Red-light districts get a redesign, users create comic strips and Apple embraces open innovation (sort of)
Design against crime
From prostitution to couture
Since the 17th century, locals and tourists have flocked to Amsterdam’s red-light district. But now a different type of temptation is on display in the windows of the world-famous Wallen district (above) as a fascinating new initiative is launched.
The Red Light Fashion Amsterdam project is rebranding the area as a centre for couture. Throughout 2008, 16 shop fronts formerly used by ladies of the night will become showcases for the city’s clothing designers.
The initiative is part of a crackdown on crime. Although prostitution has been legal since 2001 (and was tolerated for decades before that), money-laundering has moved into the industry.
Last year, more than 30 brothel permits were revoked and a non-profit housing agency bought a number of buildings in the area. Mariette Hoitink, of fashion agency HTNK, proposed giving former houses of ill repute new life by lending the space to designers, from high couture to street fashion.
The city has set a deadline of one year for the project to bring a new dynamic – and clientele – to the area. For the time being, brothels and boutiques will compete for tourists’ cash.
Education
Learning to play
For autistic children, playing and relaxing can be hard. Reactive Colours, a software project from the Cardiff School of Art and Design (CSAD), could be about to change that.
The software prompts users to respond to shapes, colours and movements on the screen after research showed that autistic children were drawn to toys such as spinning tops and kaleidoscopes. “It’s about using conventional technology in unconventional ways,” says Wendy Keay-Bright from CSAD. The aim is to make the software free for members to play on the web, and open up the source code to stimulate development.
Feedback from teachers suggests the software particularly helps children with very poor social communication skills and self-esteem to take control, develop social skills and concentrate. Most children have simply said it makes them feel good.
Trendspotting
Taking a bite of open innovation?
For all its image as a maverick innovator, Apple has been cagey about letting others interface with its beautifully designed products. Though Apple worked with Nike in 2006 to produce a sensor and iPod Nano add-on that relayed information to runners, things have gone cold since.
But if Apple doesn’t provide the innovations for users, other companies will. The launch of the acclaimed miShare, a $100 ‘bridge’ that enables users to swap songs between two iPods in seconds, does something many users had hoped Apple would do. The gadget is even less popular with the music industry – which feels that file sharing is killing its business – than with Apple.
Apple’s resistance to such devices and applications is not pure intransigence. There are real security concerns. Products like the iPhone are a software developer’s dream. But opening up the operating system could put users’ privacy at risk: contact lists could be pilfered, calls eavesdropped on and the device made vulnerable to viruses.
The user community, restricted to developing via the web, began hacking the iPhone to add their applications directly to the device. Apple’s response was to ‘brick’ (render useless) hacked iPhones via a software update, outraging innovators.
With a software development kit finally set for release, Apple may win its mavericks back. Andrew Reuter, a developer at Austin-based software company Journyx, says: ‘The kit will turn more attention to the iPhone. Third-party developers will start writing applications using it, which increases the popularity of the iPhone, which makes it a more desirable target platform, which causes more web developers to create apps that support the iPhone.’ The kit may, finally, make the iPhone the ubiquitous pocket device Apple wants it to be.
David Gentleman
The stamp of good design
Few designers can have made such an impact on British visual culture as 77-year-old David Gentleman, winner of the 2007 Prince Philip Designers Prize, organised by the Design Council. His work has featured on 100 British stamps and thousands see his murals at London’s Charing Cross tube station daily. The artist has also contributed posters to such diverse causes as the Stop the War Coalition and the National Trust, as well as illustrating hundreds of books. ‘I wanted to do stuff that would be seen,’ he tells DCM. ‘Working on my own has allowed me to do whatever I want.’
Rethinking the future
David Bott, director of innovation platforms for the UK’s Technology Strategy Board, outlines plans to stimulate creative thinking to deal with society’s most pressing issues.
Can the government use innovation to address the challenges that face society? It’s a question the new Technology Strategy Board – an executive non-departmental public body with a remit to boost UK growth and productivity – is trying to answer.
The board has already worked on two “Innovation Platforms” concerning more efficient transport systems and personal security in the internet age. It recently announced three further platforms – Low Carbon Vehicles, Assisted Living and Low Impact Buildings – which will each address a specific challenge for society
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Low Carbon Vehicles, which involves the Department for Transport, is tackling the carbon efficiency of individual modes of transport. Assisted Living, in partnership with the Department of Health, looks at ways to provide care for the increasing number of elderly and chronically ill people in society, without dramatically increasing the number of hospitals and carers required.
The Low Impact Buildings platform, working with the Departments of Communities and Local Government and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, is examining how to ensure buildings consume fewer resources and emit less carbon dioxide during their lifetimes.
In each of these areas, continuing with current practices would make meeting the needs of society and the environment tremendously difficult without an enormous increase in resources. By addressing these challenges now, and harnessing the innovative capabilities of UK companies, the board hopes to give home-grown business a strong advantage internationally, as other countries confront the same problems and look to import solutions.
Although the mainspring of the work is technological, each challenge has a human dimension in the implementation of the technological solutions. This is where design has a vital role to play, as solutions must deliver the necessary functionality in a manner that makes them attractive to the user. Products or solutions must also be designed for energy-efficient production, material sustainability and for re-use or recycling.
For more information on the work of the Technology Strategy Board, visit www.innovateuk.org
Finance
Credit where it’s due
Since Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, the concept of microcredit has been touted as the salve for the world’s financial and social ills. Microcredit involves small loans being made to poor, hitherto ‘unbankable’ people, usually women, who will use the money to start small businesses and achieve self-sufficiency. This lending strategy has been criticised – microfinanciers, because they take on more risk, often charge higher interest – but it is one of several new approaches to lending that are cumulatively redesigning the banking system.
Yunus launched Grameen Bank in 1976 in Bangladesh but his approach is now spreading to Europe. In 2006, Paris think-tank Eurofi estimated that the European microcredit market was growing by 67% a year and comprised more than 11m people.
Microcredit services require a new attitude to borrowers and a new style of lender. Such web-based lenders as Kiva.org and MicroPlace.com (where individuals extend investment loans via the site) were backed by the European Commission, which plans to support their activities with £11.3m of funding. The European Commission believes demand for microcredit could soon reach £4.6bn.
In the US, peer-to-peer (ie person to person) lending is expected to grow 800% by 2010, as the credit crunch hits, unsecured loans become more difficult to find and the public’s faith in the banking system is tested.
Research
Lessons from global brands
How do the world’s biggest companies manage design? Is it possible to instill commercial nous in scientific researchers? And how do companies turn design to their competitive advantage?
Eleven of the world’s most prestigious companies took part in an in-depth Design Council study to answer these – and other – questions. The findings offer genuine insight into the way design is used in these firms. Here are some of the secrets from a selection of the companies involved:
- Strong leadership. At BSkyB, brand values are managed in-house and, crucially, the product design manager, Ed Snodgrass, maintains a direct link with CEO James Murdoch.
- Using design to shape the brand. Starbucks’ designers and external consultants work from “the same creative palette”. New concepts must pass a five-criteria compatibility ‘filter’.
- User insight. Once driven by technological developments, Microsoft has switched focus to creating products that respond to its users’ needs.
- Designers talk business. Xerox involves designers from early in the process, right through to launch – developing their business acumen.
- Cross-functional working. Designers at Yahoo! are encouraged to think beyond their own discipline.
- Shrewd use of external expertise. BT uses outside designers to translate internal R&D work into new products.
The other companies taking part were LEGO, Virgin Atlantic, Whirlpool, Sony and Alessi.
Find out more at www.designcouncil.org.uk/elevenlessons
The new black is…
Words for a new century
Nutraceutical (noun: food – or parts of food – with possible health benefits)
Coined from ‘nutrition’ and ‘pharmaceutical’ to describe foods with a medicinal effect. There is no regulatory definition for its marketing use.
Mezzobrow (noun/adjective: synonym for middlebrow; from ‘mezzo’)
Containing (or appearing to have) highbrow qualities, but still appealing to a sizeable and diverse audience. Think Nick Hornby, Pizza Express or Last Night of the Proms.
Simplex (adjective: complex, yet simple)
Designers are frequently told to combine a host of functions with ease of use. For example, the Apple iPhone is a simplex combination of phone, iPod and web browser.
Fortification creep (noun: the steady increase of military appearances in design)
In 2004, Tyler Brûlé called for designers to make the anti-terrorist measures appearing around embassies and official buildings look more attractive. He may have been on to something – fortification is increasingly a built-in factor of design, as in Mitsubishi’s military-looking Warrior range.
Protirement (noun: like retirement, but more fun)
Retiring or quitting an unattractive job to pursue work or hobbies more suited to one’s personality. One estimate suggests that 15% of under-35s in the UK have protired. This trend may not survive the global downturn.
Computer bardo (phrase: a transitional state experienced by computer users)
Bardo, a Tibetan word which means ‘transitional state’ or ‘state in-between’, is used to describe time wasted on a computer, waiting for software to power up or a web page to download. The average corporate home page, for example, now takes 19 seconds to download.
Bopreneur (noun: entrepreneur who works at the Base of the Pyramid (BOP))
A 21st century twist on the ‘social entrepreneur’ – a term first used back in the 1960s – to categorise those who work to improve the lot of the three billion people who live on less than $3 a day.
Creative cities
Turin
Claim to fame: Italy’s automobile capital, which was founded as a Roman camp in around 23BC, is now the world’s first official design capital. The honour, bestowed by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), reflects Turin’s drive to transform its urban environment, a campaign which began when it hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics. The Piedmont capital will host many design-related events, including the World Congress of the International Union of Architects in June.
Creative industry: Piedmont’s 624 design businesses employ more than 50,000 people and generate £8.5bn in turnover. The automotive industry, led by FIAT, takes up just 6.7% of the design sector, but generates 26% of its wealth. In Turin, a new community of 100 designers called Turn was founded in 2005 to promote design and design thinking in the city.
Designing the future: The Politecnico, Turin’s university for engineering, architecture and design, has 300 laboratories, 25,000 students and more than 6,000 researchers. Research facilities at its new campus will be used by General Motors and Motorola.
Cultural elite: Famously the setting for 1969’s The Italian Job, Turin has its own film commission and a new virtual reality and multimedia park to promote innovation. The city’s International Book Fair is second in Europe only to Frankfurt’s Buchmesse. Rebirth of a city: As Italy’s first capital (from 1861 to 1864), Turin will host the 2011 celebrations of its 150th anniversary as a unified nation. Billions are being invested to update public transport systems, create new cultural centres and establish a network of green spaces around the city’s rivers. New rail lines will speed up journeys to Lyon and Milan.
Crowdsourcing superheroes
DC Comics, publisher of such legendary creations as Batman and Superman, has launched a new imprint, heralding a fresh chapter for the industry.
Zuda is a web-based comics community that invites submissions from users, puts them to a popular vote and crowns a winner each month. The victorious strip could become an ongoing, online series and make its way into print. (DC reserves the right to appoint instant winners if submissions are just too good to pass up.)
The arrival of a heavyweight such as DC on the web-comic scene promises a new business model. DC president Paul Levitz says: 'There seems to be a bunch of creators out there who want to create, and a sizeable audience who want to see their creations. There’s an opportunity for a publisher to connect creators with an audience.'
Some creators have raised concerns over intellectual property rights, but Zuda is one of the most intriguing crowdsourcing projects to date – and could be the one that packs the biggest 'KAPOW!'
Urban signage
Making London more legible
Can a new set of overground maps become as functional and iconic as Harry Beck’s tube map for lost Londoners and disorientated out-of-towners? Legible London thinks so. Its new signs, now being trialled in the West End, aim to help confused pedestrians master the city’s streets.
The new signs are the result of a 2006 study highlighting the fact that the capital’s piecemeal information for walkers can involve up to 32 wayfinding systems. Many footsore pedestrians, the study found, turned to the classic tube map – or the tube itself – in despair.
Using the theory of ‘mental mapping’, the new system is consistent, so users can quickly understand and remember how it works. The signs incorporate grid-style maps and point out walking times and noteworthy landmarks along routes.
Article first published in Design Council Magazine, Issue 4, Summer 2008
Picture credits
Vehicles in a traffic jam: Shutterstock
Turin, Italy: Alamy