A Culture of Superheros: The Thing As Construction Worker

Posted on July 18, 2008 by Ray


Image source: Dulce Pinzón

And speaking of transformations, I recently saw the show Superheros: Fashion and Fantasy show at the Met’s Costume Institute. The show, skillfully art directed by a friend Shane Valentino, was well curated and displayed– mixing the source material from the original comics with film costumes and related representation in fashion. I mean, who doesn’t want to see Linda Carter’s outfit from Wonder Woman?

However, the photography of Dulce Pinzón takes the concept of the superhero and flips it on its head. Originally from Mexico, Pinzón takes photos of immigrant workers who come to the US to work and send back remittances each week. In 2006, an estimated US$45 billion dollars from 12.6 million immigrants were sent back to Latin American from the US, revealing the magnitude and symbiotic interdependent relationship.  In this example, Sergio García works as a waiter in New York. He is able to send back US$350 a week. Other heros include Superman as delivery boy, Batman as car service driver, and yes, Wonder Woman as laundromat worker. The subjects of her work are simultaneously honest, absurd, tragic, and inspiring, while questioning our concepts of the idols, hero, fame, and equality.

Posted in culture, ethics of design, uniforms | 1 Comment

Becoming Kanye

Posted on July 17, 2008 by Ray

It’s funny how ideas come together. I’ve been slowly making my through Grant McCracken’s book Transformation. This morning on the train, I came to his section on the post-modern transformation of man, in particular on the absorption of hip hop culture into the wider mainstream (read: non-African American.) The chapter coincided with Absolut’s viral campaign feature a KW pill that turns you into Kanye West, entitled “Be Kanye,” which I first noticed it as a guerilla ad on the subway.

Image source: bekanyenow.com

The tension between the authentic and the simulated is a major theme of his book. Here, the transformation and exchange is at its most literal, take a pill and physically turn into West. Instead of “being like Mike” (or West) the transformation is complete and actual. The amazing part is that obviousness of the gesture, instead of the usual implied subtext that Rob Walker discusses, the promise of transformation IS the text. Their only gesture to veil the promise is through the parody of an informercial, there is not real pill, just drink Absolut. I wonder how much further would a marketing campaign take the suggestion of the literal transformation.

Posted in culture, marketing | 3 Comments

The Windmill And The Lighthouse

Posted on July 15, 2008 by Ray

Image source: flickr


Image source: flickr

On the way out to Provincetown from Boston, a few weeks ago, I noticed a sole windmill on the shore, largely ignored by the passengers on the ferry. However, on the other side I saw people rush over with digital cameras to snap at a lighthouse on the other side. I made a mental note to get some pictures on the way back. Sure enough on my return, the lighthouse drew out the cameras, even in misty and slightly choppy waters.

In a time of soaring energy and fuel costs, plans to build modern windmills are decried as wrecking the “natural” landscape of the Jersey Shore as well as Nantucket Sound. T Boone Pickens, the legendary Texas oil business man, is placing bets on wind, investing millions into wind farms in Texas. In an interview in Fast Company magazine, he has an interesting quote:

And you’ll do all this on your beautiful 68,000-acre ranch?

“I’m not going to have the windmills on my ranch. They’re ugly. The hub of each turbine is up 280 feet, and then you have a 120-foot radius on the blade. It’s the size of a 40-story building.”

I appreciate Picken’s overall strategy that this country needs to shift away from dependence on oil and carbon-based fuel and towards sustainable and clean energy sources. But it’s too bad that he has such a distasteful view of the aesthetics windmill.

On the other hand, the lighthouse is an interesting piece of architecture. Once a crucial aid in navigating the waters at night or in storms, they usefulness is challenged by advances in GPS, telecommunications, and mapping. However, they remain camera worthy icons of the sea and coasts. Preservation societies have been formed to assist in their upkeep and some lighthouses have been designated as history buildings. I wonder if the original construction of lighthouses were challenged for corrupting the natural landscape. Or if they were largely ignored at telephone poles are.

I do not think that there is something inherent to the lighthouse that makes it more palatable to the mainstream cultural aesthetics, because the traditional wooden windmill have the same elevated sense of historic and aesthetic value.The funny thing is that I find windmills really beautiful, especially many of them in row. Without any post-modern irony, these structures conjure allusions from Boeing to Walter de Maria to Don Quixote.

How can the modern wind farm reach the same level of good will that lighthouses and wooden windmills are afforded? Is it just that they icons of another time, having lasted long enough to achieve a romantic cultural status? Are the protests even worth arguing? New proposes are suggesting that windmills can be moved further off-shore and out of sight. This sounds more expensive to operate and build that ones closer or on the shore. I do know that a high percentage of power is lost in transport. Aesthetics have an economic and social cost.

The relationship between the windmill and the lighthouse is emblematic of a larger question that been occupying brain space for over the past year, which has to do with building an ethic of design. Many people and groups including Buckminster Fuller (more on him soon) and designers in the Bauhaus movement have approached this idea, or least defined an intention for design to improve lives. However, we are at at turning point, where the stakes seem much higher and the need for ethical design seems more relevant.

Can a framework exist for an ethical approach to design that would balance aesthetics, sustainability, equality, and empowerment? If it doesn’t yet exist, what kind of structures would it entail? What can we provide that goes beyond a suggested philosophy? Can the advancement of technological tools and computational metrics can be utilized to guide the ethical designer?

Posted in culture, design, ethics of design | 1 Comment

book review part 2: Conley’s OBD: branding vs. innovation

Posted on July 14, 2008 by Ray

In a very nice comment, Frank mentions a link to weakening relationships from buzz marketing, and digs into deeper branding versus innovation, which is another important part of Lucas Conley’s argument in OBD, which I only briefly mentioned in my original post. Marketing has become more focused on brand positioning and re-packaging then developing new and useful changes to the products.

As Conley states, when entire product categories such as laundry detergent or paper towels have been improved to be effectively the same, long standing brands such as Tide and Bounty (which I have used for decades, mostly likely because they are the ones I grew up with) are left with marketing strategies to differential themselves. I will admit that some of the packaging strategies are useful improvements, and while I like the form factor of the glass ketchup bottle, Heinz squeezable plastic one does work better. However, for each of these useful cases, we have dozens of brand extensions. Conley cites the five (and counting) versions of the Swifter, as an example.

This feature creep, where new add-ons clutter shelfs with orange juice with calcium, Kleenex with aloe, and toothpaste with breathe strips. A second related effect is that customers get used to a product, only to find them discontinued with new product lines when they try to replace them. How many more blades that they fit on a razor? I wouldn’t mind if 5 or 6 or 7 are available, if they would still make the older models (with a mere 2 blades) that I liked and are increasingly harder to find.

All these marketing efforts come at the price of true innovation advances in the underlying technology of these products. However, innovation is of course, hard. It is not at all surprising that marketing is chosen over innovation. These kinds of changes are risky and costly, and more new products are failures than successes. For every iPod, there are zunes, Newtons, and new Cokes. These risks make companies more defensive and concerned about protecting market share. But why can’t a paper towel be a paper towel until sometime better comes along?

What are we, as consumers, to do? It’s hard when use your purchasing power when companies discontinue the

When Apple releases a new product, Apple fans exception industry shattering, paradigm shifting innovations on the scale of the iPod. The light-weight mini-laptop Air got some harsh reactions. But the funny thing is that people don’t remember that the iPod didn’t instantly create the American mp3 market or change the way we conceptual our entire music collection as mobile. Rather, it took time for people out exactly what the iPod was.

Similarly, while Apple is predicted to sell 10-13 millions iPhones this year, Nokia sold 115.2 million of the 294.3 million phones sold globally in the *first* quarter of 2008.

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book review: OBD by Lucas Conley

Posted on July 10, 2008 by Ray

Image source: bn.com

I’ve recently finished, OBD Obessive Branding Disorder – The Business of Illusion and The Illusion of Business, by Lucas Conley, who write for Fast Company. I’m way behind on blogging, so I’ll keep the book review short, and will reference the book in some other posts that have been brewing in my brain.

Conley discusses branding and marketing along similar lines as Rob Walker’s Buying In. However, he takes a much more explicitly critical view of the current practices of today’s marketers, where as Walker writes from a more description perspective. One of Conley’s most interesting passages is on “buzz agents” that are paid to push products to friends and acquaintances. His concern is that when any stranger or worse any trusted friend or family is a potential marketer, the value of our entire social network are at risk. This risk is exacerbated by coupled with findings from the American Sociological Review from 2006 cited by Conley. The General Social Survey (GSS) which measure people feelings and social perceptions, found three times the number of people who stated that they didn’t have anyone to discuss important matters, than 20 years ago. The study also reported only half of the participants claimed to have two or fewer close friends and a quarter claiming having no confidants at all. Therefore, not only are we getting more isolated, the trust of the people we do interact with is decreasing as well.

Telecommunications encourages people to seek out relationships over space, and makes it easier to avoid those in their immediate surrounding. Further, as mobility increase and people move across states and countries to attend school or to find work, traditional face to face social networks are weakened. Just as Walker states that we use brands to create our own identities, Conley states that we form communities based on brands.

One side distraction of the books is its, at times, loose use of statistics to bolster arguments. In one early section, describing how US companies are replacing innovating with marketing. This is a troubling observation, reveals in the way company reshape, repackage, reposition, and retire their products rather actually innovate. Conley cites that the number of hours worked in the US is decreasing while they are increasing in the countries, many of which are in Asia. This idea would only be relevant if more hours worked translated to more innovation, which is may or may not be true. While I agree that sacrificing research and development for more marketing and brand positioning is bad for long term business practice, confusing links to data is distracting.

Overall, OBD is a good read. He notes the ironic end point, that anti-branding voices such as Ad Buster and Naomi Klein, author No Logo, are established brands themselves. I appreciate that Conley attempts to tackle the idea of how to rethinking the brand which surrounds us. Although he doesn’t provide an actual roadmap to encourage social and corportate change, which may not even exist.  If brand are inescapable, then what are people who agree with Conley to do?

Posted in book, innovation, marketing, review | 1 Comment

Physicality of light.

Posted on July 4, 2008 by Ray

Images source: flickr.com

The objects and tools around us are losing their physicality. Our cars, watches, music, phones, adding computers, and now light sources are less analogue and mechanical, as they become more digital and quantum / nano scale. Although these new innovations perform better, faster, and more efficiently, we lose the ability to see and understand how these technology work. Everything operates in a conceptual black box, as we pray that things work when we need them, because we cannot fix them by ourselves even if we were so inclined. Although we can learn conceptually how an digital watch works, we have lost the ability to use physical cues of how things work. This loss may not be earth shattering, but it does eliminate the ability of us to fix things when they break down as well as adapt their inter-workings to conform to our own needs. We are encouraged to throw away and conform.

Light from oil-based lamps and candles once provided the standard way of seeing at night. Even if you didn’t understand the physics of combustion, you could still built a mental model of how it works through experience working with its physical cues. Fire burned fuel to make heat and light. If a lamp wasn’t working, the problem could only be a few possibilities, most likely having to do with fuel and oxygen.

The introduction of the incandescent bulb worked by sending an electric current though a filament in a bulb. Here, the electric charge flowing through the filament also created heat and light. Electricity was a much safer and convenient energy source for lighting the home, an important advance. However, it was a step away from the physicality of our source for light. Even without precise knowledge of the basic science behind the light bulb, if a light bulb wasn’t working, you could still try to figure out the problem, by checking to see if it was the bulb or the power. We know that when bulbs burn out, the filament breaks. Therefore, we shake the bulb to hear if the filament is broken, albeit gently in case it is not broken. The sound of the broken filament is still an excellent feedback mechanism for testing a bulb. The kind of natural feedback that Don Norma discusses in “The Design of Future Things.”

This simple, yet effective method of testing a working bulb is eliminated when we move to the compact fluorescent bulbs and Light Emitting Diodes. On a physics level, light from CFBs and LEDs work on a nano or quantum scale from the macro or classical physics scale. Similarly, the CFBs and LEDs also take us another step away from the physicality of light. Although we still have bulbs or diodes, respectively, the objects themselves give us less natural feedback to what is going on. How do you tell what is happening when a CFB or LED is dead? I have no idea. CFBs and LEDs are cheaper, more energy efficient and last much longer than incandescent bulbs, which makes the gains in trade off preferred to the status quo.

In the end, I’m left wondering what is the value of this physicality? How important is it for people to have physical models of how their objects work? Am I just being nostalgic for the past or is there something greater at stake?

Posted in culture, design, innovation | 2 Comments

Buying In and Rob Walker at the Art Directors Club

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Ray

Image source: murketing,eventbrite

I’m a little behind in the blogging, but I heard Rob Walker for a Q&A with Danielle Sacks from Fast Company, on his book on murketing called Buying In. The event was at the ADC and hosted by the fine folks at psfk. As a speaker, Walker is likable and tells a good story. The questions were designed to give a run down of a book, which was good because it seems like most of the audience hadn’t read it yet. However, there were some nice tidbits that where not in the book. I especially appreciated his condor in stating that coining and branding “murketing” had originated in semi-seriousness; however, the realities of being a writer, (even one who has a weekly column in the New York Times Magazine) means that he needs to be known for his ideas and words.

Money take-aways (which I will paraphrase) :

– Apple iPod users went for fringe pioneers to a tribe of fans. Do you know of any Zune fanatics? Please contact him if you do, because the Zune is basically the ultimate anti-iPod.

– Obama has “projectability,” not unlike Hello Kitty, which allows people to project their ideals and images upon him. Where as, Hilary Clinton was working with a predefined concept in people’s minds, which she had to pivot against.

– American Apparel dropped their sweatshop free branding in order to move from niche to mass. However, they didn’t drop their ethical labor ideals. To them, ethical business practice IS business practice.

– Marketing formulas don’t work because “most formulas ignore culture and culture changes.” What made one campaign or strategy work in a certain time and place may not translation to another implementation because “culture marches on.”

– And probably my favorite idea of the night: saying “I’m down with that,” and clicking a Save Darfur Facebook group isn’t activism.

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warhol’s still here.

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Ray


Video Source: youtube.com


I was in Pittsburgh a few weekends ago, and finally made it to the Warhol Museum. Regardless if you like his aesthetics, Warhol’s influence on post-modern culture is unquestionable. Our current ideas of celebrity, selling out, authenticity, urbanism, mass brands, and cultural production (to name a few) can in some way be traced back to Warhol, whose life was as much of his art as the objects his produced. Many say that if he didn’t do what he did, then someone else would have. But someone didn’t and Warhol did, which makes the point moot.

His appearance on the Love Boat with the parents from Happy Days (which I remember seeing in re-run in the 80s) pretty much encapsulates this influence. From just being on the show, to interacting with middle America sit-com icons to proving the mass appeal of his art, the clip shows it all.

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listening to bob mould in the age of music abundance

Posted on June 12, 2008 by Ray

Image source: myspace.com

I’m feeling really nostalgic lately, maybe it’s because the Pixies have reunited, or the launch of muxtape, or that I’ve been catching up with friends from high school and college in Facebook, and then of course, was my roadtrip to Pittsburgh (where I spent my college years.)

For all the reasons above, I’ve been recently listening to my catalogue of Bob Mould and his 90s band Sugar: Workbook, Cooper Blue, and File Under Easy Listening. This prompted me to look into Mould more recent recordings. I had heard that he was went electronic (which is sort of true) and had been meaning to check him out again for a while. So, I finally got his most recent record, District Lines. (Ok, when I say “got,” I mean I bought the mp3s on amazon.com.)

Music was such a huge part of my past especially in my college and post-college years, that there is a distinct soundtrack that I can hinge to parts of my life. If bands are brands as Grant McCracken recently and brand formulates our identities as Rob Walker suggests, then we are what we listen to. However in revisiting this albums, what’s changed over the years, isn’t just what we listen to that is most striking, but *how* we listen to it.

I played it a few times from start to finish. In the age of mp3 downloading and streaming (even the legal ones on myspace or band sites,) who still gives an album three or four full listens just to see if they can get into it? More often than not, I jump from site to site, checking out singles, which often do not even get a full play. Tracks that I immediately like get frequent (sometimes even obsessive plays) for a week before I move on the next ones, most other get are quickly forgotten. The music listening experience is akin to Galactus, the devourer of planets from Marvel Comics, who descends upon a planet to suck all life from it, before it moves on to the next one.

District Lines was a return not only to a musician I’ve admired for years, but also a return to a way of listening to music. I love how Mould uses the traditional album structure, built around tracks 1 and 4. Track 1 “Stupid Now” opens on the quiet side, not unlike “Sunspot” of his solo album, Workbook. But then, the song shifts into great power pop, with melodies layered underneath the noisy guitars that fans expect from Mould. Track 4 is the *hit* track. In this case, “Old Highs, New Lows” shows the electronic influence of DJing at Blowoff, his DC-based party, and is, for me, as least, the biggest track on the album. From his involvement in the electronic scene, Mould started adding electronic elements to his records, like Modulate (which I haven’t bought, but it is now somewhere up on the list,) which confused critics and die-hard rock fans. Maybe he was getting used to the form, or his listeners needed to get used to his new direction. Many people have noted for years, that labels don’t have the patience to nature a musician to develop a sound over a few albums. However, I’m not sure audiences have the patience today either. But it is great to be able to trace the progression of a career over 20 years, plus he blogs.

Posted in culture, information, innovation | 4 Comments

the design of future things: evaluating design

Posted on June 11, 2008 by Ray


Image source: jnd.org


A couple of weeks ago, I finally finished, “The Design of Future Things,” by Donald Norman. I loved his popular book, “The Design of Everyday Things.” Norman is clearly an important thinker in the subject of design and usability. He tackles the intelligent systems that are being designed for our homes, offices, cars and personal devices. Instead of writing a full blown book review, I want to highlight on idea raises towards the end of his latest book, which is the entitled “The Science of Design.”

In this section, he cites that design is an interdisciplinary field, which often combines, art, social science, engineering, and business. Of the fields which comprise design, each field falls within a spectrum of formal methods of evaluating design. Engineering has quite formal approaches, and aesthetics tends to resisting them. Norman calls for a “science of design” because he feels that more rigor is needed in the intelligent systems he describes the book. The argument is easy to accept after reading about the many failures in the initial attempts at intelligent systems, which he documents in the book.

Norma does not offer the specifics of what this methodology would look like. While there are benefits to a formal approach to evaluating design, I would argue that we need to proceed with extreme care in creating an approach. My fear is that the easy route will be taken, which would blindly try to build evaluation tools based on medical experimental methods, which is where “quantifying research” usually ends up. This would be clearly wrong. Understanding if a cancer drug treatment worked is much more straight forward than if and more importantly why a design worked. (I won’t go into the problems of medical experimental methods, of which there are many.) Tom Reeves from the University of Georgia has some interesting thinking in this area when looking at methods of evaluating interactive educational tools.

Obviously, someone could create an experimental measure if a person used, learned, and understood the design properly. However, a simplistic efficacy rate (99% of testers used the design “properly”) may miss the big picture of, for example, a disenfranchised population who are not being designed for, which raises questions about the ethical and political responsibility of the designer. (Products such electronic voting booths, public transport, and educational tools are examples which readily come to mind.) Further, the leaps in innovation often require a lag time for people to understand and integrate the new design features into their lives. The temptation to overuse design evaluation tools will be great for companies who risk millions of dollars to roll out products. If the evaluation tools are poorly implemented, innovation may decrease as companies and innovators choose safer designers over ground breaking products such as GUI desktops, because they don’t initially “test” well. In the end, Norman’s call for a science of design is an important one, and it ties into the ethics of design that I’ve been thinking about lately. So, I suspect that there will be more posts in the future on the subject.

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