Creative Review: A Library Full of Dead Trees

Ratings

3 of 5 stars
What’s this?

The artist Gordon Young collaborated with famed designers Why Not Associates on these wonderful typographic tree structures for this new library in Crawley, United Kingdom.

“The striking, cracked trees, fourteen in all, are situated throughout the library building and are installed vertically, flush to the floor and ceiling to resemble supporting, structural pillars. Each tree is, in fact, a real oak trunk and displays carved passages of text from literature within the library, the typeface of each passage chosen carefully to suit the nature of the text.”

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Orange You Sorry About Tropicana?

imageTropicana’s recent reversal on their new, poorly received packaging for their orange juice products — on Monday they announced that they would be reverting to the old look for these products within a month — makes their rebranding effort an easy target for snarky blog posts. There are so many lessons to be learned — or at least ideas to be discussed arising from this debacle.

Particularly, I think, in the realm of whether the design and branding industry can really be trusted when a client endeavors to redesign a product. Did Tropicana really need that redesign? Was it really good strategy? In hindsight, the answer is almost certainly no, but hindsight of course is a too convenient perch. True, the botched execution ignited a minor consumer uproar, but it’s probably not fair to say that turn of events definitively proves that it was a bad idea in and of itself.

Still, let’s say that in the course of their research for the project, the responsible branding agency, Arnell, unearthed evidence that indicated that no, a redesign was not what Tropicana needed. Given that scenario, would Arnell have turned down the assignment, or advised Tropicana to undertake a much more modest redesign? Do they have that kind of integrity?

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Advice for Software Publishers on Writing Installers

Ratings

3 of 5 stars
What’s this?

“Did you really want someone’s first experience with your work to make them hate you? That installer, the process of getting bits to where they should be is the very first interaction someone one has with your actual code, and yet, too many of you out there give it less thought than clean socks!” An IT professional offers eleven ‘commandments’ of good practice for software installation. Somewhat profanely delivered, but unimpeachably right.

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NYT: Tropicana Discovers Some Buyers Are Passionate About Packaging

Ratings

3 of 5 stars
What’s this?

“The PepsiCo Americas Beverages division of PepsiCo is bowing to public demand and scrapping the changes made to a flagship product, Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice. Redesigned packaging that was introduced in early January is being discontinued, executives plan to announce on Monday, and the previous version will be brought back in the next month.”

What a disaster, though I think the reversal is clearly needed since the new packaging is virtually useless for shoppers. The root of this problem — and this is for a much longer blog post for another day — has less to do with PepsiCo than with the design and branding industry in general, I think. Not every client who thinks they need a redesign really needs a redesign.

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Macworld: Hands on with an Imaginary Apple Netbook

Ratings

2 of 5 stars
What’s this?

Macworld editorial director Jason Snell on his experiences running Mac OS X on a US$350 MSI Wind netbook: “But the Wind is most definitely a system that isn’t intended for heavy use. It could be an appealing second (or third, or fourth) computer in a household, the kind of computer you keep under the couch so that you can pull it out and look up some actor’s name on IMDb. It’s the computer you buy for your kids with little fear of what they’ll do to it. If all you’re doing is reading email, surfing the Web, and maybe writing some basic documents, you’ll probably never notice. But if you try to do more, you’ll probably regret it.”

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The Award for Best Super-hero Movie Goes to…

In keeping with a personal tradition, I’ll once again be sparing myself hours of excruciating boredom by not watching tonight’s 81st Academy Awards on television. If you know me, then you know that I’m an unabashed enthusiast for the movies. But I do everything that I can to keep the Oscars at a distance. I don’t just avoid watching them, though. I also try to avoid paying attention to them as best I can.

Still, it’s been hard not to notice that Christopher Nolan’s epic popcorn blockbuster “The Dark Knight” was somewhat flagrantly stiff-armed in this year’s nominating process. True, the movie received eight nominations — including best art direction and cinematography, and an almost surefire nod to Heath Ledger for best supporting actor — but it was also snubbed for best picture and best director. Here’s a movie that not only broke box office records and earned plaudits from audiences all over the globe, but it was also praised by no shortage of serious critics as a significant elevation of the admittedly limited super-hero genre. In every way that matters for popular entertainment, it was one of the most important — and best — films of 2008. To fail to acknowledge “The Dark Knight” or its director accordingly is, to me, just more evidence that the Academy Awards is a credible measure of nothing other than timid fickleness.

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NYT: Credit Where Credits Are Due

Ratings

2 of 5 stars
What’s this?

In an Op-Ed article from today’s newspaper, the principals of the well-regarded design studio No. 17 lament that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences still fails to recognize a critical contribution from the design community. “There’s an Oscar for pretty much every aspect of filmmaking, except one: the title sequences… Titles have become wonderful bridges from reality into the cinematic world and back out again. At their very best, they are themselves innovative, emotional experiences, microcosms of their movies.” I wholeheartedly agree, but that would be a technical Oscar, if I ever heard of one.

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Macworld: iPhone Apps Are Seldom Used

Ratings

1 of 5 stars
What’s this?

According to a report from iPhone metrics company Pinch Media, “of the users who download free applications from the App Store, only twenty percent use the app the next day, and far fewer do as the days pass. For paid applications, the return rate is only slightly better: thirty percent of people use the application the day after they buy it. The drop-off rate for paid applications is about as steep as for free applications after the first day.” If accurate, this research could upend a lot of the thinking around the viability of mobile applications. Based on my own experience at least, it seems plausible.

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