While Poler’s reputation may lead many to believe they are strictly creators of “camp vibes,” their latest collaboration with performance cycling attire brand Castelli proves Poler’s interests relate to all things outdoors. The …
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…and the backlash begins: Yahoo unveiled their new logo this morning, following their 30 Days of Change marketing campaign, an interesting publicity stunt that came across as a mass-market (i.e. less rigorous) version of, say, the Brand New IDEO Make-a-Thon.
I’ll defer to Armin Vit of Brand New for a full analysis of the new logomark—will.i.am was unavailable for comment—but I must say I find it uninspired and uninspiring. Line-weight and non-obliqueness notwithstanding, something about that “Y” and the subtly flared lines evokes watered-down YSL, and the tweaked humanist typography feels a bit design-by-committee to me (it was, in fact, designed in-house by Marissa Mayer & co.). Current brand usage guidelines include the punctuation mark, but sadly it’s not quite the same without the so-called “9-degrees of whimsy”—at least not until browsers support the CSS ‘rotation’ property—and in any case, we’ll stick with regular-ol’ unexclamatory “Yahoo” in common parlance.
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Opinion: after returning from a two-week break, Sam Jacob reflects on the phenomenon of the modern beach holiday and argues that it is just as artificial as everyday working life in the city.
The summer is almost out of reach, the sun setting over vacation idylls and planes pulling their wheels up over the bleached industrial outskirts of a Mediterranean city. They accelerate into the sky, contrails arcing northwards, to deliver their payload of over-ripened northern Europeans back to their slate-grey natural habitats. They emerge from the airport still incongruously clad in espadrilles, shorts and straw hats.
Ah, holidays. The ten-ish days off from the normal pattern of life where we can kick back, get back to nature, soak up the sun and otherwise encounter the world in a different way to our usual nine-to-five. But although we often describe them as a “break”, holidays are actually a product of organised labour, products of the industrial revolution as much as the production line.
These bubbles of paradise, where the wind blows through your hair and you feel the prickle of the sun’s heat on your bare skin, are as artificial as the suspended-ceilinged, contract-carpeted and air-conditioned environments you spend the rest of the year holed up in.
Nowhere is this strange version of artificial nature more apparent than the beach. A beach might be a product of coast line geology, of sea levels and tides, of the forces exerted by the sea on the perimeter of the land, of rocks and shells worn down into grains of sand. But really the place we go isn’t this; it’s rather a highly-wrought cultural phenomenon that just happens to look (sometimes) completely natural.
The idea of the holiday is derived from holy days, still ghostly present in the word itself. Secularised and industrialised, the holiday remains a symbolic event, an act full of ritual. The beach is the ground on which we conduct this performance, aided by outfits and props. All those things we identify with beachiness – from the traditional British seaside fare of kiss-me-quick hats, donkey rides and Punch and Judy shows to the exotic cocktail-in-a-pineapple from a thatched beach bar, even the virgin, unspoiled sands of ultimate luxury beachiness – all of these are props and scenarios that allow us to commune with an idea. Walking down the promenade, in other words, or pulling on your Speedos, blowing up a deranged-looking inflatable sea monster… whatever you might find yourself doing is a way of participating in collective ideas about nature and society.
Think of all those highly specific items we drag down there: the special towels, buckets in the shape of miniature candy-coloured castles, lilos, umbrellas, tiny cricket bats, balls that catch the wind as though they thought they belonged to the sky. Think of the clothes we wear, think even of that June magazine favourite, the beach body (and how to get one). All of these point to the beach as a place that holds a very special meaning.
The very idea of a beach holiday is relatively recent. It is essentially an eighteenth-century invention, a combination of science (the beach as sanitarium) and changing attitudes to the landscape after urbanisation (which might fall under the catch-all term of romanticism). These ideas of health and romance still run through our contemporary notions of the beach like the words through a stick of rock. These combine with modern notions of leisure, with money, with images of family and/or relationships. All baking under an ozone-depleted sky, doused in gallons of SPF.
“Ha,” you might say. “Put down your cultural studies notepad, throw off your tweeds and join us frolicking in the shallows. You’re taking this far too seriously; it’s all just a little fun!” But that’s the point: the beach’s syntheticity is so absolutely absorbed into its landscape that it’s almost impossible to distinguish it from nature, even when it really is manufactured.
Beyond the vast infrastructures that holidays command – the engineering, logistics, complex finance and construction that enable travel, highways, hotels – to name but a few items necessary to enable us to go somewhere – beaches are themselves unstable places that shift with wind and tide. These erosions are often held at bay by civil engineering such as groins and breaks. Sand is rearranged in acts of “beach nourishment”: sometimes as simple as scooping it up from one end of a bay and putting it back at the other; other times as extreme as replenishing a beach with sand from somewhere else entirely. These acts of great geological shuffling mean that beaches stay in the same place against their natural inclination.
The slogan “Sous les paves, la plage” rang out in Paris in 1968. It imagined that beneath the concrete veneer of the city was something as apparently liberated as the beach. But far from being something opposite, the beach is part of the very same landscape as the city.
Sam Jacob is a director of architecture practice FAT, professor of architecture at University of Illinois Chicago and director of Night School at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, as well as editing www.strangeharvest.com.
The post “The beach is part of the same
landscape as the city” appeared first on Dezeen.
D&AD CEO Tim Lindsay has vehemently attacked unpaid internships in the creative industries as WPP partners with the charity to back its New Blood Academy programme, which will now include a number of paid apprenticeships for young creatives…
“Unpaid placements are an abhorrent abuse of a desperation [by graduates] to get into the industry,” says Lindsay. “Agencies that do that are beyond the pale.”
With the D&AD-WPP scheme, he continues, “if you’re doing work, you’re going to get paid”. The partnership sees WPP make a significant contribution to the D&AD Foundation to open up industry opportunities for graduates. As well as backing the New Blood Academy – a two-week programme of talks, discussions and workshops designed to help graduates make the leap into the industry – WPP will offer a number (the exact amount is yet to be confirmed) of three-month paid apprenticeships at its agencies, which include Ogilvy, JWT, CHI & Partners, Y&R, Grey, AKQA, The Partners, Landor, The Brand Union, Coley Porter Bell, Fitch and Digit.
This link up comes at a time when unpaid internships within the industry are under renewed scrutiny, not least because of comments reportedly made by D&AD chairman Dick Powell during a speech at the New Designers exhibition in London in July. Dezeen reported that Powell had said that graduates should be prepared to “work for nothing” in order to break into the industry. Powell subsequently refuted this and sought to clarify his position on the D&AD website and on Dezeen after reporting of the speech had resulted in a great deal of criticism. Lindsay’s comments today emphasise D&AD’s official stance on internships (detailed here).
The partnership with WPP follows an earlier sponsorship package between D&AD and Unilever, who supported the inaugural White Pencil award in 2012. Lindsay is keen for the charity to continue such connections with major businesses relevant to the industry. “Talent is the lifeblood of our industry,” he says. “It makes good business sense for agencies, networks and groups to invest in our future creative leaders. We hope that WPP’s backing will encourage others in the industry to follow their lead and help drive change in creative departments across the country.”
The One Shot project was designed to supplement other methods of public transportation. The compact design transforms from a full-fledged, fixed-belt bike to a compact, vertical unit easily stored on buses, trains or other easy-access areas. From tourists discovering new places to regular commuters heading to work, it’s a versatile system that expands the reach of public transportation for a variety of users.
Designer: Valentina Vecchia & Marilena Alberga
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(Micro Commuter Bike was originally posted on Yanko Design)
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Difficile de ne pas avoir envie de se rendre dans la ville brésilienne de Rio de Janeiro après avoir regardé cette vidéo. Intitulée « Rio », cette création tournée en time-lapse par Scientifantastic sur une musique de Jan Baumann propose de découvrir sous son plus beau jour la ville qui accueillera les Jeux Olympiques de 2016.
Samir Sadikhov, designer originaire d’Azerbaïdjan, nous offre des images 3D d’une qualité époustouflante d’un concept car Aston Martin DBC. Il s’est inspiré de la voiture de course DBR1 pour imaginer cette voiture au design impressionnant, mise en avant par un rendu 3D du plus bel effet. Plus dans la suite.
by Jennifer Miller Imagine eating dinner inside a house made almost entirely of glass. The walls are eight meters high and one can see vibrant gardens, nesting storks and rows upon rows of tall climbing vines, strung with leaves and laden with tomatoes…
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Today Yahoo! launched its new logo (above), following an experiment in which they released 30 logo variations in 30 days. Given the importance of brand language, Nick Asbury thought he’d explore a tone of voice equivalent – from ‘cloying’ and ‘hipster’ to ‘inexplicably tangential’…
As a marketing exercise, Yahoo’s logo project has certainly won a lot of attention, albeit creating more heat than light [CR’s Patrick covered the initial announcement and what it might mean for the brand; while both Design Week and Brand New have written good pieces about the project today.]
The gradual release of 30 iterations could have been an interesting idea if it had been handled as a genuine exploration of the brand, enlightening the public about the thinking behind it and involving them in the process.
Unfortunately, it’s been executed on such a bizarrely simplistic level that it comes across as a parody, no doubt reinforcing everyone’s worst preconception about branding – namely, that it’s just a matter of superficial visual decoration, like picking out a new set of curtains. (That’s the standard analogy anyway – do people still pick out sets of curtains? I suppose they do.)
Given the importance of brand language these days, it struck me that the whole exercise was crying out for a copywriting treatment. So I had a go at writing 30 tones of voice for Yahoo! in 30 days. It’s not entirely serious, although Yahoo! already appear to be using a version of Defensive.
1. Cloying (our existing tone)
Yahoo! makes it easier to discover the news and information that you care about most.
2. Punchy
Yahoo! All the news and info you need – today.
3. Story-telling
It all started way back when we decided to start Yahoo! So began our quest to make it easier for folks to find the news and information they care about. And that mission continues today. Same as it ever was. But different.
4. Sophisticated poetry
Yahoo! makes it easier
to discover the news
and information
that you care
about
most.
5. Infantilising
Hello, I’m some Yahoo! copy. I’m here to tell you all about Yahoo! Please read me and see what you think. Thank-yahoo!
6. Visionary
At Yahoo!, we believe in a world where everyone, without exception, can access the news and information they care about most passionately: for the benefit of humanity.
7. Dialogue
– Who are you?
– We’re Yahoo!
– What do you do?
– We make it easier to find the news and information you need.
– Like Google?
– Yes, but different and more entertaining.
– But basically like Google?
– Can we discuss a redraft?
8. Inexplicably tangential
Cows are great at eating grass and mooing. But one thing they can’t do is make it easier to discover the news and information that you care about. For that, you need Yahoo!
Yahoo! News, not moos.
9. Sad
If we’re honest, the exclamation mark at the end of our name is a grammatical rictus grin that we wear habitually to distract ourselves from the undeniable reality of the fact that we work for Yahoo!
10. Defensive
Yahoo! is genuinely here to make it easier to discover the news and information that you care about. And that’s not a bad thing, is it? We may not be the best at what we do, but a lot of people like it and that’s an achievement, isn’t it? What have you done with your life?
11. Rhyming
We’re Yahoo!
And we do
what we do
for people like you.
12. Designer confidence
We Are YahooTM
13. Hesitant
Yahoo?
14. Mature
Yahoo.
15. Pretentious
Yahoo;
16. Annoying
Yahoo:-)
17. Hipster
Yahoo_
18. Northern
Yahoo! Ya bastard!
19. Unnecessarily aggressive
Yahoo the f–k do you think you’re talking to?
20. Scientific
News + information x now = Yahoo!
NB: This project was abandoned at Day 20 due to inexplicable lack of public interest.
A version of this article was originally posted on checkthis.com/yahootone and is reproduced with permission.
The September issue of Creative Review is available to buy direct from us here. Better yet, subscribe to make sure that you never miss out on a copy – you’ll save money too. Details here.
Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards 2013. We will be featuring these projects by category, so stay tuned for your favorite categories of design! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com.
The Extrapolation Factory is an imagination-based factory for developing future scenarios, embodied as artifacts for sale in a Brooklyn 99¢ store.
The project is comprised of two parts, a workshop and a pop-up store-exhibition. “Factory workers” translated future forecasts into unique scenarios, each inspiring a future 99¢ store product-concept. Workers fabricated these future products, including packages that revealed its inspiration story and sources that support it.
The products conceived in the workshop were shelved in a Brooklyn 99¢ amidst items already available. Store regulars and invited shoppers strolled the aisles, conversed with strangers, and purchased futures that spoke to them.
– How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
We were looking through our futurescope, searching for potential attractions to be built at Coney Island, and accidentally caught a glimpse of the Core77 Awards list.
– What’s the latest news or development with your project?
The Extrapolation Factory is focusing in for our next two projects. Later this year, the assembly lines will start churning out future souvenirs for the City of New York, followed by synthetic biology-enabled services.
– What is one quick anecdote about your project?
We loved working with the owners and employees of the 99¢ store, who allowed us to install the speculative products in their shop, and helped us out along the way. As an exchange, we agreed to design and install seasonal window displays for their winter holiday and Valentines Day sales. We never imagined we’d be doing window displays when we started this project!
– What was an “a-ha” moment from this project?
For us, the most exciting moment was the actual experience of strolling the aisles of the fully installed store. Stocking the shelves, and then seeing the fictional products next to the real ones conjured a surreal feeling that we didn’t get in our studio, and could never be replicated in a gallery.
View the full project here.
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