Aside from writing a branding report today (which I will share with you once all contributors have OKed it), I received some wonderful news from Gabriel Weinberg of Duck Duck Go. Those who are used to the Duck will know that you can search using what he calls bangs—the exclamation mark. On Chrome, which […]
Category: design
Graphic, web and industrial design.
Testing the search engines
I hadn’t heard of Blekko, a search engine, till last week, so armed with a new entrant, I wanted to see how they all compared. Blekko’s very pretty, and I’ve told Gabriel Weinberg, the man behind Duck Duck Go, just what it is that makes it attractive. Most of it is the modernist design […]
Igovt hates my answers
I signed up to the Igovt site for the New Zealand Government today, allowing citizens a single log-on for e-government services (such as the Companies’ Office, where we have to file annual returns). In case you forget your password, you can choose from a variety of security questions they can ask you. The following […]
Retro moment: the first American Ford Granada
Above: The US Ford Granada in a contemporary advertisement, as posted at americangranada.com. Not the European car, but the American one of the same name: the Ford Granada was marketed as a US alternative to a Mercedes-Benz. Not as overstyled as, say, the Ford Maverick, this was an extremely heavy car, and Ford’s marketing […]
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Giving Chrome a thrashing, including its typography
My friends Julian and Andrew both provided advice on how to fix the Firefox problems I had been having. Removing and reinstalling plug-ins seems to have solved the constant crashing, though eventually it stopped loading images whenever it felt like it (hit ‘Reload’ enough times and they would return) and Facebook direct messaging stopped working. […]
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Titling Goldeneye 007
This is nothing new to gamers (whose world I am not a part of—unless you count the last time I had a gaming console, which was 1984), though I found the opening sequence to the remade Goldeneye 007 game rather well done, apart from the colons. The Neuzeit typeface looks good here. As we’ve known […]
Retrograde steps for our cellphones
Last week, our company’s Nokia 2730 Classics arrived as part of a contract with Telstra Clear, of whom we’ve been a customer since the 1980s. They are a reminder of how technology is regressing. Remember that scene in Life on Mars, where Sam Tyler, or Samuel Santos in La chica de ayer, tells Annie […]
Happy birthday, Lucire
Above The first issue of Lucire in 1997. Below right Lucire’s first iPad cover. [Cross-posted at Lucire] An hour ago, we turned 13. Normally this wouldn’t have merited much of a mention, since 13’s not the sort of number people tend to celebrate. But I happened to be up, after a long day catching up […]
Volvo Cars, a unit of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co.
I haven’t missed the sale of Volvo to Geely, but it wasn’t as momentous as the rebirth of Saab. We knew the deal was coming and the rest were formalities. The company has said there will be no Geelys badged as Volvos and vice versa. It recognizes the Volvo brand is too valuable to […]
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Saab promises new generation of cars will have original DNA
Rumour has it that the new Saab—a small car (finally)—will resemble the ur-Saab, the 92. In fact, inside Saab, it has the codename 92. Where have I heard this one before? I know. Stefan Engeseth’s Detective Marketing, 2001 edition. And from what I understand, since in 1999 I could not read much Swedish, it […]
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