Via Spinneyhead.]

Surprisingly, I've just encountered a relatively good interface.

• A recorded voice welcomed me, and notified me that I could use a menu or go straight to a real person i.e. I didn't have to listen to the menu first.
• I did have to join a queue, and was asked which genre of music I'd prefer to hear whilst waiting &ndash and 'no music' was an option.
• The automated operator was able to inform me immediately that the queue was very long, and that it wouldn't be practical for me to wait; I was asked to call again later. That was mildly annoying, but being told up-front was very welcome.

My favourite is the shift bicycle:

[Via BoingBoing.]

I suppose those visiting the site are doing so for a particular purpose (gown hire for degree ceremonies) and since the company has a monopoly deal with the University, visitors aren't exactly customers, needing to be impressed.
Still, I think it's poor design to shove in the TOC up-front. It's just rude. This isn't software installation....

Every day this week, the main entrance to my building has been locked, to deter any protest invasion by the hippies camping outside. There are three doors: the one on the left obviously isn't in use, the central one is a revolving door with an ingenious revolving 'shutter' currently in place (i.e. the whole door is masked), and the 'normal' door on the right is locked, displaying a very obvious sign. The sign (the only one on the whole entrance frontage; it's not exactly lost amongst several other notices) states "Please Use The Side Entrance", in ~40pt. text. It couldn't be clearer.

Yet at least twice per day this week, I've seen people approach the revolving door, find it's inaccessible, push in vain on the right-hand door, turn to the left door, then give up and start to walk away, scowling. Whenever I've pointed the sign out to people, it's been plain that they were literally unaware of a 40 x 30cm (16½ x 12") sheet of white paper at about head height, stating a clear message in large black type.

What more could be done? People simply don't read. Some things have to 'Just Work', and no amount of signage will help. If it doesn't do exactly what's expected, in the expected way, it won't work at all for a significant number of people.

It's all on The Culture Show's website, but I don't know whether that'll be archived, so I'll reproduce the shortlist(s) here:

• Anglepoise Lamp
• Aston Martin DB5
• British road signage
• Dr Martens boot
• Dyson vacuum cleaner
• E-Type Jaguar
• London A-Z
• Mini skirt
• Penguin paperback
• 'Power, Corruption and Lies' (the album cover, not the concepts themselves!)
• Raleigh Chopper
• 'Sgt Pepper' album cover
• Sinclair Calculator
• 'The Face' magazine
• Verdana typeface

• Catseye
• 'Grand Theft Auto'
• K2 phone kiosk
• Mini
• Routemaster bus
• 'Tomb Raider'
• World Wide Web

• Concorde
• Supermarine Spitfire
• London Underground map

Others are rather odd choices.
The 'Power, Corruption and Lies' album cover? I hadn't even heard of it before the poll!
'Tomb Raider' and 'Grand Theft Auto'? The programme argued that each changed the nature of computer games, which is probably true, but are they really design icons of the last 105 years? Actually, I'd argue that the Lara Croft character is iconic, just not in the same league of influence or ubiquity as others.
Likewise the Verdana typeface (which I didn't even know was British!) – one of the very top design icons of the past century? If a British typeface has to be included, surely Stanley Morison's Times New Roman has had a greater impact, not only in the age of PC word processors.

It's been suggested that there's a fundamental ideological flaw in the list, repeating an argument about the Design Museum itself. Sir Terence Conran founded the Museum to celebrate the manufactured object and the industrial design process. Yet, as James Dyson claimed when he resigned as chairman in 2004, the remit has been hijacked to feature 'merely' decorative design – iconography and style:

Incidentally, the Design Museum's own site offers Flash and standard html interfaces – well done – but the 'shop' section of the html side is Flash-only. Well done....

[Update 17/03/06: Concorde won, with the Underground map second and the Spitfire third.]

The latest generation of carriages are generally considerably higher than platform level, so a step is required. Presumably for streamlining, this is drawn into the body of the carriage whilst in motion. When one presses the button, the step has to be extended before the door opens. Surprisingly, it doesn't snap out instantly, kneecapping little old ladies; instead, it emerges rather slower, taking a few seconds.
That's fine if one is attempting to board the train, as one can see the step. When attempting to disembark, however, one presses the button, and nothing appears to happen. I've often seen people pressing the button repeatedly before it's activated at all, then pounding it in alarm when it seems the door isn't going to open at all.

I noticed this evening that in announcing imminent stops over the PA, the conductor explained how to operate the doors. Before every stop.
Doesn't that suggest a slight usability problem? If one knows what's happening, it's absolutely fine, but first-time passengers shouldn't face a learning curve or need instruction simply to get out at the end of their journeys.

Rather stretching the point: though I found these helmet covers (noggin sox - good name!) amusing, I think the joke would wear thin rather quickly (for an adult – it might be a good way to persuade a child to use a helmet), and I wouldn't be seen dead in one myself.

However, I'd definitely wear this jacket.

[Via the University's internal cycling forum.]

I've prepared a template for holding pages, one per facet of a new inter-departmental initiative. I requested copy text from the departments, clearly specifying that there's space for up to 200 words, and providing a mock-up to indicate where text will appear & how it'll be formatted (wrapped around an image at the bottom-left of the page).

One department complied, and has a pretty good page.
Another provided 694 words, "all essential". The page looks awful, and the image is well below the second scroll i.e. 1¾ screens down at 1024x768. It's a standard template; the pages have to match, so I can't only customise one, and I don't have time anyway.

And who'll be blamed? Go on, guess.

[Update 15:25: I mentioned it to my boss, who summarily dumped 487 words!]

The context in which I saw these gimmicks? By the tills in the Spar shop on campus, being given away free, as they can't sell 'em....

• A bookshelf/divider incorporating a chair and stool. I suspect those angled shelves would create unusable 'dead' space, and the finish gives the impression this is just a mock-up, but it has potential. While you're visiting that page, also admire the desk lamp styled to look as if it's falling through the desk.
• The 'ultimate' bed which seems to combine all the furniture and fixtures of a typical bedroom into one somewhat ugly item.
• This one is a little annoying: a 'clever' design which hasn't been thought through properly. It's an armchair which pivots (vertically) to reveal a stove and cooking workspace. Because "you'll never sit and cook at the same time". Possibly true, but one might well wish to sit down to eat, ideally before cleaning the workspace and hob and converting the unit back to a seat.

Honest mistake? Maybe. The logo is a fairly obvious construction, which I could imagine inventing myself; a circle with one quarter squared. It's certainly conceivable that two designers could produce the same logo independently. However, the fonts of the accompanying text are suspiciously similar, too, which makes me wonder whether it's a publicity stunt which, by posting this entry, I might be assisting. Damn.

[Update 27/03/06: Quark has undergone a
re-rebranding, and now has another new logo. That means one can no longer visit the Quark & SAC websites and compare the logos, but the original article from The Register has screenshots. Alternatively, go to the SAC home page and imagine thair logo in PANTONE 368 – it really was identical.]

Okay; it's a memory card, for use in digital photography – how could that be exciting? The nature of the item is irrelevant; it could be a pair of glasses, or a pen, or a concrete mixer. It's the elegance of design that's noteworthy.

*: That NY Times link mightn't be permanently archived.

The button design is... mixed. The distinction between the grey 'Help' & 'Clear' buttons and the red 'Search' button is good, but user familiarity with conventional form layouts means it's all too easy to click on the big, more obvious, red button without reading it, and flip to the Address Finder, clearing the text already entered.

Picky? Perhaps, but if the browser's autocomplete dropdown appears when one types into the 'Town' box, the 'Help', 'Clear' & 'Search' buttons are completely hidden, and one naturally clicks on the only available button, wiping the entire enquiry.

Still picky? Okay, yes – I doubt 'This Is Broken' would be interested, really – but this could have been avoided so easily, with even the slightest pre-publication user testing. I'm not complaining about the magnitude of the error, but the apparent lack of thought.

My one significant criticism is composition. Naturally, she's very good – certainly a better photographer than me, in that sense – but the subject matter of her paintings tends to be copied from photographs, which doesn't always work.

Barring trickery, a camera records whatever is present. Knowing that, the viewer accepts what he/she sees in a photograph. However, precisely the same view in a painting attracts greater critical evaluation. If one really considers it, some genuine sunsets and cloud patterns, or the arrangements of twisted branches in trees, can look downright unnatural; rendered in a painting, one would blame the artist.

I believe this is one of the many aspects which begins to elevate the craft of painting to an art: the ability to represent what one sees in a credible manner, not merely reproduce it. Even if that palm tree really did lean at an alarming angle, change it – its 'wrongness' draws the eye too much. The same with that broken branch. That anomalously dark cloud gives the impression the church on the horizon is on fire – modify or move it. Trust me; it'd produce a more compelling image.

*: It's just a matter of taste, but whilst stipling of thick oil paint can add a luxuriant 3D effect to the centre of a flower or the fur of a fox painted on canvas or textured board, I feel the smooth surfaces of a fish or a golden buddha would be better represented in watercolours on paper i.e. without added texture.

Arial is a near-clone of Helvetica. So long as it's not absolute plagiarism (and no-one has been sued, so...), so what? Who, apart from an excessively precious font historian, cares that a pre-existing typeface was subtlely modified for wider availability? It's not even as if the pristine purity of Helvetica itself had been maintained – the author himself reports that within twenty years of its invention in the 1950s, the version in use differed from the original; a further twenty years later, when Arial was devised in about 1989, Helvetica was a range of variants under the same name rather than one definitive original. Why does one more variant, which didn't even 'borrow' the same name, matter?

The author provides a 'How to Spot Arial' guide, illustrating just how trivial some differences are (e.g. in Arial the top of the 't' terminates at an angle; in Helvetica it is cut off straight – try spotting that at 10pt on 72dpi), yet how distinct others are (the capital 'R' is quite distinct – other fonts mimic Helvetica closer, and personally, not just being perverse, I prefer the straighter line of Arial's version).

Interestingly, Arial is described as "actually rather homely", whilst simultaneously being a "shameless impostor" of Helvetica's "friendly, cheerful appearance and clean lines". Anyone notice the self-contradiction of prejudice?

By the author's own admission, Arial seems to be:

I was going to say 'So Helvetica's dead. I won't miss it.' However, that's buying into the whole ludicrous concept that it's one or the other, and I reject that. Arial is currently ubiquitous, and I don't see any reason to regret that, but Helvetica still exists, for those who want something a little different or who wish a frissance of self-superiority.

[Update 12/10/05: The former invention, Clocky, now has its own website, and its creator won the 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for Economics.]

In case the link is broken when the target site is updated: it's a rack for kitchen knives, in the form of a human figure. Two knives piece the chest, one goes through the abdomen and one through each thigh.

Now Black & Decker have produced a bulky electrical appliance, considerably larger than, say, a kettle and costing at least $39.99.
No. Just no. It's form over function and empty 'convenience' over rationality. It's a gadget (Smarthome explicitly categorises, and prices it, as such) - a toy, not a utensil.

Yes, it might be useful for the elderly or those with special needs, but they're plainly not the target market for the shiny black & chrome, nor the price tag. I'm pretty sure occupational therapists and related technologists have already produced a range of rather more utilitarian (and cheaper) alternatives for those who need them.

Maybe this thing is a talking point, but does anyone really talk about opening jars?

Not counting this entry, obviously ;)

Update 18/02/05:
A comment at Boing Boing reports that the original project was to design a genuinely useful product for those who really need it, and I agree that under the decorative elements, that's what was achieved. I just think that the styling was excessive and has shifted it to a different, more frivolous, market sector.

There is an argument that essential equipment shouldn't necessarily be dull or ugly - large-cup bras spring to mind, for some reason - and there's no reason why the elderly or disabled shouldn't have jar-opening appliances they'd be happy to have in plain view. Quality of experience matters. Everyone has the right to buy premium goods. I just hope that those who don't have the opportunity to pay premium prices aren't excluded.

Plus, I simply dislike over-designed items, so I may be overemphasising my own preference.

Strutz intend to produce more enclosed shoes and boots, and I can imagine the idea could function much better within the aesthetic of deliberately 'industrial' styles of boots e.g. some New Rocks (site requires pop-ups, or try this one), but thumbnails at the Strutz site look even worse than the sandals, as if the soles are hanging off.

High heels are all about appearence, so any attempt to resolve what is a genuine concern has to look good. I'm not sure these do.

[Via Boing Boing, appropriately]

[Update 01/02/07: the Strutz site seems to be dead, so I've removed the link. In checking whether it had merely moved, I discovered that the idea for the heels was that of Jonah White, also inventor of 'Billy-Bob' joke teeth and abortive earthworm farmer.]

I noticed this at a Channel 4 microsite promoting a one-off documentary about 'The Real Da Vinci Code', but I suspect it mightn't be archived; hence the instructions above.

Go up a level in the site structure (i.e. remove '/screambody/' from the URL) for other ideas from the same inventor, such as a machine that bites itself to make sure it's still a machine.

[via Unscathed Corpse, which is as odd as the title implies.]

This could have been avoided so easily:

I wonder how much the ad agency earned for that little ****-up.

Maybe I'm underestimating them - bad adverts sell too. The copy itself is particularly bland, but the mixed message conveyed by the layout certainly grabbed my attention.

The GloThong, available for a mere $49.95, is:

[Via Spinneyhead - blame Ian]

[Update 10/7/05: I've just discovered that GloThong.com links to this entry, as an example of their media coverage. That's fine with me, so long as it's clear their link was added without my knowledge, and I certainly don't endorse the product.]

The 'Blue Moon' one looks pretty good. It was apparently inspired by "the moon, fantasy, phenomena". Just phenomena. All phenomena, or did the author have a limited understanding of the word's meaning?

The 'Night Vision' mouse looks okay, too: very dark green with a 'Matrix'-inspired translucent interior.

Yet these are mice; simple pointing devices for computers. What's wrong with standard beige plastic?
I dunno; there'll be wallpaper images showing close-ups of the mice, next.

A good move, and I'm not about to criticise the BBC for pragmatism. I can't help wondering about the cost of debranding, though - all those letterheads and print publications that mentioned BBCi. The change to the website itself should be straightforward, merely modifying the header graphic, master stylesheet and CMS/publishing package. I remember the public criticism when the BBC changed its logo from three tilted rhombi containing the italicised letters to three squares containing the upright letters, at massive expense: tens of thousands of pounds to remove a tilt.

At the time of writing, the light bulb is leading, with 26% of the vote, followed by the toilet, as one might expect; these are the items absolutely everyone (in the UK, anyway) uses daily, whereas the others are restricted to only a proportion of the population (the bra, currently third with 12%) or are only used at intervals (the corkscrew, 6%). The relative valuation of the tap is surprising, at seventh (5%) - either people don't regard it as being as profound an influence as others, or perhaps it's regarded as less of a design achievement than the others.