Compiled by Jo Phillips

• A sobering New York Times graphic of the 2009 death count (Allied military forces only) in Iraq and Afghanistan
• An alarming case of public sector innovation in South Africa
• Some interesting and successful attempts at behaviour change in Schipol Airport,  from Core 77, demonstrating that humour is important even when the subject is serious
• A talking plate that tells you to eat more slowly, via the iftf
• Stella’s app for finding the nearest pint of the stuff to your location – and a taxi to take you home!
• Bruichladdich’s beautiful bottle for the world’s first organic whiskey. It is possible to push the boundaries even in traditionally stuffy categories
• And a video of an uplifting performance by the singer Bobby McFerrin at the world science festival last year demonstrates the power of the pentatonic scale.

The image at the top is from the Schipol bheaviour change campaign, designed by the Dutch firm Autobahn.

Jake Goretzki writes:

According to one of the so-called ‘ten commandments‘ of the German industrial designer Dieter Rams, “Good design is as little design as possible”, something that is clear from the retrospective running at the Design Museum in London (until 7th March). Rams has a cult following among design enthusiasts for his enduringly simple, elegant designs for Braun from the 1950s until the mid 1990s. For his fans, that exhibition space full of stereos, toasters and coffee grinders is, well: it’s what Heaven’s branch of Curry’s might look like, surely.

Two thoughts struck me as I left.

Firstly, if plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery, is Dieter Rams the most flattered industrial designer alive today? Without his influence, it’s certain that much of modern product design would look very different – including Jonathan Ive’s celebrated work for Apple, up to and including this week’s iPad.

Secondly, how did it come to be that an iconic, widely emulated and now ‘cult’ brand today only really exists as a largely forgettable range of electric toothbrushes and vegetable steamers? In an age where brands hunger for authenticity and ‘cool’ credentials, the brand that ‘did Apple before Apple’ could surely be working harder and making more of its credentials.

As Rams’ fifth commandment says, good design is unobtrusive. But to my mind, Braun’s fate feels like unobtrusiveness to excess.

The picture at the top of the post comes from slamxhype blog, and is used with thanks. Slamxhype’s post on the exhibition has a fantastic collection of pictures of Rams’ work.

(c) James Brittain

Alex Oliver writes:

On Wednesday evening, I had the privilege of presenting the findings from our recent study on the effect of the built environment on young cancer patients to more than a hundred people  from health, media and building sectors, at the Saatchi Gallery in London.  We recently completed this work on behalf of the Teenage Cancer Trust and its sponsors from the building, design and architectural communities.

We found that design plays an integral role in helping young people fight cancer by providing a non-institutionalised medical environment within the National Health Service.  Design works hand in hand with staff, equipment and the culture of the units by providing more comfort and greater control, which in turn contribute to maintaining ‘normality’.  For teenagers this is very important; those who recover are able more quickly to pick up their lives again; those who  don’t can manage their lives for as long as possible.

One quote from the research exemplified the approach for me:

“The first thing you noticed was the mirror and the lights – you wouldn’t get that in a normal ward so it just tells you straight away that it’s a little bit different”.

The findings will be used by the Teenage Cancer Trust and its sponsors to develop  support for these services, and for their overall approach – demonstrating clear value both from the perspectives of the users of the service,  and in terms of improving health outcomes, since more positive patients are more likely to engage with treatment, and comply with it.

There’s more information in the flyer which was produced for the launch – click on the link here for a pdf: TeenageCancerTrust_twopager

The picture of the Teenage Cancer Trust’s ‘Skylab’ unit in Cardiff is by the specialist design photographer James Brittain, and it is used with thanks. It comes from Architeria. Building Design’s bdonline service had a brief news story about the launch of the research.

Andrew Curry writes:

It’s always a pleasure to see good design, especially in unexpected places. This was the ticket I got when I played a round of crazy golf at Puckpool Park on the Isle of Wight last weekend. Less paper, less hassle, less waste. And quite a good size for a bookmark afterwards.

Anouk van den Eijnde writes:

The majority of the world’s 6.5 billion residents now live in cities – cities that are often overpopulated, congested and hostile to pedestrians and cyclists. Take Mexico City, for example, with a population of more than 20 million people: it suffers from pollution, traffic, water shortage and a high crime rate. The once attractive public spaces are now deemed by local residents to be too dangerous to spend time in. The mayor is slowly tackling these issues by revitalizing its historic centre, improving public transport and dealing with its acute water shortage. But what do residents really want from their cities?

Caracas-based architects Brillembourg and Klumpner, founders of the Urban Think Tank, are consulting local residents and community groups in an attempt to find sustainable solutions to the city’s ever-exploding population. Their focus is on the growing ‘informal cities’ where four out of its six million inhabitants are squatting the hillsides in self-built constructions. One of their initiatives is a cable car system connecting the valley to Caracas’ public transport system. Their site has an engaging video about their work.

Taking a leaf out of the ‘livable streets’ initiative - which encourages people to re-imagine how their cities would be if they were healthier and more sustainable – the American magazine GOOD asked people to do just that, and redesign their streets to make them more ‘livable’. The task was to take a photo of a street or intersection you know and hate, then use Photoshop or other image software to make the changes you wanted to see. Green spaces, bike lanes, street art, playgrounds, exercise machines – it could be anything. The winners, though mostly North American, demonstrate the value of visions in making change, and there’s also a whole gallery of entries.

Another example of involving people in urban design is Fix My Street, a UK website from the team at mySociety that allows people to report local problems like vandalism, broken lights and litter. You can simply type in the postcode online (or on your i-phone), find the location on the map and type in the problem. Comments are then sent directly to the local council on the users’ behalf. Who better to influence the design and maintenance of neighbourhoods than its local residents?

Andrew Curry writes:

I knew about the Russian Constructivist artist Rodchenko’s work as a photographer and a designer, but until I visited the Tate Modern’s current exhibition (in London until 17 May) I hadn’t realised that he’d also run an advertising agency. His partner was the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, who wrote the copy, and the company was called ‘Advertising-Constructors-Mayakovsky-Rodchenko‘.

They designed adverts for the Moscow department store GUM, for the state airline, and also some posters which would these days fall under the heading of ’social marketing’, for trade unions (“The Trade Union is a Defender of Female Labour”).

The two men were able to set up the business after Lenin encouraged some small-scale private enterprise in the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921. Mayakovsky dismissed criticism of those who thought that this wasn’t revolutionary work by saying ‘it is necessary to employ all the weapons used by our enemies’. He clearly learnt the lesson well – one of their posters was for a union opposing the NEP. Rodchenko later did the famous posters for Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin. Their advertising and design work was revolutionary, in both senses (British and American ads from the same period look fussy and cluttered in comparison), and decades ahead of its time.

The poster at the top of this post, for the state airline, is courtesy of the Tate Modern.

Compiled by Tom Ding

The first of an occasional column: Passed around the office lately were:

• A brilliant presentation on the “past and future” of city magic by Matt Jones of Doppir
• A map of the internet (or at least the 333 most important bits) modelled on the map of the Tokyo metro – not the first time, by the way, that we’ve blogged about maps based on tube networks.
• Another less subterranean map of parliamentary expenses (thanks, Digital Urban) – MapTube, the mapping mash-up site which published this also has a map showing all of the London tube stations in their geographically correct positions.
• A complete visual history of Lego’s ‘mini-figures’ from which the picture at the top of the post is taken. And news of a rather larger Lego figure, a sculpture of Jesus made from 30,000 bricks, unveiled at a church in Sweden just in time for Easter.

Enjoy!

Andrew Curry writes:

Anyone with a passing interest in modern jazz knows the ECM label, now 40 years old, with its distinctive roster and innovative design. To mark the anniversary it has released 40 of the best from its back catalogue as ‘Touchstones’ – with performers ranging from Pat Metheny and Keith Jarrett to John Surman, Anouhar Brahem and Jan Garbarek. The price is low (“at download prices”) and the packaging reduced.

It’s a move which pushes some obvious buttons. The €9.90 price is a response both to the digital download market and also to the recession, the card covers more environmentally friendly than the typical jewel case. But it also touches on some less obvious trends. The packaging design reduces the amount of space the CDs take up, in an age of decluttering, while also evoking the glossy look and feel, if smaller, of the original LP sleeves, creating a kind of nostalgia for the future. It can only be a matter of time before ECM’s new releases follow suit.

The picture is of pianist Chick Corea and vibes player Gary Burton, both on the Touchstones series.

Andrew Curry writes:

Alice Rawsthorne has an interesting article on the impact of recession on design in the International Herald Tribune. It seems it’s all good news. This shouldn’t be a surprise; innovation thrives on scarcity and constraint, and design is no different. And certainly the historical evidence bears this out. The Bauhaus and the Modernist movements emerged in the 1920s and ’30s, and the Italian post-war design boom from the depths of its post-war austerity.

The current financial and economic crisis requires that we think again about how our systems work, and – as she writes – designers excel at simplifying complex issues and collaborating with other disciplines. Rawsthorne anticipates that designers will help companies to cut costs by thinking about new ways to use materials and by imagining new service models (for example part-ownership or ‘renalism’ rather than outright purchase, as is happening with the Parisian Velib bicycle initiative – or Streetcar and Zipcar, come to that).

Beyond this, there are whole new approaches to service and system design, and she commends the work of Live|Work, which has redesigned support services, for example in its work in Sunderland, to put the user at the centre and access resources from multiple agencies rather than being caught between them.(It also works in the private sector).

The final bit of good news? The market for expensively designed objects has tanked. Half of the lots at Sotheby’s design auction last month went unsold.

Thanks to core 77 for the tip. The picture of a Velib station at the top of this post is from an article about the Velib scheme in Post-Carbon Cities.

Jake Goretzki writes:

In the first half of this post, I wrote about flags as brands with an army and navy – but still in need of relaunching or repositioning from time to time. When they do work, relaunches are marvellously transformatory. Imagine Canada with this blazer badge of a flag (below) – unbelievably, this survived until 1965. It seems to convey the notion of Canada as some kind of British backwater. How could it ever have stood out? The Maple leaf on the other hand is ownable, differentiated and unifying. That said, of course, Quebec might beg to differ – anyone for a rebrand?

Canada Pre-1965

Canada Post-1965

Unlike Canada, New Zealand still wrestles today with brand differentiation issues. At the moment the current New Zealand flag (below) looks a bit like Australia (further below) in disguise, so it’s not surprising that there’s a movement to rebrand it, both differentiating it from Australia and referencing the indigenous population – something the current flag doesn’t capture. Naturally, it’s a controversial subject and still unresolved, but one senses that the consumer context and the brand has already shifted quite a long way in this direction. The ‘All Blacks’ aren’t ‘All Red, White and Blues’ for a reason. To the neutral observer, differentiation beckons.

Current New Zealand

Proposal for a new New Zealand flag

Australia

For an example of repositioning meanwhile, look no further than the Irish tricolour, which evolved from the green, white and gold of nineteenth century nationalism

to today’s green-white-orange. The orange is widely seen as a reference to the House of Orange (and hence to Protestants): a neat conciliatory gesture, but rather like McClean’s toothpaste’s short-lived attempt to go upmarket with its packaging, or DFS’s claim to being ‘designer’, has struggled to reach its target. The brand isn’t there yet. In fact, Cote d’Ivoire might yet be closer.

20th-Century Ireland

19th-Century Ireland

Cote D’Ivoire

Flag branding disasters? Well, it’s an apocryphal case, but the Iraqi flag in recent years might be an example. The never-flown Governing Council flag was interpreted by some observers (ones with – shall we say – rather idiosyncratic world views) as referencing the Israeli flag – yes, you heard it. In reality, the ultimately repositioned new Iraqi flag found a solution in a subtle revision of calligraphy (the earlier version was widely believed to feature Saddam Hussein’s handwriting). Small design development, powerful symbolic statement. They also jettisoned their stars – these ones symbolised the shortlived United Arab Republic.

Iraq 2008

Iraq – Saddam era

Iraq – Governing Council

Lastly, a moment to savour what was once the world’s most abysmal flag: that of Rwanda until 2001. An example of branding and communication so inept that it used to remind me of ubiquitous straplines one would see in newly-capitalist Russia claiming that any product was ‘The Best in the World’. Of homework finished on the school bus.

Rwanda 1962-2001

The good news? A new brand was launched in 2001, authoritative, optimistic and even managing to evoke a feeling of a place and terrain. They’ve had the consultants in!

Rwanda 2001-