Maextro S800, with a two-tone paintwork.

We’ll all soon know luxury Chinese car brands

Maextro S800, with a two-tone paintwork.

I noted in the new Autocade Year of Cars that the French faltered in China because the Chinese marques no longer need them, especially when they are churning out superior product. They have no use for French cachet, especially as the brands edge upmarket. You’ve got the HIMA collective from Huawei, all with luxury marques, […]

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After warnings were ignored, we now arrive in the new tech mainstream

If you look back at all the tech companies I’ve called out, deep down I did so as a warning. If they show this contempt for the user, then it’s symptomatic of greater problems. Everything from Google switching your ad preferences’ opt-outs back to opt-ins and the stonewalling when it came to deleted blogs, to […]

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Wrapping up the year of disinformation?

I thought Emerald Sky Group had removed its disinformation post, falsely claiming to be working with me and having my endorsement. It’s a blatant attempt to trade off my reputation, even though I’ve spotted articles where their lads are bragging about how good they are. Well, you can’t be that good if you need to […]

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Duck Duck Go is probably scared of Mojeek

Duck Duck Go serving a page after using the !lucire bang. The second result is a frameset that has not been linked to in over two decades, a sign of Bing being a Wayback Machine.   As some of you know, I used Duck Duck Go as my principal search engine between 2010 and 2022, […]

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The case for Brand Aotearoa

Originally published in Scoop   During our mid-year travels, I was surprised to learn that Aotearoa New Zealand doesn’t have the profile that we think it does. We’re not riding the wave of The Lord of the Rings: few abroad remember the connection two decades later. No one I encountered recalls 100% Pure, and if […]

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Autocade Year of Cars 2025 now out

A two-page spread featuring cars and their drag coefficient figures plotted against their year.

  We have put a few links around the place, Stanley Moss very kindly referred to it in his blog, and an article has gone up on Lucire: the new Autocade Yearbook is out for 2025. I decided to call it Autocade Year of Cars as that was more distinctive than just Yearbook (which, for […]

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The new Jaguar

'Create exuberant' on a colourful image featuring four people dressed in yellow, orange, red and magenta.

Originally published on my friend and international branding guru Stanley Moss’s blogs, What Is a Brand? and Endless Road, as he requested this piece.     Jaguar Land Rover announced some time back that it didn’t see Land Rover as a brand any more. It would rather we think of Defender and Discovery as brands, […]

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A bronze at Best

Front cover of booklet, Pīwari the Kaitiaki, with a bee illustration.

I’m proud to say I had a small part to play in Pīwari te Kaitiaki, which took out a bronze in the Social Good category at the Designers’ Institute of New Zealand’s Best Design Awards. My role was helping realize the translated version in te reo Māori, and it was an absolute joy to work […]

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Where is brand Aotearoa?

Five New Zealand customs' officers seated on a boat.

One thing holding back exports from Aotearoa New Zealand is the absence of a true, authentic national brand. I said this even back in the days of the 100% Pure campaign, which was much lauded. I cynically asked: can we really claim this when France and Germany outspend us on the environment as a percentage […]

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Google results are old

That Google seems to get older and older. Here are the top 10 for site:lucire.com as of October 10, 2024.     The home page isn’t there, and maybe that’s OK. But what is there is the index.html file to the 2000 folder, which was put there to catch any programming errors (e.g. forgetting to […]

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