Trust Your Senses, security poster, London Underground, 2008

Eye Bee M, Paul Rand, 1970

See more of my London and Sheffield pictures here.

I’m seeing a lot of these lately on rear windows of minivans and similar larger family-sized vehicles: icons that represent every member of the household (including pets).

Seems like a new example of personalization; an untapped bit of car real estate, and a new message to publish (who are the – writ rough – people in our household).

I wonder if this is more common among Hispanics and/or the churchgoing. Any ideas? Do you have one of these? Where did you hear about it? Where did you get it?

Photos from my various travels depicting global cultural variations of the fundamental person icon.

Bali, Indonesia. They’re some pretty small people, so why does that first person seem so hulking and Cro-Magnon-y?

Taipei, Taiwan. Note the hip chapeau the stroller is sporting, and the protective headgear (?) worn by the worker.

London, UK. This fellow toils as above, but without the benefit of a helmet. Less chance of sunburn, maybe?

Tokyo, Japan. The Japanese cute aesthetic shows up in the large head and even larger cigarette.

Bangkok, Thailand. Who takes care of children?

Providence, RI, USA. Not just walking, but actively moving forward, dancing, and exuding joie de vivre.

And Karrie Jacobs has a nice example here.

A few years ago I blogged about my first encounter with a dual-flush toilet.

They are becoming more common, now.

Uppercut, by Sloan, is an interesting, if incomplete design solution. It retrofits into existing toilets. The green handle suggests to the flusher that something is different here. The iconics on the barrel indicate, somewhat, what will happen in different flushing directions. But they’ve also seen fit to provide “attractive instructional placards to educate the user [there’s that phrase again] on proper operation” – UPfor #1 (Liquid Waste), DOWN for #2 (Solid Waste). The Sloan website also provides a customizable memo (.DOC) to help get the word out.

Any change of behavior, especially in such a habitual task, is going to be a challenge. Yet office memos about flushing the toilets belong with training meetings on using the new photocopier in the thundering hell of office life. It’d be interesting to investigate how all these cues (the memo, the green handle, the icon, the placard, the memo) work together (or not) to help people shift behavior (or not).

Any anecdotes to share about new office equipment, toilet memos, or so on? Leave a comment!

The Nutella bottle is an iconic sight in Paris, with roadside cr?™peries displaying the bottle (even without the label) as a visual indicator of what you could and should get there.

Software advertised on the web is often showed in some version of what it might look like on the shelf. Even if there is no box; the software is ordered online and downloaded. There’s no physical tangible artifact. No box, no printed manual, no shrink-wrap, no CD. But the box denotes “I’m for sale” and persists as a representation of the purchase.

Note that some of the above may be actually available in boxes, but I suspect most of them are not. Indeed, some of the box images are incredibly simplistic, iconic rather than representative of what you might see in a store. Maybe someone read these Photoshop tips for creating an image of a product box.

Lilly posted (a different image of) this poster:

Originally uploaded by h0mee.

The URL in the poster redirects to their blog which, among other things, tells residents of the Mission in SF where they can the poster to put on their own street.

The poster is pretty dramatic, with an interesting do and don’t icon flow. Gives insight into the problems some communities are facing.

I’m quoted in today’s Boston Globe

NEW YORK – To those who dwell in the design universe, Apple Computer has accomplished the near-impossible: making nerdy computing products seem hip and friendly.Sleek, ergonomic, and accessible, first their computers and now their iPods have gained raves and a cult following, and they have brought terms like ‘nano’ out of geekdom and into everyday use. ‘I think every designer in the world has been in a meeting where someone announces that their printer, toaster, telephone, breakfast cereal should become the iPod of its category,’ says Steve Portigal of Portigal Consulting, a California firm specializing in design and business strategy.

Now, with the opening of an architecturally audacious retail store in Manhattan, Apple has crossed another design threshold. The Apple Store Fifth Avenue a mammoth underground docking station for Macs, iPods, and accessories has made the ultimate statement of design and product packaging by morphing the design of Apple products with the design of the building that houses them.

‘It’s difficult to think of other companies that have such design coherence,’ says Paul Thompson, director of New York’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. ‘Everything comes together under one design vision. Anyway you cut the apple, design is driving it.’

Article also quoted here.

Tracing the roots of a Canadian icon

Wendy’s International Inc. is expected to spin -off a 15-per-cent stake in Tim Hortons this week, and curious observers are watching to see how many of the shares will land in Canadian hands.

The stock will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange, but the vast bulk of Tim Hortons’s coffee sales still occur north of the border, where the chain has strong roots.
…
Tim Hortons now has about 2,597 outlets north of the border and 288 in the U.S.

Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan cheered when they learned that Tim Hortons is opening an outlet in Kandahar.

Hmm. Eating Timbits in Afghanistan? A new book idea!

Functionalfate is a blog tied to a research project/museum exhibition about the ubiquitous white plastic chair. Discussion and other good links on MeFi; Seen in ThingsMagazine. Yet another example of “Yes, but is it art?”