What a surprise, the idea of yesterday's post actually started with a news of Polaroid instant film camera and didn't realize who (initially) brought back the RIP product back to the market. Lady Gaga or the consumer?
One of the most impressive news today is Lady Gaga has officially introduced to be the creative director of Polaroid. Join venture of two well known brands isn't new, neither cross over artist with manufacturer but a famous pop star take the seat of a creative position of a enterprise is as impressive as Obama became the president of US.
Will products developed long ago still in consumption time by time?
Before the first consumer digital camera came out (early 1990), my uncle wondered would film cameras become trashes or antique once well developed digital camera available on the market. "Film cameras will be history when no one drive a car with wheels anymore." I replied.
I had my 1 mega pixel Sony DC in 1997. At that moment 35mm, 120 and 4x5 film cameras are still my workhorses for commercial photo shooting since affordable digital camera were came with less than 4 MP. Until 2005, I bought a 8 MP DSLR and found that not much clients willing to pay for film scanning so digital was the only choice for work.
Now I am using a 18 MP DSLR while 32 MP DSLR or 100+ MP digital back are already on the market.
Back to our discussion started about 15 years ago, film cameras are still in use by lots of professionals, photo students, and amateurs. Why? Traditional photo prints and digital prints look different? May be, but the main different is the process and experience.
Film photo shooting is a less cost effective with time consuming process for commercial works, in some case the quality is less good. Who likes film photography knows how to obtain unique characters generated by choosing different films and printing papers, while some photographers prefer non-profressional cameras or lens, i.e. LOMO, Lensbaby and Sea Gull for common known styles and effects.
Sounds complicated? For digital photography we also have to consider many factors, types of computer monitor/projector, hardware and software color settings, calibration, light compensation under different environment, etc.
So why film photography still alive? Film, printing paper, and chemical manufacturers are still providing products without losing money (or just a little bit) with existing demands.
Polaroid once closed their production line on all instant photography products included professional instant films and consumable films and cameras. In past few years remaining stocks around the world were sold out, fans of Polaroid instant films rise their voice, richer people tried to buy back machines from Polaroid to reproduce film for their own use.
Why instant films when good quality photographic film and super high digital cameras are available? The process and experience are different.
News around the world this month, new Polaroid cameras are coming back soon.
I used pencil drawing and writing on tiny paper pieces, then stapled them up into a mini story book when I was a kid, may be I put some cartoon stickers on it too.
I learned and prepared camera ready artworks by slicing and pasting PMT (photo-mechanical transfer) sheets with typesetting and line-art illustrations on cardboard for printing in late 80's and early 90's.
I learned and keep using computer to design page layouts, adding text copies, photographs, graphics, etc and then save as file for half-tone film output or even send files for direct-to-plate offset printing...
I still want to learn book making but I never think about using the traditional way, totally.
John Carrera from Quercus Press reprinted a pictorial dictionary released in more than a century ago. After 10 years plus of works from sorting about 13,000 of the original engraved blocks, organizing and rebuild materials for all pages, retype text contents with a 71 years old Linotype machine, letterpress printing, book binding with leather jacket made by hands, brand new copies of the 1898 American pictorial dictionary are now available for book collectors.
Medals for 2010 Winter Olympic Games to be held in Vancouver are a great design with the consideration of reuse trashed computer parts. Detail at Fast Company
May be this concept is not the core reason to win the Olympic medal design but the styling and graphic approach are good enough to win the competition. I personally believe traditional Indian art is hard to merge with modern designs, especially after I visited souvenir boutiques in Vancouver and found those mass production items.
Our world need good designers in all fields, please respect the original concepts and ownerships, and make some contribution to help mother earth being healthier.
My first impression of this tiny car is, a mini version of 60's Honda N360 or trying to take place of the real "mini" car image from 60's-80's Mini Cooper?
Doesn't matter! I would love to have one electronic car like "Hello" for my daily transportation usage to save money on up and down gas prices. In terms of the styling, as I wrote before, Hello is the mixture of other cars but still holding many tiny personal characters.
I can't explain my feeling of this car, like a toy, looks a bit plastic, having a black mask (front grill) with two blue eyes like a kind of white monkey.
Finally, I found that Hello has one design like my Jeep Liberty, the grill and headlights.
Some American guys are crazy in creativity but they belong to one of the countries that set tons of rules to protect personal information (publicly, you never know who've got our info).
Young guys love sharing personal info and even the others without thinking the consequence... fine, but marketing guys shouldn't mislead audience to disclose their friends' info subtly with cheap jokes.
How could the client accept an idea without putting themselves into the position of so-call target segment who are going to receive "jokes" instead of those who might interest at the campaign's activities.
九七年之前在香港生活時，一直就只有覺得自己就是祖籍廣東、香港出生的香港人。頂多加上英國屬土公民British Nation Overseas身份，是出國旅遊時必講嘅對白。二十年前開始到過日本玩好幾次，用的是BNO護照，表格上寫國籍都寫British - Hong Kong。但接近九七時，日本海關硬要我改寫為Hong Kong, China。都未到九七，officially我唔算中國籍喎！咁寫都得？
九七前移居咗加拿大嘅我，總遇到海關人員以外嘅人問:「Where are you come from? 」。「Hong Kong」，但nation是... well,「British Nation Overseas」，國籍真的只有BNO，居民身份就有兩個，香港及加拿大嘅。
九九年左右拿到Canadian Passport後，變成有兩個國籍，Canadian同BNO，加多個"香港永久居民"。但成為Canadian後，對國(Canada)外嘅人只會說自己是加拿大人，仔細啲我會講係Chinese Canadian, immigrated from Hong Kong。但對某些大家稱呼為老外嘅本土白人問返我:「Why mention Hong Kong, what's the different between Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Midland China? 」，「What's the different between North American (White guys) from Canada and the United States? 」我反問... 心想我都未話自己係Cantonese。梗係有分別啦，我係香港成日睇明珠英文台嘅美國同英國電視節目，大陸同台灣(80、90年代)邊有得過你睇？我見英女皇個樣多過毛澤東個尊容。
鉄人28号 Tetsujin, another legendary character from Japanese manga (comics) culture prior to Gundam, is going to be stand in front of us at the city of KOBE in Japan this fall.
Different from any art pieces such as contemporary sculptures, historic sculptures, architecture or mechanical structures stand in other cities around the world, a full size robots figure created for comics in more than 40 years ago is more than placing an art piece into the community, or show off their design to the world... those are remarkable icons containing lots of meanings.
Thousands of human-like-robot characters created and disclosed to the world by Japanese artist in the past century. Although all of them have no value to our daily lives, in a certain extend, those are what many people living for and making for living. Who likes these robots are same as fans love their music or movie idols, think about how people react if a Micheal Jackson (a legendary star from now on) sculpture locates in the center of NYC than you could imagine how enthusiasts will react to these figures.
One interesting question, beside economy factors, what else does a full size robot model affect the city or the country?
Art pieces are representing artist thoughts, experience or just an experiment in medium, which may motivate audience to think and redevelop ideas. Fiction robots were designed with a purpose, entertaining audience and make money. Even we can't connect them to industrial design nor experimental study in science but all design bases on imagination. One professor mentioned that the size of his cell phone (2000s) is way smaller than the wireless intercom device shown at the first Star Trek movie in 1970s, but they thought about that 30 years ago.
Japanese created tons of things in the world, yes, including Sony Walkman and Honda's ASIMO. Comics robots are from paper sketches to computer CG animation, now from 1:144 plastic models to 1:1 metal models, I think many of us wanted to see a movable giant robot as seen in the animation in the future. Standing still figures may no yet get close to some people's dream but certainly we should satisfied and happy to see them in the city in it's form, when no self powered laser gun nor sword is available yet.
That life-size Tetsujin cost 135,000,000 yen (about CA$1,350,000 or HK$9,450,000). Two giant robot figures let Japan proud to let the world knows that they are the leader of real and fiction robots, which also give mental support to many Japanese too.
Gundam is a Manga character first launched in 30 years ago. When the TV animation came out, I've got a 1:144 1st generation Gundam (The main character) model from an uncle (my dad's friend) at one of the old style HK department store.
I bought some other characters along with my brother after we entered secondary school, more and more robot animations came out, I didn't focus on Gundam's models since then.
But, the story of Gundam 機動戦士 keeps moving on. Second generation (improved quality in drawing techniques)..., Z, Seed... I can't tell the name of each generation actually. Japanese and many Asia guys or even girls (there are female versions of Gundam later on) love Gundam, I found someone in Japan made huge scale model up to a human size few years ago.
And now it's 1:1, not a 6 feet human proportion, it's the real Gundam dimension of 18 meters tall (about 6 floors) located at Odaiba, Tokyo. That will not only attract tourist, I believe that's a dream come true for many of us who wondered about how big or how it should be in real size.
The Amazon case indicated a real good sample of "purpose" and "planet". I order books from Amazon occasionally; the cartoon wraps did well to protect my books while they are recyclable. Instead, if I buying books at Chapters I can't refuse to grab a plastic bag for two reasons, when it's raining or I bought more than one book or magazine.
The marketing's 4Ps is market oriented sales method, concentrated on demand & supply. Setting competitive price point to attract target segments while cutting cost (and may be cutting quality) to leave a bigger margin. The target is an endless increment in profitability.
The new 4Ps are focus on "balance between consumable power (the actual market needs) and wastage (sustainability in product's usage or lack of sales)". Which is not replacing the old 4Ps, it should be applied before the marketing 4Ps when developing business or product.
"...we need to stop thinking more products. Let’s think better products."
Remarks: • Services also count as products in marketing terms • Marketing's 4Ps are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion
Professor Sir Ken Robinson's speech at TED in Feb 2006.
A version with Chinese subtitle at YouTube prepared by Taiwanese professor Yau (姚仁祿) is part of his "What is design" (東海大學「設計邊境」第一堂) lecture in Feb 2009.
If you can understand Mandarin, a (any type's) design student, or interested how design change from century 2K to 2K1, his speech is good for you, but 2 hours long for all 5 clips.
We all born to eat (drink first actually), we learn how to accept and eat different kind of food since we were small, this is a simple boring memory.
Not everyone in the world eat same kind of food, in terms of cooking method or flavour. Today, American enjoys Sushi and uncooked fish meat, and Chinese love pizza and hot dog are just finding new food to spice up our taste bugs and our life.
Middle and eastern populations used to have a balanced food intake (if possible) with their traditional recipe but American fast food culture started attack the world (including themselves) since 60's. Some western populations are now changing their eating habits to improve their health by consume less salt, fat, and tried to prepare food at home with fresh ingredients. As long as the world keeps spinning, American marketers must keep seeking ways to expand sales networks, outside America.
Most of us identify hamburgers from fast food restaurants are junk food (source of high calorie and trans fats with a little price), some may try to prevent consume hamburger at their best. A certain number of populations in the rest of the world never heard about hamburger, not a news, but the news is marketers introduced this 40+ years old food product to people who live in hidden villages around the world.
How a Whopper® or Hamburger will change a village, a third county nation? I hope it could gives them some spice or fill up their tummy, not another economic and health attack.
