Ben Maxwell's blog

Functional and intriguing. Rare and humble. Useful and special. The products on show at the Kiosk meets SCP collaboration during London Design Week are oxymoronic. And therefore fascinating.

Even the act of going to see products like these, displayed like this, is contradictory. Products as plain as laundry clips and drain plugs are displayed like works of art: hung on the walls with little printed signs describing them.

These are quiet products, but they are full of stories. The little printed signs tell the story of where and how Kiosk’s ‘curators’ found the item. And, given space, the products seem willing to tell their ancestors stories – what happened to other versions of the same product.

The Kiosk brand works in a really interesting way. Its adventurer; travelling around the world to find unique knick-knacks for stay at homes. Its curator; presenting these objects to us in thought provoking way. And its a storyteller: imbuing context and meaning into products we’ve never seen before.

The packaging alludes to these different aspects of the brand: a clear wrapper allows us to see the product, the package is sealed with the name of the people who brought it to us and the story is provided by a copy of the little sign.

Why would you do this?

Why add your parent brand logo to a thriving brand? Especially when the Flickr community are hugely loyal? And the Yahoo brand is looking a little grey and lost.

Such meddling control freakery is bad parent behaviour and just makes Flickr look uncool.

The bad news: the cables on my headphones broke.

The good news: Rather than having to buy a new pair all I had to do was replace a cable. Designing for re-use says “we value long-term relationships over short-term sales”.

Interesting to read that Freshjive is dropping its logo as of 2010. I first read about it on the excellent PFSK blog, which stated that it was going logoless and brandless. In a second interview with PFSK, Rick Klotz, Freshjive’s founder / owner described the new black square logo as “the same labeling we’ve been running on our garments, less the brand name on it”.

So, Freshjive are removing their logo from garments and leaving the border behind as a placeholder, which is going logoless.But, the placeholder has a graphic form - a black square with a white outline:

They’ll still be named FreshJive. And they will still known for leading-edge streetwear. All of which makes this a re-brand, albeit a dramatic and fundamental one.

And an ingenious one. Rick obviously knows his audience and I think he knows they’re suffering from brand fatigue. He’s making a leap into a less branded world in a bid to keep them onboard. Being one of the first to make this leap gives FreshJive an opportunity to make a splash in the short term and own the unbranded space in the long term.

I think the new identity is better too. It resonates much more closely with the Freshjive brand that is being built on the company blog - bold, outspoken and rebellious. The old logo jars next to an article about cops abusing their Tasers, whereas a black square looks perfect.

Behold my new steed - the Gentleman’s Glorie. Having missed the fixie wave the only way to go was Dutch. And after a visit to the excellent Bobbin bicycles I realised the only way to go was Dutch with pedal back brakes and unisex frame. I think unisex frame is polite for girls frame, but what the hey I’m loving this bike.

The upright position totally changes your perspective. You look ahead, down the street, not down at the road. Having my upper body in a straight position makes me feel more confident and like I deserve to be on the road.

The pedal back brake means you can’t break suddenly. You have to break gently. You have to travel (a bit) slower. Which is a good thing - you can take the time to look around.

Plus, its spec’d to the m a x. Front and back mudguards = no more wet bum. Built in dymo lights mean I can’t forget my lights / get them nicked / run out of batteries. The fully sealed chain guard keeps my strides clean. And an integral rear rack means I can give friends lifts.

But mainly its just really good fun. Riding it makes me smile.

I used to take tons of photos. The first camera I remember using was some pseudo-iconic Kodak 35mm camera I bought in Boots in a blister pack. It was small and brown. Photos taken with it were unremarkable, but real. Like bad Martin Parr.

Then my friend Tom introduced me to lomography. Colour saturation! Vignettes! Cross processing! The 10 rules of Lomography - shoot from the hip, don’t think! It was photography’s teenage rebellion against its parent, Ansel Adams. I bought a Lomo LCA and got stuck in. Here’s a lomo of Scott walking on the beach:

Then I moved to Portland, Oregon for my stint at the Mulgrew School. I bought a digital camera to capture the experience. Unlike the film cameras I don’t fondly remember what make it was. I do remember it was black and anonymous with small buttons and batteries. It conveniently captured life, but it did it in a bright, sharp and unforgiving way. Hyper-real:

Back in the UK I gradually stopped taking so many photos. Why did that happen? I think it was something to do with the change in medium.

Film cameras, whether they’re lumps of plastic or Russian works of art, capture a moment in time. You don’t know exactly what 1/60th of a second you got when you press the button. You’ve no idea what its going to look like until the magic ritual of opening a pack of images. They are private, scarce (one shot out of thirty six) and final.

Digital cameras are different. You instantly know which 1/60th you got. Shared rituals such as passing the screen around or viewing on Facebook have replaced opening the packet. Images are public, plentiful (just delete an image to make room) and temporary.

I’m not curmudgeonly complaining about technology here. I just think that all these aspects have changed what I used to think of photography. Technology diluted the significance of the image.

I’m getting back into photography. Part of this involved buying a new camera. Its digital, to make it easy to view and share. One of the reasons I chose that one was because it feels like an old film camera. Its weighty. Its got knurled metal dials. The t has manual affordances - the dials let me know that I can set the shutter speed. These let me take  Real.

These images are still not scarce and less valuable. I wasn’t sure what I could do about that. Then I read about Jamie Livingston. He took one polaroid every day for 18 years. Looking through them is an incredible experience - even more so as they capture his whole life in New York right up to his death. He was meticulous about only taking one image a day. Even if he saw something amazing later he wouldn’t shoot it. That’s scarcity. You have one image a day. I’m going to give it a shot. I’ll still take other photos during the day, but every day I’m going to have one image to be part of the series of images per day.

I saw this notice on a door of a closed down cafe in Soho:

Shame because they made an excellent pastrami on rye.

I really like how even though you can’t go in there to buy lunch anymore they are still expressing their brand values - the guy is thanking his team and striving for an interesting future. And doing so in an upbeat and true way. What could your brand be remembered for?

Reality TV and Philippe Starck both drive me nuts. Or at least the ego-driven pointless schmaltzy pseudo-design that he creates drives me nuts. So, I was expecting to be driven into a rage by ‘Design for Life’ - a reality TV show featuring Phillipe Starck.

But I enjoyed it. Damn. And … I like Philippe Starck. There i said it. Doubledamn! I liked how he put a bunch of star-struck and terrified design newbies at ease by goofing around with a red nose, explaining how he felt: “I’m so nervous”, and crucially, taking the pressure off by saying it wasn’t about design  “its about unleashing creativity”.

I like that he was trying to get the group to think of the ideas behind a product, by setting the first task in the hypermarche. (These shows are essentially a sequence of tasks. Jason and the argonauts would have made brilliant reality TV). I guess that’s to be expected from someone who’s got such a grip on  brand.

And, apparently, he’s eco: “There are too many pointless products being made these days”. He should know as he’s made a good deal of them. I guess everyone is allowed an epiphany. Looking forward to seeing how the series pans out.

Gutted about MJ. But, I love how people have been playing with the Twitter brand to show their feelings. Billie Tweet (Billie Jean set to other people’s tweets) is incredible. And I like the Fail Whale with the MJ twist:

It made me think about brands that people can play with. People like to play. It is part of human nature; experimenting with, adding to and using in new ways has helped us solve problems, invent and evolve.

Some brands embrace this innate desire to play. They have ‘playability’ - people know they can experiment with them, or add to them. It seems to me that having a brand with playability brings many advantages. People play with your brand and

• create publicity for them and you
• extend your offering
• become part of what you’re doing. The act of playing upgrades someone from an observer to a participant. They’re now part of what you’re doing and they have a higher level of affinity for your brand
• forgive your mistakes. Playing means people understand your brand and business better. So when something goes wrong they they are more likely to understand why, and be forgiving. Back to the fail whale

But you can’t force it. Like giving a toy to a child - you can’t make them play, but you can let them play.

I love hacking, in the “modification of a program or device to give the user access to features that were otherwise unavailable” sense of the word. As Mr Jalopy says “if you can’t open it, you don’t own it”. But it’s difficult. And time consuming. All those soldering irons, lines of code and tweaking things! No-one said it was easy.

Which is why I’m starting by hacking socks. All of the liberation of hacking, with minimal time and fuss. Why socks? Think about it: socks are cruel friends. Their primary purpose is to assuage the foot, but instead they twist and tourniquet leading to what my colleague Jono calls ‘corrugated ankles’. It’s time for this to change.

The sock hack (aka Casual Socks)

Equipment needed: Scissors

Time: 20 seconds

Steps
1. Grip left sock firmly. Identify elasticated section.
2. Make a vertical incision approx. 3 inches in length from the top of the sock to match the depth of the elasticated section
3. Repeat for right sock

Reclaim your ankles!

Hello.

Welcome to my blog. I’m going to fly in the face of accepted blog wisdom and instead of exclusively blogging about a micro-niche like bamboo bikes I’m going to blog about things I find interesting. Like laser graffiti and bamboo bikes.

Most things here will in some way revolve around the topics I find interesting: brands, design, marketing, sustainable behaviour, photography.

Create a great day*

Ben

* a Californian hippy once said this to me. At first it sounds cheesy, but after a while I started to think that its a rallying cry to give and create and make stuff better. Yo!