Recycling means you failed

Recently I heard someone talking about interesting implications of recycling. One of the most common strategies people think of for sustainable products is to make them recyclable. Well, recycling in fact means that the product became obsolete and couldn't keep working as what it was. Recycling means adding additional energy, materials, processes, etc., to turn it into something else. Recycling means giving away all the hard work that was put into the initial life of a product... Recycling means failure.

Are there instances where recycling is actually good and necessary? Of course! but if they are extremely rare. Most disposable products actually come from a disposable, consumerist mentality. They come from cultures that think they have unlimited resources and therefore can afford single-use or short-lifespan products.

The most sustainable products are the ones that keep working as what they are... the ones that last and wear-in. The ones we love because they got passed to us from previous generations and that we look forward to pass on to someone else.

Taipei adventures

These are some pictures from a recent trip to Taipei. It was so interesting to see a completely different take on design, culture, environment and society. I was particularly impressed by the strong attention to culture and food.

(Captions left/right & up/down)
1- Temples filled with details, craftsmanship, incense scent and tradition
2- Hip nightclub? Nope... Lights at temples' altars
3- Beautiful offerings to the ghosts (soon to be set on fire)
4- No need for plastic lids. Cups are sealed with film :)
5- Practical baby holder for parents on the go... that need to go
6- Yes, she is everywhere
7- Modern architecture filled with meaningful forms and details
8- Such a simple, beautiful bench... so serene (and comfortable, too!)

9- Beautiful cardboard products
10- Ordinary catered lunches that look extraordinary
11- Different take on food-court meals
12- More modern architecture
13- Attention to detail down to the socks
14- Lamps being delivered for the ghost's day celebration
15- Larger-than-life cuteness found everywhere
16- Who said "training wheels" are just for kid's bicycles?
17- Wooden-pattern ceramic tile
18- Taxi driver watching a soap opera

ahhh... those kids

no explanation needed here... highlights of a core77 discussion board:

Everything Jonathan Ive touches turns to Brushed Aluminum.

Jonny Ive uses Time Machine to roll back history and create new production processes for iPhones that didn't even exist five seconds ago.

Jonny Ive invented the fillet.

On the 7th day, Jonny Ive created iGod.

Jonathan Ive's iPhone turns white in the presence of Orcs.

Jonny Ive has only 17 chromosomes. Coincidently the same number of chromosomes in an Apple.

There is actually a nano-sized clone of Jonny Ive's heart inside every MacBook that makes the power light "beat" when asleep.

Jonny Ive's handwriting is 14 point Helvetica.

Jonny Ive's haircut is CNC machined.

Anyone within a 20 mile radius of Jonny Ive is capable of brilliant Design Thinking.

Jonny Ive sneezed into a tissue and unfolded it to reveal the dimensioned drawings of the first Imac.

Jonny Ive and Steve Jobs can never present a keynote at the same time because their combined reality distortion fields would level Cupertino.

Jonny Ive designed the end of the Infinite Loop

Jonny Ive blew into the headphone port of the Iphone and prototyped the first Ipad.

Jonny Ive only eats food off rectangular plates at a ratio of 1.61 : 1

Jonny Ive makes all his presentations in Garage Band.

Jonathan Ive once had a staring contest with an aluminium billet. Liquid metal was the result.

Jonny Ive can pinch-to-zoom with one finger.

Jonny Ive has never used Command+Z.

Jonny Ive uses his monstrous Apple salary to keep Dieter Rams in cryogenic storage, thawing him out only twice a year, usually on a Wednesday.

Jonny Ive can mill an aluminium block with his fingertips to a tolerance of +/- 0.00000000001".

Jonny Ive would have caught the antenna issue with the iPhone 4 if he knew how to hold anything wrong.

Jonny Ive walked into a round room, and sat in the corner.

Jonny Ive has counted how many licks it takes to get to the center of a toosie pop. Twice.

Jonny Ive is so good at keeping his projects under wraps his wife didn't even know they were having children until Steve Jobs showed the ultrasounds in a Keynote.

Jonny Ive didn't buy a Scott Wilson Tik Tok, because Jonny's Nano hovers 1mm off his wrist without any attachments.

Jonny Ive never has to use the Genius button in iTunes.

Jonny Ive has designed 9 completely unique fasteners that have no external fasteners.

Jonny Ive has never had to repeat a level of Angry Birds on his iPhone.

Jonny Ive listens to bands on iTunes that haven't even formed yet.

Jonny Ive charges his iPhone with solar power, at night.

Every time Jonny Ive eats an apple an angel gets his wings.

unnecessary things

every now and then i see designs for clocks that offer new ways of telling time. many  times these clocks are heavily designed ... you know, over designed... stylized shapes and mechanisms that lead to intriguing objects but poor time pieces... what's wrong with how time is measured now? ... i keep looking at these clocks in search of a valid reason for creating a new way of communicating time... the search never ends well. i always go back to the design of mondaine watches and hope that every time piece was as good. the purpose of mondaine watche's is simply to tell time effectively. no grand ideas of telling time differently... just easier, clearer, better.

the "lean" chair/table  was recently featured in core77. this object is supposed to "challenge the limitations of urban space" ... what a nice challenge, i thought. so the solution is a piece that is unstable by itself and completely dependent on the urban space it tries to challenge. if i need to sit on it, i need two walls to rest it against, leaving me confined to a corner. if i need a table i need to make sure that i add weight to one of the sides so that it doesn't tip over and i also need to watch out for those pointy corners... if i really need to challenge urban space, i don't need to come up with an overcomplicated design in order to succeed. take a simple box, for example... it can serve as a table, a chair, a bookshelf... it doesn't need walls or special surroundings.... and for aesthetics, it can be as clean and beautiful as i want it to be.

i recently bought a pair of shorts. i'm in love with them, mostly because they are so simple. I analyze their components and find no excess... no unnecessary details, decorations or components.  they were very inexpensive, too. i can imagine the design brief: nice shorts under ten dollars. it's so nice to see the work of a designer that didn't turn inexpensive into cheap. just get rid of the unnecessary details that increase need for materials, production and complexity.  in contrast to these clean, simple shorts, i just spent over an hour fixing a pair of pants. i bought them some time ago and even with their lightweight fabric they have become impossible to wear in the summer weather. after a closer inspection i realized the ridiculous amount of unnecessary elements that these pants have.  i cut and trimmed layers and layers of fabric around the pockets, seams, etc. i ended up removing over half a pound of unnecessary fabric. as i was re-sewing the pants, i kept thinking about how could the designer of this pants got away with a design that is wasteful and makes users unhappy.

fearless

the good thing about designers is that we're fearless. we take on problems like we have nothing to lose and we come up with innovative solutions. not a lot of other disciplines are fearless... most disciplines focus on knowing a lot about something in particular... they need to prove that they are experts in their area so they spend a long time in their area proving that they are experts in it ... they don't feel comfortable jumping to other areas because they don't know them too well. since designers tend to seat in the middle of multiple areas we assume that we know enough in those areas to start jumping from discipline to discipline. that process allows us to make connections that are integrated and unique.

the bad thing about designers is that we're fearless. too many times we end up proposing solutions without really understanding their consequences. we're so excited about making new, innovative connections that we forget to sit down to think about them long enough. at the end of the day, i think the good outweights the bad and i sleep better at night thinking that there are a bunch of fearless designers out there thinking about (among other things) how people can sleep better at night.

good stories

last night i was watching this documentary about pixar... pretty cool stuff. the highlight of it (at least to me) came when someone said that pixar's success has little to do with computer animation... it's mostly about creating great stories.  yes, they push technology... but they do it with a purpose. they explained that most of the time spent in each project is devoted to developing the story. good design is the same thing.  is not about creating a product... is about creating an experience.... about connecting. i always have a hard time explaining students that they should focus more time on developing a concept rather than on skills... many of them misinterpret this as an opportunity for mediocrity.  a concept is so much more important... it's what sets the good apart from the rest. if someone wants good skills, they can go to coroflot.com and will find thousands of great examples.... if someone is looking for great concepts, for great design stories, then they will have to look deeper.  i'm not saying that skills are not important... they are crucial! pixar wouldn't be a success story without their beautiful output. but focusing only on skills is not enough.  i always have strong reservations about resumes that only focus on skills... and I always think that job descriptions that focus only on skills lead to boring jobs that don't enable positive change in culture and society.  designers that create good stories are the ones worth looking for.

double dose of technology

as i was walking out of my daughter's school this morning, i noticed the 'tech-age mailbox'... there were so many things about this box that caught my attention: the hard-to-describe color; the strongly utilitarian shape; the choice of assembly and hardware; the semi-hanging label that revealed it's previous purpose; the strong presence of the lockpad which seemed so intimidating yet so easy to violate if someone really wanted to. but i guess what stroke me the most was the contrast of the name 'tech-age' with a product that didn't convey a high level of technology. but still, when you think about it every single component of that box is a product of technology.
later in the day i had the pleasure of meeting alan heller and spending a couple of hours listening to him talking to design students. heller is a great design facilitator, mastermind of many iconic chairs such as the bellini chair. i say mastermind because although heller does not design any chairs, he finds technologies that can lead to interesting new chairs, then thinks of a great designer that could design such piece and then brings together all the components necessary in making the chair a reality. i was really intrigued by how his approach is completely technology-based. he does not begin with a cool chair in mind... he begins with a manufacturing technology that excites him and ends with a seating device meticulously crafted by a high-profile designer.
these two encounters were refreshing doses of technology... a word than is nowadays often linked to things like interfaces, hot-spots, HD and wi-fi.

symmetry and balance

i fell in love with radiolab in 2006. every one of their episodes is so inspiring and really makes you think... and inspired people that think tend to do interesting things. one of their latest shows is on symmetry. along with their usual podcast they also have a cool video (embedded above). well, today i loaded the podcast to my ipod and decided to listen to it during my run. i was hoping for something inspiring and radiolab never disappoints. one minute into the video it clicked to me: symmetry is about halves... symmetry is about balance... symmetry is about order. symmetry is good in design because it makes evident the need for the other half. just as we look for someone that is our other half, our soulmate, we look for products that are our other halves. products with good soul-matting potential (symmetry, balance, order) are easier to assimilate and to engage with.
but what about layouts that are not symmetrical but are still engaging? well, it all comes down to balance. the more i think about it the more i think that balance is the main attribute here and symmetry is just a type of balance. symmetry can be a more linear, static type of balance... asymmetry, focal points and other groupings are dynamic types of balance. whenever i think about relationships between products and users i realize that it's all about balance. [good] designs are effective extensions of ourselves. they provide us balance in situations where we would feel unbalanced otherwise.

just good enough

there's something magical about muji... the simplicity of their designs... the harmony of their collections... the environmentally-responsible practices... the minimalist packaging. above all, there is their philosophy: just good enough. so simple, so effective, so good.

i still remember the first time that i heard about muji's 'just-good-enough' design approach. it surprised me that people were talking about it in positive notes. my experience with this notion had been a little bit different: many corporations also use the 'just-good-enough' approach, but more in terms of creating products cheap enough so that people want to buy them... reliable enough so that they barely pass certification tests... innovative enough so that marketing can sell them. it's really nice to see how a company can look at the glass half full and embrace such concept to elevate design and to make many people drool over clever products.

music & design

i have this theory that people's values remain the same in most aspects of their lives. for example, the clothing style that you like will be consistent with the music you listen to, the type of products that you buy, sites that you visit online, food that you eat, etc. they are all connected by you... your taste... your values.

whenever i think of music, it strikes me how well defined it is. music is intangible yet there's a very clear way of describing it, writing it and reading it that transcends languages and cultures. a lot of times i wished that design had a similar way of describing it. just as a musician or composer can write down and communicate harmonies, scales, orchestrations, a designer could communicate flow, balance, function, experience.  yes, designers can specify materials, geometry, assembly methods... but design is so much more than that... there's a big component of design (perhaps the most important) that does with meaning and experience that is not quantitative but qualitative... musicians are able to combine quantitative musical notation with qualitative expression but i don't think designers are as effective at this.

i've often imagined a system where you can connect design values to music values... you would know that materials in a product tend to reflect harmonies; types of surfaces and parting lines connect with melody; scale and flow reflect rhythm and lyrics. so if someone tells you that they like johnny cash, for example, you could take that music and use it to create products that would integrate the same values and therefore be popular with country-rock music fans. i think this idea can work... yet i've never been able to develop this concept... other projects always get in the way. a few years ago i read an article in new yorker magazine that described a similar concept. it described how this company called "mediapredict" would analyze trend patterns from one area/industry and use them to predict the potential success of a product in another category. for example, the potential success of an upcoming book could be predicted by comparing it to the current trends seen in top 40 hits... i wonder what type of decisions made the designers of 'monster beats' say: yeah, these headphones look like dr. dre.

what makes timeless design

first off... this is not a blog about cars. it just happens that the first topics covered here have found great examples in the auto industry.

i've been thinking a lot about planned obsolescence lately. the more i think about it the more it makes sense that products need to be as timeless as possible. what a great feeling to have a product that gets better with time! while driving i've noticed a lot of cars and how they reflect their planned obsolescence... here are a few of my insights:

-price has little to do with timelessness. i've seen timeless cars in all price ranges. the idea of something more expensive lasting for longer is actually a myth, at least in terms of cars... take a look at audi: expensive cars... cool cars... cars that have face-lifts way too often. i have to admit* that bmw does a better job at designing cars that don't look old after three years. [*=i'm not a big fan of bmw and i prefer audi's clean lines]

-most (current) timeless cars are niche cars: new bettle, element, prius, mini, jeep, mercedes g-glass... all niche cars that show little changes as they evolve. does that mean that timeless design needs to be bold and unique?

-timeless/niche cars have a hard time surviving: i always wanted a new beettle... too bad because they have been discontinued. i'm glad that i had an element at some point because they will stop making them this year. it sort of makes me wonder which are the new contenders for timeless cars...

-mainstream cars are not good candidates for timelessness... camry, civic, santa fe, c-class... they have been around for long (some more than others) but they have to play the "why be you when you can be new" game in order to survive.

this last insight drove me to a scary thought... does that mean that mainstream design cannot be timeless design? i mean, take a look at target*: new cool products for every season, which means clearance bins filled with christmas products because valentine's products need the shelves now, followed by easter products, summer products, fall products, halloween products and then christmas products again (not the same products from last year... that would be so last year). i will keep thinking more about this because i don't want to accept that timeless design and mainstream design do not go hand in hand. that would a scary, scary reality. [*i tend to go off tangents frequently, but i like to think that it makes for more interesting narratives]

professional grade

gmc finds pride in being professional grade... basically saying: we're big, bold, massive, over the top... and we don't care. too bad they don't get it. that philosophy is what got them in trouble and instead of redefining themselves as a global company that is more sensitive to broader needs and trends they stay with their narrow, ill-founded, excessive approach... it is good to be proud of who you are... but it's even better to acknowledge when you need to evolve.