Standard equipment for the base model Audi A3, as taken from the website:
Not far from where I live there is a talking pedestrian crossing. I guess it was given a voice in response to people getting flattened by buses or something. As it happens, somebody has uploaded an audio recording to this miraculous and ridiculous thing we take for granted as the internet, so rather than explain further I can simply invite you to listen here.
I remember seeing this road safety initiative announced in the local paper when it was introduced a few years ago. Instead of using the default, authoritative female voice used on others of its kind, to raise public awareness at this particular crossing they’d enlisted a local celebrity to record the message. Did you recognise the voice from the recording?
That’s right, it’s Ozzie the Owl, the mascot of the local football team.
Here follows a transcript of the exact conversation in the local council office that led to this decision, as I imagine it in my head:
– Julie’s told me to find a local Hillsborough celebrity for this traffic light thing. Any ideas?
– Pardon?
– I’ve got to find a local celebrity to record this traffic light safety thing in Hillsborough. I’m thinking that guy from that police thing? The one who was in Aliens?
– Eh?
– Big black guy, got that funny name. Karry, Karaoke something.
– Kele Okereke?
– That’s him.
– You mean Bloc Party front man Kele Okereke?
– No, not him. You know who I mean, the guy in that new Aliens film and on that show, the boxsets, he’s got that funny name.
– Prometheus? The Wire? Idris Elba?
– Idris Elba, that’s him. What about him?
– You want to get Idris Elba to record the voice for a pedestrian crossing in Hillsborough?
– Yeah. He’s from Sheffield.
– No. Dominic West, also of The Wire, he’s from Sheffield.
– Where’s Idris Elba from then?
– I don’t know.
– Well what about this other bloke then? Think he’ll be up for it?
– Dominic West?
– Yeah.
– Do I think The Wire’s Dominic West will be up for recording a traffic light message in Hillsborough?
– Yeah, why not?
– Why not? Many reasons… I thought you were looking for somebody from Hillsborough.
– Yeah.
– He’s from Sheffield.
– Not Hillsborough?
– How do I know?
– Good point. Okay. Erm. Sheffield. Sheffield. Famous Sheffielders…
– Hillsborough! You’re looking for famous Hillsborough people!
– Oh yeah. Hillsborough. Hillsborough. Hillsborough park. Hillsborough… library.
– Hillsborough library? Who? What celebrity? That’s a thing, not a celebrity.
– Hillsborough. Hillsborough Leisure Centre?
– You’re just saying things in Hillsborough! What do you mean Hillsborough Leisure Centre?
– Leisure centre.
– That’s a thing! A leisure centre is not a celebrity.
– The boss or somat.
– The boss of the leisure centre? The boss of Hillsborough Leisure Centre?
– Yeah.
– Is a celebrity?
– Kind of.
– What’s his name?
– …
– So he’s not a celebrity is he!
– Jessica Ennis! She’s a celebrity. She’d be good. Is she from Hillsborough?
– No.
– …
– Look, the only person I can think of, and technically he lives in Stannington but it’s as close as I think you’re going to get, is Bobby Knutt.
– Who’s that?
– Bobby Knutt. Eyup Knutty? The pantomime guy. Never see him at the Crucible when you were a kid?
– Which pantomime?
– All of them. Eyup Knutty. Moustache, curly hair. I’ve seen a picture of him some- there look, poster, Puss In Boots.
– Bobby Knutt? Is that who that is? Didn’t know he did pantomimes. Thought he only did science programmes and that?
– No… no, I think that’s Dr Robert Winston. They do look similar actually, I’ll grant you. But no, quite different men.
– And he’s from Stannington?
– Bobby Knutt is, yes. He lives there, or he used to. Don’t know if he’s from there. He’s local though.
– Where’s Dr Robert Winston from?
– Irrelevant.
– We need somebody from Hillsborough though.
– Yeah… I know. But as I said, he’s as good as you’re gonna-
– WEDNESDAY!
– Wednesday? What?
– Of course. Can’t believe we’ve forgot Wednesday. Sheffield Wednesday. SWFC. A player from Sheffield Wednesday! We can use one of them. Yeah!
– Well, yeah, hang on. Are any of them actually from Hillsborough?
– Probably. I don’t know.
– Chances are very few, if any, are actually from around here. They might play here, and live here, but they’re not from here.
– The manager then?
– Again, probably moves around a lot. And he’s not exactly a celebrity either.
– Well, there’s got to be someone. SWFC’s famous.
– The only thing that’s permanent is the mascot, the Owl.
– Ozzie the Owl!
– Yeah, but obviously-
– Perfect, yeah! Ozzie the Owl. Of course!
– Well no, cos he’s jus-
– We’ll get him, he’ll do it.
– Yeah, but… he’s just a bloke in a suit.
– Yeah, we’ll get him to record it.
– Yeah, but then it’s just a bloke.
– He can do it in the suit.
– Yeah, but it’s… it’s a recording.
– It’s still Ozzie the Owl though.
– Well, Ozzie the Owl doesn’t… it’s not real is it, it’s just a suit.
– It’ll be reyt, he can record it in the suit can’t he.
– Yeah… but… it’s just a man’s voice. It’ll just be a man’s voice. It’s probably not even the same man who does it every week.
– It’s fine, it’s perfect. Famous, celebrity, local, famous footballer.
– He’s not a footballer. He’s the mascot. Just a bloke.
– It’s fine. I’ll tell Julie now, tell her what you think.
– No… hang on… I don’t-
– It’s perfect! I knew you’d be able to think of someone.
– I didn’t, I haven’t. It’s just a bloke.
– Julie, we’ve decided who it should be.
– No… Not we. It’s just a bloke.
– Ozzie the Owl. Yeah, I know, perfect!
– It’ll just be a bloke’s voice…
The time rich designer is able to offer a service for free to a deserving cause. There are out there many worthwhile projects very deserving of such services, and it doesn’t take long to find one you believe in. Indeed, your offer of help will likely be welcomed with open arms.
And soon enough you’ll be the least popular person at the table. Here’s why.
Typically the designer first has to work with a group to identify the desired outcome. This always goes great because it’s a conversation about ambition, optimism and affirmation.
The problems begin during the next step, when the designer begins to work backwards from that desired outcome in order to find the solution. Unfortunately, the solution might not be what people want to hear. In fact it’s almost guaranteed not to be, when one considers the reality that most things worth doing don’t come easy.
Designers – at least those who consider their remit to extend beyond the realm of decoration – have to accept the likelihood that certain aspects of the input they offer will be unpopular with the client. A designer exists to solve problems, and in order for problems to be solved they must first be identified. So for a while the job is to find fault, and no matter how tactfully it’s done, nobody likes having their faults picked out.
There’s something compounding this problem.
Volunteer-run projects unfortunately have a double mandate. Firstly, they have their core aims as stipulated in their constitution. Secondly, they have an unofficial, unspoken role to play. They have to provide satisfaction for those running the show.
In my experience to date, it seems this second unofficial role can very easily become the dominating one. It can become more important that a project’s activities satisfy the egos and desires of the team behind it, rather than satisfying the stated aims and objectives they’re all supposedly there to achieve.
Paid employees have a regular paycheque ensuring they do their job even when they hate it, but volunteering has to be rewarding. The volunteer has to be satisfied by what they do, otherwise they’ll just walk. So volunteers are often motivated by the process rather than the result. The designer – necessarily focussed on the result – is likely to suggest things that will have an effect on that process. These suggestions can therefore go down very badly indeed, and will likely be met with fierce resistance.
Ordinarily the designer should be able to justify their position, their methods and suggestions. They are after all based only on the facts. But in the voluntary world where money plays no part, this is extremely difficult because people are typically only able to see the value in that which either suits them or they’re somehow invested in. Here, the designer hasn’t been paid, nor have they said anything anybody likes to hear. They’re an outsider upsetting the apple cart. They can only offer reality, and reality is worthless if the audience hasn’t paid for it and doesn’t want to hear it.
Reality is the currency of the designer, but reality doesn’t sit well with many voluntary groups, with those people giving up their precious free time for the greater good. That’s enough of a commitment for the volunteer – they don’t want to be faced with the suggestion that they’re not volunteering well enough.
As a friend said to me a while ago; “The problem with the brutal truth is that it’s brutal.” Quite rightly, nobody expects a volunteer to deal with brutality.
Designers typically react to a brief in an additive manner. In order to solve a problem they add something that wasn’t there before. It might be a tool, a device, a website, an app or a simple piece of printed literature. It might be something big or small, complicated or simple, but generally something is created that didn’t exist before.
Traditionally, that’s what creativity is thought to be – the act of creating things. Michael Bierut, a most vocal and deservedly respected design practitioner and commentator recently defined designers as being driven by their desire to create something where there once was nothing; as he puts it, “The thrill of making something”. By our nature, we creatives create. We bring into existence. We give rise to. We add.
It’s a definition I’m not entirely happy with because it suggests we cannot be creative unless we add something. Can one not be considered creative by removing something?
Over the past few years I’ve been developing a mild fascination with this concept of design by reduction. Can we designers start solving a few more of our problems through a simple removal of things, rather than creating more things?
This is not to be confused with the more commonly seen approach I’d call ‘streamlining’. I fully accept our racks of CDs have been replaced with pocketable iPods, and shelves full of books now live in our Kindles. Streamlining is noble, necessary and very clever, but it isn’t true reductive design because a new item has been brought into existence. A solution may well result in a net reduction of items overall, but the designer still answered the brief by creating an item that didn’t previously exist, and so approached it with an additive mindset.
The idea of true reductive design that so interests me is that in which a problem is solved without anything new being created. The designer must approach the problem with a reductive mindset from the beginning, and resist the temptation to add anything.
Though a project of pure fantasy, I’ve had a go at it myself. The first time was last year when I shared a suggestion for promoting and encouraging social cohesion by the simple act of removing the walls and fences that separate our gardens. That project can be seen here. I then just recently happened across an image which suggested another opportunity for design through reduction, and it set the mind ticking.
The goal of the petrol pump designer has thus far been to insulate the motorist from the dirty business of transferring fuel from a large underground tank into the tanks in our cars. And they’ve done it well; beyond a distant humming noise and the alarming climb of the digits beside the pound sign, does anyone ever consider the process taking place within that brightly coloured box when they squeeze the handle?
Perhaps we might consider our actions after a gentle reminder that petrol pumps are just that – petrol pumps. You see that belt driven component in there? That’s a pump. See that thing next to it? That’s an electric motor. See what it all does? It uses electricity to turn the pump that draws refined oil from a huge storage tank underground, along pipes and into a tank in the back of your car. That stuff it pumps, that’s petrol, that’s the stuff you burn. It’s come all the way from the Middle East for you to burn.
I find it quite a compelling idea. Of course nobody is likely to immediately scrap their car as a result of such an initiative, but it would act as a gentle nudge. And nudges are a proven technique in altering behaviour. It’s the reason behind the optimistically voluminous transparent donation boxes at the exits of museums, and why the staff make sure there’s a conspicuous littering of notes atop the coins before the doors open each morning. It’s a gentle nudge. Stick a fiver in. Go on. Others have. We need to fill this thing.
Of course there is one mild concern raised by opening the sides of petrol pumps. The safety risk posed to the careless and the beskirted by belts and pulleys at high RPM threatens this as a truly reductive design. If we replaced the fascia panels of those pumps with perspex, could that still be considered design through reduction? We’ve certainly removed the visual barrier between the user and the activity. Perhaps a transparent fuel hose allowing the motorist to actually see the fuel they were buying could be similarly beneficial. It might trigger the end of fuel being an abstract concept and actually make us think beyond the pounds and pence, if only for a moment but each and every time we fill up: “Oh my god, that is actually petrol. That’s dead dinosaurs right there”.
‘Removing a visual barrier’. Is that really design through reduction? Perhaps it’s a cop out? I’m still adding a piece of perspex to a petrol pump. A barrier has been removed, but not a physical one. So let’s keep going, just in case we’re not happy with it. Let’s create a solution that adds nothing.
Let’s propose a scheme whereby fuel retailers can get some kind of mildly profitable tax rebate if they install clear pump fascias and transparent fuel hoses to their pumps. Then watch as not a single one takes up the offer after deciding that they’ll lose more money in the long term if their customers are made aware of what they’re buying.
Then simply publish the findings of the scheme’s failure and let the press and the public do the rest. “Fuel Retailers Rather Pay Tax Than Inform Customers” would be a punchy headline. “Fuel Bosses Prefer Tax to Transparency” punchier still.
As much as I adore and admire the work of British industrial design legend Kenneth Grange, it’s hard for me not to think in many ways that he’s from a generation of designer that had it fairly easy. When he was asked to design petrol pumps, all he had to do was make them pretty and pleasing to use.
Today’s climate provides design challenges that are more serious, more complex and which necessitate solutions entirely devoid of glamour. Reduction may well be a perfect solution to a particular problem, but it’s without glamour. People pay for things, for new things, nice things, shiny things; they’re not going to pay to have things taken away. Kenneth Grange drove an E-Type Jag. A reductive designer would likely end up homeless.
Last week I took a day off and went for a bike ride in the countryside. The mainly rural surroundings were briefly interrupted by a motorway intersecting my route.
The calm solitude of my activity that day was only appreciable when I stood on a seldom crossed pedestrian bridge mere metres above yet a world away from the thunderous roar below. Only when made aware of those that didn’t have the day off could I really start to appreciate that I did.
I like designing things. I like cargo bikes. I like vector graphics. I like technical drawings.
I like combining the things I like.
In the ten years since the release of David Fincher’s Panic Room I’ve yet to see another movie title sequence I adore quite so much.
My design studies covered film title sequences, so I was intimately familiar with Kyle Cooper’s masterpiece for Fincher’s earlier movie, Se7en. My love of Fincher was then solidified when the magnificent Fight Club was released, itself headed up by an epic opening sequence. So as I sat in the cinema beside a fellow graphic design student, we had high hopes that Panic Room’s titles were going to be something special. It didn’t disappoint.*
A decade on, floating typography in live action 3D space is a commonly used device, but I’d never seen it before Panic Room, and I’ve never seen it done so well since.
Daily life on the streets of Manhattan seems to go by oblivious, while overhead huge words hang motionless in mid air. The scale, the compositions, the perspective all combine to create something inexplicably threatening.
Such is the seamless integration with the CGI type into the environment, you wonder what the people down below think about it. Have they noticed what hangs overhead? Do they know it’s there? Are they just ignoring it? Have they become used to it? Why do they not stare up in amazement, or run in fear?
But life just goes on, everyone seemingly oblivious to something really rather sinister. We can see it, but nobody else can. That’s the beauty. It’s a simple device; calm, quiet and delivered with little drama, yet it creates a tension that sets the scene for the thriller that follows.
The viewer is initially put in a position somewhat detached from the world, and we feel we want to shout down to the people on the streets, to warn them, make them look up, to make them aware of the terrifying thing going on. But we can’t. We’re powerless.
And then we find ourselves down at street level, looking up as the words continue to hang. Where once we were detached, looking down from a unique perspective, we’re now down in there with everyone else, the threat now above us.
With no faces, no action, with nothing more than a few bits of type, some steady shots of everyday Manhattan and some suitably foreboding music, the scene is set for the entire movie. Before any dialogue takes place, before any characters are introduced, before we know anything at all, we’re put on edge. Absolutely fantastic. Give it a watch.
*I actually remember my friend whispering an astonished “f-kin hell”.
The digital camera has made us all photographers. Youtube has made us all film makers. Blogs have made us all writers. Free software has made us all desktop publishers and web designers. Twitter has made us all journalists. Cheap digital printing allows us to design our own t-shirts and print our artwork onto canvas. Garageband allows us to record and master our own music. 3D printing allows us to design and manufacture our own consumer items.
Before the age of mass manufacture we each made what we needed when we needed it. After mass manufacture, it seems we’ll be doing much the same. And the short-lived window of opportunity that has been the creative industries will be closed.
Long term there can be no money to be made doing things humans naturally want to do, because there is money to be made bringing that fun to everyone, and money is like water – eventually it finds the shortest route.
It’s also compensation. That’s the fundamental reason for money to exist, and nobody can really expect compensation for something they like doing. So perhaps the only way to earn a living in the future will be by doing things we all hate.
Look at your job. If you enjoy it there will be somebody somewhere working on a way to remove you from the equation. So you’re screwed. If however you dread getting up for work in the morning, good news – you’ll probably get to do it for ever. So you’re screwed.
These were the place names laid out for each and every guest at the wedding of Steve and Jennie last year. Apparently they were made by hand using a tube of superglue and countless Scrabble sets bought over eBay.
I think they were an excellent bit of design, and I couldn’t think of anything more fitting to reflect the interests of two Scrabble obsessed English teachers.
Nice work guys. Happy anniversary.
Tomorrow the Institute of Advanced Motorists plans to issue a press release claiming that 57% of cyclists jump red lights. It seems the rest of the world is quite rightly focussing on the harmfully inflammatory and counter-productive nature of their openly dubious claim. With that covered, I’d like to take the opportunity to say why I think cyclists ignore red lights. It’s a design issue.
Anyone automatically claiming that each and every occurrence of red light jumping is ‘dangerous’ or ‘stupid’ is being closed minded. Our world comprises infinite shades of grey yet our systems can typically only accommodate black or white. Common sense is something traffic lights can neither appreciate nor accommodate.
The sooner our road planners make proper allowances for the humans that use their systems, as opposed to treating their job as maintaining the efficiency of a large scale plumbing project of pipes, valves, volume and flow to which humans are an inconvenience, the sooner ridiculous inhuman issues like this can fizzle into irrelevance and die the death they so very deserve. There is nothing inherently dangerous in riding past a box on a stick with the bulb behind the red lens lit.
The cyclist light jumping issue isn’t the fault of cyclists – it’s the fault of a decades old design experiment that has gone badly wrong. As the existence of desire lines trampled beneath our naturally pythagorean human nature perfectly illustrates, for any system to work it must serve the needs of the user. Currently, our road network doesn’t do that very well, and it’s an issue that has only relatively recently been tackled with work like that pioneered by a design hero of mine, the late Hans Monderman.
Those who design systems with the idea that the end user is stupid will very quickly find their system doesn’t work. There are idiots in any situation, and the idea that our world should be built around those lowest common denominators is a fallacy. If you treat everyone as an idiot, everyone will behave like an idiot because the system encourages – nay – relies on it. Treat everyone as the intelligent human beings they overwhelmingly are, and things can actually start to work.
Common sense soon hits a glass ceiling on the current road network, above which lies illegality. Being less likely to get caught for minor and harmless transgressions on a bicycle means the humans riding them are more compelled to resort to common sense and behave naturally. Having the liability of a traceable number plate and two tonnes of metal around you prevents such natural freedom.
The main danger for the aware and alert red light jumping cyclist isn’t the actual red light jumping. It’s the retaliatory acts of jealousy and resentment by those who witness it from behind nearby steering wheels. The culture of hate and intolerance it breeds is the far greater daily threat to the cyclist. But that hate is focussed on the wrong target. Drivers shouldn’t be angry at the cyclist for making natural human progress; they should be angry that the system – to which we are all expected to adhere and the one in which they feel helplessly trapped – isn’t allowing them the same natural freedom.
Of course, every cyclist can stand patiently at every red light without any attention paid to its validity (or obvious lack thereof) merely so as not to aggravate the driver behind, but that would be letting human stupidity and ignorance dictate our group dynamic when intelligence and enlightenment is much better positioned to do the job.
I was once a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists. In fact I was asked if I’d consider becoming an observer, to teach the System of Car Control to new recruits. Unfortunately the inherent contradictions of an organisation dedicated to using a system based on common sense and alertness within the confines of a system that so often seems to positively discourage the deployment of either quickly got the better of me and I turned my back on it.
By definition, the IAM is committed to a system proven to be entirely broken. That they’re trying to fend off the moribundity facing all motoring organisations by becoming one of the loudest voices in the increasingly relevant world of utility and transport cycling is something we should all oppose. A motorist’s approach to moving around isn’t what cycling needs.
Most people will agree that the most satisfactory systems are those that are totally intuitive, they are those that need no user manual. The current edition of the Highway Code has 152 pages.
I didn’t buy my Bahco 8071 adjustable spanner. I found it languishing in a damp corner of the cellar, buried at the bottom of an old inherited toolbox where my industrial fabricator grandfather last laid it perhaps 25 years ago. It’s nothing special – new ones are about £18 – but it felt like a crime not to rescue such a nice tool. It was covered in surface rust and the mechanism was seized solid, but a strip, wire brush, oil and rebuild brought it back to perfect operational status. It’s now one of the tools I most reach for in my toolbox, performing today as perfectly as it ever did.
Occasionally though, it comes out of the toolbox just to be looked at. I feel it and adjust it and just consider it. It may initially be considered a cold and industrial item only because it takes some consideration to see beyond one’s preconceived notions of a spanner’s cold and industrial function. Yet doing so allows focus to fall purely on the aesthetic, where hide flowing compound curves like those on a Coke bottle or 1960s Jaguar sports car, intersecting perfect machined edges of a precision reminiscent of lead crystal glassware.
It is an item of exact quality. It is easily user serviceable. It is useful. It is versatile. It is comfortable to use. It is well made. It is solid and long lasting. It is affordable. It is efficient. It is empowering. It is timeless. It is elegant. It represents such perfect harmony of utility and elegance that it exemplifies the inherent beauty of pure and necessary function.
These are the qualities I believe all designs should have. Whether you’re designing a logo, a layout, a piece of software, an item of clothing, furniture, transportation, an entire city or whatever else you might care to imagine, the qualities of this Bahco 8071 adjustable spanner are those I think we all should be striving towards.
