Month: December 2010

Advertising

LaLan Intimate Apparel Dance

By Delphine Hirasuna |

This Japanese television commercial for Wacoal LaLan bras is a fascinating departure from the usual approach to selling intimate apparel in Western cultures. No sultry bedroom eyes, no come-hither looks, no languorous poses. Victoria’s Secret models they are not. The contrast is stark between the lingerie ads in the U.S. that imply that the right underwear will make you sexy and desirable, and this Japanese ad featuring young women doing a surreal and zany dance. What’s even more interesting is that Wacoal, a company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, employs the sexy underwear strategy in ads that it runs in many other countries.

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Industrial Design

How Design Dictated How We Type

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Reflect on this: the English-language QWERTY keyboard layout was designed by Christopher Latham Sholes in 1873 not to make typists faster, but to slow them down – and we have been living with that ever since.

As with so many inventions, the design was driven by available materials and technology.

Sholes was the fifty-second known person to try inventing a mechanical writing machine, but the first to call it a “type-writer.” He worked out the basic design of the type-writer readily — each key was attached to a metal typebar that had the corresponding letter, molded in reverse, to the striking head. The problem was that when multiple keys were hit too fast or simultaneously, the typebars became entangled and would have to be unjammed by hand.

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Global Trends

Anti-Forgery Passport Design

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Over the next few years, it is likely that many countries will be redesigning their travel passports. The purpose isn’t to make them more attractive, which certainly they can use, but to deter increasingly more sophisticated and dangerous counterfeiters.

Along with hi-res micro images, encrypted biometric information, hidden data chips and other security devices, passports are being issued with different full-color images on every page. They aren’t just any kind of image, but ones using microprinting, holograms, fluorescent dyes, thermochromatic inks, ornamental patterns made with a geometric lathe, intaglio, watermarks, and magnetic inks, among other techniques. All this is for public safety, but since nations are investing millions of dollars anyway, it would be nice if they gave some thought to the aesthetic quality of the new design while they are at it. Like currency and postage stamps, passports can be used to communicate the beauty, style and uniqueness of the issuing country.

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Humor

Branding Santa

By Delphine Hirasuna |

Quietroom, a London-based firm that works with clients to “develop a brand language that connects with their customers,” felt that jolly old guy up North was too busy wrapping presents for good boys and girls to focus on the effectiveness of his brand, so Quietroom did it for him…pro bono. Here’s the brand guideline they came up – hope Santa appreciates their generous effort.


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Book Excerpt

An Aesthetic Look at Business

By Marty Neumeier |

In his book “The Designful Company,” Marty Neumeier, director of transformation at the brand marketing firm, Liquid Agency, argues that business management itself has an aesthetic component. “Of course, everyone knows you can apply the principles of aesthetics to the curve of a fender, the typography of a web page, or the textures in a clothing line. Yet you can also apply them to upstream strategy, organizational change, and marketplace reputation,” he says. In the chapter “The Rebirth of Aesthetics,” Neumeier charts the elements of aesthetics and attaches questions to them that all types of businesses – even design firms, large and small – should ask themselves to become more innovative, identify how the parts relate to the whole, operate more creatively, and arrive at a strategy that will lead to market distinction and long-lasting growth. It’s good to end the year by taking stock of what you’re doing and where you want to go.