Hasta La Ideas

Bruce Nussbaum’s recent blog post, attacks “Innovation” and welcomes “Transformation.” I think the key phrase in there is how the future of Design “relies on humanizing technology, not imposing technology on humans.”

I would like to wish you a magnificent and wonderful 2009 and I want to THANK YOU enormously for all your continues support, comments and emails … there were so many designs, artwork and crafts that I wish I could have shown you also in 2008, but there is just not enough space and time when working by yourself … but before we leave 2008 I really would like to share this with you …

‘Onkruid‘ … beautiful textile products inspired by weed, the tablecloth comes in 4 versions, made and designed in the Netherlands by Mara Skujeniece … see more amazing work by Mara right here …






… and the beautiful 100% bamboo Magazine rack and chair by Lara de Greef and her Olympic Goldcups. Here you can read more about the very talented Dutch designer Lara de Greef.

… and how about this fantastic book … Vive la Fête … a DIY styling book for all occasions …  not your usual Christmas tree will be shown here! It is time for celebration with very different styling, playful homemade garlands and a mega-ultra-special personal vase for an extremely unique birthday … Vive la Fête … is brought to you by the fantastic Dutch stylingduo FriedaMaria and the beautiful photography is by Tjitske van Leeuwen.  Uitgeverij Snor (mustache) published the book and you can order the book right here … at BijzonderMooi

When you visit the amazing website from FriedaMaria you will be bombarded by beautiful images, styling ideas and a lot of inspiration … it was a feast for me this morning to see all the ideas and totally understand why many international magazines and companies like to work with these brilliant ladies … Ontwerpstudio FriedaMaria …

:: HAPPY NEW YEAR :: here’s to a splendid 2009 :: and may this New Year bring you all you are wishing for …

I will be back on Monday January 5 2009 ……………………………

During the days before Christmas we have rolled out a number of meters of decorative lights. It took us a while. And it would probably have been a lot easier had we rolled the light cables on rollers like these at the end of the last season. Surprisingly we have not seen any products like these in Swedish shops, but there’s always e-trade… The rollers are USD 14:95 for four. The bag is unfortunately not included. If you want one it’s another USD 7:95 each.brbr

Apple's iPhone has inspired a flood of next generation smartphones

It’s almost, as Yogi Bera would say, “deja vu all over again”. 7 years ago, after Apple first introduced the iPod, there was a rush of “iPod-killers” that flooded the market in order to compete. However, few of these devices ever caught-on long enough to realize any real commercial success and mount a serious challenge to the dominance of the iPod.

This time around, with the mobile market, Apple is something of a late entrant with its iPhone. In 2001, MP3 technology was still relatively new and no MP3 manufacturer had yet created a device — or desktop music management software — capable of establishing it in a dominent position. Not so with the mobile phone market. Last summer, when Apple first introduced the iPhone, it immediately faced stiff competition against entrenched and established manufacturers such as Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Nokia.

That said, since the iPhone was released in July 2007, it has enjoyed a remarkable climb in market share, skyrocketing from 4% at the time of its debut to 23% to date. It therefore comes as no surprise that, once again, the popularity of Apple’s device has spawned numerous immitators from RIM/Blackberry’s Storm to LG’s Voyager.

While I don’t see an iPhone-killer in any of them, despite being a faithful iPhone user, I’m rooting for the imitators to do a better job of giving Apple a run for its money than the so-called iPod-killers did. Why? For the simple reason that a good, healthy competition will only end up quickening the pace of innovation and lowering the prices of the resulting products. Both not only good for consumers but also good for the future of mobile computing, which is the next, fastest-growing frontier in the digital space.

Graph courtesy of ChangeWave

Of course, given the sad history of the manufacturers chasing Apple, I’m afraid I don’t have reason to be optimistic. And I’m ALWAYS optimistic! It’s tough for me to realistically expect a rapid pace of innovation to come from the same companies that, prior to the introduction of the iPhone, developed some of the most useless, unimaginative and uninteresting devices on the planet. That last bit is not hyperbole either. For years the United States mobile market has lagged significantly, and embarassingly, behind its European and Asian counterparts. I find it interesting that now that a popular competitor has entered the space, each of them has found a way to incorporate features that had been unheard of before, such as touchscreens and real web browsers.

And why are they content with merely immitating the iPhone rather than developing something truly unique, user-friendly and useful? If they are all content with merely copying and coming in second to the iPhone, it’s unlikely they’ll all of the sudden start truly innovating.

The digital future is at stake

Why is all this important? Why do I care if the others in the mobile market give Apple a run for its money, rather than watch it route the industry as it did with the iPod? Because this time the future of the Internet is at stake. A recent Pew Internet survey found that “the mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020″.  Also earlier this month, Opera Software announced in its latest State of the Mobile Web report that “overall data traffic has increased 463% since last year“.

Not entirely surprising. We now have mobile devices that are capable of doing things other than simply placing phone calls. The result is that we’re doing things with our mobile devices that we used to only be able to do with our desktop computers.

For those of us in the design field, we’re seeing clients begin to catch up very quickly as they ask for more ambitious mobile solutions to their business needs. This was hardly the case when useless WAP browsers run from archiac mobile operating systems ruled the market. Indeed one of the things that will make the iPhone so difficult to catch is the advantage it has, having developed a large ecosystem of innovators who write applications for the iPhone that extend its functionality far beyond Apple’s original functionality. Companies are beginning to see the advantages of empowering their customer/client bases and allowing them to connect with their brands wherever they are.

To be sure, Apple has never truly needed outside competitors to spark it’s internal culture of innovation. But it sure would be nice if others found religion and started really developing great products for once.

YEAH RIGHT!!!

.chris{}

In the year 2009, is this what newspapers SHOULD look like?

Newspapers are dying. Magazines are very, very sick and have a very bad prognosis. How bad is it? Mike Elgan of the site Datamation sums up the grim situation in his recent article Media Companies Have Only Themselves to Blame:

The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy Monday. The company publishes the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and other daily newspapers. The New York Times Co. intends to pawn its shiny new Manhattan building to borrow a quarter of a billion dollars just to stop the bleeding. Other major dailies are either for sale, or rumored to be so, including the Rocky Mountain News, the Miami Herald and others. The Cox newspaper group is closing its Washington bureau. Most newspapers have announced layoffs, or will do so soon.

Magazines are faring a little better than newspapers. But the industry is all doom-and-gloom, and everyone is predicting a bloodbath in 2009. Newsweek has reportedly lost between half a million to a million subscribers from its 2.6 million rate base and has announced layoffs. TIME layoffs may total 600. National Geographic, The Economist Group and Doubledown Media are all laying off staffers.

Even books are suffering. Simon & Schuster has laid off 35 people. Random House, Inc. killed its Bantam and Doubleday divisions. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announced that it would not take on any new authors.

How bad is it? Bad. Newspapers and magazines are getting hit especially hard during the economic downturn. But why? How did we get here? I remember the parade of “The End of Print” articles that were written two booms and 10 years ago. Didn’t newspapers and magazines have ample time — and money — to get their collective acts together? Or did the digital revolution, which we ALL knew was coming, sneak up only on them?

After all, there is not declining interest in the NEWS. There is no declining interest in the content that newspapers and magazines specialize in. So as their titanic struggles mount, I find myself asking myself a myriad of questions like:

1. Why didn’t a People Magazine create a blog like the supremely popular and influential Perez Hilton’s blog? Instead of innovating for a new medium, they’ve essentially repurposed their print mag for the web.
2. Why didn’t any major newspaper buy — or start for that matter — eBay or Craig’s List? Instead of losing millions as classified ads flocked to the web, they would have created new revenue streams.
3. Why are there so many magazines that are not even online yet? Two of the biggest graphic design magazines, PRINT and HOW, have sites that only allow you to sign up for the printed versions!

In a recent article by Seth Godin, Watching the Times struggle (and what you can learn), Seth makes a lot of great points but none more relevant, especially following an election cycle that piqued worldwide interest, than the point he made about the huge missed opportunity newspapers made in not leveraging their existing Op-Ed voices:

2. Leverage the op-ed page and spread important ideas:
Sure, Tom Friedman and a handful of other columnists have a large reach and influence. But why doesn’t the Times have 50 columnists? 500? Tom Peters or Jim Leff or Joel Spolsky or Micah Sifry or Pam Slim or Patrick Semmens or Dan Pink would be great columnists. Why not view the endless print space online as an opportunity to leverage their core asset?

What would happen if the huge team of existing Times editors and writers each interviewed an interesting or important person every day? 5,000 or 10,000 really important interviews every year, each waiting for a sponsor, each finding a relevant audience…

Newpapers are in the shape they’re in today because they missed critical opportunities during the last 10-15 years to expand beyond their centuries old business models and stake a claim on the information superhighway. The only good news is, it’s not too late for them! If our nation’s leading newspapers get real about innovation and really look to push the boundaries about digital and how they (a) reach audiences and (b) derive revenues.

The only problem is, at most newspapers and magazines, that type of culture of innovation does not exist.

A few words about when we say “the death of” something

No one realistically thinks that when we say “the death of print”, newspapers will actually cease to exist. Newspapers will continue to exist, just not in the form or level of prominence that we’ve known them. Nothing TRULY disappears. Heck, you can still find someplace where you can send and receive a TELEGRAPH! Radio, once king, wasn’t completely wiped off the face of the Earth once television arrived. But the arrival of television had a profound effect on the future of radio. It marginalized it. To the extent that radio exists today, it exists because it is able to do the things that TV cannot do — be mobile, be very small and allow us to consume its content without needing to see it.

Newspapers won’t completely vanish into thin air. But we should take a nice, long look around. While they won’t vanish, they’ll be far fewer in number and much smaller in influence than they are now. And, unfortunately, they have only themselves to blame for it.

.chris{}