Posts tagged “animals”

Curating Consumption

Since Johnny Holland has said farewell, we’ll be continuing this series here on All This ChittahChattah. Here’s some stories and observations that Beth and Steve have assembled over the past few weeks.




Tim Hortons beverage pricing offers a large number of sizes with a tiny, silly price difference. No doubt there are graphs that prove this is a good pricing strategy, if upselling by 11 cents turns out to have any impact on the bottom line. As a shopper, I find it mind-boggling; the friction for supersizing is almost zero and now I have to actually think about how much I want to drink. The Tims man showed me the largest size and it was so obviously too much (more horse trough than hot choc), so I saved myself a few pennies and went down a size or two. /SP



Pets-as-people is certainly nothing new; a trend that has continued to grow in terms of marketplace dollars, emotional engagement a product selection. Still, it’s astonishing to look at a wall of clothing that looks like t-shirts in a range of kids’ sizes and styles, and to realize that actually you are looking at a selection of “Pet Gear.” /SP

As I tried to write the contents of this bag (pumpkin squash curry coconut) onto the label I quickly found myself ranting about the poor design: How can you fit anything on this tiny label (e.g., “pump sq cur coc”)? Then my young designer self surfaced and I realized that, “No, in fact this is perfectly designed.” The available writing space is exactly aligned to the end of the copy above, the height is exactly the height of the Ziploc brand. Everything was in harmony! I can’t tell you how many times while in design school that I designed something most beautiful yet most unusable. Thankfully a super brilliant creative director showed me the way. Functional can be beautiful. If you make medicine bottles clearer or safety messages intriguing enough to read then you’ve done something as a designer. What can seem like the most banal and uninteresting design project is a challenge not many can rise to. Anyone can design for cool brands like Nike, Coke and Pepsi. But can you make Ziploc bag labels a thing of beauty? Or at the very least, give me some more room to write! /BT



“Members only?” Here’s how I imagine that signage came about
Store manager: Why do you think we’re not getting any business?
Clerk: Maybe people don’t know we’re open?
Store manager: But we’ve been open for weeks!
Clerk: But we don’t have any kind of sign or anything telling people we’re open,
Store manager: But, it’s a store…I mean…the door is open…lights are on…we’re in here!
Clerk: Yeah, but it’s kind of not official until you have one of those big signs up…
Store manager: Fine!
[later that day]
Customer: Finally! Been waiting for you to open so I can see how much membership costs. /BT

ChittahChattah Quickies

  • [from julienorvaisas] A Masterpiece of Nature? Yuck! [NYTimes.com] – [The rapid calculation of stimulus described here is certainly not confined to the judging of ugly animals, but it is always as much a reflection of the subject as the object. This article is for you, if you like pictures of star-nosed moles, etc.!] As scientists see it, a comparative consideration of what we find freakish or unsettling in other species offers a fresh perspective on how we extract large amounts of visual information from a millisecond’s glance, and then spin, atomize and anthropomorphize that assessment into a revealing saga of ourselves.
  • [from julienorvaisas] Electronics Designers Struggle With Form, Function and Obsolescence [Bits Blog – NYTimes.com] – [Planned obsolescence is nothing new, but does it necessarily follow that because electronic gadgets are not built to last we should expect to have to invest in products to address their obvious design flaws?] So is the fact that we all buy gadgets and then have to spend additional money to buy protective coverings for our electronics speak poorly of the design of these products? Jason Brush, executive VP of user experience design for Schematic, noted in an interview that the fragility of electronics today might not be a matter of form and function, but rather that gadgets are not meant to be long-lasting. “If you purchased a Leica camera a hundred years ago it would still work today. It was bulletproof,” he said. “But electronics today are not built with permanence in mind.”

Retail experience at Cabela’s

One of the highlights of Kansas City was the chance to check out Cabela’s, a hunting/fishing/camping superstore. Although it’s chock full of animal killing products (and animal killing accessories), it manages to (in that way that the hunting community has always done) reframe this as pseudo-conservation and love for animals. The awe-inspiring amount of taxidermical displays feels like a trip to the national history museum, but the outdoor grill right next to one of the displays reveals the true nature of the endeavor. Lots of surprise and general challenges to my own perspectives made for a fun visit.

Here is a flickr set of my photos.

A quick look at dystopia

Children of Men is an intense and incredible movie, but also a tough one. There are very few typical futuristic elements in a movie set 20 years hence, basically since things have gone to shit in a big way. But here’s a couple:

A virtual keypad used by a wealthy young man who may have been autistic. He was not able to interact with other people and he was required to take pills. That’s all we know about him.
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The buses are old and run-down, but they feature digital billboards with full-motion advertising.
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The film played with time in an interesting way. Very little obvious sense of the future, fashions resembled today’s, London simply looked more like Mumbai (or Mexico, as the directed had suggested) than what we might think of today. And familiar songs (i.e., King Crimson) swing between the soundtrack and Muzak-like background that the characters hear in posh settings. And so the Battersea Power Station (where art is being preserved) is a location…with a pig floating in the background.
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Yes, the pig from the Floyd album cover for Animals.
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Update: a reel of displays, interfaces, fake ads, and other visual artifacts is here [via DesignObserver]

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