Digital clocks are probably the worst. I tried to write a book one time about good design and poor design, but I never got beyond my hatred for digital clocks. They've finally started getting a little better in the last 5 years or so.

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I truly appreciate good design, but I hate it when the "Designer" label is used to justify overcharging consumers.

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And that's where the audience thing comes up: why is this film shown as an AIGA/IDSA event? Because hasn't anyone from this community heard that stuff a zillion times? Do we believe it? Is this movie for us, or are we the alpha market that will help the movie gain further audience but (as I'm doing) talking about it?

Frankly, I was so turned off by the firms gently (no doubt due to some deft editing) talking about themselves as these bubbles where great stuff happens, as opposed to the actual field of design where people move on career arcs in a variety of different organizations that are, in my mind, pretty much the same. The scenes of designers interacting with each other at brainstorms or with prototypes or on-screen were very fake, offensively so. "How's about a removable handle? Well, oh, yes, that's a good idea" "We're not designing toothbrushes, we're looking at the future of dental care" all come right out of the marketing literature kool-aid and I was bummed that Hustwit couldn't sniff that out as false.

I think - and the movie sort of gets at this with Rob Walker's powerful (but too wryly delivered and too quick for me to fully process - I wanted a rewind button and a moment to digest) suggestion that what we already own is maybe good enough for most of us - that there's a Big Lie for design around We Create Meaningful Stuff. Guess what, you don't. As one person in the movie said "people care about a lot of things and maybe cleaning their teeth isn't one of them" most of the stuff that gets made is stuff that no one cares about. Most of the things we each own are not our grandfather's wonderful briefcase, as the opening breakfast montage makes clear - we've got a lot of stuff and very little of it has significant meaning. Or if you make a product that sells big, chances are that few people will attach much emotion to it, regardless of the category. BMWs and iPhone are rare design gigs. So design should stop lying to itself and its customers about this, because it's absolute crap. And I thought the film let that idea hang just a bit.

I thought the bit with Jonny Ive was brilliant (although he referred to CNC and bosses in a way that wouldn't help you if you didn't know what that referred to) because it gave me something new to think about (I sense a theme here :) - a company that has framed the design in the popular consciousness as being about cool, modern, sleek, and user experience is putting an enormous amount of effort into designing the way the thing gets made - a designed aspect of the product that is entirely invisible to the end-user. That's probably nothing new to people with experiencing in manufacturing, but it opened my world up a bit.

I liked Alice Rawsthorn's example of design being used to create standards, citing an ancient Chinese army that had archers who designed their own arrows and were not interchangable. This reminded me of what I blogged yesterday [www.portigal.com] where the Chinese government is trying to standardize the language used in names in order to simplify their database requirements.

The discussion was almost all about design - its future, sustainability, the other 90%, etc. - and not enough about the film itself. Hustwit relies on getting The Big Names and that seems to be the core of the film but he does something else amazing - he creates this visual glue between the interviews that is just so powerful. In Helvetica he turned the camera on the printed environment and showed us the impact of Helvetica that maybe we hadn't already experienced ourselves. Here he observes people, people in cars, people shopping for Apple products, people walking across the street, as well as the knick-knacks that populate our homes (as well as some amazing mechanical processes) that all point to a much keener eye than he takes credit for. In the montage of software interactions there's a quick shot of a VCR flashing 12:00 - of course, that's an obsolete example but it's THE classic interaction design cliche and I was so pleased to see it. As much as the talking heads make you think (or at least are intended to), the linking imagery really makes you feel and in both films that was my favorite part: the observation of our world, informed by some (hopefully) new ideas.

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Sorry, I'm drinking coffee.

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