Wondering whether to launch a new product? Feel the need to change the world, but not sure that you’re worthy? Perhaps you’re just waiting for some kind of sign, some words of wisdom from a bearded guru. Well here you go – in the words of Steve Jobs:
…Life can be much broader after you discover one simple fact. And that is everything around you that you call life – was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. And you can build you own things that other people can use… Once you learn that, you will never be the same again.
Hi there lovely clients… OK, I am going to take a bit of a risk here and show you a video which I think you might not like, but which you should see.
We all like getting a bargain. Driving a bargain makes us feel in control of our lives. Being able to bask in your own great tough beat style negotiating skills is really really clever right? Or is it?
What are you really trying to achieve long term? Do you really want to save a few pounds now and annoy your designer? Or would you rather be foresighted enough to build a trusting creative relationship – making your designer want to put their soul on the line for you, burn the midnight oil and deliver a crash hot profitable work that makes you long term wealth?
Well watch this, and get an insight what it’s like for us when more short-sighted clients (not like you of course) get confused about why we create good work for them… Enjoy
3D gesture control technology receives a €7.1million boost! “So what?” I hear you ask…
Robert Bosch Venture Capital has just invested €7.1million in IDENT Technology to launch a 3d gesture recognition chip. Clearly they think it’s important, so what is 3d gesture recognition and how might we use it?
3D Gesture Control is different to the “Microsoft Surface” which appeared in 2007. The Microsoft Surface is really like a table sized iPad, with additional sensing functionality, like being able to read credit cards that are placed on the table.
Whilst perhaps “The Surface” is a geek’s wet dream for coping with social interaction, it nevertheless has some exciting applications in restaurants, hotels or even in the future home. But as a human user interface “Surface” is still a touch sensitive device, limiting interaction to the 2D plane of the screen.
3D Gesture control ‘on the other hand’ (no pun intended), can detect movements of your hand in 3D space – yes just your actual body parts, without any separate controller like the Wii uses. It can do this by monitoring the tiny changes your body cause to a weak electric field around the device. This is the same as the capacitive touch sensing that the iPhone etc use, except it can also measure the distance of your hand from the surface as well as somehow detecting the shape you are making with your hand. I have no idea how they actually manage to turn this into reliable software instructions – there’s clearly something fiendishly clever going on here.
The interesting question for us designers is how we could use this, and how might this change the interaction between people and machines? It could change what we use screens for, what gets controlled and how. We could all end up like Sylar from “Heroes”, opening windows or changing the lighting mood with a causal flick of the hand around the nearest “room control screen”. Just think of the disco lighting fun for future kids!
Perhaps more importantly, this may lead to a whole new, more complex set of gestures we have to learn. Will there need to be standards developed, an ISO gesture language? Flicking “the V’s” at the hotel wall to order up two cold beers will mean different things in China than it does in the UK for instance. Will anyone be in charge of thinking through the ramifications of all of this? Probably more likely it will be down to the hardware companies to develop the standards from first principles, and the most successful in marketing their product will be the one’s who eventually set the standard. It will be crucial for all our sanity that good human centred designers and usability experts have a lead role in this development.
To give you a better idea of this here’s a video IDENT have created about a “Gesture Cube” Concept, which shows off some of the more obvious phone / entertainment type applications (it’s a bit corporate and cheesy but you get the gist). Alternatively if you think this could have applications in your products – then get in touch – we’d love to lend you our expertise and brainstorm what this might mean in your future product design.
I’ve just watched a very interesting film of Paul Belford speaking about his approach to making adverts that don’t look like adverts. What I really liked about this is his obvious irreverence for logos and sticking to brand guidelines.
I strongly believe that the most important job of brand guidelines is to explain what the brand is about and what it is trying to convey – NOT what font should be used, what size headings must be, or to whom you must bow and congratulate on their magnificent achievements with the logo.
Of course it can be vital reference material to know what the standard font is etc. BUT it must be clear that this is only helpful guidance, and is not the law which must not be broken. I remember a few years ago designing some advertising for a large engineering company (who make air conditioning). The “marketing assistant”, who had been on a one day course about branding, spent most of the meeting explaining that none of my ideas met the brand guidelines and that they were “not allowed” to change the one-colour version of logo from blue to red.
I have always admired companies that really ‘get’ branding, that it is a way of building your own visual language with people, which acts as a short-cut to constantly remind people what you’re all about. I guess if what you’re all about is being totally inflexible and small minded, well then great -stick to your fascist brand guidelines and never deviate!
Personally I think great brands who like to play around with it, show far more confidence and communicate a sophisticated innovative attitude to the world. A couple of great examples of this might be the SuperDry clothing or rebel surfers Quicksilver (although I don’t know if if there is any vestige of rebel left in that organisation?).
So, if you have any doubt that creative passion and artistic integrity create good things for business – watch this and then gather your courage – and talk to us to develop your brand.
Oh the Irony, China announces the launch of it’s first aircraft carrier, just as the UK winds up without any. Have they got ours? No apparently it’s an ex-Russian navy carrier, refitted by the Chinese, presumably powered by crushed soft toys, all controlled from the bridge fitted with a range of knock off iPads. Still I wouldn’t like to be caught straying into the wrong waters by them!
The newly refurbished carrier docked in Dalian Port. More to the point - LOOK at the size of that crane behind it! They don't mess about the Chinese... You should see the size of the lorry that brought the carrier to the dock!!
There’s an interesting, if slightly worrying quote from a Reuters article about the launch:
“An aircraft carrier is the mark of major powers,” Pan Chunli, a 29-year-old IT technician in Beijing told Reuters. “China has grown dramatically. The whole world should take a fresh look at China, viewing it as a rising power that it has the ability to defend its rights and territory.”
Followed by an astonishingly patronising one from the Andrew Erickson of the U.S. Naval War College and Gabriel Collins, a security analyst:
“A newly-wed couple wants a ‘starter home’, a new great power wants a ‘starter carrier’,” wrote in a note about the carrier launch”…. “China’s ‘starter carrier’ is of very limited military utility, and will primarily serve to confer prestige on a rising great power, to help the military master basic procedures, and to project a bit of power”. (www.andrewerickson.com)
Oh well, it’s good to know that just like the megayacht arms race for billionnaires, the world’s governments are driven by the same basic desire to outdo each other with the size of their… err weapons. Still at least if China starts developing a whole battlegroup of eye-wateringly expensive carriers, they might have to start putting up their taxes closer to something like the level that people and businesses are burdened with here in the UK. That might help with the trade deficit, though it’s shame the Chinese don’t want be lured into a competition about who can have the most expensive social care and human rights programs.
Recently we’ve been getting at least 3 marketing emails a day from Chinese prototyping or engineering companies, with the odd Indian or web design one thrown in for spice. These sweet and sour ramblings are often so badly written it’s funny. At least it would be funny if it wasn’t for the time they waste.
Why do they bother? I really do appreciate that they are trying to communicate with us in our language, but surely they must realise that poorly written marketing communications are worse than useless. Why waste everyone’s time?
So in the spirit of wasting everyone’s time… here is email make us laughing today:
Good morning my friend .Thank you for your time to read my email.
This is XXXX from Marketing Department, XXXXXXX Glad to know you are a large-scaled Design company from the internet.
We’re not from the internet, we’re from England…
Thank you for giving me a chance to introduce my company ,our company is focus on providing service for the industry design company all over the world ,our services including make metal sheet parts , injection molding parts ,blow molding parts .tooling making, vacuum forms parts .die casting parts.lathe parts etc, we have corporated with many oversea industrial design companies and always have a cordial working relationship.low price and good quality are our advantages.you are welcome to visit our website www:vcan-sourcing.com which includes our company profile ,history and some new products.
If you are interested in our company please let us know,,Sincerely hope to establish business relations with your esteemed corporation. we will spare no efforts in endeavoring to be service to you.
This article has been reproduced courtesy of Laura Trapnell the top IP solicitor & all round good egg (ARGE..?) at our favourite IP Solicitors in the UK: Bonallack & Bishop: So… Why Register a trademark? Very good question:
A registered trademark is easier and cheaper to protect than an unregistered mark, allowing it to be dealt with as ‘property’. If your mark is unregistered, you will only be able to (more…)
After an exhaustive search, horay, we’ve found our next designer – he will be joining Realise in a week’s time! He is an award winning designer and definitely “gets” the power of the in-depth “design thinking” that is the basis of our product design process. He’s proven he can deliver some great examples of clever innovation that could revolutionise their market. This is exciting stuff.
Anyway, we thank all you excellent product designers who applied for the position – we were overwhelmed by the number and quality of applicants – so it will take us a while to let all of you know how you fared, please bear with us! We’d like to wish you all the best of luck in your design careers and may be our paths will cross in the future.
In the meantime, we’ll reveal all when the “new guy” has had a chance to settle in and begin enjoying the challenge!
Otherwise keep you eyes peeled ready for the next hire!
We love Letterpress here – certainly Gary our designer is finding Letterpress a bit of a revelation in his design career. How can something so old fashioned that has been superseded by much “better” technology, produce such interesting and soulful results. This kind of thing… it’s disturbing to a young man brought up in the digital age!
Well for all you people out there wondering what the hell we’re talking about, there’s a great little film Gary found (in his lunchtime) which conveys the wonderful rythm and life that goes into producing a letterpress beer mat…. check this out:
Seeing as we’re growing, we decided to visit New Designers yesterday… Interesting! The standard is very high, but it’s hard to pick people out as everyone is producing good renders and having their stuff rapid prototyped (in China many of them). Added to that, each person has very little space, so they tend to show off their flashiest stuff and the whole experience has become like walking through a giant 3D ‘innovations’ catalogue.
The problem is product design projects are often complex and the real value is in the thinking behind them, rather than just the final piece. When you are presented with such a large variety of slick final work, it’s a strange, visually overwhelming experience. I found it difficult to know where to start. Some stands were better than others in this respect. I’m disappointed to say that the Brunel stand was extremely confusing. They had an interesting central section with combined group brand themed projects, but for me this massively distracted from trying to get though and begin understanding individuals products. UWE on the other hand, did a much better job with each student being more separate, and many of these doing a good job of explaining the proposition and the process of how they got there. This is not an easy thing to convey in one A1 size board!!
Anyway, the good news is that we did manage to dive into a number of people’s work. Much kudos to all the graduates, there’s a lot of good quality work out there considering these are not experienced design professionals. And I’m excited to say that 3 or 4 special people did stand out for us as being potential RealiseProduct Designers , so watch this space!
