Creative Think

Another Odd British Government Logo

Question: have you looked at your logo from a number of different viewpoints lately? Maybe you should.

Last week I reported on seeing the London 2012 Olympics logo while I was there. It's a bit controversial: among other things, some say it looks likes the Lisa Simpson performing a sexual act. Anyway, I hope the Brits have fun with it.

Today, my sources have sent me another odd British logo (hat-tip to Alex), shown below.

This one, done at a cost of £14,000, was done for the U.K. Office of Government Commerce.

What does the OCG do? According to the Times (of London), they are "responsible for improving value for money by driving up standards and capability in procurement."

So, what do you think of the design? Certainly looks modern and clean. Although it's kerned a little too tightly for my tastes.

Logos are seen from a bunch of different angles, especially when they're on mouse pads, pens, and the like. What happens when you rotate this 90 degrees like so?

My goodness, the logo takes on a whole new life! It's practically an icon to Onanism.

Despite many titters and much laughter from the public, the OCG is using it anyway. A spokesman for the OGC said this:

"We concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of letters 'OGC' and is not inappropriate to the an organization that's looking to have a firm grip on government spending. The logo presents a very clean, uncluttered and modern identity."

Firm grip, indeed!

 

Happy Birthday Bach!

Happy Birthday Johann Sebastian Bach, born on this day (March 21) in 1685. His music, the fusion of a powerful intellect and an unshakable faith, is capable of both melodic simplicity (e.g.,"Sheep May Safely Graze") and elaborate complexity (e.g., "The Art of the Fugue").

We are very fortunate that Bach lived and abundantly applied his gift. He is one of those rare individuals about whom it can be said, "Had he never been born, we'd all be the poorer."

Bach has long been one of my very favorite creative muses. When I'm in need of inspiration, I can listen to Bach for days on end. I have many favorites, but here a few quick ones:

   • The Goldberg Variations
   • "Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme" cantata
   • Cellos Suites
   • Sonatas  1-6 BMV 525-530 (especially #6) 
   • The Well-Tempered Clavier

What are your favorite Bach pieces?

Uri Caine in Concert

Last night I went to see Uri Caine in a solo piano concert at Stanford. Caine is a virtuoso classical and jazz pianist, jazz ensemble leader, composer, and classical music interpretter.

Caine performed an all Mahler program. My favorite was his interpretation of the Adagietto (fourth movement) of Symphony #5. (He also did movements from Sym. #1, #2, and #5.)

Caine's performance was electric, confident, searching, and playful. At times his playing is literal: he delicately picks out the notes like stars in the sky. But more often, his MO was to take Mahler's themes and run them through his vivid imagination to create a wild and moving amalgam of sounds and feelings. Thus, Caine is able to make Mahler sound like Fats Waller, Glenn Gould, PDQ Bach, and Keith Jarrett. A true tour de force.

The second half of his program was comprised of Caine's takes on Mahler lieder (from the Song of the Earth and The Boy's Magic Horn). He'd take a three minute song and run with it for ten minutes — entertaining the audience all the way with his variations. For example, in the "Farewell" song, he seamlessly brought Stravinsky and Mahler together in ways neither could have ever imagined.

I first became aware of Uri Caine a little over a year ago when I did a post on Bach's Goldberg Variations ("Waking Up with the Goldberg Variations"). One reader suggested that I check out Caine's interpretation of the Goldbergs. I did, and I was absolutely floored (and have listened to it scores of times since). I highly recommend it. Caine's rendition of Wagner is also worth listening to.

Thank you for a delightful evening, Uri.

Farewell to "The Wire"

I just got back from my trip to east Asia — in time to catch the series finale of HBO's "The Wire." It did not disappoint.

I'd say that "The Wire" is one of the top five or six series I've ever watched on television. It's set in the Baltimore of 2002-2008 and deals with the interplay of its police force and the drug community. The writing is outstanding, and the characters are intriguing. I especially liked seasons three and four.

My recommendation: rent the DVDs. I give it a big thumbs up! You will not be disappointed.

Good luck to you, David Simon.

Hooray for Mad Men!

I've never downloaded a TV program. Until three weeks ago, that is. iTunes ran a special for the season of Mad Men ($22 for 13 episodes) and I snatched it up. (I connected my Mac to my plasma screen for viewing.)

Mad Men is the creation of former Sopranos' writer-producer Matt Weiner. The show is about the advertising industry and is set in the New York City of 1960. The title refers to "Madison Avenue" and this was the dawn of advertising's "golden age."

In this world, everyone smokes. Everyone drinks at work (sometimes before noon). And the women are either secretaries or housewives. The show centers around star creative director Don Draper (3rd from left, played by Jon Hamm).

It was fun to see the creative teams come up with ideas for various products such as: Lucky Strike, Kodak's slide projector, Richard Nixon's Presidential campaign, Israel Tourism Board, Bethlehem Steel, and a New York department store. It was also a kick to hear them talk about the new art of "Brainstorming" and how to do it!

I thoroughly enjoyed this program, and was happy to see it renewed for a second season. (I was twelve in 1960 and it was interesting to re-enter that world again: people watched Twilight Zone and Leave It to Beaver.)

Mad Men just won a Golden Globe for best "Dramatic Television Series," and Jon Hamm won for "Best Dramatic Actor." (He is very good.) Congratulations!

Prizes Before Utility: A Designer Dogma?

In a recent post called "Get Out of the Dogma House," I wrote about how one's dogmas can interfere with seeing alternative solutions to problems.

Today I received the following observation from the British/German "Idea Engineer" Graham Horton. Graham (shown below) is a Professor of Computer Science at Universität Magdeburg and also the co-founder of the German ideation firm Zephram (blog link here) whose clients include Daimler, BMW and Siemens. This is what Graham wrote:

"One designer dogma which I find particularly annoying is the belief that it is more important to win design prizes than to produce objects that meet customers' needs. A concomitant dogma is that the prize criteria be abstract and internal rather than pragmatic and useful.

"Two common examples are advertising and architecture. Prizes are awarded for commercials which are completely unsuccessful in imprinting the product in the viewer's/reader's mind.

"Similarly, two buildings on our university campus [Magdeburg] have won architectural prizes which have serious deficiencies from my (the user's) point of view. In the first building all the projection surfaces are mounted next to the windows (with no possibility of lowering blinds) so that it is virtually impossible to make out the images being shown. In the second, (our university library) the roof began to leak owing to a design error only one year after after completion and had to be completely overhauled."

Thanks for your thoughts, Graham.

I'd like to hope that the "cool appearance before functionality" mindset isn't widespread. Nonetheless, here's my question.

Question: What's your personal experience with products (or other artifacts such as buildings, ads, etc.) that won awards from their creator's peers (or were deemed "cool") but didn't live up to their intended users' expectations of effectiveness?

Delightful Pentagons

Several years ago when I was in Delhi, India, I visited the dargah (shrine) of the mystic Hazrat Iniyat Khan (1882-1927) who is credited as helping to bring Sufism to the west.

I was struck by the beauty of the surroundings — especially this carved marble wall screen made up predominantly of pentagons.

I took great delight in this pattern, and spend a good fifteen minutes sitting next to it studying it. I found it quite soothing.

You might take a moment to check out the different pentagons and the patterns they make.

Question: I'm currently working on a project that involves the pentagon shape. If you feel like sharing, I'd love to hear your favorite ways pentagons are used, either in nature or in human-made constructions. Perhaps you have a pentagon story.

Design for the Other 90%

"The world's cleverest designers cater to the globe's richest 10 per cent, creating items like wine labels, couture, and Maseratis. We need a revolution to reverse this silly ratio." So says Dr. Paul Polak who runs International Development Enterprises, an organization helping poor farmers become entrepreneurs.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is currently hosting an exhibit called "Design for the Other 90%" (running through September 23).

On display are inventions that are designed to help poor people with their very basic needs. A number of these inventions deal with water: procuring water, getting clean drinking water, and getting water in the dry season for drip irrigation.

Shown at left (photo: P.J. Hendrikse) is the Q-Drum which is a circular jerry can that holds 20 gallons of water. It rolls so smoothly that a child can easily tow it on a rope. The Q-Drum is designed to change the way water is fetched; currently this backbreaking job is usually done by women and girls who balance water cans on their heads. This looks like quite an improvement.

Another invention is the Lifestraw (photo: Vestergaard Frandsen). This drinking filter kills bacteria as water is sucked through it. Since a significant portion of the world's population does not have access to safe and clean drinking water, the Lifestraw is a boon for preventing waterborne diseases. I recommend viewing this video from India to see a lively demonstration of the Lifestraw in action.

More inventions are cited and displayed at the above Cooper-Hewitt link. Also, check out Donald McNeil's article "Design that solves problems for the world's poor" in the May 29, 2007 New York Times.

Breastfeeding Icons (Update)

Update: With Mother's Day soon approaching, I thought I'd update one of my first posts: it's about a design contest for breastfeeding icons. Here is the original post. I'll name the winner at the end.

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You be the Judge! If you've ever created an icon or logo, you know that you want your design to be recognizable, memorable, and simple. There's a delicate balance between providing enough information to make your idea recognizable, but not having so much that the concept you're trying to communicate gets lost. In addition, having your design work at many different sizes is important.

Mothering, the natural family living magazine, decided to have a "Create a Breastfeeding Icon" contest.

The image of a baby bottle on an airport sign announcing the location of a "parents lounge" infuriated us and got us thinking: Isn't there an international symbol for breastfeeding? We called around. Spoke to lactivists and breastfeeding organizations all over the world. No one had seen or heard of an international symbol for breastfeeding. This is our official call for entries.

They received over 500 entries, and narrowed it down to twelve finalists. I've selected my favorite four icons (shown below). Voting just ended and the winner will be announced soon. Okay, icon judges: Which do you think best does the job? Which would you like to see in an airport?

Among the many entries were some that, as the editors put it,  "made us smile." Again I've selected my four favorites. What do you think? Would you want to see any of these at an airport? Do they (unintentionally) communicate another message?

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The winner according to Mothering is icon 8 (above) created by Matt Daigle, a graphic designer, stay-at-home father and self-described "Mr. Mom." Congratulations Matt!

Interesting side note: Matt is a deaf cartoonist. Check out his site for his take on what he thinks is funny in the "deaf world."

Any thoughts? Which icon would you have selected?

The Origami Art of Robert Lang

I just finished a wonderful profile of physicist turned professional origami artist Robert Lang. (It appeared as the "The Origami Lab" by Susan Orlean in the February 19, 2007 issue of The New Yorker.)

Shown at left is Lang's origami piece called "Mt. Diablo Spider," made from one uncut 7" square piece of paper. Amazing. The crease and fold pattern Lang meticulously designed to make this shape is shown below.

Lang has a master's in electrical engineering from Stanford and a Ph.D. from Caltech in applied physics, and also holds 80 patents. But seven years ago, he left his profession to devote himself full-time to his life long passion, origami.

To view some of Lang's origami art constructions, go to his website. Many of these are available for sale. There is also a discussion about the science and mathematics involved in origami.

I'm a big advocate of taking expertise from one field and applying it to another. On this score, Lang does not disappoint; he still does some part-time consulting for industry. But Lang's current assignments involve "folding" and packaging rather than physics.

According to Orlean, "One medical manufacturer hired him to figure out how to fold a heart implant — a mesh heart support system for people with congestive heart failure — so that it was compact enough to be implanted via a skinny tube but, when released from the tube, would unfurl properly around the heart." A recent project had Lang working on a similar problem: compactly folding a telescope with a 100 meter diameter lens into a shape small enough so that it could be packed into a rocket and sent into space.

Question: Think of one of your hobbies or side interests. What skills or knowledge from it can you apply to a current problem? What do you discover?