Classic Badges of Americana – the devil’s in the details…

November 5, 2012 By

I had a rare trip out with my dad on Saturday – cramming in the London Motor Museum, a quick Mexican meal at Wahaca, and finally seeing Looper at the cinema.

All three were very enjoyable, but the cars deserved most of the attention, and plenty of photos. One of things I particularly love about 1960s American cars is the style, particularly in the details like

 

Badges:

Dodge Challenger R/T Badge

1960′s Dodge Challenger RT Badge

 

Fuel Caps:

Dodge Challenger Fuel Cap

1960s Dodge Challenger Fuel Cap

 

Even vents for the motor:

Ford GT40 Rear Window - London Motor Museum

Ford GT40 Rear Window and Vents

 

I have to admit, I was slightly motivated by the fact I’ve finally download Instagram to my new phone, so Hot Rods and Muscle Cars lend themselves to retro filters. But I’ve always been fascinated by the style of 60′s American cars. Something about the idea of a huge engine, soggy suspension and steering, combined with stylistic touches to add flair to something with the natural aerodynamics of a bungalow.

 

Muscle Cars at London Motor Museum

Muscle Car dream garage?

 

It’s a reminder of the impact that design can have on something which will only become more utilitarian and commoditized in the future. Packaging an automated, battery-powered people mover isn’t going to have the same battle of form and function as it does when you’re squeezing in a 5.7 litre petrol engine, and being shuttled forward by a serious of small explosions under the bonnet.

And how real enduring beauty comes from marrying form and function. Muscle Cars aren’t pretty in the same way as a Ferrari or Porsche can be. They’re burgers, blue jeans, work boots and rock ‘n’ roll. And in my mind, all the better for it – I wonder how many ‘working class’ icons will come out of the current era?

Speaking to a good friend and branding consultant, I mentioned that most of the brands I love are small or tiny companies doing different things. When it comes to mainstream brands, there are a scant few – two that spring to mind are Uniglo and Onitsuka Tigers, making me seem like a Japanophile, but even then it’s for their selvedge jeans and classic sneakers.

There’s the iPhone of course. But will a scratched original iPhone still combine form and function in 40 or 50 years time? Modern technology is generally made to be disposable.

And maybe for physical products, it’s coming to an end as 3D Printing means we’ll have more access to whatever we want, no matter how obscure or unusual.

Which means for me it’s probably time to spend more effort on the style of online sites. The impact of Pinterest-style sites for web and mobile has already been well-documented, but a recent Wired article on Jack Dorsey went into his appreciation of selvage denim and how the background for a new Square icon was a pair of particular high-end designer selvage jeans, rather than a flat blue colour.

It’s time websites gave more emotion and more feeling. I always thought that if any action on the website could feel as satisfying as opening a new packet of cigarettes, that website would be guaranteed success. Maybe it’s time to edge back from effortless clicking, swiping and sharing to put some meaning back into our designs and interactions?

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Data, Sharing and Over-Sharing

July 2, 2012 By

Data is one of the biggest trends at the moment – it’s interesting to see the amount of coverage given to the recently announced integration between Nike’s Fuelband and the Path social network, for example.

What’s interesting to me about this is that the Nike Fuelband is essentially a very cool fitness tracking bracelet, which continues the Nike+ tracking and sharing trend. If you’ve tracked your run etc 5 or more times, it’s extremely likely to now be a habit you’ll continue, and the more social you are, the more likely you’ll keep it going to pass that early barrier.

That’s one side to it, the other struck me as I was distracted by the stats on my Last.fm profile.

Will social networks be defined by how much is shared?

Obviously there have already been attempts to create new social networks around the selling point of user privacy, and so far none have really achieved the kind of meteoric success of the big social sites.

What I’m thinking about is something slightly different in the way the networks are perceived and gain users, and it struck me as I posted on Facebook about how I don’t automatically feed every Spotify track into Facebook, but they’re all available as scrobbled by Last.fm (In 5 years I’ve scrobbled 14,524 songs to Last.fm which if you took an average of 4 minutes per track would be 58096 minutes, 968.26 hours, or 40 days worth).

What I’m thinking of is something like the following split:

  • Least shared data: Twitter. No requirement for real names, or details. Big asynchronous groups.
  • Average: Facebook. Suggests using real data (although you can get around it). Slightly smaller groups and closer to ‘real’ friends.
  • Most shared data:  Path. Integrate and share absolutely everything with a smaller, closer group of friends.

Will data sharing and data services start to shape our attraction to certain networks in an equal fashion to who we know is actually using them? Does the social aspect of sharing fitness data with other people in training equal the social aspect of connecting with my family whose interests on Facebook may rarely intersect with my own?

If we take Facebook as the standard sharing benchmark due to the massive user numbers, there’s definitely a skew towards much more sharing than ever before (Obviously some will have a locked down FB profile with a fair bit of effort required). Will we see a world of people addicted to data sharing looking to go beyond what FB can offer, or a greater number of people looking for more privacy and less automatic sharing?

These aren’t absolutes, and there will always be people heading in both directions, but I’m intrigued to see on which side the see-saw starts leaning.

Seesaw

Do you think many people will continue to silo the data in the most appropriate communities (e.g music on last.fm, books on Goodreads, fitness on a running forum etc), or will they look for one central data hub social network to rule them all?

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Privacy, Frictionless Sharing, and Hasah Elahi

December 5, 2011 By

I originally wrote about Hasan Elahi four years ago following an article in Wired, which described how he was incorrectly questioned by the FBI, and the Tracking Transcience project he began as a result to share everything about his life – where he was, what he was eating, his purchases etc. (My original post is here). Way before frictionless sharing became available to us all!

I thought it was worth sharing his recent TED talk which was queued up in my always growing list of videos to watch;

 

It’s something which is going to be a growing issues for more of us as ‘frictionless sharing’ and online lives are the easiest for people to track and interact with. Rather than trying to hide everything, perhaps overwhelming the systems with information is the more effective route, particularly, as Elahi points out, the various Government agencies in every country whose stock and trade is information. After all, ‘Everyone’s a curator now‘

Frictionless sharing and frictionless ambivalence

I’ve been looking at the rise of ‘frictionless sharing’ – exemplified by Spotify autoposting every song you play on Facebook. The insightful Chris Thorpe summed it up well with his blog post comparing it with frictionfull sharing.

What I really want and act upon is that one personal recommendation from someone I trust/respect/like for the one thing that really matters – a new song, a book, an article. Something that someone saw and though they absolutely had to share with me.

After all, I thought at this time of year it’s meant to be ‘the thought that counts’, and ‘it’s better to give than receive’. No thought goes into autoposting, and you’re giving me nothing – except a bunch of unfiltered noise alongside everyone else doing the same thing in my friends list.

Unless you’re doing it to devalue government information agencies, in which case you’re far more interesting than your choice in mainstream pop suggests…

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